This paper examines the housing and neighbourhood quality of public housing in Lagos, Nigeria. It describes the nature and characteristics of the housing; and reports findings from a survey research on public housing in the study area. A survey of eight purposively selected public housing estates (five low-income and three mediumincome estates) was conducted to evaluate the housing quality and neighbourhood infrastructure and identify areas of vulnerability to future public health hazards. The paper identifies and discusses the quality indicators and causes of inadequacy in the selected housing estates. The assessment of the conditions and quality of housing and neighbourhood environment in each of estates was conducted by means of penalty scoring. Blocks of houses in low-income estates reported significantly lower levels of housing and environmental quality than houses in the medium-income estates. Based on housing condition alone, approximately 34 per cent of all the housing blocks surveyed (n=225) in the eight estates were categorised as being of poor quality and dilapidated, that is, with two or more major defects. Based on the neighbourhood environment, about 65 per cent and 30 per cent in the low-income and mediumincome estates respectively fall into the poor quality category. The study identifies and discusses the perceived reasons for these findings and makes useful recommendations that could enhance housing quality and improve quality-of-life in public housing. It concludes on the need for participatory approaches to infrastructure improvements and enhanced collaboration between stakeholders to maintain present housing and neighbourhood stock and develop sustainable future builds. Copyright © 2012 IAHS.
Buildings in Hong Kong and perhaps elsewhere take up a significant portion of greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions. Having committed by the HKSAR Government to reduce the carbon intensity of Hong Kong by 50-60% by 2020 compared with 2005, the building sector has an undeniable role to play. Despite that building environmental assessment (BEA) tools are increasingly used to evaluate the environmental impacts of building facilities in the local industry, their effectiveness in the carbon reduction were still unknown. This study therefore aims to reveal the local practices and industry practitioners’ perceptions on reducing buildings’ carbon footprint in general, and to explore the capability of the BEA tool adopted in Hong Kong, namely Building Environmental Assessment Method (BEAM Plus), for carbon footprint evaluation in particular. An interview survey was carried out with twelve local industry experts to achieve the research aims. The results of interview survey indicated that the awareness and concern of building carbon footprint were still very limited in Hong Kong. This might due to the insufficient endeavor from various stockholders especially the government and private developers in promoting and adopting low carbon strategies for buildings. Besides, there was a predominant view among the interviewees that the BEAM Plus is not adequately comprehensive to assess the buildings’ carbon footprint. Adopting a holistic framework for assessing the carbon footprint throughout the entire building lifecycle is thus desirable. Copyright © 2012 IAHS.
The world’s growing population needs adequate and safe homes. In order to provide and increase the number and quality of housing projects, new alternative methods need to be investigated. In this paper, the use of artificial intelligence in decision making for housing projects will be presented. The artificial intelligence tool to be utilized will be artificial neural network algorithms. The complexity of issues related to planning and design of housing projects will be simplified into social, economic, engineering, environment and safety issues. In the artificial neural network algorithm, the parameters including population, environment, distance from hospitals, distance from schools, seismicity level of district of project, climate, topography, distance from highways, financial criteria are used as input parameters. The housing project efficiency is determined by the output parameter of the algorithm. Different housing project areas’ data are used for training and testing the artificial intelligence model. Based on the results of the training phase, a forecasting study is presented for a specific area in Turkey. In order to reach the best results, various configurations and architectures are trained. The success rate of the model is measured by r2, a statistical indicator applied to the analysis. The best configurations, architectures, and error graphs are presented. Advantages of this innovative artificial intelligence approach are that; in the future, it can be utilized as a forecasting tool of efficiency of housing projects. Copyright © 2012 IAHS.
Modeling sound propagation in complex environments can be a difficult task. In realistic applications the boundaries of scatterers present in the propagation domain can be partially absorbing, and this must be accounted for in the numerical models. This paper addresses the use of a frequency-domain Dual-BEM (BEM/TBEM) formulation to model the propagation of sound generated by fixed and moving point loads in 2.5D configurations, in the presence of very thin elements with partially absorbing surfaces. The proposed approach is based on the concept of impedance boundary conditions and is applied in conjunction with a Dual-BEM approach, thereby allowing the definition of models in which only very compact descriptions of the propagation domain are required. Since a 2.5D formulation is used, 3D responses can be computed as a discrete summation of simpler 2D solutions. The formulation of the numerical methods used here (BEM, TBEM and Dual-BEM) are described, together with the strategy devised by the authors to incorporate sound absorption. A numerical application involving fixed and moving 3D sources is described to illustrate the applicability and usefulness of the proposed approaches. Copyright © 2012 IAHS.
With the strong support of government and the increasing level of public awareness, sustainable housing construction has become a hot topic which triggers debate in the academic worlds over the last decades. As a result, the body of knowledge seems to be well developed based on a series of analytical and empirical studies. However, whether the conceptual frameworks or analytical models, which are established by a certain kinds of conditions, constrains and assumptions, are really rational for practical application, still needs to be further examined. In addition, it is not unusual that a gap exists between ‘what needs to be done’ and ‘what is really done’ due to complex reasons. Therefore, the voice of practitioners, particularly in a specific project scenario, should be addressed carefully. In order to highlight the gap between research and practice on sustainable housing construction and to build a bridge there of, this study aims to conclude the laws and regulations as well as mainstream of sustainable housing construction in the past two decades in China and clarify the main obstacles and challenges for the implementation of sustainable housing construction. Through semi-structure interview, four crucial factors have been highlighted which includes detail incentive policies and promotion activities, sound and systematic standards, additional regulations on continuous inspections, integrated support from other industrial sectors and etc. Accordingly, we have proposed the issues which need to be addressed in future research and practice. The findings of this research provide a reference to governments, companies as well as academics to start the new journey for the next generations of sustainable housing construction. Copyright © 2012 IAHS.
