Recent Development Projects Research Articles

A Study of Social Equity in Urban Spaces: Insights from Recent Urban Development Projects and Government Schemes in India

A Study of Social Equity in Urban Spaces: Insights from Recent Urban Development Projects and Government Schemes in India

Ice shedding tests for the assessment of hybrid ice protection systems

In technical areas, the prevention of atmospheric icing on structures is imperative due to safety risks and potential technical failures it poses. Recent development projects have focused on hybrid ice protection systems, combining active elements (heaters/mechanical actuators) with passive icephobic coatings. However, there is a lack of test strategies for the early development stages of these coating materials. An efficient test design for an ice wind tunnel is described here, developed to quantitatively assess the ice shedding effects facilitated by icephobic surfaces in electro-thermal ice protection systems. Dependencies on test and surface parameters are explored, laying the groundwork for defining test procedures for subsequent surface evaluations. During testing, utilizing a hydrophobic model coating, a reduction in energy of over 30% was observed compared to uncoated aluminium. This finding highlights the potential effectiveness of icephobic surfaces in mitigating icing effects. The presented test serves as a valuable tool for pre-selecting the most promising surfaces for further advanced tests, particularly those involving aerodynamic profiles within the ice wind tunnel test facility. It constitutes a vital component of a comprehensive test pyramid, encompassing ice-related tests with increasing complexity. Furthermore, the results obtained from these tests are utilised to establish correlations with surface properties, thereby enhancing our understanding of the significance of these findings. This approach provides a well-founded testing strategy for evaluating and advancing icephobic surface technologies.

Operational experience and new developments for industrial gas engines fuelled with hydrogen fuels

Since 2012 Horus-Energia has been developing the technology for the hydrogen fuelled industrial gas engines. First three units were commissioned in 2014 and in 2019 reached the forty thousand running hours milestone. The success of the first hydrogen project encouraged Horus-Energia to focus on further developments and improvements of the technology. Several R&D projects have been carried out since 2016 and resulted in two granted patents and another ones currently processed. The recent development project, carried out together with PGNiG Grupa Orlen, is in its final stage. The technology being developed creates a solid base for many new solutions that will cover wide range of fuels and applications. The paper reports experience from 40.000 hrs operation of the hydrogen fuelled industrial gas engines and presents the developments carried by Horus-Energia with its research partners as well as the future development paths for the technology.

Impact and Role of the Public Realm in Creating More Socially Cohesive Communities: A Case Study of Urban Pattern in Almaty, Kazakhstan

Over the last three decades, there has been a notable transformation in urban growth patterns in Kazakhstan’s large cities, particularly in Almaty. While this can be traced back to market-oriented planning agendas, the increasing fragmentation of the public realm in cities can be linked to the recent residential development projects. The rise of these projects in post-Soviet neighbourhoods is often criticised due to their typology, as developers create them as gated communities. These patterns’ socio and spatial fragmentation is associated with fewer opportunities for social interaction between Soviet neighbourhoods and the more recent exclusive communities. Therefore, this paper investigates the key issues present in the urban patterns of Almaty city that can hinder the creation of a more cohesive society. It presents a case study of other Soviet-developed neighbourhoods with similar development patterns. The study’s methodology includes morphological mapping, observation of the use of the public realm and a survey of residents to support the findings. The investigation focuses on one of the typical urban patterns of mixed-use Soviet neighbourhoods and recent urban residential blocks, where an opportunity lies for perspective communities. The research reveals a lack of social cohesion between local communities due to mono-functional land use, poor permeability and accessibility that fragmented the city into closed neighbourhoods. The research dives into the core issues of Soviet and post-Soviet urban morphology’s outcomes in the public realm and the impact on social life in these neighbourhoods.

Assessment of Building Information Modeling (BIM) as a Time and Cost-Saving Construction Management Tool: Evidence from Two-Story Villas in Jeddah

Building Information Modelling (BIM) is a well-known construction technology for improving management. Its implementation in Saudi Arabia’s construction industry is increasing as it adapts to futuristic construction management practices. This quantitative case study examines the factors that led to the success of employing the BIM tool in managing a recent home development project in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. After a survey of the available literature, 28 success criteria were identified and validated by an expert panel of 18 industry professionals. Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) is used to analyze data from a pilot survey of 132 people. A total of three factors are deleted because of factors leading to a value of less than 0.6. Further, there were 212 people who filled out the main survey questionnaire, and the data are analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM). The findings show that BIM significantly improved the house development project in terms of cost, time, quality, safety, efficiency and environmental effect. Implications for management are highlighted, along with the study’s limitations and suggestions for further investigation. Overall, this research offers helpful information for residential building experts who want to make the most of BIM.

IABSE Survey of Implemented Decision-making Models used by Public and Private Owners/Operators of Road- and Railway Infrastructures

Infrastructure systems, such as bridges, are a driver for the economic growth and sustainable development of countries. Similarly, the development of operation and maintenance strategies for infrastructure systems may aim at optimal management using Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) such as reliability, redundancy, availability, safety, economy, environmental performance and resilience. Recent research and development projects, such as COST TU1406, highlight that infrastructure managers make decisions based on a mix of qualitative and quantitative data from various sources paired with models of various levels of complexity as well as expert judgement. Similarly, recent state-of-the-art academia reports on a variety of different decision-making models applicable to the optimal management of infrastructure systems may be used. Within IABSE Commission 5 on Existing Structures, Task Group 5.4 has performed a survey on implemented decision-making models among 23 infrastructure managers from 20 countries. It highlights some similarities in relation to KPIs, condition rating and limit state checks. This has stimulated the standardisation of decision making. The application of risk-based methods, performance prediction and intervention modelling are somewhat more scattered and may call for further research and development as well as training. The need to bridge the gap between implemented decision-making models and research is of paramount importance.

Fallowscapes: A transition-driven tool to market ecological urbanism

Urban areas generate high demand for urban areas to accommodate a broader range of functions associated with growth, given the rising rate of urbanization with more than two-thirds of the human population in 2050 projected to be city-dwellers. As a result, urban areas have been undergoing vigorous spatial, social, and ecological transitions. This generates a direct impact on nature, multiplicity, and the use of space. With the onset of drives focused on limiting the urbanization of space like “net zero land-take by 2050” by the European Union [11], it is evident that global authorities have realized the need to aid these spatial transitions. Such urban ecological transitions are primarily focused on territorial borders where sprawling infrastructure reservoirs and vital natural ecosystem services conflict. ‘Fallowscape’ has been seen as a tool to assist transition at peri-urban borders and form a link between brownfield and greenfield development. However, to justify the practice as a sustainable approach, there are various economic and social aspects to be accounted for, which influence the feasibility of fallow lands. Recent urban development projects (by the public as well as private sector) have seen a rise in the desirability of sustainable and ecologically sensitive approaches. Developers are keen on building dynamic environments that incorporate environmental transitions. However, with the perspective of profitability in mind, such projects often face challenges in authorization and execution. The research intends to introduce Fallowscapes as innovative practice for urban development projects, evaluating its position as a profit-driving tool by preparing an inventory of actors and ecologically sensitive parameters for urban development projects. The paper undertakes literature review of Fallowing as an ecologically sustainable practice, conducting empirical research by comparing case studies that implement Fallowscapes as an approach to market ecologically sensitive project visions.

The Risks of Hydro-Hegemony: Turkey’s Environmental Policies and Shared Water Resources in the South Caucasus

Abstract The 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war intensified the debates about regional integration and political rivalries in the South Caucasus. In the changing geopolitical setting of the region, Turkey’s regional environmental policies contradict its cooperation-based and friendly relations with the regional states. Taking a recent hydropower development project in the Kura-Araks River basin initiated by the government of Turkey as a case study, this study reviews Turkey’s transboundary water management policies in the region in connection with its political ties with the regional countries. This article argues that Turkey uses its relative power in the regional hydropolitical relations by exploiting current and historical issue-linkages and benefit-sharing options, and that the intention to act like a hydro-hegemon in the South Caucasus will negatively impact Turkey’s position in intended regional cooperation schemes and long-established strategic partnerships with the regional countries, especially Azerbaijan and Georgia.

Unlocking Digital in Potential in Composites

The National Composites Centre (NCC) has worked on two recent diverse research and development projects

Inclusivity insights: two urban development projects in Johannesburg

Johannesburg, which is South Africa’s largest city and economic center, is still influenced by patterns of inequality of the past. Although spatial transformation has been rapid since 1994, spatial divisions along class lines are still prevalent long after the apartheid era. This is despite the fact that societal values such as inclusivity, spatial justice and equal access to resources have become the core goals of Johannesburg’s spatial and urban development. This is particularly true when addressing housing, public open spaces, transport and social infrastructure embedded in a suitable land-use mix. However, despite the adoption of numerous policies by government, this research indicates that even recent urban development projects such as Fleurhof and Waterfall are falling short in delivering those objectives. Based on a case study analysis, we show that significant dysfunctionalities become evident when evaluating these two projects, despite their meeting relevant indicators of spatial inclusion on paper. Tensions are identified between theoretical approaches and the implementation of societally relevant policy goals. These include inclusivity and spatial justice by mostly privatized provision of housing and services, and deficiencies in public maintenance of infrastructure. The research reveals, that ‘ticking-the-boxes’ behavior on policy and project level does not produce equitable, inclusive neighborhoods and urban spatial patterns, but rather reproduces spatial inequalities of the past. If these policies are to result in real spatial change and improvement in the lives of Johannesburg residents, a more proactive approach by the public sector at different levels will be necessary.

Recent progress of SPIDER: Aspects of subtractive approaches to existing building’s performance improvement

This contribution reports about methodology, progress and preliminary findings of a recent exploratory Research and Development project, pertaining to the (semi-)automated thermal retrofit of existing building’s envelopes. Thereby, the potential of robots, which autonomously identify areas of facades that can be used for inserting openings into the existing wall material, is examined. The idea is based on the fact that masonry walls of historic masonry walls (especially of Gründerzeit buildings built between 1850 and 1918) often have been structurally over-dimensioned. As such, the spare thickness of the walls could be used for thermal insulation purposes. The initial idea to implement air cavities for insulation purposes is in correspondence with the predominant functional principle of most insulation materials.

Exploring the professional identity and agency of student teachers in multilingual classrooms

ABSTRACT While there is now a considerable body of work on teacher identity in the area of language education, much less attention has been given to the question of the extent to which student teachers are enabled to construct identities that are consonant with the opportunities and challenges of current multilingual classrooms. Drawing on a recent large-scale research and development project, this article explores how the student teachers in our study: understood their responsibilities towards pupils for whom English is an Additional Language; perceived their development needs, preparedness and confidence to support EAL pupils; the constraints they encountered; and the opportunities that they utilized to be and act responsively within multilingual classrooms. Findings are contextualized within the policy framework concerning language and the variegated landscape of Initial Teacher Education (ITE) in England; and framed against apposite perspectives on identity and agency, with a central place being given to socio-cultural theories of identity formation which focus on discourse and practice. Building on the findings, the Discussion points up some of the elements that need to be in place if student teachers are to develop a professional identity that is truly inclusive and responsive to linguistic and cultural difference.

Addressing Frequency Control Challenges in Future Low-Inertia Power Systems: A Great Britain Perspective

The ambitious global targets on decarbonization present the need for massive integration of renewable generation in power systems, resulting in a significant decrease in the system inertia. In addition to the reduction in system inertia, the transmission system in Great Britain (GB) faces some unique challenges owing to its relatively small capacity, while being decoupled from other transmission systems and with the renewable resources largely non-uniformly distributed across the system. This paper presents opinions and insights on the challenges associated with frequency control in a low-inertia system and the potential solutions from a GB perspective. In this paper, we focus on three main techniques that act over different time scales: synchronous condensers, inertia emulation, and fast frequency response. We evaluate their relative advantages and limitations with learnings from recent research and development projects in GB, along with the opinions on their roles in addressing the frequency control challenges in future low-inertia systems.

Decentralized project management concept for schedule-critical space projects

The Apollo moon missions of the 1960s pioneered the classic phased approach to space mission management. While successful at the time, this rigid and inflexible management philosophy has become synonymous with cost and schedule overruns of most high-profile space missions. The software industry has recently adopted modern, more flexible project management techniques based on “lean-agile” methods that enable team collaboration and communication through distributed task and schedule management, online document sharing and rolling-wave planning. However, due to the inherent schedule complexities of hardware development and the firm constraints of design review and launch timelines, flexible project management frameworks have not been widely adopted for space mission management. This paper presents a modified version of the traditional agile management philosophy, adapted to the unique needs of the space industry. A recent satellite development project was managed using the new modified-agile approach, while collecting project hours and task durations. Comparisons were made between this new style of space project management and a recently completed satellite development project using traditional space project management techniques. Results show that the new management approach reduced strain on the project team, improved overall productivity, and maintained a more level task loading when compared to the traditional management approach. This paper also illustrates how the new management approach can enable project resilience to change by analyzing its response to the labor disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Development of Interview Protocol to Explore Hybrid Agile Software Development Phases

Agile practices are a development approach based on agile manifestos that value individuals and interactions, working software, customer collaboration and responding to change. Recently, Software Engineering (SE) team is combining agile with non-agile development approaches, which lead to hybrid agile. Hybrid agile is a mixture of a plan-driven development approach and agile practices. Hybrid agile has gained the interest of software engineering team as one of the development approaches for recent software development projects. However, there are uncertainties of security measures of hybrid agile. Therefore, the security strategies of a software project developed based on hybrid agile needs further investigations. This research is a proportion of a study on hybrid agile, in which this research focuses on the development of the data collection instrument to study hybrid agile. This research explores the development and validation of an interview protocol that will be the instrument for studying the hybrid agile approaches and methods implemented by the Software Engineering team and discovering the security strategies taken to ensure reliable software will be deployed to the end-users. This paper will discuss the questions designed for research, which involves the development of the interview protocol. This paper also explains the validation process and reliability examination of the interview protocol to ensure the interview protocol is reliable for the actual data collection process fromthe identified sample population

Editorial for Wiley's IJSCN Special Issue “Satellite networks integration with 5G”

Editorial for Wiley's IJSCN Special Issue “Satellite networks integration with 5G”

Green-Agile Maturity Model: An Evaluation Framework for Global Software Development Vendors

Agile methods are extensively adapted by software development organizations due to the competitive benefits it offers. In recent years global software development (GSD) projects practice agile methods as prominent methods to deliver the software in increments with utmost user satisfaction and affordable cost. Beside the use of agile methods, the software industry has also considered the green aspect of software, to be in line with the demands of the organizations and the world technological ecosystem. The green and sustainable feature of software should focus both the energy and resource efficiency key factors. This phenomenon of embedding the green flavor in software has emerged a new research area, green software engineering, that promises the development of eco-friendly software with minimum energy and use of less computing resources, to trim down the adverse effects on both society and environment. The principal objective of this research study is to design and develop a multi-level Green-Agile Maturity Model (GAMM) to assess the GSD vendors’ agile maturity in terms of green software development. The model has been built in four phases. In phase I and II, systematic literature review (SLR) was performed to identify the success factors and risk factors that either supports or hinders the green and sustainable software development respectively by practicing the agile methods in GSD. The results have been validated from 106 relevant experts, dealing with agile and green software projects, through questionnaire survey. The experts’ demographic represents 25 different countries. We also identified the industry practices through SLR and survey, to address our identified critical factors. Phase III of this research deals with development of the GAMM by categorizing the identified factors into seven Green-Agile maturity levels. A similar approach has been used in other models such as Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI), Implementation Maturity Model (IMM) and Software Outsourcing Vendors Readiness Model (SOVRM). In phase IV of this research, five case studies were conducted at GSD organizations, to evaluate the structure and efficacy of the GAMM, while as a major contribution, this paper presents our developed model, the GAMM, which aims to assess the green-agile maturity of the GSD vendors in terms of green and sustainable software development.

Factors, mechanisms and challenges of planning in Cyprus: a historical narrative of Limassol’s urban development

ABSTRACT This paper describes the factors that influenced urban development in Cypriot cities and how the Cypriot planning system evolved to address such factors. Limassol is chosen as the case study for an in–depth approach in order to come to general but precise conclusions. The paper offers an interpretive–historical narrative of the urban development of the city from the latter part of the Ottoman period to the present day in order to understand the mechanism through which Cypriot cities have grown and the role of planning in shaping their form and influencing how they function. The objective is to provide a comprehensive description of factors, mechanisms and actors involved in the emergence and transformation of Limassol, and in particular the role of planning in its historical evolution and in more recent regeneration and development projects. The narrative was constructed using a variety of primary and secondary sources, including travellers' reports, historical cartography, press articles and interviews with expert stakeholders. The paper concludes with an assessment of the current state of planning in Cyprus, its potential future directions, and remarks on the effectiveness of the narrative in interpreting causal pathways of development and evaluating the impact of planning actions and policies.

Planning, property and profit: the use of financial viability modelling in urban property development

By drawing upon McAuslan’s analysis of the ideologies underpinning land use planning law, this paper examines financial viability modelling and legal processes in the context of local authority decision-making related to property development on large urban sites. A local authority can make a site ready for development by using ‘compulsory purchase’ powers to acquire land, by transferring that land to a property developer and by granting that developer planning permission to commence construction. Analysis of case law, academic criticism of viability modelling practices and a recent property development project highlight issues arising when local authority planning departments use viability appraisals to legitimise decisions purportedly taken in the public interest. An in-depth examination of viability modelling within local authority estates departments then opens a new site for critical inquiry of local authority land acquisition practices. The paper’s conclusions reflect upon how financial viability modelling shapes decision-making, despite questions surrounding both modelling techniques and the outputs that viability appraisals produce.

Assessing voluntary resilience standards and impacts of flood risk information

ABSTRACTVoluntary resilience standards are an emerging tool for cities to incentivize developers to incorporate climate change adaptation strategies. Urban planners and researchers, however, are still assessing their relative impacts on the design of recent large-scale development projects. This paper answers the question of whether, and at what scale, anticipated changes to mapped flood risk are associated with mitigation actions to accommodate climate change. A case study of the Climate Change Preparedness and Resiliency Checklist in Boston, Massachusetts presents a database of 171 unique survey responses from 104 proposed projects. Comparing developments with documentation to an internal subset of 54 projects in the Boston Planning and Development Agency’s projected Sea Level Rise – Flood Hazard Area (SLR-FHA), this paper finds projects impacted by updated Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Flood Insurance Rate Maps (FIRMs) are associated with different building uses, higher sea level rise assumptions and greater abilities to endure inundation. There are also neighbourhood-level differences in climate expertise and the projects’ ability to withstand utility disruption. Both of these observed impacts may have important implications for the formulation and application of voluntary resilience standards in other coastal cities.