published_or_final_version / Housing Management / Master / Master of Housing Management

Taking a look at building management in Hong Kong, it is observed that some Owners’ Corporations (OC) initiate maintenance before orders are received from the Government, others do not. This illustrates that OCs of buildings have different perceptions of risks and are responding to these risks in their own ways - some actively considering and prioritising stakeholders’ safety and interests, yet others may not. OCs that implement self-initiated building maintenance work before receiving any statutory order may have certain attributes lacking in those that implement building maintenance only after receiving Government orders that may be subject to penalty. Similarly, some Owners are willing to contribute their personal time and effort for collective good. They pay attention to building management and maintenance; some even become executive members of OCs. It is assumed that Owners willing to spare their own time to take part in OC work and be committee members with no formal reward, may hold characteristics different from those of other Owners. It is proposed that these characteristics are General Citizenship, "Organizational Citizenship Behavior" (OCB) and "Corporate Social Responsibility" (CSR), and these factors may show value disparity amongst different Owners and OCs. If every OC holds a considerable level of citizenship and tries to learn the lesson by observing risk events, the Government can save cost from the need to deploy additional resources to promote and monitor maintenance work on private buildings. This thesis therefore aims to identify the differences between OCs and other Owners in building management and maintenance, as well as the impact of citizenship on building management and maintenance, with reference to the Social Learning Theory proposed by Bandura. Both qualitative and quantitative findings supported the objectives and hypotheses of this study. Independent sample t-test confirmed that OC members demonstrate high levels of General Citizenship, OCB and CSR than other Owners. Multiple regression model indicated that 43.2 per cent of the variation in OCs in taking initiative to maintain their buildings may be explained by four explanatory variables, namely CSR, OCB, Group Cohesiveness and General Citizenship. The implications of this study suggested that in addition to the direct impact of citizenship on building maintenance, citizenship may spillover from one form to another in the context of building management, and the transformation is mediated by the organizational context and other situational factors. This study concludes that in order to achieve a stronger effect of citizenship in different settings, further improvement is required in the political system and in education to cultivate a more complete sense of citizenship for citizens of Hong Kong. In addition, future study shall be extended to explore the impact of citizenship on OC decisions on other aspects of building management, including community and estate activities, facilities, security and cleansing, as well as planning and budgeting. Further research and testing can be conducted to develop a more robust conceptual framework, including the mediating effects among the manifestation of citizenship and its impact on building management and maintenance. / published_or_final_version / Real Estate and Construction / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Thesis (M. A. (African Languages)) -- University of Limpopo, 2015 / The purpose of this study is to analyse the building, use and caring of traditional Tsonga houses. Data was collected by means of interviews. An interview is an instrument of collecting information by asking the participants questions. The participants of this study were male and female Tsonga elders. The research area of this study is Ndhambi, Mageva, Maphata and Makhuva villages, which are found in the Mopani District of Limpopo Province. This study attempts to answer the following questions:  How were traditional Tsonga houses built?  What were traditional Tsonga houses used for?  How were traditional Tsonga houses cared and repaired?  Why are the causes of gradual disappearance of Tsonga culture? The findings of this study revealed that men and women were responsible for building traditional houses and they were assisted by their female and male children. The type of houses built was rondavels without windows and they used poles, grass, stones, water and soil for building the houses. They decorated the walls of the traditional houses with clay and black and red soil mixed with dung. Traditional houses were taken care of and repaired by men and women assisted by their children using equipments such as poles, reeds, grass and soil which were collected in the veld. They used the houses for sleeping, cooking, girls initiation and worshipping of their forefathers. Lastly, The Tsonga nation is no more building the traditional houses because they have been influenced by foreign cultures to abandon their own culture. KEY CONCEPTS Houses, traditional, role, building, care of, decoration, men, women, boys, girls.

Most existing structural health monitoring (SHM) techniques are based on measured acceleration data. Such practice, however, is highly expensive to operate, mainly due to cumbersome, time-consuming and expensive installation of sensors and their data acquisition systems. As an emerging noncontact method, the vision-based displacement sensor systems have attracted significant research interests and offered a promising alternative to the conventional sensors for SHM. However, most existing vision-based sensors require physical access to the structure to install a predesigned target panel, which has a higher contrast and thus is easier to track. Besides, most studies are carried out in controlled laboratory environments. The accuracy and robustness of vision sensors in the outdoor field conditions have not been fully investigated. It is also noted that current researches are mainly focusing on the measurement performance evaluation of vision sensors, without discussing the use of the measured displacement data for SHM. This dissertation develops a high-precision vision sensor system for remote and real-time measurement of multipoint structural displacements by tracking natural targets on structural surfaces. Two sets of software packages are developed respectively based on two advanced template matching algorithms (i.e., the upsampled cross correlation and the orientation code matching) incorporated with different subpixel techniques. Comprehensive experiments, including laboratory shaking table tests and field bridge tests, are carried out to evaluate its performance. Satisfactory agreements are observed between the displacements measured by the proposed vision sensor and those measured by high-performance reference displacement sensors. Moreover, this study examines the robustness of the vision sensor against ill environmental conditions such as dim light, background image disturbance and partial template occlusion. This dissertation further explores the potentials of the vision sensor for fast and inexpensive SHM applications, by demonstrating the usefulness of the displacement data for experimental modal analysis, finite element (FE) model updating, damage detection, etc. For a three-story frame structure, the modal analysis shows that the obtained natural frequencies and mode shapes from displacement measurements by using one camera match well with those by using four accelerometers. In fact, the vision sensor can achieve smoother mode shapes which would make damage localization more accurate, while the resolution of mode shapes from accelerometers is limited by the sensor number. This has been demonstrated from the damage detection result of beam structures based on the mode shape curvature (MSC) index. To address the needs for monitoring aging railway and highway bridges, coupled train-track-bridge and vehicle-bridge FE models are firstly developed to study the dynamic interactions between bridges and moving trains/vehicles. Subsequently, a time-domain model updating approach for railway bridges is proposed based on the in-situ measurement of the bridges’ dynamic displacement histories by the proposed vision sensor. This dissertation further proposes a bridge damage detection procedure that utilizes vehicle-induced displacement response and the MSC index without requiring prior knowledge about the traffic excitation.

published_or_final_version / Housing Management / Master / Master of Housing Management

published_or_final_version / Housing Management / Master / Master of Housing Management

published_or_final_version / Housing Management / Master / Master of Housing Management

Presently, there exists a large number of historic houses that have had their walls insulated with loose-fill cellulose and can now be studied 10, 20 or 30 years after they were insulated. The wood siding of these houses can be evaluated for types of paint failure and compared to comparable historic houses that have not had their sidewalls insulated. A methodology for defining common paint failure types, their presence and possibly their severity was designed. A methodology for the selecting of historic houses with both insulated and uninsulated walls was also designed. A visual documentation process was carried out, results compiled and analyzed in order to determine if a difference could be observed between the types of paint failures on the insulated versus the uninsulated historic houses. In addition this study looked at the most common sources for moisture intrusion into a wall cavity, how this moisture moves, and how little the role of vapor diffusion plays in the wetting of the wall cavity. / Moisture and paint failure -- Understanding moisture movement in buildings -- How frame walls get wet -- How insulation might affect how frame walls get wet and how they dry -- Strategies for controlling moisture -- Other causes of exterior paint failure unrelated to moisture within the wall -- Field work -- Types of paint failure -- Case study houses -- Summary and conclusion. / Department of Architecture

Αντικείμενο της διπλωματικής εργασίας που ακολουθεί είναι η διάγνωση των προβλημάτων και η διατύπωση προτάσεων για τη συντήρηση και αποκατάσταση του Ιερού Ναού του Αγίου Δημητρίου που βρίσκεται στο χωριό Θωκνία, του δήμου Μεγαλόπολης, του νομού Αρκαδίας με σκοπό τη συνδρομή μιας ακόμα έρευνας για την μελέτη της παραδοσιακής αρχιτεκτονικής. Για τις ανάγκες της διπλωματικής εργασίας έγινε πλήρης αποτύπωση του μνημείου και του αμέσου περιβάλλοντος χώρου του. / --

Orientador: Marina Sangoi de Oliveira Ilha / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Faculdade de Engenharia Civil, Arquitetura e Urbanismo / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-16T21:41:55Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Gnipper_SergioFrederico_M.pdf: 8224325 bytes, checksum: 04186a60ef4b9f83deeb75fca0ae6c62 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010 / Resumo: Os sistemas prediais hidráulicos e sanitários (SPHS) vêm comparecendo com relevante frequência em resultados de levantamentos de manifestações patológicas. Em geral, as patologias de maior incidência não envolvem sérios riscos à vida ou à saúde, mas podem causar aborrecimentos e desconforto decorrentes dos sintomas comuns de suas manifestações. Contudo, algumas patologias podem propiciar a propagação de microorganismos potencialmente patogênicos dentro dos próprios componentes, como os causadores de legioneloses e da síndrome respiratória severa aguda. Este quadro mostra a importância de um método adequado para a investigação, supressão e prevenção desse gênero de patologias. Existem métodos formulados para a investigação de patologias construtivas genéricas nas edificações, mas que não incorporam etapas e recursos importantes para a adequada solução de problemas frequentes nos sistemas prediais hidráulicos e sanitários, como a ênfase na sintomatologia e o exame detalhado do projeto para o estabelecimento do diagnóstico, além da priorização das propostas de intervenções corretivas e preventivas. Neste trabalho faz-se uma análise comparativa de alguns desses métodos, estabelecendo um paralelo com o MASP-PDCA, e propõe-se diretrizes para a formulação de um método hierarquizado para investigação de patologias em SPHS a partir de estudo de casos múltiplos de levantamentos patológicos em edifícios localizados no município de Curitiba, além de sugerir meios para a prevenção de patologias freqüentes verificadas nos SPHS, visando a melhoria da qualidade. Com isto, espera-se contribuir para o desenvolvimento de uma ferramenta útil tanto para a manutenção do desempenho ao longo da vida útil do edifício como para retroalimentar o processo de projeto / Abstract: Building Plumbing and Drainage Systems are expressively frequent in pathologic manifestation survey results. Most assiduous problems are not generally related to serious life and health risks but use to cause annoyance and discomfort due to their characteristic symptoms. However some of these pathologies may cause propagation of potentially pathogenic microorganisms at those system components, such as legionellosis and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome. This situation reveals the importance of an adequate method for investigation, suppression e prevention of these kinds of pathologies. There are methods formulated for general building pathology investigations, but they do not aggregate stages and resources relevant for the solution of frequent problems of building plumbing and drainage systems, such as the emphasis on symptomatology and detailed design analysis in order to set diagnosis as well as to establish priority for corrective and preventive interventions. This work makes a comparative analysis of some of those methods and draws a parallel with PDCA method regarding further proposition of guidelines for the formulation of a hierarchized method for the investigation of building plumbing and drainage system pathologies based upon multiple case studies of buildings at Curitiba City. Moreover it suggests feedback means for the prevention of frequent pathologies of building plumbing and drainage systems in order to improve quality. The aim of this work is to contribute to the development of an useful tool to maintain serviceable lifetime building performance and help design process feedback / Mestrado / Arquitetura e Construção / Mestre em Engenharia Civil