Developing English domestic occupancy profiles

ABSTRACT

Occupancy patterns are necessary to estimate energy demand and evaluate thermal comfort in households. Because of this, many European countries are developing representative domestic schedules to replace outdated criteria. This paper evaluates the state of knowledge of UK domestic occupancy patterns and develops new domestic occupancy profiles for England. The presented research (1) characterizes methods for collecting occupancy data and inferring patterns; (2) identifies and assesses the quality of categories of occupancy patterns used in building simulation; and (3) develops updated occupancy profiles. A systematic scoping review identified social and monitoring surveys as the most deployed data-collection methods. A systematic literature review also established that the occupancy categories most frequently used in UK building simulation are (a) a family with dependent children where the parents work full time; and (b) a retired elderly couple who spend most of their time indoors. The interview sample from the English Housing Survey 2014–15 was used to map household typologies. Results show that categories (a) and (b) combined amount to only 19% of England’s households, which suggest models are over-reliant on these groups. Considering this result, the paper develops occupancy patterns for England derived from 2015 UK Time Use Survey diaries for each household typology previously identified.     

What can be taught in architectural design? — <Emphasis Type="Italic">parti,poché</Emphasis>, and felt qualities

This essay begins with a reflection on what has been taught in architectural design since the turn of the twentieth century. I shall trace back to the two disciplinary foundations of the French École des Beaux-Arts — parti and poché — in the education of an architect in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. I shall then attempt to superimpose parti and poché on a modern disciplinary framework, say that of mathematics, which leads to musings on a series of architectural problems that include pattern versus type, stability versus mobility, orthogonal versus oblique, confinement versus transparency, and aging versus metallic sheen. These paradoxes, I suggest, demand the education of an architect to address both the instrumental pattern of a building configuration and the ambient felt qualities of a room, rather than vision alone.     

Spatial competition and regulatory change in the grain handling and transportation system in western Canada

The grain handling and transportation system (GHTS) has been a defining component of the western Canadian economy since the early part of the last century. Only two major railways serve the grain handling industry, so the potential for the exercise of market power in transportation appears to be significant. In fact, spatially oriented regulations applicable to railways exist in Canada to mitigate this, but to date they have not often been used by shippers. While the reasons for this are not completely clear, we suggest that the regulations are now inadequate for the current state of the GHTS. Using a unique data set from the year 2000, we assess the effect on the grain handling industry of modifications to these regulations, and find that significant gains for shippers from these modifications are possible. These gains are computed to be on the order of C$10–15 million per year for grain shippers alone. We would like to thank conference and presentation participants (Transportation Research Board, Canadian Agricultural Economics Society, University of British Columbia, University of Leeds and California State University, Long Beach) as well as the anonymous reviewers who commented on the earlier versions of this paper. We would also like to acknowledge support from the Saskatchewan Department of Highways.     

Decomposing regional productivity growth using an aggregate production frontier

The main contribution of this paper is the implementation of a new model which combines the two parametric approaches most commonly used in the productivity literature: fixed effects and stochastic frontiers. This allows us to discuss whether it is better to use average or frontier functions to estimate regional productivity. The empirical section uses panel data of Spanish regions over the period 1980–1995. Additionally, we calculate and decompose total factor productivity growth for the Spanish regions.     

Computer processing of subsurface impulse radar data

Bulletin of Engineering Geology and the Environment - Subsurface radar investigations are usually performed in the profiling mode. With the profile information, interfaces and objects in the strata...     

Housing finance in seven European countries: Financial instruments and government expenditure

This article is based on the study “Housing Systems in Europe: Part II. A Comparative Study of Housing Finance” by Oscar Papa, published in the seriesHousing and Urban Policy Studies.     

A note on export openness and regional wage disparity in Central and Eastern Europe

This paper extends the empirical literature on the effects of trade liberalization on regional disparities within a country. Studying the case of the Central and Eastern European countries, we find significant convergence of real wages in Poland and Bulgaria, only. Furthermore, countries with a faster growing export openness in the period 1991–1998 experienced larger increases in their regional disparities. Especially, intermediate goods trade seems to have been a main driving force. Our estimates suggest that the long run impact of rising intermediate goods export openness in the last decade was a 23% increase in the average economys variance of real wages.Received: December 2002/Accepted: January 2004The authors are grateful to two anonymous referees for their helpful suggestions.     

Migration analysis using data with time intervals of differing widths

Migration data collected for periods of differing lengths will yield inconsistent population forecasts, inconsistent multiregional life tables, and alternative interpretations of mobility levels and migration patterns. In this paper, examples are first given to illustrate the effects of migration interval choice on demographic variables. The moverstayer model and its generalizations are discussed in their role as models useful in achieving consistency. It is argued that in addition to theievel of mobility, the geographic pattern of migration flows is also affected by the choice of interval width.