In Manitoba there are an estimated 200 small and 10 large wastewater treatment systems contributing nutrients to surface water when effluent is discharged. The objective of this study was to assess the sustainability and social acceptance of wastewater irrigation in the southeast Interlake region. It was concluded that sustainably irrigating forage crops would be challenging. The combination of soils with only ratings of fair for irrigability and the low quality of wastewater limits the long term sustainability of irrigation. Only one study site maintains a high potential to develop a wastewater irrigation program due to sufficient suitable land and appropriate wastewater quality. The social acceptance of wastewater irrigation is mixed with only about half the survey respondents favourable to irrigation or reuse of wastewater.

Šiame technologijų amžiuje vis daugiau technologijų sąveikauja su aplinka. Tai įvairūs prietaisai, sistemos, robotai, kurie geba apdoroti vaizdinę informaciją ir/arba ją interpretuoti. Kadangi vaizdinė informacija užima labai daug kietojo disko vietos, palyginus su kitokios rūšies informacija, iškyla jos saugojimo bei parsiuntimo problemos. Šioms problemoms spręsti pasitelkiamas duomenų glaudinimas (data compression). Šie sprendimai gali būti įgyvendinti programiškai (software) ir aparatūriškai (hardware). Aparatūriniai sprendimai pasižymi dideliu greičiu taip pat panaudojimo galimybėmis. Kadangi ateityje technologijos vis labiau sąveikaus su aplinka, įrenginiai, sugebantys greitai, tiksliai ir kuo mažesnėmis kietojo disko sąnaudomis apdoroti vaizdus, taps ypač reikšmingi. Tokius įrenginius patogu projektuoti ir tirti naudojantis aparatūros aprašymo kalbomis (angl. Hardware Description Language). Taip pat svarbus šių įrenginių aspektas – vis didėjantis jų sudėtingumas. Pakartotinio naudojimo (reuse) metodologija – naudojimas sukurtų ir verifikuotų komponentų – dabar yra kertinis lustų bei SOC (System On Chip) kūrimo akmuo, kadangi tai yra metodologija, kuri leidžia sudėtingus lustus projektuoti prieinama kaina, geresnės kokybės taip pat taupo žmogiškuosius išteklius ir laiką. / In this age of technological advances more and more technologies interact with environment. It is various devices, systems, robots which are capable to process and/or interpret visual information. Visual information is very space consuming information in comparison with other types of information, so problems like storing, downloading emerges and data compression is trying to resolve these problems. These data compression solutions may be implemented using software or hardware. Hardware solutions characterized with their high speed. In future more and more technologies will be capable to interact with environment, so tools capable of fast, precise and good compression render of images will become very important. These tools may be designed and studied using hardware description languages. Furthermore, visual information processing tools becoming very complex. Reuse methodology enables easier, faster and cheaper design of such tools.

The reuse of domestic greywater for toilet flushing has the potential to reduce both water consumption and wastewater production, but there is a need for low-cost, low-maintenance greywater treatment systems that can meet reclaimed water quality standards. The purpose of this thesis is to develop a horizontal subsurface flow wetland design that can be sited in a greenhouse, to document the initial performance of the design treating real greywater, to determine the effect of plants, and to provide recommendations for design. Pilot wetlands (planted and unplanted replicates) were constructed in a passively heated greenhouse and fed real domestic greywater. Effluent quality was compared to national reclaimed water quality guidelines. After the first five months of the study, operational changes (reduced loading, aeration of influent, fill and drain) were tested to determine their effect on effluent quality. The results show that the original design basis, 7.5 gBOD m-2d-1, is not appropriate for greywater wetland design under the conditions of this study due to insufficient removal of BOD and turbidity (although suspended solids removal was acceptable). Anoxic conditions within the wetlands led to reduction of sulfate to hydrogen sulfide, which demands oxygen and leads to odour and turbidity problems. Plants did not affect treatment during the first five months. Aerating influent and operation in fill and drain mode may improve BOD removal at relatively high hydraulic loading rates, but effluent disinfection is required to completely remove E.coli. Design recommendations were developed, including tentative loading rates and plant species. / Ontario Centres of Excellence, NSERC

This thesis addresses the revitalization of the former Nova Scotia Textiles Limited mill in Windsor, Nova Scotia, Canada. Windsor is a small town that lies along the confluence of the Avon and St. Croix River shores, off the Bay of Fundy, and is the gateway to the Annapolis Valley region. This abandoned textile mill serves as a monument in the landscape while also holding a special part in the identity of the town’s historic industrial past. This thesis proposes to establish a meaningful connection between the textile mill and the community, as well as with the phenomenal Fundy landscape by means of a regional interpretive center. Commercial, institutional and recreational facilities ensure year-round stability for the site. A context-based approach links the architectural intervention to the dynamic layers of building, site and tidal landscape beyond.

The current human-created division between the natural and built environments has exacerbated environmental problems because nature has been designed as and, consequently, is seen as an Other to be utilized and manipulated at will. Exploring this disconnected relationship between humans and nature, as well as its origin and its effect on building occupants and the environment, is thus a necessary part of this project. The primary concern, however, centers on how we can establish a relationship with the natural environment through interior design to help foster ecological design practices and positive environmental behaviors that move beyond sustainability, resulting in a positive human-nature relation while supporting a coevolutionary perspective. Specifically, this investigation utilizes biophilic design as a solution to the division. The product is an adaptively reused structure that houses a mixed-use, multi-unit residential development, which explores the creation of human-nature connections through direct, indirect, and symbolic means.

No description available.

Nowadays, there is a growing demand for personalization and the "one-size-fits-all" approach for hypermedia systems is no longer applicable. Adaptive hypermedia (AH) systems adapt their behavior to the needs of individual users. However due to the complexity of their authoring process and the different skills required from authors, only few of them have been proposed. These last years, numerous efforts have been put to propose assistance for authors to create their own AH. However, as explained in this thesis some problems remain.In this thesis, we tackle two particular problems. A first problem concerns the integration of authors' materials (information and user profile) into models of existing systems. Thus, allowing authors to directly reuse existing reasoning and execute it on their materials. We propose a semi-automatic merging/specialization process to integrate an author's model into a model of an existing system. Our objectives are twofold: to create a support for defining mappings between elements in a model of existing models and elements in the author's model and to help creating consistent and relevant models integrating the two models and taking into account the mappings between them.A second problem concerns the adaptation specification, which is famously the hardest part of the authoring process of adaptive web-based systems. We propose an EAP framework with three main contributions: a set of elementary adaptation patterns for the adaptive navigation, a typology organizing the proposed elementary adaptation patterns and a semi-automatic process to generate adaptation strategies based on the use and the combination of patterns. Our objectives are to define easily adaptation strategies at a high level by combining simple ones. Furthermore, we have studied the expressivity of some existing solutions allowing the specification of adaptation versus the EAP framework, discussing thus, based on this study, the pros and cons of various decisions in terms of the ideal way of defining an adaptation language. We propose a unified vision of adaptation and adaptation languages, based on the analysis of these solutions and our framework, as well as a study of the adaptation expressivity and the interoperability between them, resulting in an adaptation typology. The unified vision and adaptation typology are not limited to the solutions analysed, and can be used to compare and extend other approaches in the future. Besides these theoretical qualitative studies, this thesis also describes implementations and experimental evaluations of our contributions in an e-learning application.

As a master’s practicum of interior design, this project is concerned with the role of design in shaping mass and individual identity. Cultural commodities, as components of the Culture Industry, effectively define a communal identity for the individuals. The Winnipeg Metropolitan Theatre is chosen as the site of this practicum. This Practicum is interested in defining new spatial relationships and functions. In order for these goals to be achieved, a new function has been defined. The public studio for ephemeral arts is open to the whole society for being involved in the artistic process. By using a qualitative research method, this practicum studies the theoretical aspects of modern mass identity. However being an interior design project, it heavily relies on the ideas of a selected number of theorists, mainly from the Frankfurt school, for building the theoretical foundation of the design. The new design is the result of questioning the existing space’s spatial hierarchy, the new function’s spatial requirements, and a critical approach toward the adaptive reuse of an existing building.

This project involved the adaptive reuse of Maw Garage at 112 King Street. The building was transformed into an interpretive centre for Winnipeg’s Exchange District. As museums are faced with challenges of being relevant in today’s context, museum planners have started to shift their attention toward new approaches for the design of these environments. The purpose of this project was to investigate the evolving nature of the museum, and to determine how its role in society could be modified to better accommodate its audience’s needs. Society’s understanding of heritage in regard to the way we interpret, relate to, and connect with objects, each other, and environments has changed. A thorough review of literature resulted in a broad understanding of post-museum, constructivist learning, and public space theories. Combined with knowledge gained from the analysis of three precedents and programming, these theories enabled the development of a contemporary museum that challenges stereotypical ideas of the museum. This design proposal illustrates one possible way in which post-museum, constructivist learning, and public space theories could be used to design a new museum. Although the solution presented here is specific to Winnipeg’s Exchange District and the Heritage Winnipeg client, conceivably, the same theories could be used to design interpretive centres elsewhere in North America.

The objective of this study was to provide a technique, based on the residence time distribution of a process, for modelling, assessing and improving flow in the processes of water and waste water treatment works. The technique should be accessible to the staff managing and operating the works. From a review of the literature, a preference was given for the experimental method used for determination of the tracer response, including choice of tracer and tracer addition and monitoring. Data analysis techniques were reviewed, and the method of time domain fitting was developed into a computer program, IMPULSE. IMPULSE provided a tool for analysis of residence time data, and removed the constraint of numerical complexity. Using the building blocks of IMPULSE, a realistic flow model can be constructed from tracer data and evaluated. IMPULSE allows a quantitative comparison of models proposed for a process, and provides the parameters of the models. These parameters quantify the non-idealities in a process. A knowledge of the non-idealities provides a basis for decision-making when modifying a process. The results of tracer experiments performed on some water and waste water treatment processes were analysed using IMPULSE. The results showed that collection of good experimental data was critical to the success of the analysis. It is proposed that a guide be produced which draws out the main points raised in the study, including collection of tracer data and use of IMPULSE. The guide should be accessible and easily understandable to the staff managing and operating water and waste water treatment works. / Thesis (M.Sc.Eng.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1995.