Geographies of energy transition: the case of high-performing commercial office space in the central business districts of Sydney and Melbourne,Australia

As a signatory to the Paris Climate Agreement, Australia committed to reduce emissions significantly by 2030. In a country highly urbanised and dependent on fossil fuels as its primary energy source, one key avenue for meeting these commitments is energy transition in the built environment. Australia has emerged as a leader in the design and construction of high-performance buildings in the premium commercial office sector. In this paper, we address a significant gap in understanding the diverse mechanisms through which building energy transition is being constituted in this sector, focusing on Sydney and Melbourne. In the absence of substantive publicly available data, we draw on mixed methods comprising a database developed around high-performing CBD office buildings and qualitative interviews with a range of sectoral stakeholders. We characterise the building stock in each city, and document five trends constituting energy transitions. We demonstrate that building energy transitions are not only shaped purposefully by dominant governance regimes but also by opportunistic responses to specific material and commercial conditions and legacies in each city. Thus the urban built environment affords significant opportunity for energy transitions, but pathways towards such transitions are necessarily multiple and ultimately shaped by material as well as institutional geographies.     

改进A?的高层建筑逃生路径规划算法研究

针对高层建筑内部结构复杂,发生火灾时没有疏散引导情况,逃生通道极易发生拥堵导致疏散效率降低的问题,本文基于对A*算法的改进,提出了高层建筑逃生路径规划算法。该算法以高层建筑内部路网节点为关键要素,综合火灾发生位置、人员密度、人员数量等因素,从逃生终点优化分配、节点扩展优化、权值优化3个方面进行改进,实现了火灾发生时高层建筑内部的逃生路径规划,并以某高层建筑为例,验证了本文算法的可行性。     

An improved building detection approach using L-band POLSAR two-dimensional time-frequency decomposition over oriented built-up areas

The objective of this study is to efficiently extract detailed information about various man-made targets in oriented built-up areas using polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (POLSAR) images. This paper develops an improved approach for building detection by utilizing Two-Dimensional Time-Frequency (2-D TF) decomposition. This method performs outstandingly in distinguishing between man-made and natural targets based on the isotropic behaviors, frequency-sensitive responses, and scattering mechanisms of objects. The proposed method can preserve the spatial resolution and exploit the advantages of TF decomposition; specifically, the exact outlines of buildings can be effectively located, and more types of features (e.g., flat roofs, roads, and walls that are oblique to the radar illumination) can be distinguished from forests in complex built-up areas by 2-D TF decomposition. The coarser-resolution subaperture images that are produced in the azimuth direction, which correspond to different looking angles, are beneficial for detecting man-made structures with main scattering centers oriented at oblique angles with respect to the radar illumination. In the range direction, the obtained subaperture images, which correspond to various observation frequencies, can be helpful in distinguishing flat roofs and roads from forests. This method was successfully implemented to analyze both NASA/JPL L-band AIRSAR and L-band EMISAR data sets. The building detection results of the proposed method exhibit a significant improvement over those of other methods and reach an overall accuracy over 80%, with approximately 20% higher than the accuracies of K-means clustering and the entropy/alpha-Wishart classifier and approximately 10% higher than the accuracy of the support vector machine method. Moreover, building details can be precisely detected, obliquely oriented buildings can be identified, and the distinction between buildings and forests is significantly improved, as both visually and statistically indicated. This method is highly adaptable and has substantial application value.     

建筑物沉降观测技术方法探讨

随着城市建设的迅猛发展,城市规模越来越大,建筑物越来越高,由此带来的安全隐患越来越大,由于高层建筑一般采用桩基基础,且荷载较大,对高层建筑的内部基础和设备的位置关系有很高的精度要求,其施工安装阶段将给高层建筑本身及周边建筑群体带来复杂的形变影响。为了保障建筑物施工和运营的安全,就必须对其进行沉降观测。本文结合笔者多年的实际工作经验,并结合具体的实例,对高层建筑物沉降原因、沉降观测前的准备工作及沉降观测的实施过程和观测数据的处理方法等进行了论述,最后指出如何通过沉降观测技术准确地反映出高层建筑物的沉降情况。     

Numerical simulation of water flooding into a damaged vessel’s compartment by the volume of fluid method

When a vessel is damaged, seawater floods into the damaged compartments and subsequently influences the motion of the vessel. Furthermore, the vessel’s behaviour affects the floodwater motion. In this paper, a Navier-Stokes (NS) solver with a free surface capturing technique, i.e., the volume of fluid (VOF) method, was developed to numerically simulate water flooding into a damaged vessel. To verify the developed solver, a 2-D and a 3-D dam break problems were tested. The numerical results coincide well with the experimental results and with the published numerical results. Additionally, it was used to solve the problems of linear and non-linear liquid sloshing in a hexahedral tank. The numerical results are satisfactory in comparison with the experimental results and analytical solutions. Finally, the phenomenon of water flooding into a damaged compartment of a Ro-Ro ferry was simulated numerically. The computed results are in good agreement with the experimental data.     

按新旧规范设计的多层住宅砖房地震易损性的对比

本文采用概率方法借助于拉丁超立方采样技术和非线性地震反应时程分析对按现行规范设计的多层住宅砖房的地震易损性进行分析,并与按上一代规范设计的多层住宅砖房的地震易损性分析结果[1]进行了比较,为进一步研究这类结构的地震安全性、未来地震的损失预测以及防震减灾对策奠定基础。     

An answer to an important controversy and the need for caution when using simple models to predict inelastic earthquake response of buildings with torsion

This paper presents evidence that the extension of conclusions based on the widely used simplified, one story, eccentric systems of the shear‐beam type, to actual, nonsymmetric buildings and consequent assessments of the pertinent code provisions, can be quite erroneous, unless special care is taken to match the basic properties of the simplified models to those of the real buildings. The evidence comes from comparisons of results obtained using three variants of simplified models, with results from the inelastic dynamic response of three‐ and five‐story eccentric buildings computed with detailed MDOF systems, where the members are idealized with the well‐known plastic hinge model. In addition, a convincing answer is provided on a pertinent hanging controversy: For frame‐type buildings, designed in accordance with the dynamic provisions of modern codes (such as EC8 or IBC2000), which allow reduced shears at the stiff edge due to torsion, the frames at the flexible sides are the critical elements in terms of ductility demands. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Influence of local geological conditions on the macroseismic effects in the town of Strazhitza

Damage caused by the earthquake of 7 December 1986 (M = 5.7) and its aftershocks in low-storey residential buildings in the town of Strazhitza, Bulgaria, situated in the epicentral zone are systematized. A scale of damages is compiled for two types of buildings which is coordinated with the MSK-64 scale. The territorial distribution of the seismic intensity is compared with the results of the detailed engineering-geological study. A correlation between the Quarternary deposit thickness and the observed seismic intensity is obtained.Paper presented at the 21st general assembly of the European Seismological Commission held in Sofia, 1988.     

Evaluating assumptions for seismic assessment of existing buildings

This paper evaluates the American FEMA 356 and the Greek GRECO (EC 8 based) procedural assumptions for the assessment of the seismic capacity of existing buildings via pushover analyses. Available experimental results from a four-storeyed building are used to compare the two different sets of assumptions. If the comparison is performed in terms of initial stiffness or plastic deformation capacities, the different partial assumptions of the procedures lead to large discrepancies, while the opposite occurs when the comparison is performed in terms of structural performance levels at target displacements. According to FEMA 356 assumptions, effective yield point rigidities are approximately four times greater than those of EC 8. Both procedures predicted that the structure would behave elastically during low-level excitation and that the structural performance level at target displacement for a high-level excitation would be between the Immediate Occupancy and Life Safety performance levels.     

Analysis of the weightiness of site effects on reinforced concrete (RC) building seismic behaviour: The Adra town example (SE Spain)

The damage distribution in Adra town (south‐eastern Spain) during the 1993 and 1994 Adra earthquakes (5.0 magnitude), that reached a maximum intensity degree of VII (European Macroseismic Scale (EMS scale)), was concentrated mainly in the south‐east zone of the town and the most relevant damage occurred in reinforced concrete (RC) buildings with four or five storeys. In order to evaluate the influence of ground condition on RC building behaviour, geological, geomorphological and geophysical surveys were carried out, and a detailed map of ground surface structure was obtained. Short‐period microtremor observations were performed in 160 sites on a 100m × 100m dimension grid and Nakamura's method was applied in order to determine a distribution map of soil predominant periods. Shorter predominant periods (0.1–0.3 s) were found in mountainous and neighbouring zones and larger periods (greater than 0.5 s) in thicker Holocene alluvial fans. A relationship T = (0.049 ± 0.001)N, where T is the natural period of swaying motion and N is the number of storeys, has been empirically obtained by using microtremor measurements at the top of 38 RC buildings (ranging from 2 to 9 storeys). 1‐D simulation of strong motion on different soil conditions and for several typical RC buildings were computed, using the acceleration record in Adra town of the 1993 earthquake. It is noteworthy that all the aforementioned results show the influence of site effects in the degree and distribution of observed building damage. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.