Bibliography: pages 105-107. / Information Systems, both paper-based and computer-based, are integral in the management of irregular settlements and the process of delivering low-cost housing in South Africa. An Irregular Settlement can be defined as an area where the 'shacks' have no fixed street address. Due to policies by previous regimes, under whose rule irregular settlements were almost ignored, there is often little or no spatial or socio-economic data available about existing irregular settlements. Thus for the use of the community, or to organisations interested in helping to improve the quality of life of the residents living in these settlements. As a prerequisite to quality of life, the basic need of shelter, along with food, healthcare and education need to be made available. The emphasis today is thus being placed on the provision of low-cost housing. A need thus arises to have up-to-date information about these irregular settlements in order to plan either for the upgrading of the settlement or for the relocation to new low-cost housing developments. Currently mostly paper-based systems are being used in these developments. There are two opportunities where computer-oriented information systems could be used at this time in 1996 and 1997 to assist with the management and upgrading of irregular settlements. The first is the stage of managing an existing irregular settlement; the second is managing the process of housing provision, taking advantage of the project-linked subsidy scheme. Two Cape Town based projects provide case studies for the application of information systems at the two stages identified above. The first is the Marconi Beam 'From Shacks to Houses' project located in Milnerton. The second is the Integrated Services Land Project (iSLP) of the Cape Flats. The Marconi Beam Settlement is an irregular settlement that has been accepted as part of the 'Project-Linked Subsidy Scheme' for the provision of new low-cost housing. Previously only paper-based systems were being used to manage the settlement and its move to the new Joe Slovo Park formal housing development. There was also found to be a lack of appropriate tools and awareness of which technology could be used in the process. Some of the specific application areas in which we were able to provide solutions in Marconi Beam included: ■ the identification of people directly affected by the fire that swept through the settlement in October 1996; ■ the residents who would be affected by the construction of a new road through the one area of the settlement could be identified, facilitating their movement away from the area; and ■ a system of tracking the internal moves of residents was devised by which we were able to maintain a record of the internal movements of residents whilst the system of the lottery was in place. Subsequently, with the use of the Block System, the identification of residents who were required to come in and have their applications for new houses processed, as a result of their spatial location in the settlement, was accomplished. The Indlu Management System, a computer based system, resulted from the need to keep track of, and process, large amounts of socio-economic data in order to speedily process the large number of applicants applying for national housing subsidies. As a result of the implementation of this system, the processing times per applicant have been reduced from 30 minutes to 10 minutes per applicant. The successful use of these systems in the two projects demonstrate that there is thus a definite role to be played in the use of information systems in relation to the management of irregular settlements and the provision of low-cost housing.

The intent of this thesis is to indicate the economic cost and professional value that result from earning a graduate teaching degree. Data gathered to formulate study conclusions came from questionnaires distributed to master's recipients from five Texas teachers colleges.

This study aimed to develop a radar solution that would aid the traffic calming efforts of the CSIR business campus. The Institute of Transportation Engineers defined traffic calming as "The combination of mainly physical measures that reduce the negative effects of motor vehicle use." Radar-based solutions have been proven to help reduce the speeds of motorists in areas with speed restrictions. Unfortunately, these solutions are expensive and difficult to import. Thus, this dissertation's main focus is to produce a detailed blueprint of a radar-based solution, with technical specifications that are similar to those of commercial and experimental systems at relatively low-cost. With the above mindset, the project was initiated with the user requirements being stated. Then a detailed study of current experimental and commercial radar-based traffic calming systems followed. Thereafter, the technical and non-technical requirements were derived from user requirements, and the technical specifications obtained from the literature study. A review of fundamental radar and signal processing principles was initiated to give background knowledge for the design and simulation process. Consequently, a detailed design of the system's functional components was conceptualized, which included the hardware, software, and electrical aspects of the system as well as the enclosure design. With the detailed design in mind, a data-collection system was built. The data-collection system was built to verify whether the technical specifications, which relate to the detection performance and the velocity accuracy of the proposed radar design, were met. This was done to save on buying all the components of the proposed system while proving the design's technical feasibility. The data-collection system consisted of a radar sensor, an Analogue to Digital Converter (ADC), and a laptop computer. The radar sensor was a k-band, Continuous Wave (CW) transceiver, which provided I/Q demodulated data with beat frequencies ranging from DC to 50 kHz. The ADC is an 8-bit Picoscope 2206B portable oscilloscope, capable of sampling frequencies of up to 50 MHz. The target detection and the velocity estimation algorithms were executed on a Samsung Series 7 Chronos laptop. Preliminary experiments enabled the approximation of the noise intensity of the scene in which the radar would be placed. These noise intensity values enabled the relationship between the Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) and the velocity error to be modelled at specific ranges from the radar, which led to a series of experiments that verified the prototypes' ability to accurately detect and estimate the vehicle speed at distances of up to 40 meters from the radar. The cell-averaging constant false alarm rate (CA-CFAR) detector was chosen as an optimum detector for this application, and parameters that produced the best results were found to be 50 reference cells and 12 guard cells. The detection rate was found to be 100% for all coherent processing intervals (CPIs) tested. The prototype was able to detect vehicle speeds that ranged from 2 km/h up to 60 km/h with an uncertainty of ±0.415 km/h, ±0.276 km/h, and ±0.156 km/h using a CPI of 0.0128 s, 0.256 s, and 0.0512 s respectively. The optimal CPI was found to be 0.0512 s, as it had the lowest mean velocity uncertainty, and it produced the largest first detection SNR of the CPIs tested. These findings were crucial for the feasibility of manufacturing a low-cost traffic calming solution for the South African market.

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The Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program (EFNEP) is one of the largest efforts of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) to promote healthy dietary behavior practices among the low income adults and youths in the US. Although the program is shown to be effective in achieving its stated goals, the cost effectiveness of the money spent on EFNEP remains largely unknown. This dissertation analyzes the costs and effectiveness of the EFNEP, and is organized in three essays. The first essay investigates the effectiveness of the adult EFNEP and evaluates the returns to scale on the money spent in this program by utilizing an indirect production function approach. Results indicate that the program has increasing returns to scale at the National level, although a significant variation exists across the states. The second essay develops a framework for conducting the cost effectiveness analysis (CEA) for the youth EFNEP. The CEA framework is then applied to the data from Virginia youth EFNEP to estimate the cost effectiveness ratio (CER). The CER is estimated to be about $75 per behavior improvement. The third essay examines the outcomes and the attributes of the youth EFNEP program using the Rasch model type measurement model.  Findings suggest that the youth EFNEP is effective in achieving its stated program goals. In addition, the program related characteristics are found to be important attributes of effective programs. Overall, this dissertation has important policy implications for improving the (cost) effectiveness of nutrition education programs. " / Ph. D.

As Americans witness the slow dissociation of the military from the civilian public, the need for a strong design initiative within military installations proves as applicable and necessary as it has always been. The role of the designer within the military is a longstanding and vigorously debated duty; the superficially disparate natures of the professions separate themselves on the premise of individual superiority, and isolate their fields of expertise from one another. However, the two microcosms retain an identity that may serve traditionally different clientele, but their purposes reflect and complement one another. This notion is best exemplified by the pedagogy often associated with architecture and the military: a community working tirelessly to construct a system best adapted to the public, regularly working with a client who does not have a clear vision of the resolution, but instead relies on the services of both occupations to not only visualize the outcome but to design the process as well. The all contingency of accredited designers within a typical military hierarchy have been tasked with creating a conducive living environment centralized around "the mission". While they have toiled endlessly to produce such a product, the unfortunate reality demonstrates that the weight of schematics has been typically relegated to grandsons of civil engineers and civilians with unrelated degrees and very little experience in a headquarter building hundreds of miles away. Bearing this in mind, the purpose of this thesis is to discover the greater organization of a military base, and to standardize it not according to chance doctrine, but soundly informed and localized knowledge of the surrounding environment. Such a design must be informed by a few key aspects; principally, the macro intention of such a layout must be centralized around "the mission", which in the case of most military bases, resembles a training and living environment conducive to deployment and combat effectiveness. Similarly, the determination of design must be within the scope of economic feasibility, which although quite gratuitous at first glance, is meagerly distributed throughout the separate branches and therein the country. Lastly, the design must have tenacity, as the ebb and flow of active duty populations produce an arbitrary fluctuation, but the life expectancy of such buildings is often projected within the fifty- to sixty-year time frame. Through careful research, and the benefit of personal interviews with clients who have spent collective centuries in the modern military, a design solution for the improved daily lives and increased combat effectiveness of the American military will serve to discuss the ways in which we can inform the macroevolution of military installations through dissecting the micro. / 0 / SPK / specialcollections@tulane.edu

Affordable housing has been a predominant issue in New Orleans. The demand of affordable housing units in the city far exceeds the supply available. HousingNOLA established the demand of 33,600 of affordable housing opportunities in New Orleans. There are various challenges to increasing the supply of affordable housing from project scale, design and construction, complexity of financing, building regulations, and land use policies. Moreover, funding available for affordable housing at the federal and state level have negatively impacted developer's willingness to pursue this project while forcing the developer to create more with less. These challenges manifest themselves in additional costs and time. In partnership with HousingNOLA, the investigation revolves on how construction costs in affordable development could be reduced to increase the supply to meet the demand. First, the investigation focused on clarifying if construction costs were high in the City of New Orleans. In addition, it identified factor that increased construction costs within New Orleans. Thirdly, through the study of new building technologies, provide alternative construction methodology with the potential to create more affordable housing units. Lastly, propose recommendations for next steps in the creation of affordable housing in New Orleans to HousingNOLA. / 0 / SPK / specialcollections@tulane.edu

In recent years, with the continuous growth of population, people's demand for housing is also increasing. Especially since the 21st century, the number of high-rise apartments in major cities in the world has increased significantly. As the mainstream technology in high-rise buildings,the formwork method is developing and many new formwork systems are appeared. In a complete construction project, although the cost of formwork is not high, it also requires a lot of manpower and time limit. That is why it is very important to choose the appropriate formwork. They have their unique advantages and disadvantages, whether it is the traditional wooden formwork, the current mainstream beam formwork and frame formwork, or the new aluminum system formwork. Therefore, with the continuous innovation of formwork technology, that the application of formwork in high-rise buildings should also develop in a diversified direction. This article will conduct an economic and technical analysis of various common formworks to discuss how to choose high-rise building formworks and analyze the rationality of the selection, that combined with actual projects in China. The importance of the formwork mothod in the economic execution of concrete structures is summarized through the comparison between the various formworks.:1 Introduction 1.1 Importance of formwork in construction 1.2 Overview of formwork engineering development 2 Types of formworks 2.1 Traditional wooden formwork systems 2.2 Modern formwork systems 2.2.1 Girder formwork 2.2.2 Frame formwork 2.3 System formwork 2.3.1 MIVAN Technology 2.4 Comparison of three types of formwork 3 The method of the formwork selection in the construction business 3.1 Selection working method 3.2 Factors influencing the selection of formwork system 4 Cost of formwork 4.1 The cost comparison of traditional formwork and modern formwork 4.2 The Cost comparison of three formworks in one project 4.3 Indirect economic effects of different formworks 4.4 Conclusion 5 Process comparison 5.1 Comparing technology (traditional formwork and MI -VAN formwork) 5.2 Comparison technology (traditional formwork and modern formwork) 5.3 Comparison of the process in two projects 5.3.1 The traditional wooden formwork system used in the Zhang-gong middle School (Jiangxi, China) 5.3.2 Aluminium Formwork system used in the Shenton Way 5.4 Comparing the construction period of the MIVAN formwork and the conventional formwork 5.5 Conclusion 6 Practical examples and evaluation 6.1 The Festival Walk - traditional manual-type wooden formwork 6.2 Belcher's Gardens Redevelopment - traditional manual -type wood form 6.3 Park Avenue (Phase II) - aluminum form 6.4 Conclusion 7 Summary and outlook 7.1 Summary 7.2 Outlook 8 Literature

The main objectives of this diploma thesis are to introduce the building information model as an effective tool, helping at work with the buildings throughout their lifecycle and to consider its use for real estate valuation, from the point of view of individual valuation methods, used in Czech Republic. The real estate valuation methods and the functional principles of building information model, as well as its features, are described in the first part of the thesis. In addition, the first part of the thesis also deals with the model implementation conditions in selected countries of the world. The second part of the document contains consideration for model usage in the valuation practice. A practical demonstration of working with the model is also included in this thesis.

Investment in electricity is a key element of the development process. Its importance is reflected in the growing recognition, since the 1960's, that investing in electricity provides and enhances knowledge, attitude and motivation necessary for economic and social development. The development and utilization of electricity create an economic atmosphere that has direct and indirect benefit for the economy. The direct impact is felt by most households who are able to affect households tasks more rapidly than before and save much time and effort in the process. Electricity also has an indirect impact on development. It improves the quality of life of the community by raising their income. The results of the survey at Katlehong confirms that the availability of electricity as a basic need appears to be far from satisfactory. Areas without electricity experience major social and economic costs as a result of dependency on costly and inconvenient energy sources. / Dissertation (MCom)--University of Pretoria, 1993. / Economics / unrestricted