327 research outputs found
Digital twin for urban decision support systems:Scientometric and thematic analysis
No full textThe benefits of digital twin technology for data visualisation-based city planning are covered in this chapter, along with how beneficial the connection between virtual and real-world cities is. While significant progress has been made in this field, most research remains experimental, and there is limited practical knowledge gained from real-world applications. The chapter addresses this gap by outlining research directions that consider both the advantages and disadvantages of applying digital twins in urban settings. The research agenda is developed through a systematic review of scholarly journals published from January 2021 to May 2022. The resulting analysis identifies the current state of research on digital twins in urban planning, including potential benefits, challenges, and the level of maturity of existing projects. The discussion on future research directions is essential to maximising the potential of digital twins in urban planning and to provide citizens and decision-makers with tools visualising events and changes in dynamic urban systems
Author Correction: Hydrogel mechanical properties in altered gravity (npj Microgravity, (2024), 10, 1, (83), 10.1038/s41526-024-00388-2)
No full textIn this article the affiliation, “Department of Aerospace Engineering, Khalifa University of Science and Technology, Abu Dhabi 127788, UAE” for the author “Yarjan Abdul Samad” was inadvertently omitted. The original article has been corrected
Simulating the Impact of Solar Energy on Pyramid and Stair Urban Blocks
Get PDFDeveloping countries such as Iran are rapidly expanding, putting pressure on non-renewable energy resources. The building sector takes a major share of the total energy consumption of the country and is projected to increase further, resulting in the call for strategies to reduce energy use by improving the thermal performance of buildings. This study addresses the compelling need to provide optimum design guidelines for future apartment buildings in the city of Shiraz by investigating two urban cluster typologies, stair and pyramid, arranged in five orientations. The results showcase the ideal combination of 155° for the Pyramid typology, which contributes the least to the annual energy loads of the buildings
Infrastructure Management and Construction
Get PDFThis book covers topics relevant to the concept of infrastructure construction, including key requirements of development such as measuring productivity and maintenance. It presents different categories of sustainability maintenance of critical infrastructures. In addition, it presents a complex simulation model, the reconfiguration simulator, which enables evaluation of the effectiveness of resilience enhancement strategies for electric distribution networks and the required resources to implement them. Then, it discusses health services as a critical sector in this field, which should be able to perform its function, even in times of crisis. The last chapter presents a brief review of different bridges, including the processes of design, material selection, construction, and maintenance
Technology adoption in construction.
Get PDFDue to the complexity, high risk, and conservative character of the construction industry, many technologies do not become widely adopted. Even though vendors make determined efforts to overcome this and disseminate their technologies, the customers’ decision making processes for adopting construction technologies at the organisational level largely remain unknown. This thesis investigates the extremely complex issues related to the current practices of technology adoption in construction. It tests the hypothesis that construction companies follow a specific logical process linked to need, project objectives, characteristics of the adopting organisation, and the characteristics of the new technology to be adopted. The study explores how construction companies make the decision to uptake a new technology by focusing on customer and vendor activities, their interactions, contributing factors, and people involved in the process.
Over a period of four years, seven technology exhibitions were visited to immerse the author in the customer-vendor market community and collect substantial first-hand data regarding the strategies of the vendors. This was coupled with conducting 147 semi-structured interviews spread across Australia and North America. The credibility of the results is increased by providing detailed descriptions of the process. Finally, key factors and individuals involved in the process were identified and ranked using the Analytical Hierarchy Process.
The major original contributions of this thesis are the Construction Technology Adoption Framework (CTAF) and the recognition of the vendor dissemination strategy spectrum. CTAF is a framework that delineates the stages of the process that customer organisations use when deciding to adopt a new technology and the parallel vendor activities. It is extensively validated by thematic analysis of the interviews and factor analysis. The vendor dissemination strategy spectrum consists of five classes of patterns of vendor activities that relate to the technology type being sold and the size of the vendor.
The thesis offers a framework covering the key factors that vary across this spectrum: Physical appearance, Interpersonal relationship, and Technology demonstration (PIT). It is extensively validated by both fuzzy and hard cluster analysis methods.
The thesis also introduces the Downtime, Interpersonal relationship, and Technology operation quality (DIT) framework, and a study of the customer organisation factors relevant to technology adoption. The DIT framework delineates the implementation factors that are important in making new technology decisions. The customer organisation factors include the personnel roles in the organisation, the effect of organisational structure, and the effect of attitude to technology. These contributions are cross validated between customer and vendor responses and between Australia and North America.
The significance of these contributions is that they enable vendors to understand how to match their dissemination strategies with customer expectations in each stage of the technology adoption process. It also provides a benchmark for new construction companies to use the current best practice in decision making. Understanding the CTAF decision framework also helps industry bodies and government organisations that seek to generally raise the use of new technology in the industry. The theoretical significance is that it unites the vendor perspective with the customer perspective and covers a wide range of construction technologies.
The scope of the thesis is limited to technologies in the construction industry in developed nations. Future research is warranted to more clearly delineate any differences with developing nations or related industries
ANALISIS ASPEK KEMASYARAKATAN MELALUI PEMIKIRAN A. SAMAD SAID DALAM NOVEL DAERAH ZENI DAN HUJAN PAGI
No full textAbstrak
Kajian ini dijalankan untuk menganalisis aspek kemasyarakatan melalui pemikiran oleh A. Samad Said dalam novel popular beliau yang bertajuk Daerah Zeni dan Hujan Pagi. Hal ini kerana aspek kemasyarakatan yang dibincangkan dalam novel oleh A. Samad Said dapat menggambarkan kekuatan pemikiran pengarang melalui kreativiti beliau yang dapat memberi sumber maklumat terkini kepada khalayak atau pembaca. Oleh itu, kajian ini juga dijalankan bertujuan mengenal pasti dan menganalisis aspek kemasyarakatan melalui pemikiran A. Samad Said dalam novel Daerah Zeni (1985) dan Hujan Pagi (1992). Di samping itu, reka bentuk kajian ini bersifat kualitatif melalui kaedah kepustakaan dan analisis kandungan teks. Selain itu, teori sosiologi dijadikan sebagai deduktif untuk memantapkan analisis perbincangan. Sebagai kesimpulannya, hasil dapatan kajian ini membuktikan bahawa A. Samad Said bijak mengutarakan cetusan idea dan kreativiti dalam usaha membincangkan isu semasa yang dapat diterima secara terbuka oleh masyarakat di dalam novel popular beliau.
Abstract
This study was conducted to analyze the aspects of society through the thinking by A. Samad Said in his popular novel titled Daerah Zeni and Hujan Pagi. This is because the societal aspects discussed in the novel by A. Samad Said can illustrate the strength of the author\u27s thinking through his creativity which can provide the latest sources of information to the audience or readers. Therefore, this study was also conducted by aiming at identifying and analyzing the aspects of society through the thinking by A. Samad Said in the novels Daerah Zeni (1985) and Hujan Pagi (1992). This study is qualitative in nature by using the library methods and text content analysis. In addition, sociological theory is used deductively to strengthen the analysis of the discussion. This study has proven that A. Samad Said has wisely expressed the spark of ideas and creativity in an effort to discuss current issues that can be openly accepted by the community in his popular novel.
 
Control-theoretic methods for biological networks
No full textFeedback is both a pillar of control theory and a pervasive principle of nature. For this reason, control-theoretic methods are powerful to analyse the dynamic behaviour of biological systems and mathematically explain their properties, as well as to engineer biological systems so that they perform a specific task by design. This paper illustrates the relevance of control-theoretic methods for biological systems. The first part gives an overview of biological control and of the versatile ways in which cells use feedback. By employing control-theoretic methods, the complexity of interlaced feedback loops in the cell can be revealed and explained, and layered feedback loops can be designed in the cell to induce the desired behaviours, such as oscillations, multi-stability and activity regulation. The second part is mainly devoted to modelling uncertainty in biology and understanding the robustness of biological phenomena due to their inherent structure. Important control-theoretic tools used in systems biology are surveyed. The third part is focused on tools for model discrimination in systems biology. A deeper understanding of molecular pathways and feedback loops, as well as qualitative information on biological networks, can be achieved by studying the “dynamic response phenotypes” that appear in temporal responses. Several applications to the analysis of biological systems are showcased.Accepted Author ManuscriptTeam Tamas Keviczk
Digital Methods and Tools for Mapping Public–Private Partnership Opportunities and Evaluating Proposals in the Regeneration Plans of Building Assets
No full textIn recent years, Italy is experiencing a process of digital transformation and innovation intending to simplify the perspective it is a more efficient system within the public administrations. At the same time, there was a strong increase in the demand for urban redevelopment and sustainable development of the city, also thanks to the recent sustainable policies for the containment of land consumption. The research aims to analyse the potential of innovative methods, connected to information technologies (BIM and GIS) that public administrations can use to stimulate the interested parties to act on a specific territory through the presentation of proposals of public–private partnerships. The first phase of the proposed work focused on analysing the methods of making information available during a “traditional method” of making information available. In the perspective of a plan for the redevelopment of urban contexts, the research evaluates the potential for integration of various information, such as the results of relations in the area (connections, services, infrastructures, etc.) and details on the built heritage (state of conservation and history). Information can be managed by commonly used tools, such as point clouds, BIM models with an adequate level of details and GIS platforms. These platforms make a wide range of users able to access the information through the web interface, intending to define a common language between different actors, in the redevelopment process
Closure to "evaluation of Terrestrial and Mobile Scanner Technologies for Part-Built Information Modeling" by Samad M. E. Sepasgozar, Perry Forsythe, and Sara Shirowzhan
No full textSpatial Big Data, BIM and advanced GIS for Smart Transformation
Get PDFThis book covers a range of topics including selective technologies and algorithms that can potentially contribute to developing an intelligent environment and smarter cities. While the connectivity and efficiency of smart cities is important, the analysis of the impact of construction development and large projects in the city is crucial to decision and policy makers, before the project is approved. This book also presents an agenda for future investigations to address the need for advanced tools such as mobile scanners, Geospatial Artificial Intelligence, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, Geospatial Augmented Reality apps, Light Detection, and Ranging in smart cities. Some of selected specific tools presented in this book are as a simulator for improving the smart parking practices by modelling drivers with activity plans, a bike optimization algorithm to increase the efficiency of bike stations, an agent-based model simulation of human mobility with the use of mobile phone datasets. In addition, this book describes the use of numerical methods to match the network demand and supply of bicycles, investigate the distribution of railways using different indicators, presents a novel algorithm of direction-aware continuous moving K-nearest neighbor queries in road networks, and presents an efficient staged evacuation planning algorithm for multi-exit buildings
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