Thesis (M. Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 136-153).

Thesis (M. Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 130-133).

Rural communities play a significant role in the State of Texas economy. The economic success of these communities depends heavily on maintaining adequate public infrastructure systems. This report examines the infrastructure needs of 11 rural Texas cities to identify gaps in funding resources available through state and federal grant and loan programs for infrastructure improvements. Primary findings conclude that inadequate funding support for rural infrastructure improvements through state and federal grant and loan programs exists primarily for water and wastewater infrastructure improvements and street and sidewalk improvements. In addition, the report outlines limitations specific to rural communities in obtaining various forms of capital financing that include a limited tax base, limited access to borrowing and lack of economies of scale as well as various demographic characteristics that contribute to these limitations. / text

The master's design studio project is a semester-long design course focusing on the methodologies and feasibilities to update the old city gates, walls and moats in Beijing with hybridized infrastructure as catalyst to its surrounding area's urbanrenovation process. With more and more emphasis on the re-construction of the old city-structure in Beijing (city gates, city walls and Moats dated from Ming Dynasty), its future urban design practice has become a critical topic. Study takes Beijing Anding City Gate & Desheng City gate area, together with part of the moat and city walls area linking those two gates as research object. / text

This study analyzes the quantifiable impacts of low impact development features, sometimes referred to as green infrastructure, across three alternative proposals for the development of a city district along the edge of a lake and a creek. Low impact development is defined as a stormwater management approach designed to capture water before it goes into stormwater drains or directly into bodies of water in order to allow the water to infiltrate groundwater sources or evapotranspirtate back into the atmosphere. The study applies Carl Steinitz’s Framework for GeoDesign to the three alternative proposals and the existing conditions as a means of comparison in order to understand an informed decision based approach to design. / text

In a roadway network, infrastructure conditions determine efficient network operation and traveler safety, and thus roadway engineers need a sophisticated plan to monitor and maintain network performance. Developing a comprehensive maintenance and rehabilitation (M&R) strategy for an infrastructure system, specifically a roadway network, is a complicated process because of the system uncertainties and multiple parties involved. Traditional approaches are mostly top-down, and restrict the decision-making process. In contrast, agent-based models, a bottom-up approach, could well simulate and analyze the autonomy of each party and their interactions in the infrastructure network. In this thesis, an agent-based model prototype was developed to simulate the operations of a small roadway network with a high degree of simplification. The objective of this study is to assess the applicability of agent-based modeling for infrastructure management problems through the following four aspects: (1) to simulate the user route selection process in the network; (2) to analyze the impact of users’ choices on the congestion levels and structural conditions of roadway sections; (3) to help the engineer to determine M&R strategies under a certain budget; and (4) to investigate the impact due to different fare rates of the toll road section on the infrastructure conditions in the network. This prototype detected traffic flow, and gave appropriate M&R advice to each roadway segment. To improve this model, more investigation should be conducted to increase the level of sophistication for the interaction rules between agents, the route selection, and the budget allocation algorithm. Upon completion, this model can be applied to existing road networks to assist roadway engineers in managing the network with an efficient M&R plan and toll rate. / text

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In the past few years, the study of critical infrastructures and the interdependencies amongst them in the context of an emergency situation has become a priority for many countries, including Canada. Governments, universities, and private companies all over the world are spending vast amounts of money and effort trying to better understand how infrastructures and humans react in the time stages before, during, and after a disruptive event. Analyzing complex systems such as those formed by infrastructure networks and decision makers is not a simple task and requires a multidisciplinary holistic approach. The field of research in infrastructure interdependencies is fairly new, and lies in the intersection of areas of knowledge such as emergency management, geography, simulation modeling, planning, and safety engineering. Analyzing interdependencies between infrastructure networks is not only a complex problem in terms of its formalization, but also in terms of the intricacy required to test and validate that formalization. Furthermore, identifying and having access to the data necessary to validate the formal system is probably an even more complicated issue to resolve. It is, however, only through the study of these interdependencies that certain failures or weaknesses in the systems can be discovered; weaknesses that could not be studied through the analysis of a single isolated system. Not only is it a challenging task to analyze the interconnections between infrastructure systems, but studying these at moments of stress, when the interdependencies become dynamic, is even more difficult. In this thesis I explore the intersection between three main themes: Critical infrastructure interdependencies, Emergency Management, and Geographical Information Systems (GIS). Furthermore, I analyze the different types of interdependencies between infrastructure systems, I describe some of the challenges that have to be dealt with when modeling interdependencies, and I explore the possibility of modeling and visualizing some of these interdependencies by constructing an Infrastructure Geographical Information System of the UBC campus.