Architecture, Building and Planning - Research Publications
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ItemExcellence or Exit: Ensuring Anangu Futures through Education(School of Social and Policy Research, Charles Darwin University, 2009)The discussion and recommendations in this document aim to present Anangu leaders, schools and the enabling policy community that supports schools, with key points for debate and consideration, as the platform to develop an ambitious charter for education reform. The review advocates the need to change the approach to schooling at primary, middle and senior school levels as the key means to transform training, learning and employment ‘pathways’ into journeys that lead to exciting destinations and not disappointing dead ends.
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ItemInformation and Document Management System for Construction Sites(CIB WORKING COMMISSION, 2010)Each construction project is unique in terms of how specialist professionals manage and use project documents. A construction sites use and generate a large body of documents containing valuable information across project participants. Therefore, the efficient deployment of construction projects depends partly on the effective communication among project participants. This communication, however, is hindered by the large amount and wide variation of the project information and documents involved and the spatial dispersion of construction sites. This paper presents an intranetbased information and document management system that facilitates project information and communication management within a large construction company. The system implementation and testing have shown that it can provide structured and reliable information, quick and remote access, and prompt updating capabilities of stored documents.
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ItemSelling Your Design: Oral Communication Pedagogy in Design Education(ROUTLEDGE JOURNALS, TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD, 2005-01)Good design skills are the main focus of assessment practices in design education and are evaluated primarily by drawings and models. In some settings, design studio pedagogy tends to reflect only these content-oriented assessment priorities, with minimal attention paid to the development of oral communication skills. Yet, in many professional contexts, architects need both sets of skills: design competence and the ability to articulate designs for an audience. This paper explores two approaches to oral communication pedagogy in design education - a public speaking approach and a genre-based linguistic approach - and then applies one particular linguistic approach to novice design studio presentations. Based on the findings of this study, we argue that the linguistic, genre-based approach can best offer language-based, discipline-specific description of performance strategies, rhetorical structures, and the linguistic realizations of such structures. Such information can contribute to improved pedagogical practice in the design studio.
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ItemCodes and conferences - a new era for building researchers and educators(AUBEA, 2010)This paper discusses building conference rankings, metrics and issues that impact on AUBEA academics under the new 2010 Excellence in Research Australia (ERA) framework. Part one this paper gives a brief outline of current ERA developments where Field of Research (FoR) Codes appear as a more weighty consideration when universities seek to establish research strength and higher ranking in clusters around the ERA classifications. For conferences listed in the ERA building discipline a basic locational and tier analysis is presented as is a listing of ‘multi-disciplinary’ conferences where building is part of the discipline mix. Part two presents the results of an electronic survey of AUBEA participants conducted in April 2010 who are active in Australian Construction Research. Survey analysis reveals a low level typically ‘business as usual’ attitude to ERA issues, however with some individual opinion on conference listings and further comment on implementation of ERA metrics, research outputs, data gathering and reporting at various levels in the individual institution, e.g. Division, Faculty or School/Department. The current and likely future implications of ERA introduction for both individual academics and HDR students are considerations addressed in the survey analysis and discussion section of the paper.
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ItemClimate Change Adaption and Affordability – Costs, Benefits and Regulation of Improved Environmental Performance in Housing(RICS Publications, 2008)Climate change regulatory response has lead to a number of recent studies that examine the cost and benefits of mandating improved housing design and specification. Research addressed in the paper seeks an understanding of the financial impacts of ‘sustainability’ and ‘energy efficiency’ in housing generally, biased to an Australian temperate climate regional perspective (Victoria and South Australia). The paper presents the research literature and examines the question of ‘trade-offs’ in improved residential building environmental performance. Analysis of previous studies and data on housing costs, both initial capital and operational, is a primary focus of the paper which draws some conclusions from the housing studies and cost information.
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ItemThe Singapore Flyer and design of giant observation wheels, Singapore(Informa UK Limited, 2009-01-01)Some of the engineering principles conceived behind the design of Singapore Flyer, the giant observation Wheel (GOW), built by Arup, are discussed. The wheel is 150 m in diameter, and features access gantries to allow the passenger boarding and loading platforms having two stories above ground in the terminal building located at the base of the wheel. A tropical rainforest attraction has been built into the courtyard space immediately below the wheel to attract the visitor's experience. The 2D ladder truss helps reduce wind load on the Flyer rim. The Flyer also uses cable spokes that need to be prestressed to resist compression. The structural team used purpose-written software to study rim buckling. The GOW represents one lineage of a family of visitor attractions known as ionic viewing platforms, and the engineering design process has recognized several geometric effects on the efficiency of the structure.
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ItemInternational comparison of building energy performance standards(Australia Greenhouse Office, Department of Environment and Heritage, 2005)The background to this study is the proposed changes to the Building Codes of Australia energy efficiency provisions. Specifically, these include the proposed 5-star Australian standard (BCA Verification Method V2.6.2.1) and enhancement of the DTS provisions (refer BCA Part 3.12). The aims of this study are two-fold: • Test the relative stringency of the proposed 5-star Australian standard (BCA Verification Method V2.6.2.1) against housing performance in comparative countries, and; • Compare the enhanced DTS provisions (refer BCA Part 3.12) with comparative countries.
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ItemApproaches to the evaluation of outbreak detection methods(BMC, 2006-10-24)BACKGROUND: An increasing number of methods are being developed for the early detection of infectious disease outbreaks which could be naturally occurring or as a result of bioterrorism; however, no standardised framework for examining the usefulness of various outbreak detection methods exists. To promote comparability between studies, it is essential that standardised methods are developed for the evaluation of outbreak detection methods. METHODS: This analysis aims to review approaches used to evaluate outbreak detection methods and provide a conceptual framework upon which recommendations for standardised evaluation methods can be based. We reviewed the recently published literature for reports which evaluated methods for the detection of infectious disease outbreaks in public health surveillance data. Evaluation methods identified in the recent literature were categorised according to the presence of common features to provide a conceptual basis within which to understand current approaches to evaluation. RESULTS: There was considerable variation in the approaches used for the evaluation of methods for the detection of outbreaks in public health surveillance data, and appeared to be no single approach of choice. Four main approaches were used to evaluate performance, and these were labelled the Descriptive, Derived, Epidemiological and Simulation approaches. Based on the approaches identified, we propose a basic framework for evaluation and recommend the use of multiple approaches to evaluation to enable a comprehensive and contextualised description of outbreak detection performance. CONCLUSION: The varied nature of performance evaluation demonstrated in this review supports the need for further development of evaluation methods to improve comparability between studies. Our findings indicate that no single approach can fulfil all evaluation requirements. We propose that the cornerstone approaches to evaluation identified provide key contributions to support internal and external validity and comparability of study findings, and suggest these be incorporated into future recommendations for performance assessment.
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ItemUsing GIS to create synthetic disease outbreaks(BMC, 2007-02-14)BACKGROUND: The ability to detect disease outbreaks in their early stages is a key component of efficient disease control and prevention. With the increased availability of electronic health-care data and spatio-temporal analysis techniques, there is great potential to develop algorithms to enable more effective disease surveillance. However, to ensure that the algorithms are effective they need to be evaluated. The objective of this research was to develop a transparent user-friendly method to simulate spatial-temporal disease outbreak data for outbreak detection algorithm evaluation. A state-transition model which simulates disease outbreaks in daily time steps using specified disease-specific parameters was developed to model the spread of infectious diseases transmitted by person-to-person contact. The software was developed using the MapBasic programming language for the MapInfo Professional geographic information system environment. RESULTS: The simulation model developed is a generalised and flexible model which utilises the underlying distribution of the population and incorporates patterns of disease spread that can be customised to represent a range of infectious diseases and geographic locations. This model provides a means to explore the ability of outbreak detection algorithms to detect a variety of events across a large number of stochastic replications where the influence of uncertainty can be controlled. The software also allows historical data which is free from known outbreaks to be combined with simulated outbreak data to produce files for algorithm performance assessment. CONCLUSION: This simulation model provides a flexible method to generate data which may be useful for the evaluation and comparison of outbreak detection algorithm performance.
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ItemApplying cusum-based methods for the detection of outbreaks of Ross River virus disease in Western Australia(BMC, 2008-08-13)BACKGROUND: The automated monitoring of routinely collected disease surveillance data has the potential to ensure that important changes in disease incidence are promptly recognised. However, few studies have established whether the signals produced by automated monitoring methods correspond with events considered by epidemiologists to be of public health importance. This study investigates the correspondence between retrospective epidemiological evaluation of notifications of Ross River virus (RRv) disease in Western Australia, and the signals produced by two cumulative sum (cusum)-based automated monitoring methods. METHODS: RRv disease case notification data between 1991 and 2004 were assessed retrospectively by two experienced epidemiologists, and the timing of identified outbreaks was compared with signals generated from two different types of cusum-based automated monitoring algorithms; the three Early Aberration Reporting System (EARS) cusum algorithms (C1, C2 and C3), and a negative binomial cusum. RESULTS: We found the negative binomial cusum to have a significantly greater area under the receiver operator characteristic curve when compared with the EARS algorithms, suggesting that the negative binomial cusum has a greater level of agreement with epidemiological opinion than the EARS algorithms with respect to the existence of outbreaks of RRv disease, particularly at low false alarm rates. However, the performance of individual EARS and negative binomial cusum algorithms were not significantly different when timeliness was also incorporated into the area under the curve analyses. CONCLUSION: Our retrospective analysis of historical data suggests that, compared with the EARS algorithms, the negative binomial cusum provides greater sensitivity for the detection of outbreaks of RRv disease at low false alarm levels, and decreased timeliness early in the outbreak period. Prospective studies are required to investigate the potential usefulness of these algorithms in practice.