Urban areas are hubs of creativity and innovation providing fertile ground for novel responses to modern environmental challenges. One such response is the community-led management of urban green spaces as a form of organised social-ecological innovation (OSEI). Previous studies have attempted to conceptualise the ecological, social and political potential of such informal approaches to urban green space management. However, little work has been carried out into their efficacy in the landscape, either by describing the social-ecological conditions influencing their occurrence or by quantifying the actual benefits in terms of ecosystem service provision. This research explores the emergence and impact of OSEI in a continuous urban landscape comprising the metropolitan areas of Manchester, Salford and Trafford (UK). The social-ecological context and content of OSEI were investigated using a cross-scale approach. At the landscape scale a snowball-sampling method mapped the occurrence of OSEIs using GIS and remote sensing technology. At the micro-scale, a case study quantified relative levels of provision across four key ecosystem services. The analysis presented OSEI as an adaptive response to environmental stressors, clustered around “hubs” of social-ecological innovation in the urban landscape. The distribution of OSEIs was influenced by historical context, degree of urbanisation and dependent on levels of, and dynamics between, social and ecological deprivation. Urban agriculture was instrumental as a catalyst for the emergence of OSEI and the associated production of a range of ecosystem services. Site productivity was also influenced by spatial and design considerations. This thesis has detailed the character of OSEI as a coherent phenomenon in the urban landscape which exhibits valuable response diversity according to social-ecological conditions. This, together with an evaluation of factors influencing ecosystem service provision at the local scale, has informed the validity of OSEI as an element of adaptive capacity which contributes to resilience in urban social-ecological systems.

The benefits that humans receive from nature are not fully understood. The ecosystem service framework has been developed to improve understanding of the benefits, or ecosystem services, that humans receive from the natural environment. Although the ecosystem service framework is designed to provide insights into the state of ecosystem services, it has been criticised for its neglect of spatial analysis. This thesis contains a critical discussion on the spatial relationships between ecosystem services and the urban landscape in Salford, Greater Manchester. An innovative approach has been devised for creating a landscape mosaic, which uses remotely-sensed spectral indices and land cover measurements. Five ecosystem services are considered: carbon storage, water flow mitigation, climate stress mitigation, aesthetics, and recreation. Analysis of ecosystem service generation uses the landscape mosaic, hotspot identification and measurements of spatial association. Ecosystem service consumption is evaluated via original perspectives of physical accessibility through a transport network, and greenspace visibility over a 3D surface. Results suggest that the landscape mosaic accuracy compares favourably to a map created using traditional classification methods. Ecosystem service patterns are unevenly distributed across Salford. The regulating services draw from similar natural resource locations, while cultural services have more diverse sources. The accessibility and visibility analysis provides evidence for the importance of urban trees as mitigators of ‘grey’ views, and urban parks as accessible producers of multiple services. Comprehensive ecosystem service analysis requires integration of quantitative and qualitative approaches. Evaluation of spatial relationships between ecosystem services and the physical landscapes in this thesis provides a practical method for improved measurement and management of the natural environment in urban areas. These findings can be used by urban planners and decision makers to integrate ecological considerations into proposed development schemes.

With proposed increases in both freight and passenger railway in the United Kingdom and the European Union and the building of new high speed lines, there has been an increase in interest in recent years in the human response to vibration in residential environments. As with exposure to environmental noise, exposure to environmental vibration can result in adverse effects such as annoyance and sleep disturbance. However, unlike exposure to environmental noise, well established relationships to evaluate annoyance caused by vibration in residential environments do not exist. In order to predict and control annoyance caused by vibration from environmental sources, a better understanding is needed of how humans perceive vibration and how their perception relates to measureable, quantifiable features of the vibration exposure. In the work presented in this thesis, the human response to vibration is considered on both a community and individual level. The first major aim of this work is to develop statistically robust exposure-response relationships for the human response to railway and construction induced vibration in residential environments. This is achieved via a large scale field survey in which 1431 questionnaires were conducted with residents in their own homes along with extensive vibration measurements at internal and external positions. Analysis of the data collected through this field survey shows that all of the vibration exposure descriptors advocated in national and international standards are equally well correlated with annoyance due to railway induced vibration. Using a grouped regression model, exposure-response relationships describing the proportion of respondents expected to express annoyance above a given threshold are derived for railway and construction induced vibration in terms of a variety of vibration exposure descriptors. The second major aim of this work is to investigate the perception of railway induced vibration on an individual level by investigating the salient dimensions of the perception of whole body vibration. This is achieved via a subjective laboratory test in which paired comparisons of similarity and annoyance are conducted using fourteen measured railway vibration stimuli. Through multidimensional scaling analysis, it is shown that the perception of railway induced vibration is dependent on up to four perceptual dimensions. These dimensions relate to energy in the 16 Hz 1/3 octave band, energy in the 32 Hz 1/3 octave band, the duration of the train passage, and the modulation frequency of the envelope of the signal. These perceptual dimensions are related to single figure Perceived Annoyance Ratings (A) by the following relationship: $A=-0.40+4.57{{\ddot{X}}_{RMS,16Hz}}+3.18{{\ddot{X}}_{RMS,32Hz}}+0.02{{T}_{10dB}}+0.02f{}_{\bmod }$. Finally, the single figure Perceived Annoyance Ratings are related to categorical ratings of annoyance via a logistic regression model.

Limitations in landscape architecture's intellectual underpinning potentially restrict its capability to make places which are conducive to human fulfilment. This is evident as an aesthetic and technical bias in landscape architecture which overlooks experiential dimensions crucial to the achievemenot f human fiflfilment. In responsea new conceptualf ramework is developed ftom the tenets of expressivism; a broad cultural movement with roots in eighteenth century Romanticism. Expressivist landscape architecture affirms a holistic concept of the human-envirorunenrte lationshipa s a philosophical core for landscapea rchitecturea nd includes a reconceptualisationo f landscapea s expressivel andscapep lace; an experientiale ntity defined in terms of an integration of human psychological and emotional functioning and physical space. Developing from Christopher Alexander's theoretical structures, expressivist landscape architecture is made operational by features which stress the primacy of human expressive activity, design as language and the experience of creative participation in the making of expressive landscape places.

Partnering emerged in the construction industry in the late 1980's and since then has developed into a mainstream management strategy for reducing traditional adversarialism and improving project,performance. The maturation of the approach reached a milestone recently with the publication of the first partnering contract. However the approach is still in its relative infancy and a myriad of definitions exist as to what it is. (Li, Cheng & Love, 2000). It has received considerable attention from practitioners and researchers alike yet it remains an alien approach to many and is consequently difficult to plan and implement. Even the recent partnering contract has been criticised for its complexity, while others believe partnering should remain an approach represented by management style not contractual documentation. The aim of this thesis is to develop a set of practical processes for the strategic development and implementation of partnering arrangements. It aims to develop, through the identification of best practice criteria, generic processes as well as recommend corresponding management techniques for both long term and Project Specific Partnering success. The generic processes can then be tailored to suit specific projects and business objectives. The work represents the first stage in the development of a dear and implementable partnering management tool for the construction industry. The further development required for industrial implementation has also been identified.

The behaviour of open spandrel brickwork masonry arch bridges (OSBMAB) was studied through model tests and finite element simulations. One three-metre and two five-metre span, full scale OSBMAB were constructed and tested to destruction. Two `partial' models including a combination of spandrel arches and piers, and a five-metre span single arch were also tested with intention of studying the functions of the components of the OSBMAB. To simulate the behaviour of the brickwork masonry arches, three finite element modelling techniques were developed: - (a) smeared modelling method (SMM), in which the failure of brickwork masonry caused by tensile cracking, compressive crushing or sliding is simulated as "loss of stiffness" in the corresponding directions within the domain of the geometry of the arch structure; and (b) discrete modelling method (DMM), in which the failure of brickwork masonry caused by tensile cracking or sliding is simulated as the change in the geometry of the arch structure, i. e., the geometrical discontinuity at prescribed locations; and (c) the mixed modelling method (MMM), in which the main arch, spandrel arches/piers are modelled using the SMM, and the interfaces between the fill and arch are modelled using the DMM. Parametric studies were carried out to investigate the effects of changes in material properties and finite element model related parameters on the behaviour of the OSBMAB, and to justify the values of those parameters adopted in the finite element models using the FE Package ANSYS 5.3. The comparisons were made between the finite element results and those obtained from the model tests. It has been demonstrated in terms of the ultimate loads, the modes of failure and the responses of loads vs. displacements that FE modeling can give good correlation.

Following the loss of heavy, manufacturing industry in many industrial areas in the 1970s and 1980s, tourism has featured extensively in urban and wateriront regeneration policy because of its ability to generate substantial economic benefits to destination communities. There is now an extensive literature covering urban tourism and dockland regeneration, but visitors' perceptions of urban waterfront destinations and their on-site behaviour and d experience remain largely unexplored. Additionally, whilst there is now a substantial body of literature relating to tourism's economic impact at the macro level, less is known about tourism expenditure at destination and sub-destination levels.

Current surround systems are being developed to include height channels to provide the listener with a 3D listening experience. It is not well understood the impact the height channels will have on the listening experience and aspects associated with multichannel reproduction like localisation and envelopment or if there are any new subjective attributes concerned with 3D surround systems. Therefore in this research subjective factors like localisation and envelopment were investigated and then descriptive analysis was used. In terms of localisation it was found that for sources panned in the median plane localisation accuracy was not improved with higher order ambisonics. However for sources in the frontal plane higher order ambisonics improves localisation accuracy for elevated sound sources. It was also found that for a simulation of a number of 2D and 3D surround systems, using a decorrelated noise signal to simulate a diffuse soundfield, there was no improvement in envelopment with the addition of height. On the other hand height was found to improve the perception of envelopment with the use of 3D recorded sound scenes, although for an applause sample which had similar properties to that of the decorrelated noise sample there was no significant difference between 2D and 3D systems. Five attribute scales emerged from the descriptive analysis of which it was found that there were significant differences between 2D and 3D systems using the attribute scale size for both ambisonics and VBAP rendered systems. Also 3D higher order ambisonics significantly enhances the perception of presence. A final principal component analysis found that there were 2 factors which characterised the ambisonic rendered systems and 3 factors which characterised the VBAP rendered sound scenes. This suggests that the derived scales need to be used with a wider number of sound scenes in order to fully validate them.

This study sets out to develop a framework for implementing social computing (SC) tools in higher education (HE) to enhance both the teaching and learning processes, with a particular focus on HE institutions in the Gulf States. Among other things, it reviews and addresses the known problems of HE in the Gulf States, discusses available SC platforms, and identifies the most appropriate of these based on the extant literature about user acceptance of technology. SC platforms are quickly emerging as important new technologies that can support a variety of businesses. Many publications on SC discuss its definition and its associated tools, but while studies of this kind are an important part of the development of any new trend or technology, additional research is also necessary to determine the proper use of these phenomena in particular contexts, and as yet, no clear study exists that discusses the proper use of SC tools in HE. The research in this study contributes to the fields of technology acceptance and SC research. It also demonstrates that the unified model of technology acceptance (UTAUT) can serve as theoretical basis for implementing SC in HE. It employs a multi-methodological approach at all of its stages, including data collection and analysis. Questionnaires, interviews, observations, focus groups, and evaluations were all conducted in order to obtain the data on which the study was based. The final analysis of this data was used to develop a new conceptual framework for implementing SC in HE. The research findings are validated through the development and implementation of a new system prototype for using SC in HE. This study recommends that stakeholders of HE in the Gulf States deploy SC technologies in HE to enhance generated outcomes by modernizing, supporting, and simplifying the teaching process while keeping students more engaged with customisable content. Online collaboration is also highlighted for its potential to enhance student learning and to transform education into a more user-centred process. In its summation, this study also includes a model for ensuring that research objectives are achieved and that defined knowledge gaps are covered.

BIM (Building Information Modeling) is a new radically different emerging approach to design, construction and facilities management. BIM promises to better facilitate the building development, construction and building operation. In this thesis the domain of small architectural practices is considered and how BIM can be implemented to address the problems both of operational and product efficiency and effectiveness. Research has indicated that guidance on how small architectural practices should implement BIM is lacking (Jung et al 2010). This lack of guidance is one of the reasons why small architectural practices are disinclined to adopt BIM. There is a growing need for more knowledge on how BIM technology and processes can be and should be adopted and what happens when BIM technologies and processes are implemented and used in the practice of architecture. The aim of this thesis is to develop a BIM implementation strategy framework for small architectural practices. To identify of the problems and issues of BIM implementation in a small architectural practice, a two years of case study using action research was undertaken. This involved instigating, participating and observing the implementation of BIM within a small architectural practice. Both the internal and external benefits to the architectural practice were considered. The findings of this BIM implementation research were then recorded and reviewed providing a structured approach to BIM implementation. From this process of review and reflection a revised improved framework and suggested methods for BIM adoption was developed and documented. At each stage of the BIM implementation recommendations are made. The research was undertaken as part of a Knowledge Transfer Partnership between the University of Salford, John McCall Architects (a small architectural practice) and the researcher and author of this thesis. Though being actively involved in the BIM implementation it was possible to understand the issues and document the actions that were taken as part of the BIM adoption. The major limitation of this research is the focus on a single company as the source of evidence and research. This enhanced BIM implementation framework and the suggested working methods represents the primary contribution to knowledge made by this thesis. This framework should be of value to other small architectural practices embarking on BIM implementation.