Thesis (M. Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 100-105).

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There has been a long, but disparate discourse among those responsible for our built environment about the inevitability of change on the artifacts we inhabit and those social contracts that influence their making. At a basic level doors and operable windows are an indication of the various flows that move through buildings. Innumerable “passive” and “active” strategies have been devised to allow changes to building floor plans and sections, to control sunlight and wind, to change function, etc. Hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of prototypes have been proposed and developed that change shape or composition in response to various social and environmental pressures. Though not always done with the goals of sustainability in mind, these prototypes often sought to provide increased agency for users, improved energy-efficiency and cost-effectiveness, and other commonly understood goals of sustainability. A number of books, hundreds of articles, and dozens of patents beautifully illustrate many proposed and built examples from which to learn but the descriptive terms employed are greatly varied (i.e., adaptable, animated, collapsible, deployable, enabling, evolutionary, flexible, intelligent, kinetic, manipulable, mutable, open-system, portable, protean, reconfigurable, responsive, revolving, smart, and transformable, etc.) and are therefore difficult to find. By reviewing and synthesizing the existing literature, this study provides a starting point for future research that offers both insight into how these terms have been used over time and a critique of such concerns and the exclusion of the topic within sustainability rating criteria. / text

The design project is an exploration of a design methodology, which builds upon the importance of human behavior in sustainable design, and materializes ideas and theories in spatial forms. The project focus on low income children between ages 6-15 in Meredith Learning Center, built in M Station Apartments, one of the properties of Foundation Communities, Austin. The project aims to foster sustainability education to minimize consumption and waste through interior design elements, make children active recipients of sustainability knowledge and help them to adopt daily sustainable habits by providing access for environmentally friendly choices, and motivating engaging, continuous, and appropriate acts. / text

published_or_final_version / Environmental Management / Master / Master of Science in Environmental Management

published_or_final_version / Environmental Management / Master / Master of Science in Environmental Management

Resources like water and electricity are limited and the usage of these resources are increasing along with the city’s development. Information released by different environmental organizations suggests that the consumption of these limited resources by a conventional building is huge. Green building plays an important role in improving this situation. This dissertation first finds out the energy usage of conventional buildings from different environmental organizations and different scholars/ professionals through literature reviews. The goal of this research is to find out 1) the feasibility of turning a conventional building into a green building in Hong Kong; 2) owners’ knowledge of green building; 3) if financial factors affect owners’ decision to turn their conventional buildings into green buildings. Through literature review, we found out the reasons why people prefer/do not prefer green buildings. We also found out how government policies affect consumers’ and enterprises’ behavior. By conducting a survey, we know more about the owners’ understanding of green building, the important factors of green building among the interviewees, the attractive incentives/ benefits that trigger the owners’ decision to go green, the barriers that deters the owners from going green and the most attractive incentives/ benefits of green building proposed by the Management Company/ Incorporated Owners. Through data analysis of the questionnaire conducted, we found that the understanding of green building among the interviewees is good. The interviewees could define most of the green building characteristics but not “Regular inspection, maintenance and repair of the building” and “Ensure satisfactory quality of drinking water”. We also found that financial factors could trigger the owners to turn their buildings into green buildings. The most attractive financial factors are “Reduce bill in your own unit”, “Better selling price of your flat” and “Better rental price”. Likewise, when Management Company/ Incorporated Owners propose to turn the owners’ buildings into green buildings, “Financial aspect like saving energy cost” is the one advantage rated the most “Most attractive”. At the end of the dissertation, we discuss the implications of the study like the interviewees’ energy saving concerns, rising health awareness among the interviewees and the effects of financial incentives on owners’ behavior. / published_or_final_version / Housing Management / Master / Master of Housing Management

Creating and encouraging longer-lasting relationship between designed products and its users is one of the goals that researchers in Sustainable HCI trying to achieve. The attachment framework is proposed by previous study that aims to provide knowledge and insight for designers to create longer-lasting relationship between products and users. As arguments have been made that there is a gap between Sustainable HCI theory and design practice. The attachment framework is one of the well established theoretical frameworks that need effective knowledge transformation from theory to practice. The aim of the study is to design, develop and evaluate a web-based interactive tool -- StickyDesignSpace, which helps product designers to embed the attachment framework into their design background research process. The study employs a research through design approach which focuses on the creation of innovative artifacts to solve practical problems. A web-based tool was designed and developed through the grounding, ideation and iteration process. And a high-fidelity prototype was evaluated by four design participants. The results indicated that the web tool StickyDesignSpace fostered the participated designers' attachment-related thinking by providing attachment design principles and generic design properties in a two dimensional space for organizing design background research data. Furthermore, the tool promoted the participated designers' attachment design knowledge transformation from background research process to design ideation process. According to participants' design objectives and background research goals, the tool also showed flexibility to be applied in other design process such as design idea formation and design evaluation process. The study shed light on the possibility of creating interactive tools to communicate sustainable HCI design frameworks to design practitioners, and offer the insights of how design practitioners integrate the attachment framework into their design thinking and process.

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This thesis focuses on the implications of exploitation pattern (population selectivity) and population resilience for fisheries sustainability in the NE Atlantic. Novel metrics of exploitation pattern and resilience are introduced and the effects of juvenile protection and resilience erosion on stock size, structure and yields are investigated. Analysis of both empirical and simulated data suggested that high selection of juveniles negatively affects both stock size and yield. A meta-analysis of empirical data for 38 fish stocks showed that fishing mortality of juveniles exceeding half that of mature fish leads to overfishing. Simulation-based analysis illustrated that a mean age-at-capture more than two years higher than mean age-at-maturity secures high yields at low levels of stock depletion. The effects of exploitation pattern on stock status are weaker than those of exploitation rate when empirical data are considered, both at an individual-stock and a cross-stock scale. However, simulation-based analysis revealed that for higher levels of juvenile protection than the ones observed in most empirical stocks, exploitation pattern would be more influential than exploitation rate. These findings suggest that there is a high unfulfilled potential to promote sustainability by protecting juveniles. Besides exploitation pattern, population resilience is another factor whose role in fish population dynamics was examined here. A resilience assessment of Barents Sea cod was carried out using a novel integrated approach combining multivariate analysis and bifurcation theory. This way, the occurrence of a population state shift in 1981, associated with climatic and exploitation effects, was identified. The approach implemented in this resilience assessment is reproducible to any other data-rich population and can be also used at the community- and ecosystem-levels to explain and predict state shifts. As Europe is currently moving towards a more holistic approach in fisheries management through the reform of the Common Fisheries Policy, such quantification and investigation of stock/exploitation attributes beyond stock size and exploitation rate is of great importance.