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Urban scale sustainable design
Published in Rob Fleming, Saglinda H Roberts, Sustainable Design for the Built Environment, 2019
Rob Fleming, Saglinda H Roberts
The urban environment is by definition a hardscape, built from concrete, and asphalt. Buildings are also made of hard materials on sites cleared to facilitate construction. Without planning and effort to incorporate natural elements the city is devoid of plant life, earth colors, living creatures, natural light, fresh air, or connection to any type of natural system. The challenge to make cities more habitable, more life enhancing, and more beautiful is starting to be addressed by a wide range of approaches, including the use of biophilia. In Chapter 6, we covered biophilia in depth. E.O. Wilson, the founder of the biophilia movement, states, Biophilic cities are different from green cities in which the emphasis is on energy and environmental conservation. In biophilic cities, there is a greater focus on wellbeing and health, celebrating life forms and processes that we as a species have evolved from.(Eco-Business 2014)
Defining a Project
Published in Mehmet Nihat Hanioğlu, A Cost Based Approach to Project Management, 2023
A simplified scope statement (i.e., scope of works) for a house would be: “A single-story house of 2,000 sq. ft., to be built on an owner provided lot in the X suburb of Y city of Z state as per Owner provided architectural and engineering design documents and specifications. Exterior hardscape and landscape is excluded and the Owner is expected to obtain all permits.”The design documents and specifications are prepared to provide all details for all parts of the scope such as structural and architectural elements of the house as well as all equipment and appliances.
Green engineering of Hong Kong and China's first data centre certified to LEED-CS 2009 Platinum
Published in HKIE Transactions, 2018
Helen Cochrane, Fredrick Leong, Steven So, George Or, Melvyn Lai
Reduction of urban heat island effect: materials with a high solar reflectance index (SRI) have been incorporated on the roof and non-roof surfaces of the FDC2 in order to reduce the urban heat island effect and minimise impacts on local microclimates, humans and wildlife habitats. Exemplary performance at 100% of non-roof hardscape surfaces (e.g. footpath, vehicular access) is mitigated through the use of new grey concrete with SRI 35 and a weighted >100% of roof surfaces are mitigated through using new white concrete with SRI 86 (Figures 13 and 14).
The effects of small Water Cool(ing) Islands on body temperature
Published in Journal of Urban Design, 2023
To prevent potential multicollinearity, five independent variables were split into three models for mixed-effect analysis: (1) the STATION model focused on the effects of different waterscapes, i.e., STATION (S), and CONCRETE/WATER (C/W) and FOCUS/NOT (F/N) as control variables; (2) the LEVEL model focused on the effects of waterscape locations at the upper and lower levels, i.e., LEVEL (L), and CONCRETE/WATER (C/W), FOCUS/NOT, and LEVEL; (3) the WATERFALL/NOT model focused on the presence of the source waterfall including variables of WATERFALL/NOT (WN), CONCRETE/WATER, and FOCUS/NOT. Khan et al. (2019) found a moderately significant positive correlation between stress, electrodermal activity (EDA), and skin temperature (TEMP) collected using the Empatica E4 sensor. To investigate the effects of small waterscapes on cognitive stress and heat stress, ΔSCL, SCLM, ΔSCR, SCRM, ΔTEMP, and TEMPM were used as the response variables for running each of the three mixed-effects models in SPSS Statistics 26 while controlling for the random effects from variability in participants’ psychophysiological baselines and the sequence in which participants experienced waterscapes. To parse out the effects of cognitive stress from viewing hardscape from those of heat stress on body temperature, the study monitors each participant’s view to hardscaped versus water scenes as a control variable CONCRETE/WATER (C/W). For each condition, two trials were also conducted with unfocused and focused gazes to control the effects of gaze type FOCUS/NOT (F/N). To investigate the aggregated microscale WCI effects, each model uses another variable, LEVEL, to indicate waterscape locations at the upper level behind versus the lower level in front of the source waterfall. In contrast, each model uses WATERFALL/NOT (W/N) to detect the presence of potential individual microscale WCI due to the source waterfall (S1) based on whether there is a greater reduction in body temperature.