Developing an ‘as performing’ building assessment

The building profession is increasingly becoming more demanding with respect to building environmental performance. Intentions are to provide best practices into our buildings. In part, this is a response due to the Australian government and other independent organisations that have developed policy on rating tools and performance ranking measures, all with the intention of accomplishing environmentally sustainable buildings.

With rating systems endorsing innovative environmental design solutions, it could be asked: Are our buildings really operating as rated? Do we know whether our designs are in compliance with what was calculated or simulated? Is there a feedback loop informing the design process on successes or failures in our designs or mechanical services?

While ratings continue to focus on ‘by design’ or ‘as built’ rewards, few tools acknowledge perhaps the more crucial bottom line: ‘as performing’. With the exception of an AGBR (Australian Green Building Rating) scheme on actual annual energy consumption, there appears to be no ‘as performing’ assessment. Furthermore, practically every building is a prototype (a one-off) and requires commissioning, programming and scheduling of its services. It would certainly appear that as stakeholders (the procurers, owners, facilities managers and users) of the newly built environment, that what we really want to know is actual on-site confirmation of performance. It is the objective of the Mobile Architecture and Built Environment Laboratory (MABEL), to provide such a service.

International comparison of sustainable rating tools

This paper undertakes an international comparison of global sustainability tools and examines their characteristics and differences. Most importantly, it focuses on which tools from different countries can be directly compared with each other (i.e., is a five-star building with one rating system directly comparable with a four-star rating of another rating system?). The results are designed to provide some clarification of the assessment tools for sustainable buildings, which in turn will assist investors, developers, tenants, and government bodies in making
informed decisions about green buildings. In addition, it is envisaged that removing some of the uncertainty associated with sustainable buildings will increase transparency for stakeholders and facilitate their acceptance.

A performance testing framework for digital forensic tools

This thesis surveys the latest development of digital forensic tools designed for anti-cybercrime purposes. It discusses the necessity of testing the digital forensics tools, and presents a novel testing framework. This new testing framework takes the viewpoint of software vendors rather than traditional software engineering approaches.

The compliance of Australian preventative detention law with article 9(1) ICCPR

This thesis found that a provision of Australia's counter-terrorism policy, preventative detention, does not comply with a major international treaty, the ICCPR. This thesis provides an alternative model by which the Australian Government could achieve the legitimate purposes of preventative detention within the existing constraints of the Australian criminal law.

Body build : its influence on anthropometric measurements, fat distribution, body composition and carbohydrate metabolism

Examines the interrelationships between body build and body composition and carbohydrate and lipid metabolism in healthy young men and women. Results indicate that in women a low relative sitting height may be an early marker of susceptibility to abdominal obesity and its consequences, non insulin dependent diabetes and coronary heart disease.

Compliance and conformity or confidence restored? : job clubs and becoming employed

A case study of the Job Club Program for unemployed people, as it was run in a single location in Victoria, Australia. Documents and describes the views of those involved and explores their perceptions of the successes and failures of the program.

Design tools for event-driven software systems

Proposes a design method for the development of software in Visual BASIC whose programming environment is multi-paradigm. Extensions to structure charts and pseudocode to incorporate the three paradigms have been developed based on the premise that procedural models, event-driven forms and objects are mutually exclusive in operation.

Robust correctness testing for digital forensic tools

In previous work, the authors presented a theoretical lower bound on the required number of testing runs for performance testing of digital forensic tools. We also demonstrated a practical method of testing showing how to tolerate both measurement and random errors in order to achieve results close to this bound. In this paper, we extend the previous work to the situation of correctness testing. The contribution of this methodology enables the tester to achieve correctness testing results of high quality from a manageable number of observations and in a dynamic but controllable way. This is of particular interest to forensic testers who do not have access to sophisticated equipment and who can allocate only a small amount of time to testing.

Robust performance testing for digital forensic tools

In previous work, the authors presented a theoretical lower bound on the required number of testing runs for performance testing of digital forensic tools. However, experimental errors are inevitable in laboratory settings, occurring as measurement errors or as random errors and can result in practical situations where the number of testing runs is far from the theoretical bound. This paper adapts our former work to tolerate such errors in the testing results. The contribution of our new methodology enables the tester to achieve performance testing results of high quality from a manageable number of observations and in a dynamic but controllable way. This is of particular interest to forensic testers who do not have access to sophisticated equipment and who can allocate only a small amount of time to testing.

The clinical utility of a suite of continence assessment tools for use in residential aged care facilities

According to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, 80% of direct care in nursing homes in the USA is provided by workforce that has least formal education about patient care (1). This situation is echoed in Australian residential aged care facilities where the day-to-day management is largely provided by unregulated workers (i.e. nursing assistants, personal carers and nursing aides) and is overseen by registered nurses. Some facilities additionally have access to expert advice from continence nurse advisors. In order to assist the residential aged care workforce to provide continence care that is evidence-based, a team of researchers developed and trialled a suite of continence assessment tools that were mainly targeted to unregulated workers. This paper presents information on the development of the tools (Stage 1) and on their evaluation (Stage 2).