The current generation has seen technology penetrate every aspect of our life. However, even with recent advancements, adopters of contemporary technology are often angry and frustrated with their devices. With the increasing number of devices available to us in our day-to-day lives, and with the emergence of newer technologies like the Internet of Things, there is a stronger need than ever for computers to better understand human needs. However, there is still no machine understandable vocabulary that conceptualizes and describes the human-needs domain. As such, in this thesis we present a cloud-based ontology solution that conceptualizes the needs-domain by describing the relationships between the concepts of an Agent, a Role, a Need, and a Satisfier. The thesis focusses on the design of an OWL ontology which is based on an existing human-needs model. The human-needs model chosen for the ontology stems from a trans-disciplinary approach led by Manfred Max-Neef, called the Fundamental Human Needs model. It is seen as classifiable, finite and constant across all cultures and time periods. The methodology approach used to develop a new ontology is METHONTOLOGY, which is geared toward conceptualizing an ontology from scratch with the mindset of continual evaluation. We then further discuss the overall FHN Ontology comprising of various components including a RESTful Web Service and a SPARQL endpoint for querying and updating the FHN Ontology. The ontology is evaluated via competency questions for validation and via the Ontology Pitfall Scanner for verification and correctness across multiple criteria. The entire system is tested and evaluated by implementing a native android application which serves as a REST client to connect to the FHN Ontology end-point

This study was designed to test the hypothesis that desire is inversely proportional to satisfaction in the motivational category of a given person. The present study represents an attempt to devise an objectively scored test which will objectively and empirically determine the level of motivation of a given subject.

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This thesis explores how consumption impacts on people’s wellbeing in seven Peruvian communities. It draws on social science literature on consumption and incorporates the key factors highlighted by the research on wellbeing determinants. Generally, it is accepted that consumption increases wellbeing by lifting people out of poverty and that it has a negative impact if it fails to place them at a higher social position. Other aspects defining consumption such as the symbolic meaning of goods, its pleasurable dimension, the role of goods and services as basic needs satisfiers, etc. have not been systematically approached from the perspective of their effect on wellbeing. The thesis takes on this challenge by incorporating the most salient features of consumption studied by social scientists through the concepts of motives and satisfiers. It draws on psychologists’ claim that motives are important in understanding the linkages between wellbeing and people’s behaviour. It also integrates the work of human needs theorists stressing the importance of analysing the effectiveness of goods and services as basic needs satisfiers. The research follows a multi-methods approach that takes into account the local specificities of consumption, whilst aiming for a global understanding of the key factors mediating its relationship with human wellbeing; accounting for its objective and subjective dimensions. It uses regression analysis to study how consumption affects happiness through total expenditure and motives, and qualitative methods to explore the efficiency of satisfiers in meeting basic needs. The research finds, as expected, that in the Peruvian communities consumption enhances happiness when it improves basic needs levels and places people at a higher social position. People consuming because of hedonic reasons are also happier, but those consuming for social acceptance and higher status are not. Moreover, being motivated by basic needs is negatively associated with happiness. One of the reasons might be the type of satisfiers used. The exploratory study of needs satisfiers in a Peruvian slum points at their potential inefficiency, which might be contributing to people’s frustration through consumption.

Bullying is a serious problem for many adolescents, and one that can have detrimental effects on normal developmental processes, as chronic and severe bullying can obstruct the fulfilment of essential psychological needs. However, there are currently few targeted interventions available for chronic and severe bullying cases. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of the Red Balloon Learner Centres (RBLC) which are a full time personal and academic recovery programme for bullied adolescents. A mixed-methodology was utilised, and quantitative outcome measures included: depression, anxiety and trauma symptoms, self-esteem and academic engagement and self-concept. The study was non equivalent groups design (NEGD) and incorporated a comparison group of bullied adolescents from Hertfordshire local authority (LA). The aim was to compare the recovery process between groups over time by taking an initial baseline measure, and conducting follow-up assessments every three months. Both groups demonstrated significant improvements in outcome variables over time, but there were no significant differences between groups at six month follow-up on any outcome variable. Both groups reported similar recovery themes that related to need fulfilment in the areas of safety and security, control, belonging and self-esteem. Recovery is not just the absence of internalising symptomology, but constructive fulfilment of needs. Social needs were felt to be most affected by chronic and severe bullying and most difficult to fulfil constructively. It is recommended that interventions for chronically and severely bullied adolescents should enable constructive need fulfilment, which may involve changes to the ethos and culture of schools, collaborative therapeutic intervention and targeted skill building.

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This study seeks to investigate the impact of globalisation on the architectural behaviour in the United Arab Emirates, to clarify the benefits and risks of globalised architecture in architectural behaviour. Although there are several supporters of globalisation who see the phenomenon as a means of progress and development, many experts have indicated that this phenomenon has been demolishing local culture and regional considerations, and ignoring residents’ requirements. As a result, this study presents all the views about this phenomenon from many aspects, such as political, social, economic and environmental, whereby it investigates the changes in architecture and urban planning due to global standards, methods of construction, and building materials. The literature review was the first part of the study and the theoretical studies were divided into three pivots in this thesis: The globalisation impacts and features, the relationship between globalisation and architecture and the last pivot concentrates on the human needs in architecture. The study also concentrates on the impact of globalisation on architecture through the terminology of “globalised architecture”, and focuses on some global phenomena in the architectural domain, such as skyscrapers, multi-storey buildings and iconic landmarks. The empirical study examines this argument about globalisation through questionnaires and interviews. A comparison is drawn between two groups: globalised houses is the first group, which reflects globalisation’s impacts on architecture, where this provides easier ways to specify features, elements and specifications for the era. In contrast, the non-globalised sample is the opposite of the first group, because it reflects the features of houses without the impacts of globalisation. Ultimately, the findings indicated that there are differences between the two groups. Both samples occurred in the same place and time, but the form of architecture and urban design has affected human behaviour. Thus, this study suggests a paradigm that could provide more humanitarian elements in architecture and urban design. It also suggests some general recommendations supporting human needs, and local considerations such as standards and codes.

Governments and municipalities need to understand their citizens’ psychological needs in critical times and dangerous situations. COVID-19 brings lots of challenges to deal with. We propose NeedFull, an interactive and scalable tweet analysis platform, to help governments and municipalities to understand residents’ real psychological needs during those periods. The platform mainly consists of four parts: data collection module, data storage module, data analysis module and data visualization module. The whole process of how data flows in the system is illustrated as follows: Our crawlers in the data collection module gather raw data from a popular social network website Twitter. Then the data is fed into our human need detection model in the data analysis module before stored into the database. When a user enters a query through the user interface, they will get all the related items in the database by the index system of the data storage module and a comprehensive human needs analysis of these items is then presented and depicted in the data visualization module. We employed the proposed platform to investigate the reaction of people in four big regions including New York, Ottawa, Toronto and Montreal to the ongoing worldwide COVID-19 pandemic by collecting tweets posted during this period. The results show that the most pronounced human need in these tweets is relatedness with 51.32%, followed by autonomy with 22.56% and competence with 18.82%. And the percentages of tweets expressing frustration are larger than those of tweets expressing satisfaction for each psychological need in general.