This research project aims to determine whether fully subsidised BNG house developed within an integrated development such as Cosmo City can fetch sufficient value to bridging the ‘gap’ between BNG house and an affordable house and thereby assisting a house hold to leverage itself up the housing ladder. Based on Cosmo City as a case study the research investigates real value verse perceived value of BNG houses within an integrated development. The information and data collected includes; the replacement cost of a BNG house, Cosmo City’s BNG residents perception of value, professional commentary on BNG house value, capital growth within the entire development of Cosmo City, a comparable analysis of three houses within Cosmo City and official Municipal Valuations. The literature review reveals that the creation of integrated developments are the way forward to urban and community sustainability, as they provide a platform for social and economic development by alleviating poverty and assist with wealth creation. This is achieved by constructing environments which have better access to amenities and work opportunities and which provide for lifestyle and income changes. The analysis of the research determined that a BNG house has real value (replacement cost), perceived value, (BNG and professional interviews) and market value (Municipal Valuation) and should command sufficient value as a result of the attributes associated with integrated development’s, which include mobility, accessibility, service levels and locality. The conclusion is that my hypothesis cannot be substantiated as yet as a BNG house cannot be sold or purchased due to the pre-emptive clause which restricts the sales of BNG houses for a period that is no sales of BNG houses have as yet taken place. However, the research does determine that BNG house has both perceived and real value.

<p>Low-Cost Housing Projects is an essential part in the line of developing sustainable solutions for the provision of shelter for ordinary people in the third world. In poor countries severe problems like population growth, uncontrolled urbanisation processes, deforestation and erosion are present as a result of misuse of all different kinds of resources; this is the fact also in Ethiopia. This degree project is a sub-project integrated in a larger research project at Halmstad University concerning Sustainable Low Cost Housing for the Kambaata Region, Ethiopia. The purpose of this sub-project is to plan and design two dwellings as when erected will serve as a demonstration project in Durame the main urban area of the Kambaata region.</p><p>The houses will be constructed from the two suitable low cost building materials; Adobe</p><p>blocks and CSSB (Cement Stabilized Soil Blocks).</p>

Low-Cost Housing Projects is an essential part in the line of developing sustainable solutions for the provision of shelter for ordinary people in the third world. In poor countries severe problems like population growth, uncontrolled urbanisation processes, deforestation and erosion are present as a result of misuse of all different kinds of resources; this is the fact also in Ethiopia. This degree project is a sub-project integrated in a larger research project at Halmstad University concerning Sustainable Low Cost Housing for the Kambaata Region, Ethiopia. The purpose of this sub-project is to plan and design two dwellings as when erected will serve as a demonstration project in Durame the main urban area of the Kambaata region. The houses will be constructed from the two suitable low cost building materials; Adobe blocks and CSSB (Cement Stabilized Soil Blocks).

Capture of the energy in sunlight relies mainly on the use of light-absorbing semiconductors, in solar cells and in water-splitting devices. While solar cell efficiency has increased dramatically since the first practical device was made in 1954, production costs for the most-efficient solar absorbers, III-V semiconductors, remain high. This is largely a result of use of expensive, slow growth methods which rely on hazardous gas-phase precursors. Alternative growth methods are necessary to lower the cost for III-V materials for use in solar cells and improve the practicality of water-splitting devices. The research goal of this dissertation is two-fold: to expand the capabilities of close-spaced vapor transport, an alternative growth method for III-Vs to demonstrate its compatibility with current technologies; and to explore the fundamental chemistry of close-spaced vapor transport as a growth method for these materials. This dissertation surveys plausibly lower-cost growth methods for III-V semiconductors (Chapter II) and presents in-depth studies on the growth chemistry of two ternary III-Vs: GaAs1-xPx (Chapter III) and Ga1-xInxP (Chapter IV). Finally, the growth of GaAs microstructures which could be utilized in a water-splitting device is studied (Chapter V). This dissertation includes previously published and unpublished co-authored material. / 2019-01-09

D.Litt. et Phil. / The Western Cape and the UniCity of Cape Town are the only remaining province and metropolitan municipality that have not been won by the ANC since the advent of democratic elections in 1994. The ANC won the Cape Town substructure, one out of six former sub-councils of the Cape Metropolitan Area (CMA) in the 1996. It is the Cape Metropolitan Municipality (i.e. former CMA) which is referred to as the UniCity of Cape Town in this research. The first and only time the ANC controlled the UniCity of Cape Town was between 2002 and 2006. This was as a result of the floor-crossing and the coalition between the NNP and ANC in 2002. The Western Cape is also the only province in which the NNP, DA1, ANC and the DA2 have alternated between 1994 and 2008. These two factors make the Western Cape and the UniCity of Cape Town the most hotly contested areas in South Africa. This political competition has led to accusations and counter-accusations among political parties that parties that have governed the Western Cape and the UniCity of Cape Town have used the allocation of housing services with the intention of achieving personal or party-political interests. The objective of this research has been to apply a combination of both qualitative and quantitative methods to investigate whether there is evidence to suggest that those political parties that governed the Western Cape and the UniCity of Cape Town between 1994 and 2008 have used the allocation of housing services to further party-political interests. The two leading questions were whether the political parties that governed the UniCity of Cape Town between 1994 and 2008 skewed the allocation of low-cost housing in favour of their supporters, and, if so, how political-party affiliation has affected the access to the housing services of voters in the Western Cape and the UniCity of Cape Town. The methodology used by the researcher is mainly a combination of the analysis of all available electronic and printed material and extensive interviews with the residents of Joe Slovo and Delft areas. In-depth interviews have also been conducted with leaders of community-based organisations, unions, academics and leaders of political parties. The analysis shows that all political parties that governed the Western Cape and the UniCity of Cape Town between 1994 and 2008 have deliberately targeted those suburbs in which their supporters are in the majority and in which the supporters of their rival parties are in the minority. The analysis in this research also shows that affiliation to political party has affected respondents’ access to housing services. The main recommendation is that political parties should be encouraged not to use party affiliation to determine who get goods/services provided by government in a democratic society.

Bibliography: pages 105-107. / Information Systems, both paper-based and computer-based, are integral in the management of irregular settlements and the process of delivering low-cost housing in South Africa. An Irregular Settlement can be defined as an area where the 'shacks' have no fixed street address. Due to policies by previous regimes, under whose rule irregular settlements were almost ignored, there is often little or no spatial or socio-economic data available about existing irregular settlements. Thus for the use of the community, or to organisations interested in helping to improve the quality of life of the residents living in these settlements. As a prerequisite to quality of life, the basic need of shelter, along with food, healthcare and education need to be made available. The emphasis today is thus being placed on the provision of low-cost housing. A need thus arises to have up-to-date information about these irregular settlements in order to plan either for the upgrading of the settlement or for the relocation to new low-cost housing developments. Currently mostly paper-based systems are being used in these developments. There are two opportunities where computer-oriented information systems could be used at this time in 1996 and 1997 to assist with the management and upgrading of irregular settlements. The first is the stage of managing an existing irregular settlement; the second is managing the process of housing provision, taking advantage of the project-linked subsidy scheme. Two Cape Town based projects provide case studies for the application of information systems at the two stages identified above. The first is the Marconi Beam 'From Shacks to Houses' project located in Milnerton. The second is the Integrated Services Land Project (iSLP) of the Cape Flats. The Marconi Beam Settlement is an irregular settlement that has been accepted as part of the 'Project-Linked Subsidy Scheme' for the provision of new low-cost housing. Previously only paper-based systems were being used to manage the settlement and its move to the new Joe Slovo Park formal housing development. There was also found to be a lack of appropriate tools and awareness of which technology could be used in the process. Some of the specific application areas in which we were able to provide solutions in Marconi Beam included: ■ the identification of people directly affected by the fire that swept through the settlement in October 1996; ■ the residents who would be affected by the construction of a new road through the one area of the settlement could be identified, facilitating their movement away from the area; and ■ a system of tracking the internal moves of residents was devised by which we were able to maintain a record of the internal movements of residents whilst the system of the lottery was in place. Subsequently, with the use of the Block System, the identification of residents who were required to come in and have their applications for new houses processed, as a result of their spatial location in the settlement, was accomplished. The Indlu Management System, a computer based system, resulted from the need to keep track of, and process, large amounts of socio-economic data in order to speedily process the large number of applicants applying for national housing subsidies. As a result of the implementation of this system, the processing times per applicant have been reduced from 30 minutes to 10 minutes per applicant. The successful use of these systems in the two projects demonstrate that there is thus a definite role to be played in the use of information systems in relation to the management of irregular settlements and the provision of low-cost housing.

This study aimed to develop a radar solution that would aid the traffic calming efforts of the CSIR business campus. The Institute of Transportation Engineers defined traffic calming as "The combination of mainly physical measures that reduce the negative effects of motor vehicle use." Radar-based solutions have been proven to help reduce the speeds of motorists in areas with speed restrictions. Unfortunately, these solutions are expensive and difficult to import. Thus, this dissertation's main focus is to produce a detailed blueprint of a radar-based solution, with technical specifications that are similar to those of commercial and experimental systems at relatively low-cost. With the above mindset, the project was initiated with the user requirements being stated. Then a detailed study of current experimental and commercial radar-based traffic calming systems followed. Thereafter, the technical and non-technical requirements were derived from user requirements, and the technical specifications obtained from the literature study. A review of fundamental radar and signal processing principles was initiated to give background knowledge for the design and simulation process. Consequently, a detailed design of the system's functional components was conceptualized, which included the hardware, software, and electrical aspects of the system as well as the enclosure design. With the detailed design in mind, a data-collection system was built. The data-collection system was built to verify whether the technical specifications, which relate to the detection performance and the velocity accuracy of the proposed radar design, were met. This was done to save on buying all the components of the proposed system while proving the design's technical feasibility. The data-collection system consisted of a radar sensor, an Analogue to Digital Converter (ADC), and a laptop computer. The radar sensor was a k-band, Continuous Wave (CW) transceiver, which provided I/Q demodulated data with beat frequencies ranging from DC to 50 kHz. The ADC is an 8-bit Picoscope 2206B portable oscilloscope, capable of sampling frequencies of up to 50 MHz. The target detection and the velocity estimation algorithms were executed on a Samsung Series 7 Chronos laptop. Preliminary experiments enabled the approximation of the noise intensity of the scene in which the radar would be placed. These noise intensity values enabled the relationship between the Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) and the velocity error to be modelled at specific ranges from the radar, which led to a series of experiments that verified the prototypes' ability to accurately detect and estimate the vehicle speed at distances of up to 40 meters from the radar. The cell-averaging constant false alarm rate (CA-CFAR) detector was chosen as an optimum detector for this application, and parameters that produced the best results were found to be 50 reference cells and 12 guard cells. The detection rate was found to be 100% for all coherent processing intervals (CPIs) tested. The prototype was able to detect vehicle speeds that ranged from 2 km/h up to 60 km/h with an uncertainty of ±0.415 km/h, ±0.276 km/h, and ±0.156 km/h using a CPI of 0.0128 s, 0.256 s, and 0.0512 s respectively. The optimal CPI was found to be 0.0512 s, as it had the lowest mean velocity uncertainty, and it produced the largest first detection SNR of the CPIs tested. These findings were crucial for the feasibility of manufacturing a low-cost traffic calming solution for the South African market.

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The Communications industry is currently involved in a wireless revolution. Consequently, there is a need for a wide variety of wireless solutions to replace existing wired systems. The major systems, such as cellular and satellite, are costly to put in place and require a low BER (bit error rate) to be successful for their real-time applications. In contrast to this are those systems that can tolerate a higher BER as a trade off for cost (<$50.00) and complexity. A typical application for these lower cost systems is monitoring non-critical data that is not required to be delivered real-time. The work presented here focused on designing, building and testing a Proof of Concept Prototype (POCP) for a low-cost wireless data link (WDL). In a typical WDL application, problems arise when too large a data rate attempts to travel the allotted channel bandwidth in the frequency band of interest. Also, limitations imposed by current radio transceiver technology tend to limit WDL design. The existing sponsor's wired system operates at a 9600 Baud, and presented the opposite problem: the data rate was too low for the RF Microdevices RF2905 used for the POCP. This challenge necessitated the development of a low-cost encoding scheme using standard digital logic gates in place of more costly Manchester Encoding. For the digital logic encoding scheme to work, the crystal oscillators had to be modified. This resolved the problem with the low frequency limitations of the RF2905 phase locked-loop. In addition, the polled, asynchronous, and unbalanced RS485 connections of the wired system had to be adapted to interface with the single-ended data connections of the WDL. Finally, the successful design of a timing scheme, using standard TTL components and balanced to unbalanced drivers, resolved the interface problems resulting in a low-cost WDL designed to operate with an existing wired system without requiring modifications to that system. The WDL is transparent in connection and operation and can be inserted without disrupting the current wired system. / Master of Science

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