Impact of agriculture on the built form of Al-Alkhalaf

This study is part of a comprehensive investigation of traditional settlements in the highland of Southwestern Saudi Arabia. The present study focuses on several factors which influenced the urban development of Al-Alkhalaf and its surroundings. The investigation began with the exploration of kinship systems as an underlying force that shaped the urban and economic structure of the village which is considered the principal determinant of the settlement built form and environment. The role of climate and topography in the urban and economic structure is examined, an influence highlighted by the unique pattern of agronomic, building and design techniques. The influence of Islamic and tribal laws on agricultural and building practices is investigated, a pertinent relationship which is viewed through the integration between the agricultural fields and the built form of the village, the layout of streets, open spaces, warning and defence towers, and residential areas.     

Canal oriented development as waterfront place-making: an analysis of the built form

Place-making, as a thoughtful planning, design and management approach to creating communities, is critical not only to designers of the built environment, but also to developers and municipal officials who look to build and/or regenerate urban spaces that translate into vibrant successful places. Using criteria established in the Project for Public Places ‘What Makes a Successful Place?’ matrix, this paper applies onsite ethnographic research in analyzing three US canal oriented developments (CODs) to determine whether each place-based development has created a ‘successful’ place and used its canal feature as a development component in spurring urban growth and regeneration. More specifically, these canal-oriented CODs are assessed on the basis of how successful each is at (1) embracing the canal in its design and development, (2) intermingling the space with the greater urban form, and (3) connecting private and public spaces.     

Energy and urban built form: an empirical and statistical approach

The geometrical forms of buildings have important effects on their use of energy. These relationships are explored at the scale of the entire non-domestic building stock of London. A three-dimensional digital model of the city is used to make a series of geometrical measures: building volume, exposed surface area (walls plus roof) and plan depth. These are compared with figures for the consumption of gas and electricity published by the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC). The comparisons are made at different levels of spatial aggregation, from boroughs to census districts. Strong correlations are demonstrated between exposed surface area and both gas and electricity use. The analysis also provides some evidence of a sharp increase in electricity use in districts with buildings whose depth in plan exceeds 14 m (in which air-conditioning and permanent artificial lighting are typically required). A multiple regression model is used to measure the contribution of these effects to total energy use, as compared with floor area, activities and number of employees.     

Al-Alkhalaf: the evolution of the urban built-form of a traditional settlement in Southwestern Saudi Arabia

This investigation presents Al-Alkhalaf, a traditional community located in the Asir Region of Southwestern Saudi Arabia. The study attempts to understand the irregular-built-form of the traditional settlement, and to extract an urban pattern or a rationale from what appeared to many as capricious disorder, through photographic surveys and interviews which took the form of open ended questions with prominent people in Al-Alkhalaf. The value of the survey as a research technique in the study of the evolution of Al-Alkhalaf built-environment is examined. The survey, is however, seen to have certain limitations. Its results make no allowance for the fact that there are other important determinants of human behaviour and attitude, apart from the built-environment. The survey is believed to be one of the means by which the local authority communicate effectively with designers and planners. Al-Alkhalaf built-environment survey afforded several instances of the discordance between the surveyor's perception of the built-environment and the respondents' experience of it, and of preconceptions on the part of the surveyor that were inappropriate to the respondents' life-style. The survey was considered as a link and a means of communication between designers and users. We discover that the traditional built-form emerged from a complex mix of considerations including climate, security, economics, socio-cultural factors, and religious precepts. The investigation concludes that we must begin to examine the urban form through its system of arrangement and not by its separate components. Al-Alkhalaf as one of the largest traditional settlements in the Southwestern Saudi Arabia offers valuable insights into the interaction of human behavior and the built-form. The morphology of building forms and the spatial order of the neighborhood dwelling units reflect the concern for privacy and indicate other socio-cultural characteristics. There are highly specific and complex arrangements of settings, expressing separations and linkages of people, transitions and a range of activities. This system of arrangement evolves largely from tradition or cultural forces which provide the underlying structure of the built-environment. By understanding this foundation, we can adapt, assimilate or even change the various physical components while maintaining a built-environment which is responsive to the needs of its residents. As Saudi Arabia and other societies seek a balance between modernization and traditional values, the success of traditional settlements holds valuable lessons for planners, urban designers and architects.     

Impact on urban form by the localization of railway stations: Evidence from Sweden

Since the 1990s a number of new railway stations have been established in Sweden on new or rerouted lines, while other stations have been reconstructed at their original locations. Some stations were located in urban surroundings, others in semi-urban or peripheral locations depending on the trade of between regional speed, and local urban circumstances. The urban form consequences depending on station localisation of these transport infrastructure investments are nonetheless unknown. In order to provide a basis for future planning, this research aims to provide knowledge on urban form consequences of relocating railway stations. 13 stations were selected in a case study. Changes in urban densities from 1993 to 2013 were analysed by a combination of kernel techniques and estimation of monocentric density models. Stations within an urban and semi-urban environments show strong agglomeration tendencies. Within peripheral environments, the urban development was unclear or even negative. In an urban environment, the location of the station still attracted more urban resources compared to the location of the urban density centre. These findings should be understood in the light of a market-oriented socio-economic context since 1990th influencing the planning system and the development of urban form.     

Relationship between built form and energy performance of office buildings in a severe cold Chinese region

It is well recognized that building form has significant influences on energy performance in buildings, especially in the cold climate. It is imperative to understand the relationship between built forms and energy use in order to provide guidance in early project stage such as preliminary design. Therefore, this study focuses on two aspects to understand characteristics of energy use due to the change of parameters related to building form. The first aspect is to apply new metamodel global sensitivity analysis to determine key factors influencing energy use and the second aspect is to develop reliable fast-computing statistical models using state-of-art machine learning methods. An office building, located in Harbin, China, is chosen as a case study using EnergyPlus simulation program. The results indicate that non-linear relationships exist between input variables and energy use for both heating and electricity use. For heating energy, two factors (floor numbers and building scale) show a non-linear yet monotonic trend. For electricity use intensity, building scale is the only significant factor that has non-linear effects. It is also found that the ranking results of critical factors to both electricity use and heating energy per floor area vary significantly between small and large scale buildings. Neural network model performs better than other machine-learning methods, including ordinary linear model, MARS (multivariate adaptive regression splines), bagging MARS, support vector machine, random forest, and Gaussian process.     

迪拜当代乡土建筑设计研究

以迪拜历史文化为背景,介绍了迪拜建筑的发展历程,探讨了气候因素,社会和宗教因素对迪拜传统建筑风格的影响,并对迪拜当代乡土建筑设计民族文化传统进行了探索,指出设计人员应从中国的实际情况出发,并结合传统文化,应用现代技术,从而创作出具有中国特色的当代乡土建筑.     

The effect of the built environment on human behaviour

A primary issue to be faced by the student of human urban behaviour is that of determinism. There is disagreement among social scientists on whether or not the human personality is partly shaped by the built environment. The main arguments are presented.

The implications for planning are also discussed. If determinism is rejected, planning is merely an attempt to accommodate behaviour that will inevitably unfold and its main pre‐occupation is with the projection of this remorseless future. If it is accepted, planning becomes instead the formulation of human behaviour goals and the express manipulation of the environment with the intention of realizing these goals. Regrettably, little systematic knowledge of the effects of environment on behaviour is so far available to enlighten the latter strategy.

The broad requirements for a scientific, deterministic theory of man‐environment interaction are outlined and some supporting studies reviewed. In particular, the socio‐spatial schema is proposed as a model of social psychological functioning and some applications of this approach are outlined.     

建成环境中的安全设计研究评析

基于对中国知网、维普以及万方三大数据库中对环境与犯罪预防设计研究的相关文献的归纳,首先对建成环境与犯罪之间的基础理论——CPTED的发展历程进行阐述,其次依照CPTED对建成环境的影响分三个不同策略角度进行了分析。     

Environmental cognition in the vernacular landscape: assessing the aesthetic quality of Al-Alkhalaf village,Southwestern Saudi Arabia

Changes in socio-cultural patterns, economic activities, and the technologies for agricultural productions and climate controls are bringing new patterns of visual qualities to the age-old vernacular landscape of Saudi Arabia's Asir region. Unfortunately, the lack of reference between old and new is threatening to destroy the overall environmental quality that is one of the region's greatest economic and cultural assets. Through detailed examination of Al-Alkhalaf vernacular landscape in Asir, one of the largest villages, this paper defines the major components of the landscape and assesses the basis for their aesthetic qualities and values. Throughout the traditional era, a sense of beauty was imparted to this vernacular landscape through an unconscious balancing of natural systems and human needs. Such result owed much to the management efforts of a homogenous group of villagers expressing consensus about their place in the world. Today, in the more complicated context of modern Saudi Arabia, a new appreciation for landscape traditions arises and vernacular invites pertinent commentaries. A more conscious effort is needed to achieve the same old sense of regional and aesthetic values. The paper suggests that such an effort should begin by employing concepts like aesthetic values, aesthetic qualities and visual qualities when searching for new expressions of the relationship between people and nature.     

新建铁路兰渝线速度目标值研究

根据兰渝铁路在路网中的定位,结合本线客流特点,分析了旅行时间需求和时间目标值的选择,并从与相邻路网线路的匹配、工程投资、市场竞争力及经济效益、速度目标值与客流构成的适应性等多方面分析论证了项目的速度目标值,从而增加铁路的运输效益。     

Deciphering built form complexity of Chinese cities through plot recognition: A case study of Nanjing,China

Dramatic changes in the economic systems and land rights in the recent history of China yielded unique but complex urban forms for many cities. The complexity of urban form is mostly manifested as ambiguous relations between elements of the physical form and between the physical form and human behavior. Currently, these ambiguities become obstacles that increasingly hinder urban regeneration. However, despite the fast-growing research on the morphology of Chinese cities, our understanding of the complexity of their built form is still in its infancy. Taking the city of Nanjing as the case study, this study attempts to decipher the complexity of its built form by investigating its plot patterns. Six samples, dating back to different development periods, are selected and analyzed in terms of both a physical entity and a unit of property. The results show that the complexity of plots is largely attributable to the inconsistency between their spatial boundaries as physical entities and as units of property. Accordingly, the plots of all six samples are re-recognized and two generic types of plot sub-series, co-inflection and embeddedness, are developed as a prism to decipher the built form complexity. The findings contribute to the theory on the compositional hierarchy of urban forms and may shed light on the urban regeneration of Chinese cities as well.     

Impact of urbanization and agriculture on the occurrence of bacterial pathogens and stx genes in coastal waterbodies of central California

Fecal pollution enters coastal waters through multiple routes, many of which originate from land-based activities. Runoff from pervious and impervious land surfaces transports pollutants from land to sea and can cause impairment of coastal ocean waters. To understand how land use practices and water characteristics influence concentrations of fecal indicator bacteria (FIB) and pathogens in natural waters, fourteen coastal streams, rivers, and tidal lagoons, surrounded by variable land use and animal densities, were sampled every six weeks over two years (2008 & 2009). Fecal indicator bacteria (FIB; Escherichia coli and Enterococci) and Salmonella concentrations, the occurrence of Bacteroidales human, ruminant, and pig-specific fecal markers, E. coli O157:H7, and Shiga toxin (stx) genes present in E. coli, were measured. In addition, environmental and climatic variables (e.g., temperature, salinity, rainfall), as well as human and livestock population densities and land cover were quantified. Concentrations of FIB and Salmonella were correlated with each other, but the occurrence of host-specific Bacteroidales markers did not correlate with FIB or pathogens. FIB and Salmonella concentrations, as well as the occurrence of E. coli harboring stx genes, were positively associated with the fraction of the surrounding subwatershed that was urban, while the occurrence of E. coli O157:H7 was positively associated with the agricultural fraction. FIB and Salmonella concentrations were negatively correlated to salinity and temperature, and positively correlated to rainfall. Areal loading rates of FIB, Salmonella and E. coli O157:H7 to the coastal ocean were calculated for stream and river sites and varied with land cover, salinity, temperature, and rainfall. Results suggest that FIB and pathogen concentrations are influenced, in part, by their flux from the land, which is exacerbated during rainfall; once waterborne, bacterial persistence is affected by water temperature and salinity.     

Resilience engineering and the built environment

The possible relations between resilience engineering and built environments are explored. Resilience engineering has been concerned with the safe and efficient functioning of large and small industrial systems. These may be described as built systems or artefacts. The resilience engineering approach argues that if the performance of systems is to be resilient, then they must be able to respond, monitor, learn and anticipate. The last ability in particular means that they must be able to consider themselves vis-à-vis their environment, i.e. be sentient and reflective systems. In practice, this means people individually or collectively can adjust what they do to match conditions, identify and overcome flaws and function glitches, recognize actual demands and make appropriate adjustments, detect when something goes wrong and intervene before the situation becomes serious. It is particularly important to understand the range of conditions about why and how the system functions in the ‘desired’ mode as well as ‘unwanted’ modes. Resilience is the capacity to sustain operations under both expected and unexpected conditions. The unexpected conditions are not only threats but also opportunities.     

结构可靠性研究综述

介绍了结构可靠性的研究历史,阐述了国内外结构可靠性理论研究的现状,并对世界上一些国家可靠性理论的研究和应用情况进行了论述,最后指出了结构可靠度理论研究的发展趋势。     

Evaluation of the effect of marine salts on urban built infrastructure

This paper presents the results of a study that evaluated the effects of marine salts on built infrastructures at the Port city of Chittagong in Bangladesh. Specimens made from five different types of mortars (normally used as external renders in built infrastructures such as buildings and bridges) with varying cement contents were exposed to atmospheric environment at 12 sampling stations scattered around the metropolitan area of Chittagong. The performance of the specimens was evaluated based on marine salt deposition and resistance to marine salt penetration. The study also monitored the deposition of chlorides and sulfates in wet candle sensors located at 12 stations. The type and amount of salts captured in powdered samples extracted from the mortar specimens as well as from wet candle sensors were determined using ion chromatography. The study showed that the marine salt deposition is significant up to a distance of about 200 m from the seashore. The analysis of deposition and subsequent penetration of marine salts in exposed specimens identified the mortar types that are more resistant to the aggressive potential of the region's marine aerosol. The results of this study can be very useful for local authorities engaged in selecting protective measures (in terms of external renderings) to improve the durability of infrastructures exposed to marine salts.     

A survey on the impact of motorways on agriculture

This paper looks into the ways in which farmers and farms are affected by motorways running through or near to their land. The investigation was based on an extensive questionnaire covering many aspects of farming. The more important of these questions are described and discussed in the text. Two farming communities were investigated; one near a newly opened motorway, the other, near a motorway which had been open several years. The two groups are compared in the text.