Roof pond cooling of buildings in hot arid climates

The weather in Baghdad, Iraq is hot dry in the summer while water is plentiful and cheap. These are conditions which encourage the use of evaporative cooling. A building with one space in it was used to test the effect of a roof pond which was ventilated mechanically for summer cooling. Thermal measurements were taken for the room in normal conditions without a pond, with a lone pond and no mechanical ventilation, and then finally with mechanically forced ventilation. The results showed a marked improvement in the space temperature with a significant reduction during the peak time outside temperatures at 3 O’clock reaching 6.0 °C between the room without the pond and with a ventilated one and 6.5° at 18:00 during peak inside temperatures. The study also showed that improvements would be better in real-life conditions where exterior wall area is less than the test room.     

Developing CAD techniques for preliminary architectural design

Theoretically the computer can offer the architect significant help during the preliminary design stages. To take full benefit of its capabilities it is necessary to use the computer for the design process itself. To this end, a program has been written that concentrates on ease of use so that the machine does not impede the creative process. The program works through the manipulation of design elements such as spaces and windows, not graphical ones. The result is a tool which offers improved efficiency, but is very different from current methods that use paper in preliminary design.     

Reduction of building waste in Baghdad Iraq

Debris from the building industry is a big problem in Iraq because of the large amount produced by typical building activity. It is also a growing problem because of increased renovation activity as opposed to straightforward new building. The hypothesis of this research is that a few simple changes in some of the building practices can reduce the amount of debris from a building without risking its structural or architectural integrity. These include using solid brick as opposed to perforated bricks and jack arching instead of reinforced roofing. A comparison was made between the conventional methods currently widespread and these suggestions, the results showed that these changes can reduce the building debris by up to 62%.     

Congestion control in wireless sensor and 6LoWPAN networks: toward the Internet of Things

The Internet of Things (IoT) is the next big challenge for the research community where the IPv6 over low power wireless personal area network (6LoWPAN) protocol stack is a key part of the IoT. Recently, the IETF ROLL and 6LoWPAN working groups have developed new IP based protocols for 6LoWPAN networks to alleviate the challenges of connecting low memory, limited processing capability, and constrained power supply sensor nodes to the Internet. In 6LoWPAN networks, heavy network traffic causes congestion which significantly degrades network performance and impacts on quality of service aspects such as throughput, latency, energy consumption, reliability, and packet delivery. In this paper, we overview the protocol stack of 6LoWPAN networks and summarize a set of its protocols and standards. Also, we review and compare a number of popular congestion control mechanisms in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) and classify them into traffic control, resource control, and hybrid algorithms based on the congestion control strategy used. We present a comparative review of all existing congestion control approaches in 6LoWPAN networks. This paper highlights and discusses the differences between congestion control mechanisms for WSNs and 6LoWPAN networks as well as explaining the suitability and validity of WSN congestion control schemes for 6LoWPAN networks. Finally, this paper gives some potential directions for designing a novel congestion control protocol, which supports the IoT application requirements, in future work.