Contractual arrangements for residences built for the free housing market in Vojvodina

The authors discuss the two basic forms of contractual arrangements leading to the development of the free market and describe the problems experienced during the contract phase employing the 'Montastan' system.     

Residential Building in Australia, 1993–2003

The building of new houses is a significant urban activity. The built form, shape and liveability of Australian cities are directly influenced by the actions and characteristics of firms who build new dwellings (apartments and houses). Despite this importance, little is known about the types of firms that build new houses and apartments in Australia. This article provides a detailed analysis of the residential building sector in Australia between 1993 and 2003. Focusing on elements of the sector that have been identified as important for both theoretical and policy reasons, the article presents a fine-grained analysis of industry structure, levels of concentration and the characteristics of the sector's large firms. It finds that differentiations between residential builders across space and by type of dwelling constructed are increasingly important and that large residential builders increasingly share characteristics with firms involved in other property sectors. It suggests that diversified property conglomerates pose new challenges to urban governance and to international theories of residential building.     

Residential Building in Australia, 1993-2003

The building of new houses is a significant urban activity. The built form, shape and liveability of Australian cities are directly influenced by the actions and characteristics of firms who build new dwellings (apartments and houses). Despite this importance, little is known about the types of firms that build new houses and apartments in Australia. This article provides a detailed analysis of the residential building sector in Australia between 1993 and 2003. Focusing on elements of the sector that have been identified as important for both theoretical and policy reasons, the article presents a fine-grained analysis of industry structure, levels of concentration and the characteristics of the sector's large firms. It finds that differentiations between residential builders across space and by type of dwelling constructed are increasingly important and that large residential builders increasingly share characteristics with firms involved in other property sectors. It suggests that diversified property conglomerates pose new challenges to urban governance and to international theories of residential building.     

城市居住区规划与交通规划互动——以上海市配套商品房基地为例

通过分析上海市现有已建成配套房基地大型居住区周边城市交通现状与规划滞后产生的矛盾,提出居住区选址应与周边交通规划互动的原则,以及通过建立城市副中心来缓解城市交通压力的设想。     

Behavioural adaptation and the use of environmental controls in summer for thermal comfort in apartments in India

Building energy use in India is rising phenomenally. Indian codes prescribe a very narrow comfort temperature range (23-26 °C) for summer. Ventilation controls alone consume 47% of total energy in residences. Thermal comfort field studies in Indian residences were not attempted. The author conducted a field study in apartments in Hyderabad, in summer and monsoon seasons in 2008. This paper presents the occupants’ methods of environmental and behavioural adaptation and impediments in using controls.Only about 40% of the occupants were comfortable in summer due to inadequate adaptive opportunities. The comfort range obtained in this study (26.0-32.5 °C), was way above the standard. Fanger's PMV always overestimated the actual sensation.The occupants used many adaptation methods: the environmental controls, clothing, metabolism and many behavioural actions. Use of fans, air coolers and A/cs increased with temperature, and was impeded by their poor efficacy and noise, occupant's attitudes and economic affordability. A/c and air cooler usage was higher in top floors. Behavioural adaptation was better in summer and was restricted in higher economic groups always. Thermal tolerance was limited in subjects using A/cs and resulted in “thermal indulgence”. This study calls for special adaptation methods for top-floor flats.     

Analysis of probabilistic climate projections: heat wave,overheating and adaptation

Climate change could substantially impact on the performance of buildings in providing thermal comfort to occupants. The recently launched UK climate projections (UKCP09) suggest that all areas of the UK will become warmer in the future with the possibility of more frequent and severe extreme events, such as heat waves. This study, as part of the low carbon futures (LCF) project, explores the consequent risk of overheating and the vulnerability of a building to extreme events. A simple statistical model proposed by the LCF project elsewhere has been employed to emulate the outputs of the dynamic building simulator (ESP-r), which if directly used with the numerous replicated climates available from a probabilistic climate database could be practically challenging. For complex probabilistic climate datasets, we demonstrate the efficiency of the statistical tool in performing a systematic analysis of various aspects of heat waves including: frequency of extreme heat events in changing climate; its impact on overheating issues and effects of specific adaptation techniques applied to offset predicted overheating. We consider a domestic building as a virtual case study. Results are presented relative to a baseline climate (1961–1990) for three future timelines (2030s, 2050s and 2080s) and three emission scenarios (Low, Medium and High).     

Statistical techniques to emulate dynamic building simulations for overheating analyses in future probabilistic climates

As projections of climate change become more detailed and sophisticated, analysing the effects of these projections on, for example, building performance will become more complex. This study, as part of the Low Carbon Futures project, proposes a method for integrating the latest UK Climate Projections 2009, which are probabilistic in nature, into dynamic building simulation calculations. This methodology offers the possibility that, in an analysis of overheating in buildings, it will be viable for a building designer to assess future thermal comfort of a building in a probabilistic way, with various climate scenarios informing a risk analysis of whether that building will become unsuitable as a working/living environment. To reduce the computational requirements of such an analysis, a series of statistical manipulations and approximations are proposed that serve to reduce substantially the amount of computation that would otherwise be necessary when using such climate projections. The resulting tool, which in essence captures the behaviour of complex simulation models using linear filtering techniques and regression, is successfully validated against results obtained from building simulation software results for a domestic building case-study, including versions of the building with specific adaptation scenarios applied that might offset the predicted overheating.     

Validation of methodology for utility demand prediction considering actual variations in inhabitant behaviour schedules

A data set of myriad and time-varying inhabitant behaviour schedules with a 15-min time resolution, generated by the authors in a previous study, is validated through a comparison analysis. The key idea of generating a set of raw schedule data from the restricted statistical information is called the ‘generate and kill’ concept, which is commonly used in the fields of artificial intelligence and multi-agent simulation. In the present study, we show three comparisons. The first and second compare the estimated demand with a time series of measured utility demand. These comparisons indicate that the generated data and the algorithm, as described by the authors, have the required robustness. Another comparison between the estimate and the annually averaged daily water demand of a residential area, consisting of 9327 residences, also shows an acceptable consistency.     

硅粉混凝土与人居环境

文章简要分析硅粉与硅粉混凝土的性质与性能，从房屋结构，交通环境以及自然环境三个方面论述了硅粉混凝土在人居环境建设中的重要作用，并展望了硅粉混凝土的发展前景。     

Ventilation strategies for urban housing: lessons from a PoE case study

Mechanical ventilation with heat recovery is still not widely used in UK housing, but with insulation and air-tightness standards becoming increasingly strict, it is likely to become more common. Operable windows are almost a given for housing and the UK climate is rarely extreme enough to restrict people's use of those windows for natural ventilation. This is a potential problem for the use of heat-recovery systems and could greatly reduce their energy efficiency. The paper takes the Iroko housing scheme at Coin Street, London, as a post-occupancy evaluation (PoE) case study to investigate the questions raised with respect to how well the occupants of the houses cope with balancing both natural ventilation and mechanical systems to achieve thermal comfort energy efficiently. First, the optimum balance of mechanical and natural ventilation is estimated and used to determine the maximum potential saving it could give when compared with natural ventilation alone. Short-term monitoring of the building in question together with the results of questionnaires showed why this theoretical balance is not achieved and that the energy consumption is likely to be worse than for natural ventilation alone. Noise, perceived control, perceived freshness and misunderstanding are all discussed as possible causes for the apparent disjunction. Misunderstanding on the part of residents was shown to be a critical determinant, so information about the heat recovery system was distributed to the residents and the paper ends by looking at what theoretical energy savings might be made as a result of this act.