Residential Space Research Articles

Controlling natural lighting and methods of attracting it within residential spaces

Controlling natural lighting and methods of attracting it within residential spaces

Investigating daylighting quality in educational spaces following building renovation

Abstract Daylighting is essential to the well-being of occupants in educational spaces. It increases students’ performance and provides an opportunity for achieving energy efficiency, as well as indoor visual and thermal comfort. However, daylight performance is rarely accounted for when taking decisions attributed to building renovation. This results in increased or decreased daylighting lighting levels and glare which jeopardizes the functional requirements of the space. Hence, this study adopted a mixed qualitative/quantitative approach to compare two recently renovated educational spaces (architectural design studio drawing halls) in terms of the effect of renovation activities on daylighting and visual comfort, noting that both spaces were located in the same building and subject to similar prevailing climatic conditions. This included a sequence of site measurements, surveys and simulations. The results showed great variation between both studied spaces in terms of daylight efficiency and visual comfort. Some design proposals were tested in order to deduct learnt lessons for proper accounting of daylight during building renovation plans.

Indoor Thermal Environment Improvement Based on Switchable Radiation/Convection-Combined Intermittent Heating: Comparison between Conventional Terminals and Integrated Novel Terminal

Intermittent heating is an energy-saving heating mode, which can save energy in terms of time, and thus is worth promoting, particularly in residential heating scenarios. Conventional radiant heating terminals, that is floor heating, and convective heating terminals, that is fan coils, cannot achieve both intermittent and thermal comfort during intermittent heating. Therefore, this study proposes a switchable convective-radiant heating regulation method for floor heating and fan coils to achieve a comfortable indoor environment with high thermal response speed. Furthermore, a novel combined radiant-convective heating terminal was proposed for a reliable and effective solution. Results showed that the proposed switchable method could increase both intermittence and thermal comfort. In addition, the heating terminal showed better heating performance than the combination of two conventional terminals at the key points of heating capacity, flexibility, and thermal response. It could initially heat up a typical residential space within 20–40 min and then stabilize the room temperature in a comfortable range of 18–22 °C, showing great potential for intermittent heating in room-scale heating conditions. This study provides a reference technique for intermittent heating with reduced system complexity and precise environmental control.

Design Verification and Performance Testing of Container Valves for Offshore 30Mpa IG541 Fire Extinguishing System

Abstract Addressing the challenges of large space occupation, limited transmission distance, and suboptimal fire extinguishing efficiency of the current 15Mpa IG541 gas fire extinguishing system commonly found on offshore oil production platforms and ships, especially in deepwater facilities where stringent requirements exist for both transmission distance and environmental performance. Increasing the storage pressure can enhance space efficiency and extend the transmission range of the extinguishing medium. However, the core component, the container valve of the 30Mpa IG541 system, has faced foreign bottlenecks in terms of availability and technology transfer. To address this situation, a domestically developed and independently intellectual property-protected 30Mpa IG541 container valve has been designed and tested. This design encompasses material selection, flow area calculations, action mechanism design, sampling port design, inlet and outlet thread selection, safety diaphragm design, and thread strength calculations. Subsequent testing confirmed its suitability, including functional testing, sealing tests, hydrostatic pressure testing, blast performance testing, and salt spray testing. The valve passed all tests with flying colors, ensuring reliable opening under 135MPa pressure. The container valve has also been successfully certified by DNV. This achievement lays the foundation for the next phase of certification by a classification society and the broader application of this 30Mpa IG541 system in offshore engineering.

The Resident Space Object Detection Method Based on the Connection between the Fourier Domain Image of the Video Data Difference Frame and the Orbital Velocity Projection

The Resident Space Object Detection Method Based on the Connection between the Fourier Domain Image of the Video Data Difference Frame and the Orbital Velocity Projection

A Robust Star Identification Algorithm for Resident Space Object Surveillance

Star identification algorithms can be applied to resident space object (RSO) surveillance, which includes a large number of stars and false stars. This paper proposes an efficient, robust star identification algorithm for RSO surveillance based on a neural network. First, a feature called equal-frequency binning radial feature (EFB-RF) is proposed for guide stars, and a superficial neural network is constructed for feature classification. Then the training set is generated based on EFB-RF. Finally, the remaining stars are identified using a residual star matching method. The simulation experiment and results show that the identification rate of our algorithm can reach 99.82% under 1 pixel position noise, and it can reach 99.54% under 5% false stars. When the percentage of missing stars is 15%, it can reach 99.40%. The algorithm is verified by RSO surveillance.

CH4 hydrate dissociation and CH4 leakage characteristics: Insights from laboratory investigation based on stratified environment reconstruction of natural gas hydrate reservoir

Submarine natural gas hydrates (NGHs) are one of the largest methane reservoirs on Earth, offering huge potential as an alternative energy source and serving as a crucial global carbon sink. However, the substantial risk of methane leakage during NGH development seriously threatens marine and global ecological and environmental safety, presenting a major challenge for commercial NGH exploitation. Focusing on the unknown leakage mechanisms, this study employed a new simulation device to construct a stratified environment and to investigate the characteristics of hydrate dissociation and methane leakage during depressurization production, under conditions of varied fracturing in overlying sediment. A movable module was used to dynamically isolate and connect the hydrate reservoir with the overlying layer. The results showed that the intrusion of overlying water decelerated the reservoir depressurization rate, leading to a mass of hydrate reformation. The invasion locations and flow paths of the overlying water were influenced by the fracture scale of the overlying sediment. Benefiting from the additional sensible heat and reservoir space occupation of the overlying water in the later production stages, the methane recovery ratio in the fracture-containing systems were not significantly affected. However, the leakage methane increased as fracture channels enlarged, reaching up to 9.90 % of the total methane content in the hydrate reservoir. The leakage mechanism primarily involved local overpressure, buoyancy effects, and diffusion. The research, for the first time, experimentally revealed the response relationship between methane leakage and hydrate dissociation, providing foundational data and theoretical support for the safe and efficient NGH development.

Smart Car Parking System

In this fast-growing economy, the number of vehicle users is growing tremendously, wasting a significant amount of time and fuel while searching for an available parking space. This work highlights the optimum utilization of parking slots without the physical intervention of humans by making use of an IoT-integrated embedded system. This study aimed to create a mobile application for car parking that uses NodeMCU as the Microcontroller, which is further integrated with Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) and the Internet of Things (IoT) to detect available parking slots, saving people’s time. When combined with an interactive mobile application, this technology provides an efficient solution by highlighting the availability and occupancy of parking spaces as green and red, respectively. It contributes to enhancing the quality of life of people living in congested metropolitan cities by digitizing the conventional parking system.

Transfer and persistence of intruder DNA within an office after reuse by owner

The heightened sensitivity of DNA typing techniques, paired with the extensive use of trace DNA in forensic investigations, has resulted in an increased need to understand how and when DNA is deposited on surfaces of interest. This study focussed on the transfer, persistence, and prevalence of trace DNA in a single occupation of an office space by an intruder, when all contacts made during occupation and for the two hours prior and post occupation were known. The extent to which DNA could be recovered from contacted/not contacted surfaces was investigated. This study investigates the impacts of these movements and use of an office space when the duration of occupancy, surface contact histories and shedder status of participants are known. Contacts were documented and surfaces in the office space were targeted for sampling. Categories were set for target sampling that included different types of contact. Direct and indirect DNA transfer was detected in 55 % and 6 % of samples, respectively. Contactless DNA transfer was detected in 0.5 % of samples. The owner was observed as the sole/major/majority contributor in 77 % of the samples and as minor contributor in 10 % of samples. The intruder was observed as the sole/major/majority contributor in 14 % of samples and as the minor contributor in 16 %. An increased number of contacts increased the relative DNA contribution of the individual making the contact, however, not all observed direct contacts resulted in detectable DNA transfer. The outcome of this study will aid in better sample targeting strategies and contribute to the pool of data assisting in the development of activity level assessments.

A WSN and vision based smart, energy efficient, scalable, and reliable parking surveillance system with optical verification at edge for resource constrained IoT devices

As urbanization accelerates, the demand for efficient parking surveillance solutions has increased. However, existing solutions often face challenges related to energy consumption, scalability, and reliability. This paper introduces a smart hybrid parking surveillance system integrating wireless sensor networks (WSNs) with vision based solution at the edge for resource constrained IoT devices to address these challenges. The solution leverages WSNs for periodic readings of parking space occupancy and introduces a low power sleep mode in the network for energy efficiency, along with optical verification strategies using computer vision models like R-CNN and Faster R-CNN FPN on ResNet50 and MobileNetv2 backbones for distinguishing between true and false positives in the WSN data for a greater accuracy in parking space occupancy. The system utilizes edge for computing on edge servers resulting in increased responsiveness of the system, reduced data transmission and real time processing of data. The proposed solution is formulated in such a way that it automatically switches between WSN and vision based sensing resulting in less energy consumption and longer lifespan of the system without compromising on accuracy. Through experimental results it is observed that models trained on the MobileNetv2 backbone demonstrated at least twice faster for both processing the images and training compared to those models trained on the ResNet backbone. On the other hand, both Faster R-CNN FPN (input resolution: 1440) and R-CNN (input resolution: 128) models trained on the MobileNetv2 backbone have slightly lower accuracies than the same models trained on the ResNet50 backbone.

Agent-based power management in apartment buildings: Tenant preferences and distributed energy resources

Apartment buildings (APBs) consist of multiple residential spaces and common facilities, unlike single-family buildings, and have correspondingly diverse energy demands; however, household preferences and behaviors have received little attention so far. Therefore, bidirectional flows between households and the APB must be considered to manage the APB energy demands by considering dynamic relationships built by households with preferences and behaviors. This study presents a demand-side management system called the unified home energy management system (U-HEMS), which considers distributed energy resources (DERs) for the APB. The U-HEMS was developed by bidirectional flows of management and decision-making processes for households and the APB. In the management process from the household to the APB, the APB power demands were optimized using a two-stage system, whereas in the decision-making process from the APB to the households, the next actions expressed by weighting factors of the household side were determined for the management process based on an agent-based model. The functionality and performance of the U-HEMS were compared with those of conventional approaches for a 100-unit APB, and five case studies were conducted to analyze their power demands considering different aspects: decision-making process, combinations of households’ preferences, reward system, penetration of electric vehicles, and DER capacities. The results reveal that the U-HEMS effectively reduces the overall costs and total peak power demand because a bidirectional model considers the dynamic relationships between households in the APB and DER operations subject to the time-varying pricing policy. Further studies are needed to assess seasonal effects on APB demands.

Phenotypic limits of crop diversity: a data exploration of functional trait space.

Relationships between crop genetic and functional diversity are key to addressing contemporary agricultural challenges. Yet, there are few approaches for quantifying the relationship between genetic diversity and crop functional trait expression. Here, we introduce 'functional space accumulation curves' to analyze how trait space increases with the number of crop genotypes within a species. We explore the potential for functional space accumulating curves to quantify genotype-trait space relationships in four common annual crop species: barley (Hordeum vulgare), rice (Oryza sativa), soybean (Glycine max), and durum wheat (Triticum durum). We also employ these curves to describe genotype-trait space relationships in the wild annual Arabidopsis thaliana, which has not been subjected to artificial selection. All five species exhibited asymptotic functional space accumulation curves, suggesting a limit to intraspecific functional crop diversity, likely due to: dominant phenotypes represented by several genotypes;or functional redundancy that might exist among genotypes. Our findings indicate that there is a diminishing return of functional diversity with increasing number of genotypes. Our analysis demonstrates the efficacy of functional space accumulation curves in quantifying trait space occupancy of crops, with implications for managing crop diversity in agroecosystems, and genetic diversity in crop breeding programs.

PENINGKATAN KUALITAS HUNIAN PADA PERMUKIMAN PADAT DI RW 02, KELURAHAN KRENDANG, JAKARTA BARAT

The settlement in RW 02, Krendang sub-district, Tambora district, West Jakarta, is a dense and unorganized urban settlement resulting from an unplanned incremental growth process. Apart from poor environmental sanitation conditions, this settlement has a low quality of residential space with very limited natural lighting and ventilation due to the closeness of the buildings and the lack of open space. This settlement is the location for implementing a community service program which aims to help the West Jakarta government deal with the city's slum problem by involving community participation to improve the quality of residential space. The initial program in 2023 aims to open people's minds about the importance of healthy residential spaces, and to make this happen can be done using simple, low-cost methods. In the next stage, sustainable programs will be continued until a model of healthy, low-cost housing is realized in this settlement. A series of community service activities have been carried out with the culmination of counseling activities for social treatment to build collective insight and awareness among residents. The counseling took place at the community hall, attended by RW administrators as well as RT representatives and community leaders within RW 02. The counselor team used pictures of simulation designs for the renovation of multi-purpose buildings and pre-school children's education in RW 02 as counseling aids. Based on pre-test and post-test data through filling out questionnaires by participants, it shows a significant increase in collective awareness regarding the program objectives.

Carbonate microfacies reveal how Asturian shell middens formed in the Mesolithic

The littoral platform of eastern Asturias (northern Spain) is a coastal karst modeled by the sea. During the Early Holocene, this landscape was exploited by successfully coastal-adapted hunter-gatherers. Intense coastal foraging resulted in accumulation of large amounts of shellfish in numerous karstic rockshelters. A century ago, the Count of Vega del Sella established the post-Paleolithic age of the Asturian shell middens, carbonate-cemented deposits hanging from the walls of karstic cavities. He argued that these were remnants from past shell accumulations filling up completely the rockshelters, as result of direct waste disposal, while the occupations occurred outside. Our geoarchaeological approach tested this long-lasting site-formation model with micromorphology and carbonate microfacies analysis of two sites: El Alloru and El Mazo. Novel outcomes are: 1) the carbonate cements correspond to calcareous tufa resulting from spring activity; 2) the deposits show a stratigraphic framework related to successive phases of debris accumulations and stasis; 3) tufa formation and accumulation of anthropogenic debris are syn-depositional; 4) biogenic and diagenetic cements reveal phreatic conditions. All these contradict a priori expectations from Vega del Sella's widely accepted model of anthropogenic mound constructions preserved in the currently cemented deposits. Microcontextual evidence suggest that shells were likely processed and produced also inside the rockshelters, which might have been used as occupation spaces as well instead of just for waste disposal, while the analyses exterior deposits at El Alloru also present occupational signs. This study also supports further evidence for higher water-table levels in the early Holocene at regional level, despite most caves show no signs of spring activity today.

A generalizable approach to imbalanced classification of residential electric space heat

A generalizable approach to imbalanced classification of residential electric space heat

Nondestructive and three-dimensional visualization by identifying elements using synchrotron radiation microscale X-ray CT reveals microbial and cavity distributions in anaerobic granular sludge.

Microorganisms inhabit diverse environments and often form biofilms. One factor that affects their community structure is the surrounding physical environment. The arrangement of residential space within the formed biofilm plays a crucial role in the supply and transportation of substances, as well as the discharge of metabolites. Conventional approaches, such as scanning electron microscopy and confocal laser scanning microscopy combined with fluorescence in situ hybridization, have limitations as they provide information primarily from the biofilm surface and cross-sections. In this study, we developed a method for detecting microorganisms in biofilms using synchrotron radiation X-ray microscale computer tomography. The developed method allows nondestructive three-dimensional observation of biofilms at a single-cell resolution (voxel size of approximately 200 nm), facilitating an understanding of the relationship between microorganisms and their physical habitats.

Comparing the impacts of built environment across different objective life neighborhoods on the out-of-home leisure activities of employed people using massive mobile phone data

An adequately-designed built environment can prompt willingness of employed people to carry out out-of-home leisure activities. However, since much of the literature relies on static or perceived residential neighborhoods which may have substantial deviations from realistic environmental exposure, some associations between out-of-home leisure activities and built environment may be biased. In this study, we develop three kinds of objective life neighborhood measurements (residential space, job-housing space, and activity space) using massive mobile phone data, to distinguish the differentiated impacts of built environment across different objective life neighborhoods on the out-of-home leisure activities. According to the results, the activity space makes the exploratory models far more reasonable and persuasive than other life neighborhoods, especially in urban development areas, and the benefits of activity space cannot be attained solely by expanding the distance parameters of residential space or job-housing space. Furthermore, the results demonstrate the relative importance of built environment for out-of-home leisure activities, especially the factors of population density, proportion of urban green space, and metro coverage rate, may be underestimated if the ordinary life neighborhoods are applied. This study provides some references for urban planners to formulate effective environmental intervention strategies to maintain active and healthy lifestyles of employed people.

Utilizing spontaneous plants for sustainable development in residential green spaces: Insights from environmental drivers and niche analysis in Fuzhou City, China

This study, aimed at exploring low-maintenance, high-diversity, and sustainable greening strategies for residential areas, conducted a comprehensive survey and analysis of spontaneous plants in residential green spaces in Fuzhou City, documenting 361 species. Employing methods such as variance partitioning, Canonical Correspondence Analysis (CCA), and ecological niche analysis, we investigated the environmental factors influencing the distribution and composition of these plants, as well as their interrelationships. The study found that the composition of spontaneous plants in residential green spaces differs from other urban environments, with a high proportion of alien species (43.77%) due to influences such as resident activities, including a large number of ornamental and edible plants. Maintenance level, urbanization gradient, and green space ratio are common factors affecting the composition and distribution of spontaneous plants in urban environments, while unique residential socio-economic factors like building age, housing prices, and population density significantly affect the spontaneous plants in residential green spaces. The overall dominant plant community shows a significant positive association, indicating a relatively stable stage of succession. Although competition among most species is not significant and interspecific connectivity is weak, the presence of seven dominant invasive species intensifies competition. Based on these findings, the study proposes several specific sustainable management measures: adopting the concept of New Naturalistic Ecological Planting Design, selecting native spontaneous plants with strong adaptability, and constructing plant communities that are ecologically stable and have ornamental value by mimicking natural ecosystems. Additionally, specific methods for managing specific invasive species in residential green spaces using competitive replacement control methods are proposed. These measures aim to promote the health and sustainable development of urban residential green spaces.

Residential green space and summer heat stress: a repeated cross-sectional study

Residential green space and summer heat stress: a repeated cross-sectional study

The space occupation and use by tree crowns explain variations of individual growth rates in an old-growth temperate forest in Japan

Relative growth rates (RGR), i.e., growth rates per unit biomass (ΔM/M, where M is plant mass and ΔM is the change in M over a period of time), reflect growth strategies of plant species. Partitioning of RGR to net assimilation rate (ΔM/leaf area) and leaf area ratio (leaf area/M) provides further insights into allocation strategies. To apply this analytical approach to large canopy tree species, we used crown area (Ac) as a proxy for leaf area to understand variations of RGR partitioned to space use efficiency (SUE, ΔM/Ac) and space occupation efficiency (SOE, Ac/M). With UAV imagery, we measured Ac of 226 co-occurring individuals of 14 canopy tree species in a 1-ha stand in a temperate old-growth mixed-forest in Japan, and analyzed how RGR was related to SUE and SOE. The results show that deciduous species exhibited higher SOE and lower SUE compared to evergreen species, even though their RGR values largely overlapped. Late successional species tended to have higher RGR through higher SUE than early-to-middle successional species. We also analyzed the relationship of absolute growth rates (AGR) with several functional traits including DBH (diameter at breast height), Ac, leaf- and stem traits. Both Ac and DBH were strong determinants of AGR across species. Low specific leaf area (SLA, leaf area per unit leaf mass) and high wood density positively contributed to AGR across species, offering long-term growth advantages for old-growth natural forest. The analytical framework introduced in this study may be useful to elucidate the variation of tree growth strategies of canopy trees in natural forest stands.