The impact of information and communications technology on commercial real estate in the new economy

Purpose – This paper seeks to critically review the conceptual frameworks that have been developed for assessing the impact of information and communications technology (ICT) on real estate. Design/methodology/approach – The research is based on a critical review of existing literature and draws from examples of previous empirical research in the field. Findings – The paper suggests that a “socio-technical framework” is more appropriate to examine ICT impact in real estate than other “deterministic” frameworks. Therefore, ICT is an important part of the new economy, but must be seen in the context of a number of other social and economic factors. Research limitations/implications – The research is based on a qualitative assessment of existing frameworks, and by using examples from commercial real estate, assesses the extent to which a “socio-technical” framework can aid understanding of ICT impact. Practical implications – The paper is important in highlighting a number of the main issues in conceptualising ICT impact in real estate and also critically examines the emergence of a new economy in the information society within the general context of real estate. The paper also highlights research gaps in the field. Originality/value – The paper deconstructs the myths of the “death of real estate” and “productivity increase means jobs loss”, in relation to office real estate. Finally, it examines some of the ways in which ICT is impacting on real estate and suggests the most important components for a future research agenda in the field of ICT and real estate impact, and will be of value to property investors, facilities managers, developers, financiers, and others.

Towards the design of a unified semantics model for OLTP and OLAP systems

The concepts of on-line transactional processing (OLTP) and on-line analytical processing (OLAP) are often confused with the technologies or models that are used to design transactional and analytics based information systems. This in some way has contributed to existence of gaps between the semantics in information captured during transactional processing and information stored for analytical use. In this paper, we propose the use of a unified semantics design model, as a solution to help bridge the semantic gaps between data captured by OLTP systems and the information provided by OLAP systems. The central focus of this design approach is on enabling business intelligence using not just data, but data with context.

A unified theory of balance in the extratropics

Many physical systems exhibit dynamics with vastly different time scales. Often the different motions interact only weakly and the slow dynamics is naturally constrained to a subspace of phase space, in the vicinity of a slow manifold. In geophysical fluid dynamics this reduction in phase space is called balance. Classically, balance is understood by way of the Rossby number R or the Froude number F; either R ≪ 1 or F ≪ 1. We examined the shallow-water equations and Boussinesq equations on an f -plane and determined a dimensionless parameter _, small values of which imply a time-scale separation. In terms of R and F, ∈= RF/√(R^2+R^2 ) We then developed a unified theory of (extratropical) balance based on _ that includes all cases of small R and/or small F. The leading-order systems are ensured to be Hamiltonian and turn out to be governed by the quasi-geostrophic potential-vorticity equation. However, the height field is not necessarily in geostrophic balance, so the leading-order dynamics are more general than in quasi-geostrophy. Thus the quasi-geostrophic potential-vorticity equation (as distinct from the quasi-geostrophic dynamics) is valid more generally than its traditional derivation would suggest. In the case of the Boussinesq equations, we have found that balanced dynamics generally implies hydrostatic balance without any assumption on the aspect ratio; only when the Froude number is not small and it is the Rossby number that guarantees a timescale separation must we impose the requirement of a small aspect ratio to ensure hydrostatic balance.

A unified neurofuzzy model for classification

This work proposes a unified neurofuzzy modelling scheme. To begin with, the initial fuzzy base construction method is based on fuzzy clustering utilising a Gaussian mixture model (GMM) combined with the analysis of covariance (ANOVA) decomposition in order to obtain more compact univariate and bivariate membership functions over the subspaces of the input features. The mean and covariance of the Gaussian membership functions are found by the expectation maximisation (EM) algorithm with the merit of revealing the underlying density distribution of system inputs. The resultant set of membership functions forms the basis of the generalised fuzzy model (GFM) inference engine. The model structure and parameters of this neurofuzzy model are identified via the supervised subspace orthogonal least square (OLS) learning. Finally, instead of providing deterministic class label as model output by convention, a logistic regression model is applied to present the classifier’s output, in which the sigmoid type of logistic transfer function scales the outputs of the neurofuzzy model to the class probability. Experimental validation results are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed neurofuzzy modelling scheme.

A unified theory of available potential energy

Traditional derivations of available potential energy, in a variety of contexts, involve combining some form of mass conservation together with energy conservation. This raises the questions of why such constructions are required in the first place, and whether there is some general method of deriving the available potential energy for an arbitrary fluid system. By appealing to the underlying Hamiltonian structure of geophysical fluid dynamics, it becomes clear why energy conservation is not enough, and why other conservation laws such as mass conservation need to be incorporated in order to construct an invariant, known as the pseudoenergy, that is a positive‐definite functional of disturbance quantities. The available potential energy is just the non‐kinetic part of the pseudoenergy, the construction of which follows a well defined algorithm. Two notable features of the available potential energy defined thereby are first, that it is a locally defined quantity, and second, that it is inherently definable at finite amplitude (though one may of course always take the small‐amplitude limit if this is appropriate). The general theory is made concrete by systematic derivations of available potential energy in a number of different contexts. All the well known expressions are recovered, and some new expressions are obtained. The possibility of generalizing the concept of available potential energy to dynamically stable basic flows (as opposed to statically stable basic states) is also discussed.

Ice internal friction: Standard theoretical perspectives on friction codified, adapted for the unusual rheology of ice, and unified

Sea ice contains flaws including frictional contacts. We aim to describe quantitatively the mechanics of those contacts, providing local physics for geophysical models. With a focus on the internal friction of ice, we review standard micro-mechanical models of friction. The solid's deformation under normal load may be ductile or elastic. The shear failure of the contact may be by ductile flow, brittle fracture, or melting and hydrodynamic lubrication. Combinations of these give a total of six rheological models. When the material under study is ice, several of the rheological parameters in the standard models are not constant, but depend on the temperature of the bulk, on the normal stress under which samples are pressed together, or on the sliding velocity and acceleration. This has the effect of making the shear stress required for sliding dependent on sliding velocity, acceleration, and temperature. In some cases, it also perturbs the exponent in the normal-stress dependence of that shear stress away from the value that applies to most materials. We unify the models by a principle of maximum displacement for normal deformation, and of minimum stress for shear failure, reducing the controversy over the mechanism of internal friction in ice to the choice of values of four parameters in a single model. The four parameters represent, for a typical asperity contact, the sliding distance required to expel melt-water, the sliding distance required to break contact, the normal strain in the asperity, and the thickness of any ductile shear zone.

In vitro batch cultures of gut microbiota from healthy and ulcerative colitis (UC) subjects suggest that sulphate-reducing bacteria levels are raised in UC and by a protein-rich diet.

Imbalances in gut microbiota composition during ulcerative colitis (UC) indicate a role for the microbiota in propagating the disorder. Such effects were investigated using in vitro batch cultures (with/without mucin, peptone or starch) inoculated with faecal slurries from healthy or UC patients; the growth of five bacterial groups was monitored along with short-chain fatty acid (SCFA) production. Healthy cultures gave two-fold higher growth and SCFA levels with up to ten-fold higher butyrate production. Starch gave the highest growth and SCFA production (particularly butyrate), indicating starch-enhanced saccharolytic activity. Sulphate-reducing bacteria (SRB) were the predominant bacterial group (of five examined) for UC inocula whereas they were the minority group for the healthy inocula. Furthermore, SRB growth was stimulated by peptone presumably due to the presence of sulphur-rich amino acids. The results suggest raised SRB levels in UC, which could contribute to the condition through release of toxic sulphide.

Palaeovegetation (Communications arising): diversity of temperate plants in east Asia

The exceptionally broad species diversity of vascular plant genera in east Asian temperate forests, compared with their sister taxa in North America, has been attributed to the greater climatic diversity of east Asia, combined with opportunities for allopatric speciation afforded by repeated fragmentation and coalescence of populations through Late Cenozoic ice-age cycles1. According to Qian and Ricklefs1, these opportunities occurred in east Asia because temperate forests extended across the continental shelf to link populations in China, Korea and Japan during glacial periods, whereas higher sea levels during interglacial periods isolated these regions and warmer temperatures restricted temperate taxa to disjunct refuges. However, palaeovegetation data from east Asia2, 3, 4, 5, 6 show that temperate forests were considerably less extensive than today during the Last Glacial Maximum, calling into question the coalescence of tree populations required by the hypothesis of Qian and Ricklefs1.

The Met Office unified model global atmosphere 4.0 and JULES global land 4.0 configurations

We describe Global Atmosphere 4.0 (GA4.0) and Global Land 4.0 (GL4.0): configurations of the Met Office Unified Model and JULES (Joint UK Land Environment Simulator) community land surface model developed for use in global and regional climate research and weather prediction activities. GA4.0 and GL4.0 are based on the previous GA3.0 and GL3.0 configurations, with the inclusion of developments made by the Met Office and its collaborators during its annual development cycle. This paper provides a comprehensive technical and scientific description of GA4.0 and GL4.0 as well as details of how these differ from their predecessors. We also present the results of some initial evaluations of their performance. Overall, performance is comparable with that of GA3.0/GL3.0; the updated configurations include improvements to the science of several parametrisation schemes, however, and will form a baseline for further ongoing development.

Unified framework for construction of rule based classification systems

Automatic generation of classification rules has been an increasingly popular technique in commercial applications such as Big Data analytics, rule based expert systems and decision making systems. However, a principal problem that arises with most methods for generation of classification rules is the overfit-ting of training data. When Big Data is dealt with, this may result in the generation of a large number of complex rules. This may not only increase computational cost but also lower the accuracy in predicting further unseen instances. This has led to the necessity of developing pruning methods for the simplification of rules. In addition, classification rules are used further to make predictions after the completion of their generation. As efficiency is concerned, it is expected to find the first rule that fires as soon as possible by searching through a rule set. Thus a suit-able structure is required to represent the rule set effectively. In this chapter, the authors introduce a unified framework for construction of rule based classification systems consisting of three operations on Big Data: rule generation, rule simplification and rule representation. The authors also review some existing methods and techniques used for each of the three operations and highlight their limitations. They introduce some novel methods and techniques developed by them recently. These methods and techniques are also discussed in comparison to existing ones with respect to efficient processing of Big Data.

Channel equalization for indoor lighting communications networks

We consider indoors communications networks using modulated LEDs to transmit the information packets. A generic indoor channel equalization formulation is proposed assuming the existence of both line of sight and diffuse emitters. The proposed approach is of relevance to emergent indoors distributed sensing modalities for which various lighting based network communications protocols are considered.

Acoustic scattering : high frequency boundary element methods and unified transform methods

We describe some recent advances in the numerical solution of acoustic scattering problems. A major focus of the paper is the efficient solution of high frequency scattering problems via hybrid numerical-asymptotic boundary element methods. We also make connections to the unified transform method due to A. S. Fokas and co-authors, analysing particular instances of this method, proposed by J. A. De-Santo and co-authors, for problems of acoustic scattering by diffraction gratings.

A unified approach to the recognition of complex actions from sequences of zone-crossings

We present a method for the recognition of complex actions. Our method combines automatic learning of simple actions and manual definition of complex actions in a single grammar. Contrary to the general trend in complex action recognition that consists in dividing recognition into two stages, our method performs recognition of simple and complex actions in a unified way. This is performed by encoding simple action HMMs within the stochastic grammar that models complex actions. This unified approach enables a more effective influence of the higher activity layers into the recognition of simple actions which leads to a substantial improvement in the classification of complex actions. We consider the recognition of complex actions based on person transits between areas in the scene. As input, our method receives crossings of tracks along a set of zones which are derived using unsupervised learning of the movement patterns of the objects in the scene. We evaluate our method on a large dataset showing normal, suspicious and threat behaviour on a parking lot. Experiments show an improvement of ~ 30% in the recognition of both high-level scenarios and their composing simple actions with respect to a two-stage approach. Experiments with synthetic noise simulating the most common tracking failures show that our method only experiences a limited decrease in performance when moderate amounts of noise are added.

A coupled cloud physics–radiation parameterization of the bulk optical properties of cirrus and its impact on the Met Office unified model global atmosphere 5.0 configuration

A new coupled cloud physics–radiation parameterization of the bulk optical properties of ice clouds is presented. The parameterization is consistent with assumptions in the cloud physics scheme regarding particle size distributions (PSDs) and mass–dimensional relationships. The parameterization is based on a weighted ice crystal habit mixture model, and its bulk optical properties are parameterized as simple functions of wavelength and ice water content (IWC). This approach directly couples IWC to the bulk optical properties, negating the need for diagnosed variables, such as the ice crystal effective dimension. The parameterization is implemented into the Met Office Unified Model Global Atmosphere 5.0 (GA5) configuration. The GA5 configuration is used to simulate the annual 20-yr shortwave (SW) and longwave (LW) fluxes at the top of the atmosphere (TOA), as well as the temperature structure of the atmosphere, under various microphysical assumptions. The coupled parameterization is directly compared against the current operational radiation parameterization, while maintaining the same cloud physics assumptions. In this experiment, the impacts of the two parameterizations on the SW and LW radiative effects at TOA are also investigated and compared against observations. The 20-yr simulations are compared against the latest observations of the atmospheric temperature and radiative fluxes at TOA. The comparisons demonstrate that the choice of PSD and the assumed ice crystal shape distribution are as important as each other. Moreover, the consistent radiation parameterization removes a long-standing tropical troposphere cold temperature bias but slightly warms the southern midlatitudes by about 0.5 K.

The Met Office Unified Model Global Atmosphere 3.0/3.1 and JULES Global Land 3.0/3.1 configurations

We describe Global Atmosphere 3.0 (GA3.0): a configuration of the Met Office Unified Model (MetUM) developed for use across climate research and weather prediction activities. GA3.0 has been formulated by converging the development paths of the Met Office's weather and climate global atmospheric model components such that wherever possible, atmospheric processes are modelled or parametrized seamlessly across spatial resolutions and timescales. This unified development process will provide the Met Office and its collaborators with regular releases of a configuration that has been evaluated, and can hence be applied, over a variety of modelling régimes. We also describe Global Land 3.0 (GL3.0): a configuration of the JULES community land surface model developed for use with GA3.0.