1,720,975 research outputs found
Modelling water use in commercial buildings: the impact of NABERS on spatial, temporal and climatic variations in water use in Australian commercial buildings
No full textWith increasing global water resource pressures and rising water demands in urban buildings, enhancing water efficiency has become essential for sustainable development. Green building certification systems, such as NABERS, play a significant role in promoting water-saving behaviors. Using data from 1,248 office buildings across six major Australian cities (2006-2019), this study examines the effectiveness and mechanisms of NABERS certification by integrating temporal, spatial, and climatic dimensions. Results indicate NABERS significantly reduces water intensity by approximately 9.8%, with greater effects in initially high-consuming buildings, while high-efficiency buildings risk efficiency loss post-certification. Certification adoption and effectiveness are notably higher in CBD areas compared to Non-CBD regions due to market competition and economic incentives. Seasonal and climatic variations markedly influence building water use, suggesting certification systems should incorporate tailored regional standards and climate resilience indicators. To ensure lasting efficiency, the study recommends strengthened long-term monitoring post-certification. These findings offer insights for refining green certification systems and advancing sustainable urban water management
Modelling population size from chemical loads in wastewater
No full textWastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) is an approach to quantify and monitor the consumption of illicit drugs and pharmaceuticals and the exposure to chemicals and disease. A key step in WBE is the normalisation of observed concentration by wastewater catchment population size to produce a per-capita load and enable comparison between sites. There are a range of methods used to determine a catchment’s population, with perhaps the most promising but under utilised within the literature being the collection of wastewater samples concurrently with census to develop predictive models of population size.
This thesis used wastewater samples collected at seven wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) during the week of the 2018 New Zealand census. These plants covered both urban and rural areas, with population sizes ranging from around 5,000 to 360,000. Samples were analysed using standard LC-MS/MS methods for a range of pharmaceuticals which had expected consistent consumption. Seven chemicals (carbamazepine, paracetamol, codeine, morphine, atenolol, hydrochlorothiazide, acesulfame) were consistently detected at all sites and showed no significant intra-week variation, so were used for the modelling.
A Bayesian inference model was applied and calibrated using the census-wastewater data set. The modelling approach combined the prior knowledge (population size provided by WWTP operators) with the sampled chemical mass loads to produce a new esmate for population size through Bayesian inference. The underlying model assumption was that population size has a linear
relationship with chemical mass loads. A leave-one-out approach was applied for model cross validation.
The population model produced accurate population estimates for two out of the seven catchments, showing variable predictive accuracy. The low predictive ability of the model could be due to the strength of the correlations observed between population size and mass loads, the quality of the census data, the prior knowledge inputted, the number of chemicals used within the model, or the number of sites and related population range included.
Key sociodemographic variables derived from census as well as the Index of Multiple Deprivation were correlated with chemical loads. Mostly weak to moderately strong correlations were reported, showing that these chemicals were appropriate for use within the population model and unlikely to have significantly impacted results
Where does my water go? Reflections from a hydrosocial perspective on the technical and social challenges of modelling urban stormwater for a wide audience
No full textFull Text is available to authenticated members of The University of Auckland only.Urban stormwater presents many common problems such as flooding, pollution and ecological degradation of freshwater and coasts. Part of a potential solution to these problems is to engage urban residents in stormwater conversations and thus prompt action. One way to achieve this might be using hydrological modelling. These models portray information which is out of sight and out of mind and so are suited to the urban stormwater problem. This thesis, then, examines the technical challenges of developing stormwater models for a large urban audience.
Proof of concept flow path models are developed using relatively simple and tested methods. Stream networks and stormwater infrastructure are burned into a 1 m resolution digital elevation model, and the D8 algorithm applied to visualise stormwater flow paths. This proof of concept modelling is used to assess the feasibility and technical challenges of developing an urban flow path model on a city scale.
Models are tested to demonstrate their reliability, accuracy, and computational performance. Fundamentally, any point within the catchments produces a flow path to an outlet. Runtime on a standard desktop computer was found to be between 0.1 and 2 seconds. Using dedicated and more powerful computer infrastructure would accelerate the generation of these maps substantially. A key outcome is a formalisation of the challenges to represent stormwater infrastructure in a 2D model. These challenges include representation of buildings in a DEM, curb and channel features, assigning flow directions to underground pipes, and depicting flow paths near bridges and culverts. Several approaches to dealing with each are presented so that future research can address them.
After dealing with the technical challenges, the thesis turns its attention to the tensions involved in developing such models (a technical exercise) with a deliberate hydrosocial starting point (a social perspective). A key finding is that the disciplinary path by which the hydrosocial is approached, and where it is invoked in the modelling process, can significantly influence the models themselves. Crucially, a hydrosocial framing changes the conversation on why we model and perhaps more importantly reminds us that the value of such models is the (political) work they do and not necessarily the technical outcome
Wastewater-based epidemiology as a method to explore spatial, temporal, and sociodemographic patterns of drug use: A New Zealand case study
No full textFull Text is available to authenticated members of The University of Auckland only.Wastewater-based epidemiology (WWBE) is a relatively young field of research which uses advances in analytical chemistry to investigate community-level drug use through the analysis of municipal wastewater. Being a young discipline, the WWBE literature has focussed on describing and refining analytical techniques. There are areas of research still to explore, particularly practical applications such as how drug use patterns vary between urban and rural communities, and whether these patterns reflect sociodemographics.
This thesis uses WWBE to investigate drug use patterns in New Zealand. Daily composite wastewater samples were collected at seven wastewater treatment plants of varying size and location during census week in March 2018. The aim was to best capture the sociodemographics of each catchment for comparison with drug use. Samples were analysed for methamphetamine, cocaine, MDMA, nicotine, alcohol and morphine via LC-MS/MS using standard methods. Drug use was back-calculated based on detailed catchment mapping using GIS maps of the reticulated pipe network for each site and the best available sociodemographic data, which did not happen to be census week information. Drug consumption rates were compared between sites, throughout the week and correlated with sociodemographic measures of age, ethnicity and (dis)advantage.
Cocaine and MDMA consumption were higher in cities, whereas methamphetamine use was higher in rural locations. However, the considerably high rates of methamphetamine use at Te Maunga (Bay of Plenty’s urban site) showed that methamphetamine use is not particular to rural communities. Cocaine, MDMA, and alcohol consumption were higher on weekends, and this was more pronounced for cities. Conversely, nicotine and morphine were consumed consistently throughout the week. Weekly patterns of methamphetamine consumption were different across sites. Methamphetamine and nicotine were positively correlated with metrices of disadvantage, whereas cocaine and MDMA were positively correlated with metrices of social advantage.
These findings demonstrate that drug use patterns varied across communities, and that these patterns are attributable to supply dynamics, social preferences and sociodemographic characteristics, namely community-level measures of disadvantage. This thesis ends with a frank and open discussion about the accuracy of WWBE to draw implications for how WWBE data is interpreted and applied in drug policy
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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