Making energy sector assessment studies in LDCs

Mixed reasons lay behind studying energy sectors of developing countries in the mid-1970s, eg panic after the 1973/74 oil price rise, an exaggerated emphasis on indigenous fuels, especially new and renewables, and a desire to study the sectors of many countries, searching for common themes. After doubting the value of energy sector assessments, planners today accept such studies as being both worthwhile and a useful introduction to energy planning. Three things are now needed: firstly, follow-ups to the issues and options already discovered; secondly, a methodology for performing such studies; and, thirdly, macro-economic driven energy sector models.     

Adapting to changing user requirements

Systems which have the capability of adapting to changing user requirements must be founded on accurate and perceptive models of the organisation in which they have to function. Design methods based on active user participation and the use of experimental and prototyping methods help to ensure accurate models. But because systems are expected to survive even when circumstances change, the designers have to have a view of what the future world will look like. A technique which helps to provide such a view is called “future analysis”. However, even designs based on the best prediction technique cannot guarantee a fit between the currently designed system and future needs. Hence it is important to design systems with built-in flexibility. A number of methods have been developed which reduce the disruption caused by the amendment or even replacement of a system or system's component.     

Adjustment and energy: Dangers of a demand-side obsession

Short-term energy adjustment, based on the now-dominant IMF model, is in strong conflict with that required for longer term development and growth. The world economic recovery is threatened by structural, cyclical, and other factors, including the debt problem of developing countries, commodity price surges, and potential energy problems. Short-term adjustment impacts on longer-term policy and investment in the energy sector, assuring that economic recovery will demand rapid increases in oil imports for oil-importer developing countries. National policies in industrial countries to squeeze energy have been very successful, but have likely deepened the recession and intensified some cyclic aspects of investment and development. Oil supply is still strongly influenced by OPEC, and only through heightened appreciation of recession-recovery cycles will the tremendous importance of the potential resources of oil-importer developing countries be recognized - a first step towards the inevitably multilateral framework needed for their development.     

Third World energy policies The urban-rural divide

This article investigates the differences in energy consumption generally found in the urban and rural sectors of Third World nations. Energy policies in these nations are generally found to reflect the dualism of developing economies with a widespread neglect of rural energy problems. A quantitative model is developed using simple functions to represent a household's allocation of time, explicitly including market as well as non-market activities and commercial and non-commercial energy. On this basis, it is inferred that situations of extreme fuel scarcity in rural areas can best be managed by governments organizing emergency supplies of fuel in compensation for productive work. Specific reference is made to the food and fuel problems of Sahelian Africa in this context. Directions for further empirical research using the model developed are suggested, with the example of work already done in India.     

电厂SO2排放对上海世博园区的影响分析

燃煤电厂烟囱排放是上海大气中SO2的主要来源之一，因此在分析上海大气中SO2浓度时必须考虑电厂的影响。作为计算大气扩散的经典模型，高斯扩散模型一直被人们广泛地利用。利用高斯扩散模型分析了上海各大电厂对世博园区SO2浓度分布的影响，可为上海世博园区的环保工作提供参考。     

Project Units 2b and 2c,Nuovo Portello,Milan

The once industrial area immediately surrounding Milan is undergoing a transformation. Valentina Croci describes a sizable development at Nuovo Portello currently being undertaken by the Milanese architect Cino Zucchi, on a site close to the old trade fair. She explains how Zucchi is, in this particularly fragmented urban context, seeking a solution that is ‘do-it-yourself city planning on a miniature scale’, while also drawing on his considerable practical and academic knowledge of Milanese housing design. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Web‐based resource model for scholarship 2.0: object reuse & exchange

Digital scholarship offers the opportunity to move beyond the limitations of traditional scholarly publication. Rather than limiting scholarly communication to text‐based static documents, the Web makes it possible for scholars to expose and share the full evidence of their research including data, images, video, and other genre of materials. These aggregations of evidence, or compound documents, can then be integrated into a linked data cloud, the basis of Scholarship 2.0—an open environment in which scholars collaborate and build new knowledge on the existing scholarship. We present Open Archives Initiative–Object Reuse and Exchange (OAI–ORE), a set of standards to identify and describe aggregations of WebResources, thereby making the Scholarship 2.0 vision possible. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

AL-ULA OASIS AND THE LOST CIVILIZATION

This article firstly explores how Al-Ula, an ancient city in northwestern Arabian Peninsula, thrived historically despite little rainfall, and reviews the historic civilizations ruled this oasis. Then, it points out that the misuse of limited water resource degraded the environmental capacity of the oasis, resulting in the imbalance between humans and the land and eventually the decline of civilizations. Finally, the article concludes that the oasis and the watershed it depends on is an integral system, whose lifeblood is maintained by water cycle restoration. It is also one of the key tasks of Landscape Architecture to explore ecological restoration and sustainable management of watershed in the sense of hydrology.     

Radical Post-Modernism and Content: Charles Jencks and Rem Koolhaas Debate the Issue

The following debate took place on 28 December 2009 between Charles Jencks and Rem Koolhaas , and was transcribed and edited by Eva Branscome. Jencks and Koolhaas have exchanged ideas since the late 1960s. Jencks was the one to insist that Koolhaas come to the 1980 Venice Biennale, originally entitled ‘Post-Modernism’. (Paolo Portoghesi invited Jencks to collaborate with him on this first Biennale before it expanded into historicism.) In January 2002, Jencks was also a judge of the competition for the CCTV Building, the headquarters for China Central Television in Beijing, discussed below. Jencks and Koolhaas continue to thrive on their discussions and disagreements. Although they have very different commitments to the issue of ‘content’, their varying positions help to clarify what is meant here by ‘radical’. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

大海·绿舟·音乐——“深圳蛇口海上世界格林尼治广场设计大赛”金奖方案设计心得

该文以＂深圳蛇口海上世界格林尼治广场设计大赛＂金奖方案为例,从环境分析、立意构思、设计表达、技术策略等方面探索了绿色建筑设计的思路和方法,提出应因地制宜地采用绿色建筑技术,注重建筑、人、环境之间的和谐共生,以塑造特色鲜明的绿色建筑。