Infrastructure Engineering - Research Publications

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    Application of nanomaterials in the sustainable built environment
    Gammampila, GRG ; Mendis, PAM ; Ngo, TDN ; Aye, LA ; JAYALATH, A ; RUPASINGHE, RAM (University of Moratuwa, 2010)
    Nanotechnology is widely regarded as one of the twenty-first century’s key technologies, and its economic importance is sharply on the rise. In the construction industry, nanomaterials has potentials that are already usable today, especially the functional characteristics such as increased tensile strength, self-cleaning capacity, fire resistance, and additives based on nano materials make common materials lighter, more permeable, and more resistant to wear. Nanomaterial are also considered extremely useful for roofs and facades in the built environment. They also expand design possibilities for interior and exterior rooms and spaces. Nano–insulating materials open up new possibilities for ecologically oriented sustainable infrastructure development. It has been demonstrated that nanotechnology has invented products with many unique characteristics which could significantly provide solutions current construction issues and may change the requirement and organization of construction process. This paper examines and documents applicable nanotechnology based products that can improve the sustainable development and overall competitiveness of the construction industry.
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    Application of nano insulation materials in the sustainable built environment
    Gammampila, GRG ; Mendis, PAM ; Ngo, TDN ; Aye, LA ; Herath, NCH (University of Moratuwa, 2010)
    Nanotechnology is widely being used in the built environment for its advantages in many improved engineering properties of the nano materials. Nano insulating materials open up new possibilities for ecologically oriented sustainable infrastructure development. The most widely used nano material in built environment is for the purpose of insulation to improve the energy efficiency namely in the buildings and dwellings. Nanotechnology has now provided an effective and affordable means to increase energy efficiency in pre-existing buildings as well as new construction by increasing thermal resistance. The major advantage of nano insulation materials is its benefit of translucent coatings which increase the thermal envelope of a building without reducing the square footage. The intrinsic property of nano insulating material is it can be applied to windows to reduce heat transfer from solar radiation due it its thermal resistant property and the translucent property allows diffusing of day light. The nano insulating material has significant advantage in reducing the operational energy aspects of buildings due to its valuable insulating properties. This paper examines applicable nanotechnology based products that can improve the sustainable development and overall competitiveness of the building industry. The areas of applying nano insulating material in building industry will be mainly focused on the building envelope. The paper also examines the potential advantages of using nanotechnology based insulating material in reducing the life cycle energy, reduction of material usage and enhancing the useable life span. The paper also investigates the operational energy by simulation methodology and compares the reduction of operational energy consumption.
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    Land registry futures: a vision for the role of tomorrow's land registries: or another view of the cathedral
    BENNETT, ROHAN ; WALLACE, JUDE ; Marwick, Brian ( 2010)
    Australia and her states have significantly improved land information management since 1982: cadastres were digitized, land registries computerized, GIS was incorporated, and SDIs developed. However, the risk of a special land information babel as espoused by Justice Kirby in 1982 still remains, particularly in the realm of land registries. Australia is now entering the era of national approaches to land registration. The national eConveyancing system represents the first step. Many more initiatives will follow. Australia’s land registries need to continue collaboration in order to build a coherent national vision based around key registries, spatial enablement, and shared services. The power inherent in all land registry information must be unleashed. Land registries are more than mere pocketknives for conveyancing. They are multi-purpose tools with the capacity to service society with the information needed to respond our most pressing challenges.
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    Towards e-Land administration: electronic plans of subdivisions in Victoria
    Kalantari, Mohsen ; Lester, Chris ; Boyle, David R. ; Coupar, Neil (Surveying and Spatial Sciences Institute, 2009)
    The Internet and web technologies are now thoroughly integrated into the business of the cadastre, with initiatives like VOTS, LASSI, SMES, LANDATA and SPEAR completed or well underway in Victoria. These technologies provide great opportunities for better service delivery, more customer satisfaction and reductions in operating costs through integrated electronic land administration. With this systematic introduction of the Internet and web technologies into the business of the cadastre, electronic lodgement of plans of subdivisions (ePlan) are about to introduce a new era to the surveying industry by providing an infrastructure for the digital lodgement, exchange, alteration, examination and approval of plans of subdivisions and their associated documents and data in this State. A number of components are needed to be established and a number of current systems are needed to be re-engineered through the ePlan project implementation. This article introduces the Victorian ePlan initiative and outlines the technical component of the system. The ePlan initiative will bring significant benefits to the surveying profession, land development industry, local councils, State Government agencies and instrumentalities and other key stakeholders involved in the land development process by optimising the current practices of submitting plans of subdivision in Victoria, both paper-based and PDF-based plans, by making them fully electronic. Finally, the article discusses that the electronic plan of subdivision is not an end by itself; rather it is a means that facilitates achieving a number of goals remarkably authoritative cadastral database, standardised data exchange between user and databases and electronic land development process.
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    Decentralized querying of topological relations between regions without using localization
    Duckham, M ; Jeong, MH ; Li, S ; Renz, J (ACM, 2010-12-31)
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    Critical issues in global geographic information management - with a detailed focused on data integration and interoperability of systems and data
    RAJABIFARD, ABBAS ( 2010)
    The GSDI Association continues its support for the United Nations for taking the initiative on this critical global geographic information issue; and is willing to contribute to new arrangements to improve global geographic information management. The role of the GSDI Association, in essence, is to facilitate better global outcomes through utilisation of geographic information and spatial data infrastructures (SDIs). This role directly complements the proposal to establish a United Nations Committee on Global Geographic Information Management (UNCGGIM). The GSDI Association's view of the changes now taking place in the geographic information world and these changes exemplify convergence of technologies and disciplines. These changes need to be influenced where appropriate, and leveraged, by the global geographic information community, particularly by the United Nations. This paper presents some views related to the “critical issues in global geographic information management” and in particular a response to the following issues: - Governance: is global governance relevant and necessary? - Interoperability of systems and data - Data integration and layering, and - Capacity building and technology transfer In responding to these issues, the paper however provides a more detailed discussions on “interoperability of systems and data” and “data integration” in particular the technical and non-technical issues and heterogeneity associated with multi-sourced spatial data integration in the context of SDI.
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    VISUALIZING CLIMATE CHANGE IMPACT WITH UBIQUITOUS SPATIAL TECHNOLOGIES
    Bennett, RM ; Pettit, C ; Aurambout, JP ; Sheth, F ; Senot, H ; Soste, L ; Sposito, V ; Guilbert, E ; Lees, B ; Leung, Y (COPERNICUS GESELLSCHAFT MBH, 2010)
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    Automatic spatial metadata enrichment: reducing metadata creation burden through spatial folksonomies
    Kalantari, Mohsen ; OLFAT, HAMED ; RAJABIFARD, ABBAS (Leuven University Press, 2010)
    Metadata plays a key role in facilitating access to up-to-date spatial information and contributes to the finding and delivering of high quality spatial information services to users. In particular, metadata is an important element in functioning and facilitating spatial data infrastructure (SDI) initiatives. With huge amount of spatial information being generated, a spatial application must be sufficiently flexible to extract and update spatial metadata automatically. Automatic spatial metadata generation framework includes three fundamental but complementary streams; automatic creation, automatic update and automatic enrichment of spatial metadata. This paper explores the automatic metadata enrichment stream based on the tagging and folksonomy concepts. The paper argues how folksonomies help bringing the vocabulary of spatial data users into play and using them hand in hand with those sometimes mysterious terms supplied by experts in metadata records. The paper then builds on the tagging and folksonomy concepts and proposes a conceptual model to employ them for spatial metadata enrichment. The paper finally discusses advantages and disadvantages of this approach against formal type of organizing spatial metadata.
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    Exploring the key areas of spatial metadata automation research in Australia
    OLFAT, HAMED ; Kalantari, Mohsen ; RAJABIFARD, ABBAS ; Williamson, Ian P. ; Pettit, Christopher ; Williams, Stephen (Leuven University Press, 2010)
    Improving the spatial metadata management process to facilitate data discovery, access and retrieval through an SDI platform has been the goal of a number of organizations at different jurisdictional levels in Australia. A current linkage research project titled “Spatial Metadata Automation” is being conducted at the University of Melbourne in conjunction with some industry partners. This research project aims to explore different approaches for automating spatial metadata so that the process of creating and updating spatial metadata – where feasible – becomes automatic. As part of the project an online questionnaire was designed and distributed within the major organizations dealing with spatial data in Australia to assess the users’ needs regarding metadata automation and also the current status of the activities in metadata creation and updating. This paper presents the results of the assessment process and explores the key areas of spatial metadata automation research in Australia. It also reviews some of the more important initiatives regarding spatial metadata in this country and explains the characteristics and framework of the current research. The paper then discusses the structure of the questionnaire and the results of the responses analysis. Finally, the findings, future needs and research questions are presented.