Huge Building Research Articles

RETRACTED: Evolution of Urban Transport in Algeria from Artisanal Mode to Regulation

In parliamentary law to resolve the troubles experienced in country transport, including in urban transport, the Algerian state has been heavily involved in recent years as an actor/regulator in the sector. Therefore, large and complex investment projects are launched and huge budgets have been allocated whose amounts have never been touched earlier. Major works are underway and huge building sites are coming forth. The objective of the article is the analysis of the dynamics of change of urban transport policy in Algeria. To do this, we will deal with the following points. The first point presents the dynamics of change and the opening up of the urban transport market while emphasizing the disappearance of incumbent operators and the explosion of transport supply. It also draws parallels with the notion of artisanal transport observed in other countries. Although liberalization has effectively solved the problem of supply in Algeria, quantitatively speaking, it has generated other types of problems that are in fact important issues in terms of sustainable development. These considerations are the subject of the second point to be addressed. Finally, a third point presents the major features of the new urban transport policy characterized by the return of the State and the implementation of a strategy to modernize the system.

Posttraumatic Psychiatric Disorders and Resilience in Healthcare Providers following a Disastrous Earthquake: An Interventional Study in Taiwan.

Background Posttraumatic psychiatric disorders (PTPDs) are common in disaster workers; however, their incidence and resilience in healthcare providers (HCPs) following a disastrous earthquake are still unclear. Therefore, we conducted an interventional study to clarify this issue. Methods After a medical response to the scene of a collapsed huge building, we conducted an assessment of the HCPs using an immediate self-administered questionnaire and a follow-up questionnaire 1 month later. Psychological support after the operation was implemented. We performed analysis of the risk for PTPDs and comparison between immediate and follow-up questionnaires. Results The mean age (standard deviation) of the HCPs was 32.7 (5.2) years, with 33.5 (5.8) years for nurses and 32.4 (4.4) years for physicians. The proportion of females among the nurses and physicians was 94.3% and 12.5%, respectively. In total, 16.4% (11/67) of HCPs fit the criteria of PTPDs. Nurses had a trend of higher incidence than physicians. Female HCPs had a trend of higher incidence than male HCPs. After intervention, none of the HCPs reported PTPDs in the follow-up questionnaire (p < 0.05). Conclusion This study delineated that PTPDs were common in HCPs following medical response to an earthquake; however, the resilience was good after the early intervention.

Structural failures due to anthropogenic sinkholes in the urban area of Naples and the effect of a FRP retrofitting

Abstract This work is about the hypothesis of structural health monitoring of architectural heritage in masonry exposed to collapse risk in the city of Naples. We analyze the collapse mechanisms in static terms relating the planimetric layout of the underground cavities of Naples with some recent collapses of structures that occurred in the city. The present work focuses on the relationship between these collapses and the presence of underground cavities. Constructions in masonry, contrary to common opinion, are structures that provide comparatively level of safety depending on to the strength of materials and construction techniques adopted, together with the fact that they are able to settle and to find a new equilibrium configuration; in other words they embody the prototype of resilient structures. The main critical issue able to put in crisis a huge masonry building is the subsoil subsidence. In fact, the structure reaches the collapse for the creation of cavities or chasms under it, which literally remove the support surface of its foundation. In particular, the present work aims to analyze the collapse of two buildings of the Department of Veterinary Medicine of Federico II, that occurred in Naples last December and, starting from a real case of the collapse of a masonry building, the research aims to correlate this collapse with one of the cavities present in the subsoil of Naples and evaluate the possibility that the cause of the collapse to be related the corresponding cavity (or to a newly formed) situated below a corner of the building. The effect of a possible retrofitting intervention, consisting in three FRP strips glued to the surface of the structure, is also considered.

Banganarti and Selib in 2011/2012 and 2013

In the course of two seasons in 2012 and 2013 the team carried out excavations and research on the living quarters alongside the fortifications of Banganarti, including a large building (E.1) and eastern tower. Work on the restoration/conservation of the Upper Church progressed according to plan, combined with limited iconographic studies. The team also worked at the sites of Selib and Soniyat. At Selib explorations continued at three locations. The phasing of the church at Selib 1 was established (separate report by A. Cedro), leading to a reconstruction of the plan of the earliest two buildings. A Meroitic(?) structure was investigated at Selib 3 and the Meroitic settlement at Selib 2 continued to be investigated (separate report by R. Hajduga and K. Solarska). A tachymetric plan and magnetic map of the environs of the Kushite temple at Soniyat was accomplished, recording a huge building (palace?) of apparently Kushite date (Napatan ceramic forms and Egyptian imports dating from the Third Intermediate Period) to the north of the temple. A separate team undertook a reconnaissance in regions scheduled to be flooded due to new dam construction projects in Kajbar and Shereik (Third and Fifth cataracts), staying on to record in detail a number of Makurian fortresses.

Study on Strategies of Energy Saving and Emission Reducing Building Design in Urban and Rural Areas

In China, huge building energy consumption is the most prominent problem in the current situation of energy consumption. It has caused a series of energy and environmental problems. Therefore, it is extremely urgent and significant to study energy saving and emission reducing strategies in the aspects of building orientation, separation distance, solar radiation, wind direction, internal and external environment, etc. This paper discusses current situation and development trends of building design on energy saving and emission reduction in urban and rural areas of China. Through discovering existing problems in building energy consumption and architectural design in China, this paper proposes strategies of energy saving and emission reduction in architectural design and analyzes specific measures in architectural design through the typical case study.

On Design of Low-operation-cost Ice Arenas with Energy Saving Approaches

Ice arena is a kind of public buildings with high operation cost due to its huge building volume and high energy consumption for refrigeration and heating. Good building design can contribute to the reduction of energy consumption during its operation. Manipulation of shapes, control of height of interior space, skylight setting and insulation of arena are major design approaches we can take. Energy saving effects of these building design elements are analysed from the standpoint of operation cost control, and some suggestions are given.

Trapped in a Photonic Maze

Imagine yourself in a huge building, lost in a maze of corridors and trying to find a way out. Imagine further that whatever route you try, you always end up back in the place where you started. Although you can move around, de facto you are trapped, localized in a limited region of space. While this might sound like a surrealistic scenario for a motion picture, it is also a good analogy for how researchers attempt to trap light and other types of waves. Mario Molina and colleagues [1] at the University of Chile, Santiago, and Robert Thomson and colleagues [2] at the Heriot-Watt University in the UK now report how they have trapped light in a crystalline structure called a photonic Lieb lattice [3]. They show that light of a certain frequency can enter a lattice site and remain there, without entering the neighboring sites. The results open up alternative routes to trapping waves.

Social BIMCloud: a distributed cloud-based BIM platform for object-based lifecycle information exchange

Abstract Background The architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry lacks a framework for capturing, managing, and exchanging project, product, and social information over the lifecycle of a building. The current tools have various limitations, such as lack of interoperability, slow to transfer huge building model files, and possibility of data inconsistency. Methods In this paper, we present a cloud-based BIM server framework namely Social BIMCloud that facilitates BIM information exchange through dynamic merging and splitting of building models. The data model of Social BIMCloud is based on but not limited to IFC. The data model of Social BIMCloud was further extended to accommodate social interactions, by studying the formal modes of communication in the AEC industry. An object-based approach to capture and manage social interactions in AEC projects through a BIM-based visual user interface was also developed and demonstrated. Results Social BIMCloud addresses the issues of inefficient data transfer speed and data inconsistency in a distributed environment by facilitating the storage and partial exchange of integrated nD BIM models. Data interoperability is facilitated through open BIM standards such as IFC and direct integration with construction software. High performance, scalability, fault tolerance, and cost effectiveness are facilitated through data partitioning, data replication strategies, multi-node structures, and pay-per-use tariff systems, respectively, through a cloud-based NoSQL database. Conclusion The Social BIMCloud framework helps to develop and exchange BIM models, which are rich in project information such as social interactions, cost, and energy analyses. This framework improves the communication efficiency between project participants, leading to better designs and less rework. The information captured by this framework could also be useful to determine important metrics such as industry trends, relationships among project participants, and user requirements.

화장실을 이용한 층별 피난공간 확보 기술개발

The fire on a high-rise building would possibly cause fatalities because of ineffective egress due to extended evacuation distance in huge building structure, coupled with dense population, thus requiring secured optimal evacuation method and space. The restroom located in the living space is considered to be useful refuge space which is built with wet pipe and noncombustible materials. This study aimed to develop a system that would make use of the existing restroom as a fire refuge space. Ventilation duct were installed to discharge odor during normal conditions. We could serve the air supply duct to also raise the air pressure in the restroom so as to prevent the toxic gas from gapping around the restroom. The nozzle for the water screen would be installed in restroom door facing the living room to form the water screen which would protect the door. This study is intended to replace the existing refuge space with the restroom in such a way as described above.

Unemployment and Homelessness in the City of Poznań in 1929-1939

Abstract The Polish National General Exhibition (PWK, also known as “Pewuka”) was held in Poznań in 1929. It was meant to be and it did become a showcase of the economic, industrial, social and cultural achievements of the Polish State, newly reborn in 1918, in the aftermath of the Great War. Staging of the Exhibition coincided with the advent of the economic crisis. Preparations for the Exhibition required an enormous amount of work, and considerable investments were needed to build a suitable infrastructure. Poznań became a huge building site, with many labourers coming to the city in search of employment. After 1929 those labourers added to the large group of the unemployed in the aftermath of the great economic crisis. During the 1930s the unemployment and the related problems aggravated the housing crisis in Poznań. The city authorities attempted to resolve this problem by putting the homeless up in the former exhibition grounds recently vacated following the closure of the Polish National General Exhibition. It was only an interim measure. In search of a more permanent solution, the city started to redevelop allotments or community gardens by building purpose-built residential garden huts or sheds.

Numerical Modeling of Cohesive Softening Effects in Thick Adhesive Layers

AbstractThis work is concerned with the material modeling of the inelastic behavior of bonding and debonding effects in adhesive layers. High‐strength adhesives are applied in building industries utilizing thick adhesive layers due to huge building elements and construction tolerances. Therefore a continuum approach is presented to describe the nonlinear material behavior. In the failure criterion two stress invariants are used, which involves the hydrostatic pressure as well as the deviator stress state. A non‐associated flowrule, which determines the evolution of the inelastic variables, is required to ensure the thermodynamical consistency of the model. Hardening and softening are included as well as the rate‐dependency of the adhesive. Furthermore the viscoplastic approach is used for regularization of the mesh dependency in case of material softening. The nonlinear material model is implemented in a finite element program. The material tangent modulus is incorporated to obtain quadratic convergence for the global equilibrium iteration. The identification of material parameters is discussed on the simulation of typical experiments for adhesive materials. As a drawback of the presented phenomenological material model, the large number of parameters involved in the constitutive description is discussed. (© 2013 Wiley‐VCH Verlag GmbH &amp; Co. KGaA, Weinheim)

DIGITAL REBIRTH OF THE GREATEST CHURCH OF CLUNY MAIOR ECCLESIA: FROM OPTRONIC SURVEYS TO REAL TIME USE OF THE DIGITAL MODEL

Abstract. Our multidisciplinary team has virtually reconstructed the greatest church of the Romanesque period in Europe. The third church of the Abbey of Cluny (12th c.) has been destroyed after the French Revolution, leaving only 8% of the building standing. Many documents have been studied, to include the latest archaeological knowledge in the virtual model. Most remains have been scanned for CAD restitution. The mock-up of the church needed 1600 different numerical files, including the scanned pieces and the anastylosis of a Romanesque portal, a Gothic façade and a mosaic pavement. We faced various difficulties to assemble the different elements of the huge building, and to include the digitized parts. Our workflow consisted in generating geometrical shapes of the church, enriched with metadata such as texture, material... The whole mock up was finally exported to dedicated software to run the rendering step. Our work consisted in creating a whole database of 3D models as well as 2D sources (plans, engravings, pictures...) accessible by the scientific community. The scientific perspectives focus on a representation in virtual immersion of the grand church at scale 1 and an access to the digital mock-up through Augmented Reality.

Spanish Cinema Roundup

The seventh annual edition of Spanish Film Screenings took place in the capital on June 18–20, 2012. Intended as the major professional event for the promotion of Spanish film, Madrid de cine (as it is also known) is organized by FAPAE (the producers’ association), ICAA (the film academy), and other bodies including the Madrid tourist authority. Sixty-six foreign buyers and twenty-four representatives of the international press (including your correspondent) were treated to meetings with Spanish sales agents and film crews and screenings of forty-three recent titles. In a uniquely Spanish touch, there was also a padrino, or godfather, for the event. Enrique Urbizu (director of No Rest for the Wicked, the most recent feature to gain the best film award at the Goyas or Spanish Oscars) gave an evocative and informative talk on ‘‘The Light of Madrid’’ high above the city in the tower of the Cibeles Palace. The location was emblematic for more than one reason. While the Cibeles statue in front of the palace is a famous symbol of the city, the huge building itself was recently transformed from central post office to town hall at ruinous expense. Coming as it did just days after Spain was granted a humiliating bailout (known significantly in Spanish as rescate—rescue) by the European Central Bank, Spanish Film Screenings provided a rare opportunity not only to take the commercial pulse of a national cinema, but also to ask what the future of such a mid-sized industry (and nation) might be at a time of unprecedented fiscal crisis. The Spanish case thus holds clues for the future of film elsewhere in Europe and beyond. At first things seemed surprisingly positive. A FAPAE report on 2011 suggested that, out of a total of 199 features made that year (the fourth-highest figure in Europe), the number of titles screened abroad had increased (by twentyone percent), as had the number of countries in which they were seen (by fifteen percent). In Mexico alone distribution had risen to thirty-six titles, higher than ever before. An award was presented to Agustin Almodovar, producer of The Skin I Live In, as the film with greatest international impact: to date it had been sold to forty-two countries and seen by 4.2 million people. In private interview, however, Pedro Perez, the head of the producers’ association, was more cautious. Spanish cinema had always been in crisis; and he hoped that his country, the first to go into recession, would also be the first to come out of it. But there were three new problems. Firstly, a change in the market meant that, in this current transitional period, box-office receipts were down but it was as yet unknown how to monetize new windows such as video-on-demand and Internet (the rate of piracy in Spain remains among the highest in the world). Such uncertainty damaged small businesses like Spanish production companies above all. Secondly, the very visible economic crisis in Spain cast a shadow over the industry. Thirdly, a recent change in government from the Socialists to the right-wing People’s Party had brought with it a shift in funding policy from state subsidies to fiscal incentives. The latter would prove insufficient to fund features, unless they were raised enough to reassure private investors, an initiative that might well be vetoed by the European Union on anti-competition grounds. Enrique Urbizu, Agustin Almodovar, and Pedro Perez at the Spanish Film Screenings awards ceremony Courtesy of FAPAE.

Wooden foundation piles and its underestimated relevance for cultural heritage

For centuries, wooden pile constructions support buildings in areas with unstable soils in Europe, and many other parts of the world. Depending on the local soil conditions and the building above, pile foundations differ in construction type, pile length, timber species and timber quality applied and the degree of conservation. It is estimated that millions of wooden foundation piles are still in service, carrying small buildings like family houses, or bigger buildings like churches and palaces or constructions in water-like quay walls or bridges. Many of these buildings are old and therefore wooden foundations are an important asset for cultural heritage. This is not always realised probably because foundations are hidden in the soil and therefore not visual as part of the building and because the wooden pile is replaced by concrete from the 1950s and onwards. There are many examples of wooden foundations that have been in service for several hundreds of years, but there are also examples of severe settling of buildings founded on wooden piles in historical town cities like Amsterdam or Venice. All foundation problem causes are known and are explained in this article. However, the process of bacterial wood decay, one of the causes, is not yet fully understood and the immense population of wooden foundation piles in the European soil offers a unique chance to learn more about it. As bacteria can degrade wood under water, it is also one of the main threats of waterlogged archaeological wood. A better understanding of bacterial wood decay does not only give chances to improve the conservation of wooden foundations, but it can also improve the in situ conservation of wet archaeological sites. Conservation of wooden foundation piles does not only save the building above its construction but saves also a unique archive related to building history and past timber trade connections. This article advocates the importance of foundation piles on the cultural heritage agenda as key issue for wood conservation in wet soils and saving a huge building historical achieve.

공유기 및 RFID를 이용한 옥내 측위 웹 서비스 구현

위치기반 서비스는 일상생활에서도 널리 이용되는 매우 편리한 서비스임으로 GPS 신호가 잡히지 않는 빌딩, 대형상가, 지하상가와 같은 건물 내부에서도 제공되어야 한다. 이처럼 건물 내부에서 제공되는 위치기반 서비스를 옥내 위치기반 서비스라 하는데, 옥내 위치기반 서비스 개발에 있어서 가장 중요한 기술은 옥내측위이다. 옥내측위 방법 중 가장 범용성이 있는 것은 무선근거리통신망의 공유기 신호를 이용하는 것이다. 한편, 근래에는 웹 서비스가 뛰어난 소프트웨어 재사용 기술로 판명되고 있다. 따라서 옥내측위가 웹 서비스로 프로그램 개발자에게 제공된다면 옥내 위치기반 서비스의 실용화를 크게 촉진할 것이다. 본 논문은 공유기 신호를 이용한 삼각측량 및 K-NN 옥내측위 서비스와 RFID를 이용한 옥내측위 서비스를 제공하는 웹 서비스 구현 사례를 소개한다. LBS (Location Based Service) services are very useful to our daily life and it should be available inside a building: a huge building, a shopping mall, a large scale underground shopping center, and so on where GPS (Global Positioning System) signal is not available. An LBS which is provided inside a building is called an ILBS (Indoor Location Based Service). One of the most important techniques for ILBS development is indoor positioning. Among the indoor positioning techniques, APs (access points) of WLAN based ones are most economical because WLAN is available almost everywhere. Meanwhile, the web service has been proved to be an excellent practice of software reuse. Therefore, if indoor positioning is provided in the form of web service to programmers then development of ILBS would be greatly accelerated. This paper introduces the AP based trilateration and K-NN indoor positioning and RFID based indoor positioning web services we have developed.

Public Anthropology “at the Fair”: 1893 Origins, 21st‐Century Opportunities

ABSTRACT What have been the connections between anthropology and public fairs and festivals in the United States? Anthropologists have been involved in public fairs and festivals in the United States for over 100 years. Back in 1893, members of the new discipline of anthropology played a major role in the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition, both in the huge Anthropology Building and on the sprawling Midway Plaisance. Today, the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington, D.C., is in many ways a modern laboratory for research and experience in public anthropology, ethnomusicology, and folklore. In this essay, I examine the profound changes in the control of voices and discourse surrounding the activities at these types of fairs and festivals. I challenge anthropologists to observe and participate in this expanding discursive field and ask how sites like YouTube can aid in the process and enable critical future developments in pubic anthropology.

Fire Smoke Simulation Analysis of the Flow Characteristics in Huge Building

To a large comprehensive convention center as an example, this paper analyses the flow characteristics of fire smoke of the main hall and the feasibility for sharing space as "Quasi safety zone". First, the fire scenario was identified through the fire hazard analysis, then, set a model and take a simulation analysis by fire simulation software FDS, based on this fire scenario which have been established. At last, draw conclusions according to the smoke flow properties.

The Study on Light Floor Impact Sound Improvement by Void Slab Applied with Surface Covering Materials

The living quality of the Taiwanese citizens keeps rising; the improvement of floor impact sound has being carried out into practical project gradually. The void slab, used to be used in huge span building, is very common in housing building. From reference, the void slab represents the one of the latest architectural facilities, which focuses on the noise improvement for the living quality, by its characteristics of rigidity and lightweight. In order to select an appropriate floor covering material, the experimental investigation based on the standard ISO 140-7 and 140-8 should be carried out to experiment the performance of the bare void slab and the covering materials over the slab for discussing the possibility of material application on the void slab. Therefore, in this study, the noise insulating performance of the void slab through the field experiments in the practical condominium-type housing projects will be tested, and the floor impact sound performance of the selected sample of covering materials (teak wood and carpet) applied on the existing void slab will also be shown in this paper. The results show that the void slab presents good effective performance for heavy floor impact sound, but the void slab should be applied with covering materials to demonstrate efficient improvement toward the light floor impact sound, and the performance varies from materials. The researchers expect that the database could provide designers and constructors the reference of the floor covering materials related to the floor impact sound insulation and reduce the time and the costs issue.

ISOTOPIC DATA: IMPLICATIONS FOR THE SOURCE(S) OF OSIREION GROUNDWATER, ABYDOS, EGYPT

Among the many wars which depicted and documented at the ancient Egyptian history, little of themThe Osireion, formerly concealed within a West Bank Nile terrace, is thought to have been animportant building to the Ancient Egyptians. Its huge building blocks define a rectangular centralstone island surrounded by a water-filled channel nearly 13m below the surrounding land surface.The channel was cleared of debris to 4.3m in 1925, but not to its original depth. Westerman (2008)successfully probed to 10.4m using a metal rod. Seismic data suggest its walls may extend 15mbelow the water table. Westerman listed six questions that elude archeologists and Egyptologists.Why, when and how was the Osireion built? Is in the interior of the island hollow? Why was it built inwater? What is the source of the water? Eleven water samples were collected including the Nile,Osireion, two nearby idle dewatering wells, an active eastern French drain and six active watersupply wells. a18O and aD were measured by EAEA and PO4, Cl, Na+K and TDS by SohagUniversity. Factors such as evaporation, mixing, relative humidity, surface elevation and rechargeclimate can influence isotopic contents. The Nile sample appears most affected by evaporation,consistent with Lake Nasser’s great size and arid climate. Water samples fall below the GMWL andpaleowater line in a region expected of modern precipitation in arid, low latitude climates. Sinaigroundwater by contrast are isotopically lighter, suggestive of recharge at higher elevation duringcooler climates. a18O, aD, PO4, Cl, Na+K and TDS concentrations suggest Osireion waters are noteasily explained by simple evaporation of any supposed end member. a18O and aD concentrationsare strikingly different from two nearby down groundwater gradient, dewatering wells most likely froma mixed source not typical of the ten other samples. Upfllowing from a semi-confined artesianaquifer, possibly also diffuse regional leakage through the Esna Shale are suggested.

ChemInform Abstract: “Supramolecular Wrapping Chemistry” by Helix‐Forming Polysaccharides: A Powerful Strategy for Generating Diverse Polymeric Nano‐Architectures

AbstractReview: 33 refs.