Narrative, education policy and the newsprint media : A critical discourse analysis of the construction of young people's participation in education or employment

This thesis used Critical Discourse Analysis to investigate how a government policy and the newsprint media constructed discussion about young people’s participation in education or employment. The study found that a continuous narrative across both sites about government as a noble agent taking action to redress the social disruption caused by young people’s disengagement. Unlike the education policy, the newsprint media blamed young people who were disengaged and failed to recognise the barriers they often face. The study points to possibilities for utilising the power of narrative to build a more fair and rigorous discussion of issues in the public sphere.

Sustainability reporting in construction contractors : a case study

Construction activities have significant impacts on the environment, economy and society. As a result, sustainability has become an agenda in construction related business. This is evidenced by an increasingly number of construction related companies adopting sustainability reporting practice. Construction contractors are no exception. This study aims to investigate the sustainability reporting practices adopted by top Chinese contractors active in the international arena. The focus is placed on those Chinese contractors ranked top 50 by the Engineering News Record (ENR) top 225 international contractors. The results showed that the sustainability reporting practices of these top Chinese contractors, in terms of both approaches and the depth, varied significantly however there is a clear trend of growing level of disclosure of sustainability related information. Similarly, environmental sustainability seems the predominate focus of sustainability reporting exercises of top international contractors from China. These findings help to assist senior management of construction contractors to form business strategies to facilitate disclosure and other sustainability related practices.

Design of an experimental apparatus to analyse bagasse behaviour in a chute

Pressure feeder chutes are pieces of equipment used in sugar cane crushing to increase the amount of cane that can be put through a mill. The continuous pressure feeder was developed with the objective to provide a constant feed of bagasse under pressure to the mouth of the crushing mills. The pressure feeder chute is used in a sugarcane milling unit to transfer bagasse from one set of crushing rolls to a second set of crushing rolls. There have been many pressure feeder chute failures in the past. The pressure feeder chute is quite vulnerable and if the bagasse throughput is blocked at the mill rollers, the pressure build-up in the chute can be enormous, which can ultimately result in failure. The result is substantial damage to the rollers, mill and chute construction, and downtimes of up to 48 hours can be experienced. Part of the problem is that the bagasse behaviour in the pressure feeder chute is not understood well. If the pressure feeder chute behaviour was understood, then the chute geometry design could be modified in order to minimise risk of failure. There are possible avenues for changing pressure feeder chute design and operations with a view to producing more reliable pressure feeder chutes in the future. There have been previous attempts to conduct experimental work to determine the causes of pressure feeder chute failures. There are certain guidelines available, however pressure feeder chute failures continue. Pressure feeder chute behaviour still remains poorly understood. This thesis contains the work carried out between April 14th 2009 and October 10th 2012 that focuses on the design of an experimental apparatus to measure forces and visually observe bagasse behaviour in an attempt to understand bagasse behaviour in pressure feeder chutes and minimise the risk of failure.

Improved earthwork allocation planning for fuel consumption and emissions reduction in linear infrastructure construction – case study data

This document provides data for the case study presented in our recent earthwork planning papers. Some results are also provided in a graphical format using Excel.

Analyzing and defining information requirements of knowledge intensive construction management tasks on BIM

With the increasing popularity and adoption of building information modeling (BIM), the amount of digital information available about a building is overwhelming. Enormous challenges remain however in identifying meaningful and required information from a complex BIM model to support a particular construction management (CM) task. Detailed specifications of information required by different construction domains and expressive and easy-to-use BIM reasoning mechanisms are seen as an important means in addressing these challenges. This paper analyzes some of the characteristics and requirements of component-specific construction knowledge in relation to the current work practice and BIM-based applications. It is argued that domain ontologies and information extraction approaches, such as queries could significantly bring much needed support for knowledge sharing and integration of information between design, construction and facility management.

A micro-level indexing model for the assessment of sustainable urban ecosystems

During the last several decades, the quality of natural resources and their services have been exposed to significant degradation from increased urban populations combined with the sprawl of settlements, development of transportation networks and industrial activities (Dorsey, 2003; Pauleit et al., 2005). As a result of this environmental degradation, a sustainable framework for urban development is required to provide the resilience of natural resources and ecosystems. Sustainable urban development refers to the management of cities with adequate infrastructure to support the needs of its population for the present and future generations as well as maintain the sustainability of its ecosystems (UNEP/IETC, 2002; Yigitcanlar, 2010). One of the important strategic approaches for planning sustainable cities is „ecological planning‟. Ecological planning is a multi-dimensional concept that aims to preserve biodiversity richness and ecosystem productivity through the sustainable management of natural resources (Barnes et al., 2005). As stated by Baldwin (1985, p.4), ecological planning is the initiation and operation of activities to direct and control the acquisition, transformation, disruption and disposal of resources in a manner capable of sustaining human activities with a minimum disruption of ecosystem processes. Therefore, ecological planning is a powerful method for creating sustainable urban ecosystems. In order to explore the city as an ecosystem and investigate the interaction between the urban ecosystem and human activities, a holistic urban ecosystem sustainability assessment approach is required. Urban ecosystem sustainability assessment serves as a tool that helps policy and decision-makers in improving their actions towards sustainable urban development. There are several methods used in urban ecosystem sustainability assessment among which sustainability indicators and composite indices are the most commonly used tools for assessing the progress towards sustainable land use and urban management. Currently, a variety of composite indices are available to measure the sustainability at the local, national and international levels. However, the main conclusion drawn from the literature review is that they are too broad to be applied to assess local and micro level sustainability and no benchmark value for most of the indicators exists due to limited data availability and non-comparable data across countries. Mayer (2008, p. 280) advocates that by stating "as different as the indices may seem, many of them incorporate the same underlying data because of the small number of available sustainability datasets". Mori and Christodoulou (2011) also argue that this relative evaluation and comparison brings along biased assessments, as data only exists for some entities, which also means excluding many nations from evaluation and comparison. Thus, there is a need for developing an accurate and comprehensive micro-level urban ecosystem sustainability assessment method. In order to develop such a model, it is practical to adopt an approach that uses a method to utilise indicators for collecting data, designate certain threshold values or ranges, perform a comparative sustainability assessment via indices at the micro-level, and aggregate these assessment findings to the local level. Hereby, through this approach and model, it is possible to produce sufficient and reliable data to enable comparison at the local level, and provide useful results to inform the local planning, conservation and development decision-making process to secure sustainable ecosystems and urban futures. To advance research in this area, this study investigated the environmental impacts of an existing urban context by using a composite index with an aim to identify the interaction between urban ecosystems and human activities in the context of environmental sustainability. In this respect, this study developed a new comprehensive urban ecosystem sustainability assessment tool entitled the „Micro-level Urban-ecosystem Sustainability IndeX‟ (MUSIX). The MUSIX model is an indicator-based indexing model that investigates the factors affecting urban sustainability in a local context. The model outputs provide local and micro-level sustainability reporting guidance to help policy-making concerning environmental issues. A multi-method research approach, which is based on both quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis, was employed in the construction of the MUSIX model. First, a qualitative research was conducted through an interpretive and critical literature review in developing a theoretical framework and indicator selection. Afterwards, a quantitative research was conducted through statistical and spatial analyses in data collection, processing and model application. The MUSIX model was tested in four pilot study sites selected from the Gold Coast City, Queensland, Australia. The model results detected the sustainability performance of current urban settings referring to six main issues of urban development: (1) hydrology, (2) ecology, (3) pollution, (4) location, (5) design, and; (6) efficiency. For each category, a set of core indicators was assigned which are intended to: (1) benchmark the current situation, strengths and weaknesses, (2) evaluate the efficiency of implemented plans, and; (3) measure the progress towards sustainable development. While the indicator set of the model provided specific information about the environmental impacts in the area at the parcel scale, the composite index score provided general information about the sustainability of the area at the neighbourhood scale. Finally, in light of the model findings, integrated ecological planning strategies were developed to guide the preparation and assessment of development and local area plans in conjunction with the Gold Coast Planning Scheme, which establishes regulatory provisions to achieve ecological sustainability through the formulation of place codes, development codes, constraint codes and other assessment criteria that provide guidance for best practice development solutions. These relevant strategies can be summarised as follows: • Establishing hydrological conservation through sustainable stormwater management in order to preserve the Earth’s water cycle and aquatic ecosystems; • Providing ecological conservation through sustainable ecosystem management in order to protect biological diversity and maintain the integrity of natural ecosystems; • Improving environmental quality through developing pollution prevention regulations and policies in order to promote high quality water resources, clean air and enhanced ecosystem health; • Creating sustainable mobility and accessibility through designing better local services and walkable neighbourhoods in order to promote safe environments and healthy communities; • Sustainable design of urban environment through climate responsive design in order to increase the efficient use of solar energy to provide thermal comfort, and; • Use of renewable resources through creating efficient communities in order to provide long-term management of natural resources for the sustainability of future generations.

Practical framework for measuring performance of international construction firms

The internationalization of construction companies has become of significant interest as the global construction market continues to be integrated into a more competitive and turbulent business environment. However, due to the complicated and multifaceted nature of international business and performance, there is as yet no consensus on how to evaluate the performance of international construction firms (ICFs). The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to develop a practical framework for measuring the performance of ICFs. Based on the balanced scorecard (BSC), a framework with detailed measures is developed, investigated, and tested using a three-step research design. In the first step, 27 measures under six dimensions (financial, market, customer, internal business processes, stakeholders, and learning and growth) are determined by literature review, interviews with academics, and seminar discussions. Subsequently, a questionnaire survey is conducted to investigate weights of these 27 performance measures. The questionnaire survey also supports the importance of measuring intangible aspects of international construction performance from the practitioner’s viewpoint. Additionally, a case study is described to test the framework’s robustness and usefulness. This is achieved by benchmarking the performance of a Chinese ICF with nine other counterparts worldwide. It is found that the framework provides an effective basis for benchmarking ICFs to effectively monitor their performance and support the development of strategies for improved competitiveness in the international arena. This paper is the first attempt to present a balanced and practically tested framework for evaluating the performance of ICFs. It contributes to the practice of performance measurement and related internationalization in the construction industry in general.

Reducing the Risk of Alcohol and Other Drugs in Construction : An Australian Assessment

There is increasing concern about the impact of employees’ alcohol and other drug (AOD) consumption on workplace safety, particularly within the construction industry. No known study has scientifically evaluated the relationship between the use of drugs and alcohol and safety impacts in construction, and there has been only limited adoption of nationally coordinated strategies, supported by employers and employees to render it socially unacceptable to arrive at a construction workplace with impaired judgment from AODs. This research aims to scientifically evaluate the use of AODs within the Australian construction industry in order to reduce the potential resulting safety and performance impacts and engender a cultural change in the workforce. Using the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT), the study will adopt both quantitative and qualitative methods to evaluate the extent of general AOD use in the industry. Results indicate that a proportion of the construction sector may be at risk of hazardous alcohol consumption. A total of 286 respondents (58%) scored above the cut-off score for risky alcohol use with 43 respondents (15%) scoring in the significantly ‘at risk’ category. Other drug use was also identified as a major issue that must be addressed. Results support the need for evidence-based, preventative educational initiatives that are tailored specifically to the construction industry.

Analysis of the design-construction supply chain in the thermal performance of sub-tropical and tropical housing

Background: In sub-tropical and tropical Queensland, a legacy of poor housing design,minimal building regulations with few compliance measures, an absence of post-construction performance evaluation and various social and market factors has led to a high and growing penetration of, and reliance on, air conditioners to provide thermal comfort for occupants. The pervasive reliance on air conditioners has arguably impacted on building forms, changed cultural expectations of comfort and social practices for achieving comfort, and may have resulted in a loss of skills in designing and constructing high performance building envelopes. Aim: The aim of this paper is to report on initial outcomes of a project that sought to determine how the predicted building thermal performance of twenty-five houses in subtropical and tropical Queensland compared with objective performance measures and comfort performance as perceived by occupants. The purpose of the project was to shed light on the role of various supply chain agents in the realisation of thermal performance outcomes. Methodology: The case study methodology embraced a socio-technical approach incorporating building science and sociology. Building simulation was used to model thermal performance under controlled comfort assumptions and adaptive comfort conditions. Actual indoor climate conditions were measured by temperature and relative humidity sensors placed throughout each house, whilst occupants’ expectations of thermal comfort and their self-reported behaviours were gathered through semi-structured interviews and periodic comfort surveys. Thermal imaging and air infiltration tests, along with building design documents, were analysed to evaluate the influence of various supply chain agents on the actual performance outcomes. Results: The results clearly show that in the housing supply chain – from designer to constructor to occupant – there is limited understanding from each agent of their role in contributing to, or inhibiting, occupants’ comfort.

Encouraging visitors : a new set of guidelines for designing prison visitors’ centres

Visitors to prison are generally innocent of committing crime, but their interaction with inmates has been studied as a possible incentive to reduce recidivism. The way visitors’ centres are currently designed takes in consideration mainly security principles and the needs of guards or prison management. The human experience of the relatives or friends aiming to provide emotional support to inmates is usually not considered; facilities have been designed with an approach that often discourages people from visiting. This paper discusses possible principles to design prison visitors’ centres taking in consideration practical needs, but also human factors. A comparative case study analysis of different secure typologies, like libraries, airports or children hospitals, provides suggestions about how to approach the design of prison in order to ensure the visitor is not punished for the crimes of those they are visiting.

Error and uncertainty of adult age estimation of the pubic symphysis in an Australian sub-population using computed tomography

After attending this presentation, attendees will gain awareness of: (1) the error and uncertainty associated with the application of the Suchey-Brooks (S-B) method of age estimation of the pubic symphysis to a contemporary Australian population; (2) the implications of sexual dimorphism and bilateral asymmetry of the pubic symphysis through preliminary geometric morphometric assessment; and (3) the value of three-dimensional (3D) autopsy data acquisition for creating forensic anthropological standards. This presentation will impact the forensic science community by demonstrating that, in the absence of demographically sound skeletal collections, post-mortem autopsy data provides an exciting platform for the construction of large contemporary ‘virtual osteological libraries’ for which forensic anthropological research can be conducted on Australian individuals. More specifically, this study assesses the applicability and accuracy of the S-B method to a contemporary adult population in Queensland, Australia, and using a geometric morphometric approach, provides an insight to the age-related degeneration of the pubic symphysis. Despite the prominent use of the Suchey-Brooks (1990) method of age estimation in forensic anthropological practice, it is subject to intrinsic limitations, with reports of differential inter-population error rates between geographical locations1-4. Australian forensic anthropology is constrained by a paucity of population specific standards due to a lack of repositories of documented skeletons. Consequently, in Australian casework proceedings, standards constructed from predominately American reference samples are applied to establish a biological profile. In the global era of terrorism and natural disasters, more specific population standards are required to improve the efficiency of medico-legal death investigation in Queensland. The sample comprises multi-slice computed tomography (MSCT) scans of the pubic symphysis (slice thickness: 0.5mm, overlap: 0.1mm) on 195 individuals of caucasian ethnicity aged 15-70 years. Volume rendering reconstruction of the symphyseal surface was conducted in Amira® (v.4.1) and quantitative analyses in Rapidform® XOS. The sample was divided into ten-year age sub-sets (eg. 15-24) with a final sub-set of 65-70 years. Error with respect to the method’s assigned means were analysed on the basis of bias (directionality of error), inaccuracy (magnitude of error) and percentage correct classification of left and right symphyseal surfaces. Morphometric variables including surface area, circumference, maximum height and width of the symphyseal surface and micro-architectural assessment of cortical and trabecular bone composition were quantified using novel automated engineering software capabilities. The results of this study demonstrated correct age classification utilizing the mean and standard deviations of each phase of the S-B method of 80.02% and 86.18% in Australian males and females, respectively. Application of the S-B method resulted in positive biases and mean inaccuracies of 7.24 (±6.56) years for individuals less than 55 years of age, compared to negative biases and mean inaccuracies of 5.89 (±3.90) years for individuals greater than 55 years of age. Statistically significant differences between chronological and S-B mean age were demonstrated in 83.33% and 50% of the six age subsets in males and females, respectively. Asymmetry of the pubic symphysis was a frequent phenomenon with 53.33% of the Queensland population exhibiting statistically significant (χ2 - p<0.01) differential phase classification of left and right surfaces of the same individual. Directionality was found in bilateral asymmetry, with the right symphyseal faces being slightly older on average and providing more accurate estimates using the S-B method5. Morphometric analysis verified these findings, with the left surface exhibiting significantly greater circumference and surface area than the right (p<0.05). Morphometric analysis demonstrated an increase in maximum height and width of the surface with age, with most significant changes (p<0.05) occurring between the 25-34 and 55-64 year age subsets. These differences may be attributed to hormonal components linked to menopause in females and a reduction in testosterone in males. Micro-architectural analysis demonstrated degradation of cortical composition with age, with differential bone resorption between the medial, ventral and dorsal surfaces of the pubic symphysis. This study recommends that the S-B method be applied with caution in medico-legal death investigations of unknown skeletal remains in Queensland. Age estimation will always be accompanied by error; therefore this study demonstrates the potential for quantitative morphometric modelling of age related changes of the pubic symphysis as a tool for methodological refinement, providing a rigor and robust assessment to remove the subjectivity associated with current pelvic aging methods.

Exploring dependencies of 5.9 GHz DSRC throughput and reliability on safety applications

Dedicated Short Range Communication (DSRC) is the emerging key technology supporting cooperative road safety systems within Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). The DSRC protocol stack includes a variety of standards such as IEEE 802.11p and SAE J2735. The effectiveness of the DSRC technology depends on not only the interoperable cooperation of these standards, but also on the interoperability of DSRC devices manufactured by various manufacturers. To address the second constraint, the SAE defines a message set dictionary under the J2735 standard for construction of device independent messages. This paper focuses on the deficiencies of the SAE J2735 standard being developed for deployment in Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANET). In this regard, the paper discusses the way how a Basic Safety Message (BSM) as the fundamental message type defined in SAE J2735 is constructed, sent and received by safety communication platforms to provide a comprehensive device independent solution for Cooperative ITS (C-ITS). This provides some insight into the technical knowledge behind the construction and exchange of BSMs within VANET. A series of real-world DSRC data collection experiments was conducted. The results demonstrate that the reliability and throughput of DSRC highly depend on the applications utilizing the medium. Therefore, an active application-dependent medium control measure, using a novel message-dissemination frequency controller, is introduced. This application level message handler improves the reliability of both BSM transmissions/receptions and the Application layer error handling which is extremely vital to decentralized congestion control (DCC) mechanisms.

A family of Alltop functions that are EA-inequivalent to the cubic function

Sequences with optimal correlation properties are much sought after for applications in communication systems. In 1980, Alltop (\emph{IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory} 26(3):350-354, 1980) described a set of sequences based on a cubic function and showed that these sequences were optimal with respect to the known bounds on auto and crosscorrelation. Subsequently these sequences were used to construct mutually unbiased bases (MUBs), a structure of importance in quantum information theory. The key feature of this cubic function is that its difference function is a planar function. Functions with planar difference functions have been called \emph{Alltop functions}. This paper provides a new family of Alltop functions and establishes the use of Alltop functions for construction of sequence sets and MUBs.

The challenges of managing complexity in projects : an Australian perspective

Project Management (PM) as an academic field is relatively new in Australian universities. Moreover, the field is distributed across four main areas: business (management), built environment and construction, engineering and more recently ICT (information systems). At an institutional level, with notable exceptions, there is little engagement between researchers working in those individual areas. Consequently, an initiative was launched in 2009 to create a network of PM researchers to build a disciplinary base for PM in Australia. The initiative took the form of a bi-annual forum. The first forum established the constituency and spread of PM research in Australia (Sense et al., 2011). This special issue of IJPM arose out of the second forum, held in 2012, that explored the notion of an Australian perspective on PM. At the forum, researchers were invited to collaborate to explore issues, methodological approaches, and theoretical positions underpinning their research and to answer the question: is there a distinctly Australian research agenda which responds to the current challenges of large and complex projects in our region? From a research point of view, it was abundantly clear at the forum that many of the issues facing Australian researchers are shared around the world. However, what emerged from the forum as the Australian perspective was a set of themes and research issues that dominate the Australia research agenda.