Analysis of house prices to assess economic impacts of new public transport infrastructure: Madrid metro line 12.

Transportation infrastructure is known to affect the value of real estate property by virtue of changes in accessibility. The impact of transportation facilities is highly localized as well, and it is possible that spillover effects result from the capitalization of accessibility. The objective of this study was to review the theoretical background related to spatial hedonic models and the opportunities that they provided to evaluate the effect of new transportation infrastructure. An empirical case study is presented: the Madrid Metro Line 12, known as Metrosur, in the region of Madrid, Spain. The effect of proximity to metro stations on housing prices was evaluated. The analysis took into account a host of variables, including structure, location, and neighborhood and made use of three modeling approaches: linear regression estimation with ordinary least squares, spatial error, and spatial lag. The results indicated that better accessibility to Metrosur stations had a positive impact on real estate values and that the effect was marked in cases in which a house was for sale. The results also showed the presence of submarkets, which were well defined by geographic boundaries, and transport fares, which implied that the economic benefits differed across municipalities.

Heterogeneous Collaborative Sensor Network for Electrical Management of an Automated House with PV Energy

In this paper we present a heterogeneous collaborative sensor network for electrical management in the residential sector. Improving demand-side management is very important in distributed energy generation applications. Sensing and control are the foundations of the “Smart Grid” which is the future of large-scale energy management. The system presented in this paper has been developed on a self-sufficient solar house called “MagicBox” equipped with grid connection, PV generation, lead-acid batteries, controllable appliances and smart metering. Therefore, there is a large number of energy variables to be monitored that allow us to precisely manage the energy performance of the house by means of collaborative sensors. The experimental results, performed on a real house, demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed collaborative system to reduce the consumption of electrical power and to increase energy efficiency.

VLC-based light-weight portable user interface for in-house applications.

Advances in solid-state lighting have overcome common limitations on optical wireless such as power needs due to light dispersion. It's been recently proposed the modification of lamp's drivers to take advantages of its switching behaviour to include data links maintaining the illumination control they provide. In this paper, a remote access application using visible light communications is presented that provides wireless access to a remote computer using a touchscreen as user interface

Some past decision theory models for euro construction model codes and for road drainage in Spain, and modest hints with multi-criteria methods for agro and environmental assurance

The authors are from UPM and are relatively grouped, and all have intervened in different academic or real cases on the subject, at different times as being of different age. With precedent from E. Torroja and A. Páez in Madrid Spain Safety Probabilistic models for concrete about 1957, now in ICOSSAR conferences, author J.M. Antón involved since autumn 1967 for euro-steel construction in CECM produced a math model for independent load superposition reductions, and using it a load coefficient pattern for codes in Rome Feb. 1969, practically adopted for European constructions, giving in JCSS Lisbon Feb. 1974 suggestion of union for concrete-steel-al.. That model uses model for loads like Gumbel type I, for 50 years for one type of load, reduced to 1 year to be added to other independent loads, the sum set in Gumbel theories to 50 years return period, there are parallel models. A complete reliability system was produced, including non linear effects as from buckling, phenomena considered somehow in actual Construction Eurocodes produced from Model Codes. The system was considered by author in CEB in presence of Hydraulic effects from rivers, floods, sea, in reference with actual practice. When redacting a Road Drainage Norm in MOPU Spain an optimization model was realized by authors giving a way to determine the figure of Return Period, 10 to 50 years, for the cases of hydraulic flows to be considered in road drainage. Satisfactory examples were a stream in SE of Spain with Gumbel Type I model and a paper of Ven Te Chow with Mississippi in Keokuk using Gumbel type II, and the model can be modernized with more varied extreme laws. In fact in the MOPU drainage norm the redacting commission acted also as expert to set a table of return periods for elements of road drainage, in fact as a multi-criteria complex decision system. These precedent ideas were used e.g. in wide Codes, indicated in symposia or meetings, but not published in journals in English, and a condensate of contributions of authors is presented. The authors are somehow involved in optimization for hydraulic and agro planning, and give modest hints of intended applications in presence of agro and environment planning as a selection of the criteria and utility functions involved in bayesian, multi-criteria or mixed decision systems. Modest consideration is made of changing in climate, and on the production and commercial systems, and on others as social and financial.

Casa Cúpula en Carbondale, Illinois. R. B. Fuller, 1960 = Domo House in Carbondale, Illinois. R.B. Fuller, 1960

Si existe una imagen verdaderamente elocuente para describir a Richard Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983) esta es, sin duda, la que el pintor Boris Artzybasheff (1899-1965) realizó para la portada con la que la revista Time abrió el 10 de enero de 1964. En ella se puede ver como la cabeza de este inventor, ingeniero, poeta y arquitecto se encuentra facetada en cientos de triángulos, formando algo que no es sino una cúpula geodésica, como aquellas que le habían hecho famoso en todo el mundo. Frente a esta identificación que se da en la imagen de Artzybasheff entre Fuller y sus cúpulas, transformando al arquitecto en su propia obra, lo que se pretende realizar en este trabajo de investigación es el camino inverso, penetrar en esa cabeza o, mejor dicho, en esa cúpula que la alberga, a través del estudio de una de las cúpulas más personales que construyera RBF: la que fue su casa en Carbondale, en la que vivió durante toda la década de los años sesenta del pasado siglo, precisamente los mismo años de aquella fantástica portada de Time. El análisis detallado de esta obra nos permitirá acercarnos al centro gravitacional del pensamiento de RBF: la búsqueda de una mayor libertad para el hombre gracias a una arquitectura más sostenible y, por ello, más económica. Una búsqueda que le llevó a crear no sólo una casa, sino todo un mundo propio.

Utzon and the sun path as an organizing element of life in a house

The present text intends to analyze the hypothesis stating that the path of the sun can be an organizing element for how you live in the houses designed by Jørn Utzon. To do so, I have selected twenty houses and building complexes designed by him between the years 1950-94, in Denmark, Sweden, The United Kingdom and Spain. In these projects I will look for elements which are repeated and their possible meaning. The aim is to reach practical conclusions that could help us decide how to orientate a house.

Lithologic Control on the Scaling Properties of the First-Order Streams of Drainage Networks: A Monofractal Analysis

The movement of water through the landscape can be investigated at different scales. This study dealt with the interrelation between bedrock lithology and the geometry of the overlying drainage systems. Parameters of fractal analysis, such as fractal dimension and lacunarity, were used to measure and quantify this relationship. The interrelation between bedrock lithology and the geometry of the drainage systems has been widely studied in the last decades. The quantification of this linkage has not yet been clearly established. Several studies have selected river basins or regularly shaped areas as study units, assuming them to be lithologically homogeneous. This study considered irregular distributions of rock types, establishing areas of the soil map (1:25,000) with the same lithologic information as study units. The tectonic stability and the low climatic variability of the study region allowed effective investigation of the lithologic controls on the drainage networks developed on the plutonic rocks, the metamorphic rocks, and the sedimentary materials existing in the study area. To exclude the effect of multiple in- and outflows in the lithologically homogeneous units, we focused this study on the first-order streams of the drainage networks. The geometry of the hydrologic features was quantified through traditional metrics of fluvial geomorphology and scaling parameters of fractal analysis, such as the fractal dimension, the reference density, and the lacunarity. The results demonstrate the scale invariance of both the drainage networks and the set of first-order streams at the study scale and a relationship between scaling in the lithology and the drainage network.

House of Would

Proyecto House of Would

Prefab wooden house, Pedrezuela

Proyecto wooden house

Hacia la nueva sociedad comunista: la casa de transición del Narkomfin, epílogo de una investigación = Towards the new communist society: the transition House of Narkomfin, a research epilogue

En el contexto de inestabilidad y cambio vivido en la URSS durante la década de 1920, un grupo de arquitectos dirigido por Moisei Ginzburg abordó el tema del alojamiento de masas. Su misión no sería sólo dar solución al problema de la vivienda, sino redefinirla como el marco adecuado para una sociedad sometida a un cambio sin precedentes. La respuesta se desarrolló a través de un proceso de investigación que duró más de cinco años, en tres aproximaciones sucesivas que culminaron con el edificio Narkomfin. La primera, de carácter conceptual, se formalizó en el Concurso Amistoso de 1926. La segunda se articuló a través de la investigación del Stroikom bajo premisas científicas y metodológicas. Finalmente, las conclusiones tipológicas alcanzadas en esta segunda etapa se materializaron en la construcción de algunos ejemplos, entre los que destacó el edificio Narkomfin. Este último acercamiento, de carácter empírico, ha sido tradicionalmente examinado por los expertos como un hecho aislado. Sin embargo, su estudio debe trascender necesariamente el genio del autor-creador en favor del proceso de investigación al que pertenece. Sólo desde este punto de vista cobra sentido la consideración de Ginzburg sobre su propio edificio como un medio propositivo y no impositivo: un proyecto concebido como una herramienta de transición hacia una sociedad más avanzada.

Geomorphological analysis and evolution of an altered floodplain drainage system. The case of the Partido Stream (Spain)

The Partido Stream is a small torrential course that flows into the marsh of the Doñana National Park, an area that was declared a World Heritage Site in 1994. Before 1981, floods occurred, and the stream overflowed onto a floodplain. As an old alluvial fan, the floodplain has its singular orography and functionality. Fromthe floodplain, several drainage channels, locally called caño, discharged into themarsh. The Partido Streamhad themorphology of a caño and covered approximately 8 km from the old fan to the marsh. The stream was straightened and channelised in 1981 to cultivate the old fan. This resulted in floods that were concentrated between the banks in the following years, which caused the depth of water and the shear stress to increase, thus, scouring the river bed and river banks. In this case, the eroded materials were carried towards the marsh where a new alluvial fan evolved. Control measures on the old fan were implemented in 2006 to stop the development of the new alluvial fan downstream over the marsh. Thus, the stream would partially recover its original behaviour that it had before channelisation, moving forwards in a new, balanced state. The present study describes the geomorphological evolution that channelisation has caused since 1981 and the later slow process of recovery of the original hydraulic-sedimentation regime since 2006. Additionally, it deepens the understanding of the original hydraulic behaviour of the stream, combining field data and 2D simulations.