Building digital capability: the six elements defined

A digital capability framework which describes the skills needed by staff in a wide range of academic, administrative and professional roles to thrive in a digital environment. This will provide a structure to help managers and individuals understand what is needed and supports the development of tools. We have produced an initial model of the framework which describes digital capability as six overlapping elements.

Building digital capability: Example teacher profile

This is a version of the Jisc ‘Six Elements of Digital Capabilities’ model, specifically for teaching sta or for academic sta in their teaching role. It is an update on the earlier ‘7 elements of digital literacy’ model (2009) and has many continuities with this framework. This version was produced in response to feedback that the base model alone does not provide enough detail to support embedding into practice. However, it is an example of how the base model could be used to define the digital capabilities of teaching sta and is meant to be adapted to suit specific settings.

Deepening digital know-how: building digital talent

This report covers findings from a project funded by Jisc to review how the digital capabilities of teaching and professional sta are currently framed in UK HE and FE. The project also reported on the learning, technology and organisational landscape for UK HE and FE as this influences future requirements for sta digital capability.

Building fish enclosure in Lake Nasser

This document is part of a series of 5 technical manuals produced by the Challenge Program Project CP34 “Improved fisheries productivity and management in tropical reservoirs”. This manual is based on the experience gained by the partners of the project “Improved Fisheries Productivity and Management in Tropical Reservoirs” (CP34) funded by the Challenge Program on Water and Food. As part of this project, the partners designed, developed and tested in the field three enclosures in Lake Nasser in Egypt. The objective of the manual is to document for practitioners the main technical lessons gained from these experiments. (Document contains 16 pages)

A Featureless Approach to 3D Polyhedral Building Modeling from Aerial Images

This paper presents a model-based approach for reconstructing 3D polyhedral building models from aerial images. The proposed approach exploits some geometric and photometric properties resulting from the perspective projection of planar structures. Data are provided by calibrated aerial images. The novelty of the approach lies in its featurelessness and in its use of direct optimization based on image rawbrightness. The proposed framework avoids feature extraction and matching. The 3D polyhedral model is directly estimated by optimizing an objective function that combines an image-based dissimilarity measure and a gradient score over several aerial images. The optimization process is carried out by the Differential Evolution algorithm. The proposed approach is intended to provide more accurate 3D reconstruction than feature-based approaches. Fast 3D model rectification and updating can take advantage of the proposed method. Several results and evaluations of performance from real and synthetic images show the feasibility and robustness of the proposed approach.

Building a sustainable community of coastal leaders to deal with sea level rise and inundation

Sea level rise and inundation were stated to be the highest priorities in the community-developed Ocean Research Priorities Plan and Implementation Strategy in 2005. Although they remain stated priorities, very few resources have been allocated towards this challenge. Inundation poses a substantial risk to many coastal communities, and the risk is projected to increase because of continued development, changes in the frequency and intensity of inundation events, and acceleration in the rate of sea-level rise along our vulnerable shorelines. (PDF contains 4 pages) There is an increasing urgency for federal and state governments to focus on the local and regional levels and consistently provide the information, tools, and methods necessary for adaptation. Calls for action at all levels acknowledge that a viable response must engage federal, state and local expertise, perspectives, and resources in a coordinated and collaborative effort. A workshop held in December 2000 on coastal inundation and sea level rise proposes a shared framework that can help guide where investments should be made to enable states and local governments to assess impacts and initiate adaptation strategies over the next decade.

Optimal design of building structures using genetic algorithms

A general framework for multi-criteria optimal design is presented which is well-suited for automated design of structural systems. A systematic computer-aided optimal design decision process is developed which allows the designer to rapidly evaluate and improve a proposed design by taking into account the major factors of interest related to different aspects such as design, construction, and operation.

The proposed optimal design process requires the selection of the most promising choice of design parameters taken from a large design space, based on an evaluation using specified criteria. The design parameters specify a particular design, and so they relate to member sizes, structural configuration, etc. The evaluation of the design uses performance parameters which may include structural response parameters, risks due to uncertain loads and modeling errors, construction and operating costs, etc. Preference functions are used to implement the design criteria in a "soft" form. These preference functions give a measure of the degree of satisfaction of each design criterion. The overall evaluation measure for a design is built up from the individual measures for each criterion through a preference combination rule. The goal of the optimal design process is to obtain a design that has the highest overall evaluation measure - an optimization problem.

Genetic algorithms are stochastic optimization methods that are based on evolutionary theory. They provide the exploration power necessary to explore high-dimensional search spaces to seek these optimal solutions. Two special genetic algorithms, hGA and vGA, are presented here for continuous and discrete optimization problems, respectively.

The methodology is demonstrated with several examples involving the design of truss and frame systems. These examples are solved by using the proposed hGA and vGA.

Stress and load calculation for unknown building

Not available.

The effect of earthquakes on reinforced concrete building design

The building under consideration was the Pasadena Furniture Building, on East Colorado St., Pasadena, California. It is a modern reinforced concrete building that may be classed as a warehouse of flat-slab construction.