This research project explores the integration of the concept of urban green infrastructure (GI) into three “green plans” developed by four Winnipeg inner-city neighbourhoods. Through a literature review, “green plans” evaluation, key-informant interviews, and a focus group interview, many factors that influence on the urban green infrastructure planning in Winnipeg have been identified. These factors were synthesized with a SWOT-TOWS framework to identify strategies and measures to address situations that these inner-city neighbourhoods might face in the process of urban GI planning. Several conclusions have been drawn to summarize the research results, including: green infrastructure planning in the Winnipeg urban neighbourhood context will be taking different physical forms in terms of network connection, which will have great impact on the GI benefits, GI planning principles and processes, and planning practices in those Winnipeg inner-city neighbourhoods; the “green plans” of the four Winnipeg inner-city neighbourhoods provide valuable lessons for preparing for future urban GI planning; and incorporating urban green infrastructure into current neighbourhood “green plans” will face various opportunities and challenges. Combined with some internal factors, these opportunities and challenges put GI planning in different situations, each of which needs their own strategies and measures.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Université Paris IV Sorbonne, 1998. / Cover title. Includes bibliographical references (t. 2, p. 687-712).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Rhode Island, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 151-174).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Université Paris IV Sorbonne, 1998. / Cover title. Includes bibliographical references (t. 2, p. 687-712).

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1967. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, Santa Cruz, 1996. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 375-397).

Thesis (Ph.D.)(Plant production)--University of Pretoria, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references. Available on the Internet via the World Wide Web.

The goal of this work was to apply an operable green façade wall system in order to analyze the benefits of vegetative surfaces in relation to hot arid urban climates. A second layer of information was also analyzed to provide an alternative to electricity. This method was used to actuate the operable green façade passively to enhance sustainable environmental strategies. Carbon emissions, temperature and relative humidity were evaluated in a hot arid climate on a kinetic green wall system physical scale model. Computer simulation provided insight to daylight, shading and solar irradiance within a mock up building. The results of these factors may be a useful tool to implement in building design for these climatic zones.

Energy consumption has recently become a key issue from both environmental and economic considerations. A typical mobile phone network in the UK may consume approximately 40-50 MW, contributing a significant proportion of the total energy consumed by the information technology industry. With the worldwide growth in the number of mobile subscribers, the associated carbon emissions and growing energy costs are becoming a significant operational expense, leading to the need for energy reduction. The Mobile VCE Green Radio Project has been launched, which targets to achieve 100x energy reduction of the current wireless networks by 2020. In this thesis, energy-efficient resource allocation strategies have been investigated taking the LTE system as an example. Firstly, theoretical analysis of energy-efficient design in cellular environments is provided according to the Shannon Theory. Based on a two-link scenario the performance of simultaneous transmission and orthogonal transmission for network power minimization under the specified rate constraints is investigated. It is found that simultaneous transmission consumes less power than orthogonal transmission close to the base station, but much more power in the cell-edge area. Also, simulation results suggest that the energy-efficient switching margins between these two schemes are dominated by the sum total of their required data rates. New definitions of power-utility and fairness metrics are further proposed, following by the design of weighted resource allocation approaches based on efficiency-fairness trade-offs. Apart from energy-efficient multiple access between different links, the energy used by individual base stations can also be reduced. For example, deploying sleep modes is an effective approach to reduce radio base station operational energy consumption. By periodically switching off the base station transmission, or using fewer transmit antennas, the energy consumption of base station hardware may decrease. By delivering less control signalling overhead, the radio frequency energy consumption can also be reduced. Simulation results suggest that up to 90% energy reduction can be obtained in low traffic conditions by employing time-domain optimization in each radio frame. The optimum on/off duty cycle is derived, enabling the energy consumption of the base station to scale with traffic loads. In the spatial-domain, an antenna selection criterion is proposed, indicating the most energy-efficient antenna configuration with the knowledge of users’ locations and quality of service requirements. Without time-domain sleep modes, using fewer transmit antennas could outperform full antenna transmission. However, with time-domain sleep modes, using all available antennas is generally the most energy-efficient choice.

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