Transforming pedagogy: Building the new ‘old school’

Global shifts in design practice, design education and in higher education in general have radically changed teaching practices over the past decade. In a time of tightening budgets and other factors, various paradigm shifts and challenges are continually evolving and rapidly changing the higher education landscape. Rising to these challenges and responding to them is a complex task, requiring creative approaches applied to traditional methods and tools in interior architecture and interior design courses. The focus of this paper is a discussion of the adaptation of an ‘old school’ traditional tutorial approach within the context of online interior design education, which was applied in an endeavour to increase student engagement with current relevant literature pertinent to interior design theory and practice. The adaptation and application of this tutorial approach, the O-tutorial, creates a necessary link to critical thinking and meta-cognition connecting theoretical concepts to interior design process and practice. Initial data reveals that the O-tutorial allows students to engage and critically analyse issues surrounding theory and practice, thus equipping them with the skills as future design professionals. The paper concludes with reflections and recommendations for interior design education and future potential use and application of the O-tutorial.

Field performance of in-service cast iron water reticulation pipe buried in reactive clay

Field monitoring is an important means for understanding soil behaviour and its interaction with buried structures such as pipeline. This paper details the successful instrumentation of a section of an in-service cast iron water main buried in an area of reactive clay where frequent water pipe breakage has been observed. The instrumentation included measurement of pipe strain; pipe water pressure and temperature; soil pressure, temperature, moisture content and matric suction, as well as the meteorological conditions on site. The data generally indicated that changes in soil temperature, suction and moisture content were directly related to the local climatic variations. The suction and moisture content data indicated that the soil profile at the site down to around 700 mm, and probably down to 1000 mm, is affected by changes in surface weather, while soil conditions below this depth appear to be more stable. Analysis of pipe strain indicated that the pipe behaves like a cantilever beam, with the top experiencing predominantly tensile strains during summer. Subsequently, these trends reduce to compressive strains as soil swelling occurs due to increase of moisture content with the onset of winter.

Numerical modeling of thin steel roof battens under wind uplift loads

Extreme wind events such as tropical cyclones, tornadoes and storms are more likely to impact the Australian coastal regions due to possible climate changes. Such events can be extremely destructive to building structures, in particular, low-rise buildings with lightweight roofing systems that are commonly made of thin steel roofing sheets and battens. Large wind uplift loads that act on the roofs during high wind events often cause premature roof connection failures. Recent wind damage investigations have shown that roof failures have mostly occurred at the batten to rafter or truss screw connections. In most of these cases, the screw fastener heads pulled through the bottom flanges of thin steel roof battens. This roof connection failure is very critical as both roofing sheets and battens will be lost during the high wind events. Hence, a research study was conducted to investigate this critical pull-through failure using both experimental and numerical methods. This paper presents the details of numerical modeling and the results.

Emerging issues for road construction and maintenance – A futuristic view

In the coming decades the design, construction and maintenance of roads will face a range of new issues and as such will require a number of new approaches. In particular, road authorities will be required to consider and respond to a range of issues related to climate change, and associated extreme weather events, such as the extensive flooding in January 2011 in Queensland, Australia Figure 1). Coupled with diminishing access to road construction supplies (such as aggregate), water scarcity, and the potential for increases in oil and electricity prices, this range of challenges bear little resemblance to those previously faced. In Australia, state and federal authorities face further pressures given the variety of needs resulting from the country's geographical and population diversity, expansive road networks, road freight requirements and relatively small population base.

Reducing environmental pressures of road building

Although road construction and use provides significant economic and social benefits its environmental impact is of growing concern. Roads are one of the greatest greenhouse gas contributors both directly through fossil energy consumed in mining, transporting, earthworks, and paving work, along with in-direct emissions from road use by vehicles. This discussion paper will outline opportunities within the Australian context for reducing environmental pressure in road building and consider the future environmental impacts of road projects.

Understanding pressures on the future of roads: A sustainable built environment National Research Centre Discussion Paper

According to the Australian Government, when combined with expected population growth and internal migration, expected changes in temperature and rainfall are expected to increase road maintenance costs by over 30 percent by 2100. This presents a significant future economic risk, in response, this paper will discuss the potential for roads to improve their resilience to the impacts of climate change and other key pressures. The paper will also highlight how such measures can inform state and national main road infrastructure planning and reduce future associated risks and costs.

Tuning in to a deeper wisdom

In 2005, natural sequence farming founder Peter Andrews was featured on ABC TV’s Australian Story, since voted one of the top five episodes of the last 10 years. His book Back from the Brink is a national bestseller. Why are Andrews’ ideas attracting so much attention?

The future of roads: How road agencies are facing a conflicted future

Although road construction and use provides significant economic and social benefits, its environmental impact is of growing concern. Roads are one of the greatest greenhouse gas contributors, both directly through fossil energy consumed in mining, transporting, earthworks and paving work, and through the emissions from road use by vehicles. Further,according to the Australian Government, when combined with expected population growth and internal migration,expected changes in temperature and rainfall are expected to increase road maintenance costs. This discussion paper will outline opportunities within the Australian context for reducing environmental and carbon pressure from road building, and provide a framework for considering the potential pressures that will affect the resilience of roads to the impacts of climate change and oil vulnerability.

Understanding the performance of green commercial buildings: a Sustainable Built Environment National Research Centre (SBEnrc) briefing report

Efforts to reduce carbon emissions in the buildings sector have been focused on encouraging green design, construction and building operation; however, the business case is not very compelling if considering the energy cost savings alone. In recent years green building has been driven by a sense that it will improve the productivity of occupants,something with much greater economic returns than energy savings. Reducing energy demand in green commercial buildings in a way that encourages greater productivity is not yet well understood as it involves a set of complex and interdependent factors. This project investigates these factors and focuses on the performance of and interaction between: green design elements, internal environmental quality, occupant experience, tenant/leasing agreements, and building regulation and management. This paper suggests six areas of strategic research that are needed to understand how conditions can be created to support productivity in green buildings, and deliver significant energy consumption reductions.

The future of roads: Reducing environmental pressures and the management of carbon

Although road construction and use provides significant economic and social benefits, its environmental impact is of growing concern. Roads are one of the greatest greenhouse gas contributors, both directly through fossil energy consumed in mining, transporting, earthworks and paving work, plus the emissions from road use by vehicles. Further, according to the Australian Government, when combined with forecast population growth, internal migration and changes in temperature and rainfall, these are expected to increase road maintenance costs. This discussion paper outlines opportunities within the Australian context for reducing environmental and carbon pressure from road building, and provides a framework for considering the potential future pressures that will affect the resilience of roads to the impacts of climate change and oil vulnerability. Seven strategic areas are outlined for further investigation, including a guide to carbon management for road agencies covering planning, funding, procurement, delivery and maintenance of roads.

Reducing the environmental impact of road construction

The practice of road construction and maintenance is inherently lean and efficient; a result of the economic benefits that are gained by minimizing wasted resources. In this age of conservation and environmental management, the inbuilt sustainability of existing road construction practices is being developed and extended to produce variety of environmentally sustainable options. A new concept of a “sustainable road” has emerged through both academia and industry, and is defined to be a road that is: - constructed to reduce environmental impacts; - designed to optimise the alignment (vertical and horizontal including considerations of ecological constraints and operational use by vehicles); - resilient to future environmental and economic pressures (e.g. climate change and resource scarcity); - adaptable to changing uses including increased travel volumes, greater demand for public and active (cycling and walking) transport, and; - able to harvest the energy to power itself.

Scenario planning and emerging global trends for the future of roads and automobile transport

Roads and road infrastructure will be faced with multiple challenges over the coming decades – challenges that in many ways bear little resemblance to those previously faced - and as such will require new approaches. The opportunity exists to transform the way road infrastructure is conceived and constructed, as a key part of the process of assisting society to respond to climate change and reduce other environmental pressures. Innovations in road construction, use and management in order to manage these changes can now be seen. Scenario planning is one tool that can take into account emerging challenges, develop or adopt new approaches, and thus help this transformation to occur. The paper explores scenario planning methodologies, global innovations and trends in road construction and maintenance and the findings from stakeholder workshops in Brisbane and Perth. It highlights key opportunities for road agencies to use scenarios to enable planning that, in the face of future uncertainties, facilitates appropriate responses.

How will the future of roads be navigated?

In the coming decades the design, construction and maintenance of roads will face a range of new challenges - that in many ways will bear little resemblance to the challenges previously faced - and as such will require a number of new approaches. Such challenges will result from a growing number of interconnected environmental, social and economic factors, which are set to apply significant pressure on the future of roads. For instance, environmental pressures will include the impacts of climate change on rainfall patterns and temperature profiles; economic pressure will be affected by shifting global economic balances and flows, and will include materials and resources shortages, along with predicted increases in energy and resource prices globally,i and social pressures will include potential shifts to lighter vehicles, reduced use of cars due to higher fuel costs, and political pressure to respond to climate change.

Human factors evaluation of a novel Australian approach for activating railway level crossings

There are currently 23,500 level crossings in Australia, broadly divided active level crossings with flashing lights; and passive level crossings controlled by stop and give way signs. The current strategy is to annually upgrade passive level crossings with active controls within a given budget, but the 5,900 public passive crossings are too numerous to be upgraded all. The rail industry is considering alternative options to treat more crossings. One of them is to use lower cost equipment with reduced safety integrity level, but with a design that would fail to a safe state: in case of the impossibility for the system to know whether a train is approaching, the crossing changes to a passive crossing. This is implemented by having a STOP sign coming in front of the flashing lights. While such design is considered safe in terms of engineering design, questions remain on human factors. In order to evaluate whether such approach is safe, we conducted a driving simulator study where participants were familiarized with the new active crossing, before changing the signage to a passive crossing. Our results show that drivers treated the new crossing as an active crossing after the novelty effect had passed. While most participants did not experience difficulties with the crossing being turned back to a passive crossing, a number of participants experienced difficulties stopping in time at the first encounter of such passive crossing. Worse, a number of drivers never realized the signage had changed, highlighting the link between the decision to brake and stop at an active crossing to the lights flashing. Such results show the potential human factor issues of changing an active crossing to a passive crossing in case of failure of the detection of the train.