Occupant health and productivity : an Australian perspective

The issue of whether improved building services such as air quality, provision of daylight, thermal comfort etc, have a positive impact on the health and productivity of building occupants is still an open question. There is significant anecdotal evidence supporting the notion that health and productivity of building occupants can be improved by improving the quality of the indoor environment, but there are actually few published quantitative studies to substantiate this contention. This paper reports on a comprehensive review of the worldwide literature which relates health of building occupants with the different aspects of the indoor environment which are believed to impact of these issues, with a particular focus on studies in Australia, The paper analyses the existing research and identifies the key deficiencies in our existing understanding of this problem. The key focus of this research is office and school buildings, but the scope of the literature surveyed includes all commercial buildings, including industrial buildings. There is a notable absence of detailed studies on this link in Australian buildings, although there are studies on thermal comfort, and a number of studies on indoor air quality in Australia, which do not make the connection to health and productivity. Many international studies have focused on improved lighting, and in particular the provision of daylight in buildings, but again there are few studies in Australia which focus in this area.

Assessing health risk associated with airborne polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons by chemometrics and toxic equivalency factors

Some polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are ubiquitous in air and have been implicated as carcinogenic materials. Therefore, literature is replete with studies that are focused on their occurrence and profiles in indoor and outdoor air samples. However, because the relative potency of individual PAHs vary widely, health risks associated with the presence of PAHs in a particular environment cannot be extrapolated directly from the concentrations of individual PAHs in that environment. In addition, database on the potency of PAH mixtures is currently limited. In this paper, we have utilized multi-criteria decision making methods (MCDMs) to simultaneously correlate PAH-related health risk in some microenvironments to the concentration levels, ethoxyresorufin-O-deethylase (EROD) activity induction equivalency factors and toxic equivalency factors (TEFs) of PAHs found in those microenvironments. The results showed that the relative risk associated with PAHs in different air samples depends on the index used. Nevertheless, this approach offers a promising tool that could help identify microenvironments of concern and assist the prioritisation of control strategies.

A model for assessing and correcting construction project health

Abstract Maintaining the health of a construction project can help to achieve the desired outcomes of the project. An analogy is drawn to the medical process of a human health check where it is possible to broadly diagnose health in terms of a number of key areas such as blood pressure or cholesterol level. Similarly it appears possible to diagnose the current health of a construction project in terms of a number of Critical Success Factors (CSFs) and key performance indicators (KPIs). The medical analogy continues into the detailed investigation phase where a number of contributing factors are evaluated to identify possible causes of ill health and through the identification of potential remedies to return the project to the desired level of health. This paper presents the development of a model that diagnoses the immediate health of a construction project, investigates the factors which appear to be causing the ill health and proposes a remedy to return the project to good health. The proposed model uses the well-established continuous improvement management model (Deming, 1986) to adapt the process of human physical health checking to construction project health.

A large-scale computing infrastructure for design education

Most departmental computing infrastructure reflects the state of networking technology and available funds at the time of construction, which converge in a preconceived notion of homogeneity of network architecture and usage patterns. The DMAN (Digital Media Access Network) project, a large-scale server and network foundation for the Hong Kong Polytechnic University's School of Design was created as a platform that would support a highly complex academic environment while giving maximum freedom to students, faculty and researchers through simplicity and ease of use. As a centralized multi-user computation backbone, DMAN faces an extremely hetrogeneous user and application profile, exceeding implementation and maintenance challenges of typical enterprise, and even most academic server set-ups. This paper sumarizes the specification, implementation and application of the system while describing its significance for design education in a computational context.

Ubiquitous infrastructure : urban infrastructure planning and management experience of Korea

Urban infrastructure development in Korea has recently shifted from an old paradigm of conventional infrastructure planning to a new paradigm of intelligent infrastructure provision. This new paradigm, so called ubiquitous infrastructure, is based on a combination of urban infrastructure, information and communication technologies and digital networks. Ubiquitous infrastructure basically refers to an urban infrastructure where any citizen could access any infrastructure and services via any electronic device regardless of time and location. This paper introduces this new paradigm of intellectual infrastructure planning and its design schemes. The paper also examines the ubiquitous infrastructure development in Korea and discusses the positive effects of ubiquitous infrastructure on sustainable urban development.

The MESH book : landscape / infrastructure

Resulting from a series of student-run 'Edge' conferences that have been held in Australia and New Zealand (beginning at RMIT in 1983), The Mesh Book is a collection of essays grouped into themes of Invisible Infrastructures (systems of belief), Immanent Infrastructures (natural systems) and Present Infrastructures (roads and services). Ranging from esoteric discussions to analytical case studies, the book assembles a broad spectrum of ideas on the landscape within the context of Australia and a contemporary study of place.