The first and foremost goal United Nation emulates is to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger by 2015. Slum is almost synonymous with urban poverty and hunger. The word ‘Slum’ was originally used as the ‘back slum’ meaning the backyard or ‘back room’ and later ‘back alley’. Other terms which many a times used to portray slum include, ‘shanty town’, ‘favela’, ‘skid row’, ‘barrio’, ‘ghetto’, and ‘The hood’. Although most of these terms have a unique meaning on its own respect, they are conglomerated into defining the slum. This paper concentrate on the facts of slums in Indian context and the legal aspects associated with it and ultimately initiate some thoughts on improving slums in Urban India.
In house architecture, the steel technologies use has constituted, especially in Italy, a research and experimentation field rather delimited. Although the house topic has been most important in the modernist discussion, becoming, after the war, a social problem, its declension as to steel technology remains conditioned by the historical events, cultural background does not accept the temporary idea of housing, suggested by use of steel. In the outlook of vicissitude with fragmentary border reconstruction, the goal is to research technical modes and building system and to assess techniques and shape implications. These technical-project vicissitudes were analyzed as to different topic trends: ‘experimental house’, ‘anti-seismic house’, ‘temporary house’ and ‘steel house’. The building experiences of steel house have implied innovation processes, marginal and partial, and large and general tendency to technique hybridization, researching more the factors of constructive and functional rationalization, than the linguistic potentialities.
Lightweight building materials like ferro-cement panels have been used building as low cost and cost effective construction in the developing countries. Sound transmission studies have been conducted on this panel system with different types of fibers. In this work sound reduction index studies have been conducted on Fiber impregnated ferro-cement panels with and without cavities for their transmission behavior. The panels have been erected as slabs and lifted and placed in the opening provided between source and receiver rooms. Sound transmission studies have been conducted on panels in the transmission loss suite which has been specially constructed for these set of measurements. It is shown that the presence of lightweight walls (Ferro-cement, cellulose acetate panels) have an influence on the loss factors of concrete floors, especially at low frequencies. Measurements and theoretical calculations also show that the loss factor depends on the design and construction of the walls. It is also shown that the loss factor increase is due to mainly to the energy transmission through the longitudinal waves. Copyright © 2010 IAHS.
The buildings hygrothermal behaviour has been studied in last few years by the Physics of Constructions group from FEUP [1]. The study of hygrothermal performance is essential to characterize the quality of inner environment allowing the knowledge of the thermal answer from buildings envelope when subject to inside and outside climate variations. We understood that would be of great benefit to get some results that allow the characterization of hygrothermal behaviour from constructive elements. The aim of this article is to compare the results from the experimental analysis of temperature, relative humidity and partial vapour pressure variations inside a church, with exterior variations, envelope characteristics, inner water vapour production and ventilation conditions. Copyright © 2010 IAHS.
The objective of this paper is to present an assessment of the outsourcing practices of maintenance services at Saudi Arabian universities. The findings of the study would provide practical value for facilities maintenance managers in institutions of higher education endeavoring on the processing of outsourcing maintenance services in their campuses.
In developing countries, as Brazil, social housing is financed almost exclusively with public resources. Due to lack of planning of urban space occupation and the restriction of financial resources the emphasis is given to the reduction of quantitative dwelling deficit. Thus, nor always satisfactory benefits are provided with regards to the quality of life, social insertion, generation of income and local economic development. The challenge for developing countries is to establish means to reach economic and social growth with rational use of environmental resources, considering also the diversity of local peculiarities. In developed countries several methods are available for evaluation of buildings sustainability. However, there exist the needs for a more realistic approach directed to the developing countries, which consider, beyond the rational use of natural resources, its demands for social and economic development. The objective of this article is to initiate the discussion of social housing sustainability evaluation through the adequacy and definition of indicators that evaluate not only environmental questions but also social and economic ones. It is expected that this work may contribute for the beginning of the conception of sustainability indicators oriented to the northeast region of Brazil, inducing improvements in social housing.
