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The effect of low water on loading capacity of inland ships
Get PDFTemporary low water levels can have a major impact on the loading capacity of inland ships, and as a consequence on the transport capacity of the overall waterborne supply chain. Insight in the capacity reducing effect of temporarily lowered water levels is important for the design and operation of robust transport chains on the one hand, and for the optimisation of fairway maintenance and long-term infrastructure development on the other. Knowledge on the effects of low water is clearly available at the level of individual ship owners, who adapt their transport operations to changing environmental circumstances, but less accessible at an aggregated level to assess the effects on the overall transport capacity of an inland waterway network. Based on a range of field observations and information collected from individual ships, this article introduces a general model to define the effect of low water constraints on the deadweight capacity and payload of inland ships, for which only the type, length, and beam of the vessel serve as input
Impact of design factors on user satisfaction
Get PDFPersonal control was one of the influential parameters for user satisfaction presented in chapter 5. Personal control is not related to architectural office design, and in this thesis it is not associated with privacy and communication with colleagues. Thermal and visual comfort is analysed exhaustively in this chapter. Psychological comfort is an extra parameter for user satisfaction studies since the design factors such as office layout could be correlated to privacy, communication and so on. As a next step, chapter 6 investigates influential office design factors on user satisfaction related to thermal, visual, and psychological comfort and predicting which design factors may bring better satisfaction to users.
Section 6.2 presents design factors affecting user satisfaction based on literature review. Five office cases in the Netherlands with 579 office occupants were studied using questionnaires, and interviews with facility managers and architects (section 6.3). Different statistical analysis tests were conducted to summarise satisfaction factors (section 6.4). The relative importance of design factors is described in section 6.5, and a regression analysis was used to predict profound outcomes in section 6.6
User-focused design principles
Get PDFChapter 7 tested the energy demand of possible office typologies. However, the main aim of the thesis is to develop user-focused design principles for energy efficient office renovation. Therefore, it is important to compare the degree of user satisfaction of highly energy-efficient office typologies. Based on the results from chapter 7, chapter 8 introduces design principles that architects, and facility and real estate managers can use to select the combination of parameters with better user satisfaction during a conceptual design stage of office renovation. It contains a database of the different degrees of user satisfaction with thermal, visual, and psychological comfort, according to the combination of design parameters.
Section 8.2 explains the design principles considering user satisfaction and energy efficiency. Section 8.3 provides the overview of predicted satisfaction of 144 office combinations. Recommended office combinations based on energy efficiency are explained in section 8.4. Section 8.5 describes the process of application of the design principles: how can designers interpret and use the principles and predicted models for energy-efficient office renovation
Towards an Architecture of Self-reliance: Developing and Testing a Support Tool for Inhabitants and Practitioners in Mt-Elgon, Kenya
Get PDFThis research project focuses on how decisions made by practitioners, articulating rural housing in Sub-Sahara Africa, contribute to the decreasing level of self-reliance inhabitants have regarding their housing. Multiple case studies on Mt. Elgon proved that inhabitants have a significantly higher self-reliance level, comparing traditional to modern housing. To study this phenomenon in practice and to articulate suitable design support the Design Research Methodology was chosen. The research clarification pinpointed inhabitant capacities as the key-contributor to self-reliant housing. Household survey outcomes proved that large numbers of rural inhabitant’s desire housing which they have insufficient capacities for. Indicating that the inhabitants experience a disparity between existing and desired housing capacities, moreover an inability to bridge this disparity independently, and consequently require external help. Architect seemed most appropriate to offer this help as it consist of sociocultural, engineering and design tasks. Architects are not trained in inhabitant capacity evaluation and as no suitable design tools existed, this research project developed the required design support, its application requirements and the impact measurements. These were then tested in a pilot project on Mt. Elgon. The findings were used to evaluate the support’s impact and suitability. The support tool users found it suitable to assess and integrate inhabitant capacities into housing solutions. The impact shows that the support group families have sustained their family’s level of self-reliance unlike the control group. The developed technological design, with modifications, could be used not only in rural Kenyan communities, but also help others around the continent
Future Urban Charging Solutions for Electric Vehicles
Get PDFThe numbers of electric vehicles (EV) will increase as many countries perceive EVs as a solution to reduce the emissions of transportation and therefore incentivize their adoption. However, the deployment of public charging infrastructure is lagging behind that of EVs, which represents a potential barrier to their wide-scale adoption. The objective of this paper is to develop a comprehensive overview of potential EV charging solutions to be deployed in urban areas. Using a micro-Delphi approach, experts from transport, energy and urban planning were consulted and identified 15 realistic options for charging electric vehicles in urban environments by 2035. The solutions range from purely technical to more service oriented. Most of these solutions already exist today, although some remain at a very early stage of deployment. The five most likely options were on-street public charging points, charging at work, fast-charging stations, using building domestic plugs and semi-fast charging in public areas. When combined with the typical mobility and residential profiles, our results show that EV drivers will most likely rely on a mix of solutions, when they have no home chargers. As such, no breakthrough or major shift is expected in charging infrastructures, rather a scale-up of existing solutions. Our analysis concludes that urban charging options will be numerous and no single solution is expected to dominate as users with different EV user profiles will charge at different times and locations
Choices and Strategies of Spatial Imagination
Get PDFArchitecture is by definition an act of spatial imagination, this wondrous capacity to envision possible futures for the built environment. Spatial imagination is essential in order to visualize new constructions taking shape, evolving in time, and partaking of the cultural expression of a place or era. It takes spatial imagination to foresee how architecture can meaningfully contribute to people’s lives, providing a sense of belonging, space for their needs and dreams. Nonetheless, spatial imagination is oftentimes hard to trigger or difficult to control. Imaginative ideas often emerge unexpectedly, when seemingly unconnected or contradictory words, images and thoughts are brought together. Spatial imagination, just like the creative act of writing, seems to reside in ‘the lightning flashes of the mental circuits that capture and link points distant from each other in space and time,’1 as Italo Calvino poetically claims.
The topic of this fourth issue of Writingplace journal, Choices and Strategies of Spatial Imagination, ‘links points distant from each other’, by connecting texts from different disciplines with architectural design, in order to study imagination. This issue starts from a paradoxical observation: although we recognize, almost spontaneously, the paramount role spatial imagination plays in the creation of an inspired built environment, there is admittedly limited emphasis on the detailed study of this creative imagination in the field of architectural research. Moreover, a lack of rigorous reflection on the key role of spatial imagination in addressing the urban and architectural issues that are currently at stake in our societies can be detected across all of the design disciplines. For example, there is surprisingly little attention for how specialties outside architecture can inform or inspire the proliferation of spatial imagination. It seems, as William Whyte argued, that we have forgotten that ‘we are always translating architecture: not reading its message, but exploring its multiple transpositions’. The issue focuses precisely on different kinds of transpositions between written forms of imagination and architecture, but without defending the popular belief that we should read architecture as a polysemic text and start to think in terms like ‘architexture’ or ‘polygraphy’ when analysing architecture culture
Undefined Terrain
No full textIn a period when cities are getting denser while simultaneously adapting to climate change, green urban spaces have come into focus. The green city has become a persuasive new brand, and I have studied sites that have been left undefined for years, thereby providing areas with unruly and wild vegetation that anybody is welcome to use for recreational purposes. Ideas about making cities greener are not new, and there are well-known examples in utopian fiction that describe whole cities that have the same appearance as the vacant lots I have documented and filmed: the Ellstorp lot in Malmö, and the Beauvais lot in Copenhagen. In News from Nowhere by William Morris, large areas of London have turned into forest; in Ecotopia by Ernest Callenbach, San Francisco is covered with large, park-like, car-free boulevards. These examples open up for change with the intent to create not only sustainable societies but also more equality. Women in these narrations represents the unknown, a space where you can project your fantasies, that in both novels are tainted by stereotypical thinking. To me, the sites offer a space in the city that allows me to escape these kinds of projections. But I also consider these places a utopia in reverse, where the undeveloped green space resists gentrification. Instead these sites offer valuable qualities in their function as unprogrammed areas with a rich vegetation that anybody can enjoy, adding biodiversity and inclusion to the city
Redactioneel
No full textLast year, during a DASH seminar held in Delft in the summer of 2014, Charles Correa held an ardent plea for an architecture of affordable housing that starts from space and openness, rather than bulk and density.
In his mind, models for large-scale and affordable housing were all too often based on the maximization of numbers, while the need to make space for an everyday life in which living and working can be combined, and growth and development remains possible, was forgotten.
The opposites he articulated highlight the dilemma of affordable housing: despite the often massive economic and spatial pressure in the cities, how can city dwellers that have no or a limited income be protected from having to live in a minimal provision in which there is no room for the creation of businesses and social networks?Vorig jaar, zomer 2014, hield Charles Correa tijdens een door DASH georganiseerd seminar in Delft een vurig pleidooi voor een architectuur voor betaalbare woningbouw die niet uitgaat van massa en van dichtheid, maar van ruimte en openheid.
Modellen voor grootschalige en betaalbare woningbouw baseren zich in zijn ogen te veel op een maximalisering van aantallen; ze vergeten de noodzaak ruimte te scheppen voor het dagelijks leven, waar wonen en werken samengaan, en groei en ontwikkeling mogelijk blijven.
De door hem benoemde tegenstellingen markeren op scherpe wijze het dilemma van betaalbare woningbouw: hoe kan ondanks de vaak enorme economische en ruimtelijke druk in steden voorkomen worden dat woningen voor stadsbewoners zonder of met een beperkt inkomen tot een minimale voorziening gereduceerd worden, die geen ruimte biedt aan het creëren van werk en sociale netwerken
Death by automation: Differences in weighting of fatalities caused by automated and conventional vehicles
Get PDFAlthough Automated vehicles (AVs) are expected to have a major and positive effect on road safety, recent accidents caused by AVs tend to generate a powerful negative impact on the public opinion regarding safety aspects of AVs. Triggered by such incidents, many experts and policy makers now believe that paradoxically, safety perceptions may well prohibit or delay the rollout of AVs in society, in the sense that AVs will need to become much safer than conventional vehicles (CVs), before being accepted by the public. In this study, we provide empirical insights to investigate and explain this safety paradox. Using stated choice experiments, we show that there is indeed a difference between the weight that individuals implicitly attach to an AV-fatality and to a CV-fatality. However, the degree of overweighting of AV-fatalities, compared to CV-fatalities, is considerably smaller than what has been suggested in public opinions and policy reports. We also find that the difference in weighting between AV-fatalities and CV-fatalities is (partly) related to a reference level effect: simply because the current number of fatalities caused by AVs is extremely low, each additional fatality carries extra weight. Our findings suggest that indeed, AVs have to become safer—but not orders of magnitude safer—than CVs, before the general public will develop a positive perception of AVs in terms of road safety. Ironically, our findings also suggest that the inevitable occurrence of more AV-related road accidents will in time lead to a diminishing degree of overweighting of safety issues surrounding the AV
Drones in Railways: Exploring Current Applications and Future Scenarios Based on Action Research
Get PDFEvidence shows that the applications of drones are increasing quickly in many industries. Railways are no exception. Due to fast advances in technology, drones are on the verge of breakthroughs that will affect future applications, implementations, and their consequences. Looking ahead, we elaborate on the potential for drones in railways. We use scenario planning and combine it with the findings of an action research project, which we conducted with Swiss Federal Railways (SBB). First, we explore the applications and future trends of drone use in railway operations. Second, based on seven identified factors that may affect the future of drones in railways by 2030, we develop three future scenarios: pessimistic, realistic, and optimistic. The study results help practitioners make informed decisions regarding future drone programs in railways. We also contribute theoretical insights into how high-potential technologies can unleash new capabilities in railway operations
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