Compromising Spatial Quality: Modernity in the Era of National State Building in Cairo

The paper examines the imposition of western ideals of urbanism within colonial Cairo between1882-1952. It looks at the ideologies of capitalism, state control, and utopian idealism, which were vital tools to create modern built environments in the city. The argument is that principles of Western urbanism were at work and deeply influenced the institutional and professional practices of the Egyptian planners, who were mostly educated in Europe; however the outcomes revealed a major shift towards more inflexible solutions described as more open to compromise with the existing conditions. The paper analyses the case of a re-planning scheme drafted in the 1920s by the first Egyptian director of the Ministry of Town Planning under the British occupation. The scheme represented the superimposition of a western-style neighbourhood model on a historically rooted traditional quarter in Cairo. The paper largely relies on original archival materials, maps, documents and accounts to support the historical narrative of urban planning in Cairo. It reports that westernization approaches for planning Cairo were introduced to offer a new imagery representation, which remained central to the development of planning practices in postcolonial Egypt through different practical applications.

Early Implementation of Building Information Modeling into a Cold-Formed Steel Company: Providing Novel Project Management Techniques and Solutions to Industry

The ability of building information modeling (BIM) to positively impact projects in the AEC through greater collaboration and integration is widely acknowledged. This paper aims to examine the development of BIM and how it can contribute to the cold-formed steel (CFS) building industry. This is achieved through the adoption of a qualitative methodology encompassing a literature review, exploratory interviews with industry experts, culminating in the development of e-learning material for the sector. In doing so, the research team have collaborated with one of the United Kingdom’s largest cold-formed steel designer/fabricators. By demonstrating the capabilities of BIM software and providing technical and informative videos in its creation, this project has found two key outcomes. Firstly, to provide invaluable assistance in the transition from traditional processes to a fully collaborative 3D BIM as required by the UK Government under the “Government Construction Strategy” by 2016 in all public sector projects. Secondly, to demonstrate BIM’s potential not only within CFS companies, but also within the AEC sector as a whole. As the flexibility, adaptability and interoperability of BIM software is alluded to, the results indicate that the introduction and development of BIM and the underlying ethos suggests that it is a key tool in the development of the industry as a whole.

Local materials for building houses: laterite valorization in Africa

This paper presents the preliminary results of geological and geomechanical studies on the laterite stone exploited at Dano quarry in Burkina Faso. The field work described the geological structure of quarry sites and their environment to determine the rocks alteration and the links between the bedrock and lateritic material. Physic-mechanical properties have been studied for assessing the potentiality of this material for lightweight housing, to be completed with thermal and environmental considerations. Some social and economic evaluations are in progress in order to foster its utilization under local conditions.

Load Balanced Scalable Byzantine Agreement through Quorum Building, with Full Information

We address the problem of designing distributed algorithms for large scale networks that are robust to Byzantine faults. We consider a message passing, full information model: the adversary is malicious, controls a constant fraction of processors, and can view all messages in a round before sending out its own messages for that round. Furthermore, each bad processor may send an unlimited number of messages. The only constraint on the adversary is that it must choose its corrupt processors at the start, without knowledge of the processors’ private random bits.

A good quorum is a set of O(logn) processors, which contains a majority of good processors. In this paper, we give a synchronous algorithm which uses polylogarithmic time and Õ(vn) bits of communication per processor to bring all processors to agreement on a collection of n good quorums, solving Byzantine agreement as well. The collection is balanced in that no processor is in more than O(logn) quorums. This yields the first solution to Byzantine agreement which is both scalable and load-balanced in the full information model.

The technique which involves going from situation where slightly more than 1/2 fraction of processors are good and and agree on a short string with a constant fraction of random bits to a situation where all good processors agree on n good quorums can be done in a fully asynchronous model as well, providing an approach for extending the Byzantine agreement result to this model.

Local materials for building houses: Laterite valorization in Africa

This paper presents the preliminary results of geological and geomechanical studies on the laterite stone exploited at Dano quarry in Burkina Faso. The field work described the geological structure of quarry sites and their environment to determine the rocks alteration and the links between the bedrock and lateritic material. Physic-mechanical properties have been studied for assessing the potentiality of this material for lightweight housing, to be completed with thermal and environmental considerations. Some social and economic evaluations are in progress in order to foster its utilization under local conditions. © (2014) Trans Tech Publications, Switzerland.

Hygrothermal Features of Laterite Dimension Stones for Sub-Saharan Residential Building Construction

The building sector is widely recognized as having a major impact on sustainable development. Both in developed and developing countries, sustainability in buildings approaches are growing. Laterite dimension stone (LDS) is a building material that was traditionally used in sub-Saharan Africa, but its technical features still need to be assessed. This article presents some results of a study focused on the characterization of LDS exploited in Burkina Faso for building purposes. The measured average thermal conductivity is 0.51  W/mK, which increases with water content and evolves with the specific gravity and with porosity. Rock mineral phases (quartz, goethite, hematite, magnetite) are cemented by kaolinite. The porosity of the material is high (30%), with macropores visible on the surface and found in the rock inner structure as well. Results from the hygrothermal monitoring of a pilot building are also presented.

Comfort Care Rounds: A Staff Capacity-Building Initiative in Long-Term Care Homes

This article reports a pilot evaluation of Comfort Care Rounds (CCRs)-a strategy for addressing long-term care home staff's palliative and end-of-life care educational and support needs. Using a qualitative descriptive design, semistructured individual and focus group interviews were conducted to understand staff members' perspectives and feedback on the implementation and application of CCRs. Study participants identified that effective advertising, interest, and assigning staff to attend CCRs facilitated their participation. The key barriers to their attendance included difficulty in balancing heavy workloads and scheduling logistics. Interprofessional team member representation was sought but was not consistent. Study participants recognized the benefits of attending; however, they provided feedback on how the scheduling, content, and focus could be improved. Overall, study participants found CCRs to be beneficial to their palliative and end-of-life care knowledge, practice, and confidence. However, they identified barriers and recommendations, which warrant ongoing evaluation.

Public management, Peace-building and Creating Change: Shifting the Lens of Analysis from the Macro to the Micro

Considerable time, research money and expertise has been spent exploring the complex reality of ethno nationalist conflict and the role that public management plays in supporting the transition from violent conflict to stability, order and prosperity (Esman 1999; Guelke and Milton-Edwards 2000; Brinkerhoff 2005; Brinkerhoff, Wetterberg et al. 2012; Rao 2014). However, there seems to be a gap in relation to the practical challenges of managing change within, through and beyond such conflict. This paper aims to begin the process of putting a framework around the real experience of public management in conflict and transition by shifting the lens of analysis from macros concerns about sequencing interventions (Rao 2014) and legitimate requirements of security, stability and service delivery (Brinkerhoff, Wetterberg et al. 2012) to a micro analysis of the attitudes, behaviours, challenges and compromises held and faced by those public servants on the front line of conflict management and conflict transformation processes. Using senior managers as the unit of analysis and Northern Ireland as an embryonic case study, this paper discusses the links between ethno nationalist societal conflict, public sector reform and manager behaviour. In doing so, it highlights some initial data from an early pilot study into the experiences of individuals in significant public service roles at various stages of the NI conflict / peace process and draws some tentative conclusions about the viability of a wider study.

Seismic Assessment of a Steel Braced Plan Mass Symmetric/Asymmetric Building Structure

This paper presents a seismic response investigation into a code designed concentrically braced frame structure that is subjected to but not designed for in-plan mass eccentricity. The structure has an accidental uneven distribution of mass in plan resulting in an increased torsional component of vibration. The level of inelasticity that key structural elements in plan mass asymmetric structures are subjected to is important when analysing their ability to sustain uneven seismic demands. In-plan mass asymmetry of moment resisting frame and shear wall type structures have received significant investigation, however, the plan asymmetric response of braced frame type structures is less well understood. A three-dimensional non-linear time history analysis (NLTHA) model is created to capture the torsional response of the plan mass asymmetric structure to quantify the additional ductility demand, interstorey drifts and floor rotations. Results show that the plan mass asymmetric structure performs well in terms of ductility demand, but poorly in terms of interstorey drifts and floor rotations when compared to the plan mass symmetric structure. New linear relationships are developed between the normalised ductility demand and normalised slenderness of the bracing on the sides of the plan mass symmetric/asymmetric structures that the mass is distributed towards and away from.

Alkali Activated Fuel Ash and Slag Mixes:Optimization Study from Mortars to Concrete Building Blocks

Alkali activated binders, based on ash and slag, also known as geopolymers, can play a key role in reducing the carbon footprint of the construction sector by replacing ordinary Portland cement in some concretes. Since 1970s, research effort has been ongoing in many research institutions. In this study, pulverized fuel ash (PFA) from a UK power plant, ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBS) and combinations of the two have been investigated as geopolymer binders for concrete applications. Activators used were sodium hydroxide and sodium silicate solutions. Mortars with sand/binder ratio of 2.75 with several PFA and GGBS combinations have been mixed and tested. The optimization of alkali dosage (defined as the Na2O/binder mass ratio) and modulus (defined as the Na2O/SiO2 mass ratio) resulted in strengths in excess of 70 MPa for tested mortars. Setting time and workability have been considered for the identification of the best combination of PFA/GGBS and alkali activator dosage for different precast concrete products. Geopolymer concrete building blocks have been replicated in laboratory and a real scale factory trial has been successfully carried out. Ongoing microstructural characterization is aiming to identify reaction products arising from PFA/GGBS combinations.