Knowledge Based Urban Development

The changing and challenging conditions of the 21st century have been significantly impacting our economy, society and built and natural environments. Today generation of knowledge—mostly in the form of technology and innovation—is seen as a panacea for the adaptation to changes and management of challenges (Yigitcanlar, 2010a). Making space and place that concentrate on knowledge generation, thus, has become a priority for many nations (van Winden, 2010). Along with this movement, concepts like knowledge cities and knowledge precincts are coined as places where citizenship undertakes a deliberate and systematic initiative for founding its development on the identification and sustainable balance of its shared value system, and bases its ability to create wealth on its capacity to generate and leverage its knowledge capabilities (Carrillo, 2006; Yigitcanlar, 2008a). In recent years, the term knowledge precinct (Hu & Chang, 2005) in its most contemporary interpretation evolved into knowledge community precinct (KCP). KCP is a mixed-use post-modern urban setting—e.g., flexible, decontextualized, enclaved, fragmented—including a critical mass of knowledge enterprises and advanced networked infrastructures, developed with the aim of collecting the benefits of blurring the boundaries of living, shopping, recreation and working facilities of knowledge workers and their families. KCPs are the critical building blocks of knowledge cities, and thus, building successful KCPs significantly contributes to the formation of prosperous knowledge cities. In the literature this type of development—a place containing economic prosperity, environmental sustainability, just socio‐spatial order and good governance—is referred as knowledge-based urban development (KBUD). This chapter aims to provide a conceptual understanding on KBUD and its contribution to the building of KCPs that supports the formation of prosperous knowledge cities.

Contemporary public spaces in urban knowledge precincts : observations from Brisbane, Australia

The advanced era of knowledge-based urban development has led to an unprecedented increase in mobility of people and the subsequent growth in the new typology of agglomerated enclaves of knowledge such as urban knowledge precincts. A new role has been assigned to contemporary public spaces of these precincts to attract and retain the mobile knowledge workforce for long by creating a sense of place for them. This paper sheds light over the place making in the globalised knowledge economy world which develops a sense of permanence spatio-temporally to knowledge workers displaying a set of particular characteristics and simultaneously is process-dependent getting developed by the internal and external flows and contributing substantially in the development of the broader context it stands in relation with. The paper highlights the observations from Australia’s new world city Brisbane to outline the application of urban design as a tool to create and sustain this bipartite place making in urban knowledge precincts, which caters diverse range of social, cultural and democratic needs. It seeks to analyse the modified permeable typology of public spaces that makes it more viable and adaptive as per the changing needs of the contemporary globalised or in other words knowledge society. This research has taken an overall process-based approach reflecting how urban design is an assemblage of the encompassing processes that underlay the resultant place making. It explores how the permeable design typology of these contemporary precincts in Brisbane develops a progressive sense of place that makes them stimulating, effervescent and vibrant.

Systematic integration of human factors in the specification of requirements for new railway technologies

Engineering design processes are necessary to attain the requisite standards of integrity for high-assurance safety-related systems. Additionally, human factors design initiatives can provide critical insights that parameterise their development. Unfortunately, the popular perception of human factors as a “forced marriage” between engineering and psychology often provokes views where the ‘human factor’ is perceived as a threat to systems design. Some popular performance-based standards for developing safety-related systems advocate identifying and managing human factors throughout the system lifecycle. However, they also have a tendency to fall short in their guidance on the application of human factors methods and tools, let alone how the outputs generated can be integrated in to various stages of the design process. This case study describes a project that converged engineering with human factors to develop a safety argument for new low-cost railway level crossing technology for system-wide implementation in Australia. The paper enjoins the perspectives of a software engineer and cognitive psychologist and their involvement in the project over two years of collaborative work to develop a safety argument for low-cost level crossing technology. Safety and reliability requirements were informed by applying human factors analytical tools that supported the evaluation and quantification of human reliability where users interfaced with the technology. The project team was confronted with significant challenges in cross-disciplinary engagement, particularly with the complexities of dealing with incongruences in disciplinary language. They were also encouraged to think ‘outside the box’ as to how users of a system interpreted system states and ehaviour. Importantly, some of these states, while considered safe within the boundary of the constituent systems that implemented safety-related functions, could actually lead the users to engage in deviant behaviour. Psychology explained how user compliance could be eroded to levels that effectively undermined levels of risk reduction afforded by systems. Linking the engineering and psychology disciplines intuitively, overall safety performance was improved by introducing technical requirements and making design decisions that minimized the system states and behaviours that led to user deviancy. As a commentary on the utility of transdisciplinary collaboration for technical specification, the processes used to bridge the two disciplines are conceptualised in a graphical model.

Integration of XML Schemas for the Exchange of FDOT Construction Project Data

An investigation of the construction data management needs of the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) with regard to XML standards including development of data dictionary and data mapping. The review of existing XML schemas indicated the need for development of specific XML schemas. XML schemas were developed for all FDOT construction data management processes. Additionally, data entry, approval and data retrieval applications were developed for payroll compliance reporting and pile quantity payment development.

Plasma-enabled graded nanotube biosensing arrays on a Si nanodevice platform : catalyst-free integration and in situ detection of nucleation events

Low-temperature plasmas in direct contact with arbitrary, written linear features on a Si wafer enable catalyst-free integration of carbon nanotubes into a Si-based nanodevice platform and in situ resolution of individual nucleation events. The graded nanotube arrays show reliable, reproducible, and competitive performance in electron field emission and biosensing nanodevices.

Airport security screeners expertise and implications for interface design

This paper describes research investigating expertise and the types of knowledge used by airport security screeners. It applies a multi method approach incorporating eye tracking, concurrent verbal protocol and interviews. Results show that novice and expert security screeners primarily access perceptual knowledge and experience little difficulty during routine situations. During non-routine situations however, experience was found to be a determining factor for effective interactions and problem solving. Experts were found to use strategic knowledge and demonstrated structured use of interface functions integrated into efficient problem solving sequences. Comparatively, novices experienced more knowledge limitations and uncertainty resulting in interaction breakdowns. These breakdowns were characterised by trial and error interaction sequences. This research suggests that the quality of knowledge security screeners have access to has implications on visual and physical interface interactions and their integration into problem solving sequences. Implications and recommendations for the design of interfaces used in the airport security screening context are discussed. The motivations of recommendations are to improve the integration of interactions into problem solving sequences, encourage development of problem scheme knowledge and to support the skills and knowledge of the personnel that interact with security screening systems.

Antecedent factors of knowledge sharing in research supervision

Today’s economy is a knowledge-based economy in which knowledge is a crucial facilitator to individuals, as well as being an instigator of success. Due to the impact of globalisation, universities face new challenges and opportunities. Accordingly, they ought to be more innovative and have their own competitive advantages. One of the most important goals of universities is the promotion of students as professional knowledge workers. Therefore, knowledge sharing and transfer at the tertiary level between students and supervisors is vital in universities, as it decreases the budget and provides an affordable way to do research. Knowledge-sharing impact factors can be categorised in three groups, namely: organisational, individual, and technical factors. Individual barriers to knowledge sharing include: the lack of time and trust and the lack of communication skills and social networks. IT systems such as elearning, blogs and portals can increase the knowledge-sharing capability. However, it must be stated that IT systems are only tools and not solutions. Individuals are still responsible for sharing information and knowledge. This paper proposes a new research model to examine the effect of individual factors, organisational factors (learning strategy, trust culture, supervisory support) and technological factors on knowledge sharing in the research supervision process.