Absence Of Building Research Articles

Comparison of FLUMEN and HEC-RAS 2D Models for Flash-Flood Inundation Considering Land Cover and Building Presence

The increased frequency and intensity of floods caused by climate change has exacerbated damage in urban areas. Flood-inundation maps, which is a nonstructural measure, is crucial in preventing and mitigating such damage. Two-dimensional flood-analysis models, such as FLUMEN and HEC-RAS 2D, are widely used to simulate urban flooding caused by complex factors such as buildings, land cover, and terrain. This study aims to compare the simulation results of FLUMEN and HEC-RAS 2D by considering land cover and building presence in a specific urban area. By comparing the simulation results under various roughness coefficients and the presence or absence of buildings, the uncertainties arising from model selection are examined, which highlights the importance of selecting an appropriate model for urban areas. The results of this study contribute to the decision making involved in selecting suitable numerical models for various urban-flood scenarios. In the future, a systematic approach must be established for selecting flood-analysis models and expanding their functionality through integration with hydrological models.

Digital Juneteenth: Territorializing the Freedom Colony Diaspora

AbstractAfter Juneteenth, formerly enslaved African Americans in Texas founded hundreds of historic Black settlements known as freedom colonies. Later, freedom colonies’ populations dispersed, physical traces disappeared, and memories of locations vanished as descendants passed away. In the absence of buildings and legally recognized borders, intangible heritage—stories, ephemeral traditions—define a sense of place. Betraying the perception that these places have disappeared, founders’ descendants express commitments to freedom colonies by returning periodically to plan commemorative events, rehabilitate historic structures, and steward cemeteries. The Texas Freedom Colonies Project (The TXFC Project), a team of faculty and student researchers, documents settlements while supporting descendant communities’ historic preservation aims. By making diasporic publics legible and increasing the visibility of communities’ settlement patterns and remaining extant features, The TXFC Project elevates stakeholders’ concerns in urban planning domains. In 2020, COVID-19’s social distancing requirements challenged diasporic descendants’ efforts to foster social cohesion. Consequently, The TXFC Project hosted a Facebook Live “talk show,” leveraging social media platforms to amplify freedom colony descendants’ work. The team analyzed event transcripts revealing cultural adaptations to socially restrictive conditions during Juneteenth commemorations and indicating that virtual storytelling helped territorialize widely dispersed, unbounded places for stakeholders facing natural and human-made disruptions.

Attenuation of Lightning-Induced Effects on Overhead Distribution Systems in Urban Areas

Overhead distribution systems can be strongly affected and damaged by indirect lightning. The induced voltages are usually computed neglecting the surrounding geometry and the presence of buildings in urban areas. Buildings can strongly change the behavior of the measured lighting-induced electromagnetic (EM) fields in the proximity of the point of impact. As a consequence, induced voltages can deviate from what would be measured in the absence of buildings. This work proposes an analysis of the main variables, which affect the deviation of the EM fields and of the consequent induced voltages along an overhead distribution line due to the presence of a building. Different distances between the line and the building and different building heights are considered.

Beach-dune modelling in support of Building with Nature for an integrated spatial design of urbanized sandy shores

The long-term physical existence of sandy shores critically depends on a balanced sediment budget. From the principles of Building with Nature it follows that a sustainable protection of sandy shores should employ some form of shore nourishment. In the spatial design process of urbanized sandy shores, where multiple functions must be integrated, the knowledge and the prediction of sediment dynamics and beach-dune morphology thus play an essential role. This expertise typically resides with coastal scientists who have condensed their knowledge in various types of morphological models that serve different purposes and rely on different assumptions, thus have their specific strengths and limitations. This paper identifies morphological information needs for the integrated spatial design of urbanized sandy shores using BwN principles, outlines capabilities of different types of morphological models to support this and identifies current gaps between the two. A clear mismatch arises from the absence of buildings and accompanying human activities in current numerical models simulating morphological developments in beach-dune environments.

Sistem Web Pendukung Keputusan Calon Penerima Bantuan Mandi Cuci Kakus di Kabupaten Banyuwangi

Village community especially Banyuwangi District is still many who have BWT (Bath Wash Toilet) but do not meet the standard. Such as the absence of buildings in accordance with the quality of construction that meet the needs of society. Waste water and bath rooms are disposed of in residential environments. The Government of the Public Works Department has given attention in addressing this issue through the development assistance of BWT. But in selecting the candidate beneficiaries the election process is still done conventionally. The Decision Support System (DSS) was built to help make it easier to determine the prospective beneficiaries of BWT. There are seven eligibility criteria used to assess prospective beneficiaries. Self-Connection House (CH), monthly dues per family, land contributions, population density level per hectare, individual septic tank ownership, shallow well water quality, kitchen waste water disposal and bathrooms. DSS is processed using Simple Additive Weighting (SAW) method calculation. The SAW method is capable of precise assessment. The calculation of the SAW method is based on the criteria value and the specified preference weight. On the system, there are 8 village data used to test the system process. The highest village Data became the beneficiary village of BWT. Based on the overall level of software quality can be concluded that the level of information system quality in the criteria is very good with a percentage of 94%.

Categorizing landscapes: Approaching the concept of Nature (Categorizando paisajes: una aproximación al concepto de naturaleza)

The concept of nature frequently appears in the literature, and yet it has rarely been explained. One way of understanding it makes reference to the degree of human intervention, creating a classification on a continuum from totally natural to non-natural environments. In order to identify the empirical categories into which this continuum is organized, two studies were carried out. In the first, 99 Spanish participants evaluated 150 photographs in accordance with their degree of naturalness in order to obtain a set of 50 photographs. In the second, 50 Spanish and 48 Mexican participants ordered the photographs in accordance with their own personal criteria. The results show that people organize landscapes in accordance with the presence or absence of buildings, and that each of these two categories comprises a further three subcategories. This fact could be useful when studying the impact of these environments on aspects such as connectedness or well-being.

Finite Element Analysis of Geotechnical Excavation Based on COMSOL Multiphysics

As the current geotechnical excavation process is affected by many factors, excavation will easily lead to abnormal conditions in the geotechnical excavation process. Based on this, this study used COMSOL Multiphysics finite element analysis to analyze the various factors affecting the geotechnical excavation process and set the various parameters of the project. This study studied the geotechnical excavation works in the presence of buildings and the absence of buildings. At the same time, the data were statistically analyzed and the changes of various parameters in the process of geotechnical excavation were studied on the basis of finite element simulation analysis. The research shows that COMSOL Multiphysics finite element analysis can effectively imitate the geotechnical excavation conditions and draw effective laws, which will be helpful for the effective development of follow-up projects and provide theoretical reference for subsequent related research.

Migration Histories, National Memory, and Regional Collections

Migration Histories, National Memory, and Regional Collections

Context-driven monitoring and control of buildings ventilation systems using big data and Internet of Things–based technologies

Ventilation systems are deployed in buildings to maintain good indoor air quality, especially in specific periods, or in the absence of buildings’ windows. These systems perform automatically this task by regulating the injected air according to the actual indoor CO2 concentration. Several control approaches have been implemented and deployed in real-setting scenarios, but most of them are either time-triggered or based on fixed threshold values. In this paper, we introduce a platform that integrates recent advanced Internet of Things and big-data technologies for context-driven monitoring and control of ventilation systems. The aim is to gather, process and extract contextual data, mainly indoor/outdoor CO2 concentration, to be used for maintaining a suitable ventilation rate that balances between energy consumption and occupants’ well-being. A prototype was developed and deployed for conducting experiments of different ventilation control approaches. We have developed two control approaches, ON/OFF and proportional–integral–derivative control, and compared them with the proposed state-feedback control approach. Experiments have been conducted in our Energy-Efficient Building Laboratory to evaluate these approaches in terms of the indoor CO2 concentration, the ventilation rates, and the power consumption. The experimental results show that the state-feedback control outperforms proportional–integral–derivative and ON/OFF control approaches in terms of energy efficiency and comfort.

The ratio of effective building height to street width governs dispersion of local vehicle emissions

Analysis of data collected in street canyons located in Hanover, Germany and Los Angeles, USA, suggests that street-level concentrations of vehicle-related pollutants can be estimated with a model that assumes that vertical turbulent transport of emissions dominates the governing processes. The dispersion model relates surface concentrations to traffic flow rate, the effective aspect ratio of the street, and roof level turbulence. The dispersion model indicates that magnification of concentrations relative to those in the absence of buildings is most sensitive to the aspect ratio of the street, which is the ratio of the effective height of the buildings on the street to the width of the street. This result can be useful in the design of transit oriented developments that increase building density to reduce emissions from transportation.

Perception of coastal scenery along the Caribbean littoral of Colombia

Botero, C., Anfuso, A., Williams, A.T and Palacios, A. 2013. Perception of coastal scenery along the Caribbean littoral of Colombia.Scenic evaluation is an important tool for coastal classification and management, as results obtained from numerous enquires carried out in Europe and USA showed that it is one of the top five parameters in beach choice, the others being safety, facilities, water quality and litter. The specific ranking of each one of the previous parameters ranges from place to place, scenery achieving greatest importance in the UK and USA (first and second place, respectively) and less importance in Malta, Turkey and Spain. In UK, the most important aspects of coastal scenery are historic features (hill forts, lighthouses, etc.), absence of noise, cliff height and beach type (e.g. sand). In Turkey, beach users give more importance to the absence of sewage and litter, water colour and quality, the absence of buildings and vistas of far places. In order to determine the importance given by beach users in the Caribbean coast of Colombia to coastal scenery and to its different aspects, 435 enquires were carried out at eight beaches in the provinces of La Guajira, Magdalena, Atlántico and Bolívar during 2011 and 2012. Results obtained indicated that there was circa 50% difference between the Colombian checklist, as against the one utilised in Europe and the USA. The main differences related to vegetation cover, cliffs, rock platforms, dunes, tidal range, built-non built environment, sky line and noise. The importance given to water clarity, also observed in previous studies carried out in Mediterranean beaches, is linked to the fact that local and national tourists came to the beach for swimming and/or sun, as virtually every beach user enters the sea. Lastly, the importance given to vegetation cover (especially in urban beaches where the vegetal cover consists of planted palm trees), is not really linked to their landscape value but to their usefulness in providing shade.

Online corporate brand image, satisfaction and loyalty

The personification approach (eg customers view company name as a person) has been commonly used to understand corporate brand image. Studies in the past using this approach were conducted, however, in the ‘bricks and mortar’ environment. Since the virtual environment differs from that of bricks and mortar, particularly in the absence of buildings and people, recent literatures question whether existing measures are still applicable in this context. The present study thus uses this approach to understand the corporate brand image in a strictly online setting. The research enquiry seeks to address explicitly whether a company that exists only in a virtual environment could indeed be seen as a person. The research investigates the corporate brand image of a book retailer that sells exclusively online. The research is informed by 511 responses from experienced customers of the bookstore. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to identify the brand images. The findings show that while the ‘Informality’ dimension has been commonly found as a weak factor in an offline context in the past, it has been indicated as a strong dimension in the present research setting. Furthermore, the previous research has consistently shown that the corporate brand image in a bricks and mortar environment is more likely to relate to consumer behaviour (loyalty) via consumer satisfaction. Interestingly, the present research discovers that corporate brand image can also have a direct positive relationship with consumer loyalty. The implications to brand image are discussed.

The Effectiveness of Flood Damage Reduction Measures in the Montreal Region

The purpose of this study is to assess the effectiveness of two flood damage reduction measures – designation and dyking of floodplains. The study was carried out in four Quebec municipalities located on the shores of Lac des Deux-Montagnes and Riviere des Mille-Iles, namely Sainte-Marthe-sur-le-Lac, Saint-Eustache, Rosemere and Bois-des-Filion. Criteria for selecting the study areas were: area of the flood-risk zone, presence or absence of dykes, presence or absence of buildings, and availability of data. The study areas were selected with the help of flood risk maps of the Greater Montreal region. In each area, information on the number of buildings and their economic value was taken from the municipality's property assessment database. Trends in the occupancy and value of floodplains were identified and compared. The results of the study show that, as in other regions of Canada, flood damage reduction measures based on designation and mapping of floodplains have had no impact on occupancy, have failed to reduce flood damages, and have not even halted increases in such damages.

The dispersion of fugitive emissions from storage tanks

This paper presents laboratory experiments of the dispersion and flow field downwind of cylindrical buildings such as petrochemical storage tanks. We consider buildings of height to diameter aspect ratio A= H b/ D, in the range from 1 to 0.5, submerged within deep, aerodynamically rough, neutral and stable boundary layers. Emissions are neutrally buoyant with no significant vertical momentum, releases being made from point sources at heights H s in the range of H b⩽ H s⩽1.5 H b, except in studies with floating roof tanks where the release was from an annulus between the roof and the internal tank wall. Various configurations are examined which include buildings in isolation, in conjunction with bunds (low surrounding walls) and in small groups. Characteristics of the mean velocity and dispersion fields are discussed and compared with results for releases in the absence of buildings and for releases in the presence of cuboid buildings. Dispersion characteristics of the cylindrical buildings are found to be aspect ratio dependent. Further, the presence of bunds results in a significant impact on the velocity and concentration fields leading to considerable reductions in ground-level concentrations.

Effect of terrain on path loss in urban environments for wireless applications

Path loss prediction algorithms for advanced wireless communication system planning have long considered the effect of electromagnetic propagation over buildings between the base station and subscriber. This phenomena is particularly important in residential areas, where the houses are typically a few stories high. For the most part, the buildings were assumed to lie on level terrain, although shadowing effects by the terrain in the absence of buildings has been included. Previous works have offered a number of methods to quantitatively determine these effects from path profiles. This study examines propagation over buildings when the buildings are located on terrain features (hills). The buildings, which are represented by a series of absorbing half screens, are assumed to lie in rows that are equally spaced along parallel streets, with the streets running perpendicular to the terrain slope. Numerical results are obtained using successive repetition of the Kirchhoff-Huygens approximation. A phenomenological model based on ray optics for diffraction over a smooth surface is proposed as a way to interpret the numerical results. The dependence of the model coefficients on the terrain parameters are obtained from the numerical results.

Infestations of the brown rat (Rattus norvegicus) in drift mines of the British Isles.

Questionnaire survey of the drift mines of the British Isles revealed that the presence or absence of rat infestations could be related to the size of the mine in terms of manpower, large mines being more commonly infested than small ones. In addition, various features of drift mines and their surroundings, i.e. the presence of urban areas, nearby rat concentration points, canteen and surface stables, horses, the absence of buildings and the type of surface sanitation are all related to infestation. Field survey has shown that the extent of dilapidation and piling of waste material assists infestation. It has also indicated that the greater infestation of pits with large numbers of workmen is due to some extent to the extra cover provided by the greater number of surface buildings, these being few or lacking altogether in small pits.At a mine at which changes in the rat population were studied it was seen that unsuccessful poisoning could leave a breeding nucleus of rats, but that there could also be a speedy re-invasion even after successful poison treatments. Whilst the surface rat population in the buildings of this mine was controlled there were no underground infestations. It appears, therefore, that regular inspection and control of surface infestations should in most cases prevent underground infestation.This work was carried out under a research grant from Safety in Mines Research Establishment, Ministry of Power, and I am indebted to the Ministry for permission to publish the results. I should like to express my gratitude to the several members of the staff of the Safety in Mines Research Establishment, Sheffield, for the help they gave, in particular Mr C. S. W. Grice. I should like also to thank Prof. L. E. S. Eastham in whose department the work was carried out, Dr E. T. B. Francis who supervised it, Miss B. B. Jones of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, and the many employees of the National Coal Board who assisted at various times.