Infrastructure Engineering - Theses
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ItemTechnical and financial feasibility of a solar dryer in Bhutan( 2005)The technical and financial performance of an existing solar crop dryer at Khao-kor, Thailand has been evaluated for possible replication in Bhutan. The complete dryer system has been modelled using TRNSYS and the collector area was optimised to give minimum drying cost. From the evaluation, the average collector, pick-up and system efficiencies were found as 44%, 23% and 18% respectively. The solar contribution to the load is 33% when the dryer is used for 304 days in a year. Chilli and beef were selected as products to be dried as they are an integral part of Bhutan’s dishes. The drying cost is US $ 7.94 and 5.96 per kg of dry matter for chilli and beef respectively using the solar dryer system. The corresponding costs using an electric heating system is US $ 7.76 and 6.25 per kg of dry matter for chilli and beef respectively. The solar dryer system was found to be cheaper compared to an electric heating system, however, from the commercial point of view, without any incentives, both the systems are financially non-viable in Bhutan. Nevertheless, the solar dryer system is more attractive than the electric heating system as its NPV at 13% real discount rate is higher.
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ItemA multi-purpose cadastre prototype on the web( 2000-08)The Multi-Purpose Cadastre concept has been discussed over the last three decades. The concept, although idealistic when conceived, is still regarded as visionary in addressing the inherent limitations of most modern geo-spatial systems, especially cadastral systems worldwide. The concept is being used to better disseminate and utilise the increasingly large amount of data contained in many of the geo-spatial databases developed over the last few years. The utilisation of the World Wide Web has allowed these geo-spatial systems to evolve into online ‘virtual’ systems that are accessible by most people with the appropriate tools (the computers and telephone lines). This thesis analysed the growing development of these online systems. It describes a review of online cadastral systems that revealed the similarities in moving towards the future vision of cadastral systems of the 21st century, as highlighted by the International Federation of Surveyors document, Cadastre 2014. The rapidly growing volume of geo-spatial data, which has been attributed by technologies such as remote sensing and Global Positioning Systems, are impacting on the way societies of today, are using, viewing and storing geo-spatial data. Improvements in related areas such as the Spatial Data Infrastructure, the Open GIS Consortium and the Australian World Wide Web Mapping Consortium are described and discussed in this thesis.
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ItemIndoor centrality( 2009)Indoor environments are different from other environments. There are some characteristics which are unique such as dimensionality and spatial structure. Apart from indoor centrality, research has been done to reveal the properties of centrality particularly in street networks, social networks, and biological networks. In addition, there are some indoor representations which have already been developed for different purposes such as wayfinding, behavioural science, and sociology.Therefore, this research is undertaken to investigate models of representation and apply the measures of centrality to reveal the properties of indoor environments. Different representations and betweenness centrality measures have been tested in a subset of indoor environments. The models and measures have been proven capable of revealing the properties of indoor environments such as centrality, prominency, and complexity. In addition, this research has revealed the strengths and weaknesses of both models and measures. The results of different measurements of betweenness centrality based on different representations are combined. Here, graph representations which depict space and link centralities in topological graphs is used to construct a structural hierarchy which is able to support wayfinding in indoor environments. This research contributes to our understanding of indoor centrality through the formalization of the representations and measures.