Thesis (Ph.D.)--Hong Kong Polytechnic University, 2005. / Adviser: Tse Ming Chung. Includes bibliographical references (p. 311-323)

The urbanized congregate housing and commercial buildings have long developed towards the super high-rise, enlarged and complex composition. The application, identification, usage and administration of such buildings are more complicated than general buildings; so too the fire facilities, organization, training, operation and management. Such tendency of development on super high-rise and large buildings is evident everywhere in various cities. In the area of fire prevention, there will be greater challenges. The general public remains ignorant about disaster prevention, while government authorities do not integrate and enhance regulation on categorization and identification of construction for super high-rise buildings with different applications and scales. Without accumulating our capabilities for fire prevention, it is likely incur the loss of countless lives and property in general buildings when disaster occurs. Since the implementation of the fire administration system in Taiwan from 1995, certain results have been achieved and further development is expected. However, it is found from literature review and questionnaire of this study that there are still many improvements to be made. Among numerous problems, ¡§Human negligence¡¨ covers most of the cases, which also verifies the perspective discussed in the study that ¡§people¡¨ are the keys to fire administration. Therefore, it is deemed in this study that in a super high-rise composite (general super high-rise), the caretaker, fire administrator, mutual fire administrator, professional building administration (security) company and various fire squads be the key persons to promote fire administration. Whether it is the administrational obligation of fire safety or fire rescue, the abovementioned units must link, cooperate and integrate with each other to form a group, so the capability of administrating fire safety of each super high-rise building can be controlled adequately. From various problems witnessed in this study, the following strategies are drafted to correspond with administration, which is expected to integrate the administrational level of fire safety. Under well mechanism of administration, the capacity of fire prevention can be reflected for reducing fire accidents to minimum: 1. Enhance administrative obligation and command mechanism of fire prevention for composite super high-rise buildings. 2. Establish administrative capability of fire prevention from professional building administration (security) company. 3. Regulate the categorization and identification of construction for super high-rise buildings with different applications and scales. 4. Integrate the capacity of fire prevention, operation in fire field and building¡¦s disaster prevention for unified correspondence. 5. Request the government to promote publication and incentive system for information on administration and examination of fire safety.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 264-277). Also available online.

Thesis (M. Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 63-65).

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Building tall has always been an expression of dreams, power and technical advancement. With the greatly increasing urbanization in recent years building tall has become a more viable option for office and residential housing. The Tubed mega frame concept tries to evolve the stabilizing systems of high-rise buildings with its mega frame around the buildings perimeter, created together with a new elevator system; the Articulated Funiculator. This thesis examines the effectiveness of the Tubed mega frame compared to other structural systems. Information and background has been taken from different types of literature, analysis programs and verbally from supervisors; Fritz King and Peter Severin. Using Finite Element Method (FEM-) programs studies on previously used structural systems along with the Tubed mega frame has been made, trying to draw conclusions about its advantages and drawbacks. The examinations have been done using SAP2000and ETABS, both developed by CSI. The tubed mega frame shows to require a large amount of concrete compared to other systems at lower heights, because of its geometry. As the height increases it does show an increase in effectiveness and by the time it reaches 480 meters it is using less materials and still achieving greater stiffness than other systems. Since the geometry of the Tubed mega frame is so flexible a conclusion is also made that the stiffness can be increased by sacrificing façade area or creating longer outriggers.

After the industrial revolution, the increase in population of urban centres created a severe housing shortage. In North America there were two contrasting responses to house the masses, the urban tower and the garden city suburb. These solutions have since been criticised harshly as blunders of modernism. Today, we are undergoing unprecedented urbanisation and a changing paradigm. We are again in a position where the idea of mass housing needs to be rethought. Low-rise mixed-use neighbourhoods, such as Montreal’s Plateau, can provide sustainable vibrant urban environments. However, given the current paradigm, there are instances where buildings of higher density are necessary. How can successful urban neighbourhoods be re-interpreted to develop a design methodology for buildings of higher density?

Japan’s economic, political and societal recovery after World War II is arguably one of the most impressive recoveries of any nation after a war. This thesis refers to the works of scholars on Japanese constitutional studies, Japanese security studies, Japanese politics and Japanese education to identify the forces that helped generate the rise of Japan’s post war recovery national narrative. After Identifying the forces that gave rise to the anti-war Pacifist national narrative of Japan’s postwar recovery, this thesis highlights the role of Japan’s peace museums and memorials in helping to maintain and effectively communicate the nation’s postwar values of democracy and pacifism to future generations. This thesis will then discuss the challenge for Japan’s Peace memorials and museums in an era where anti-war Pacifism is less relevant and may eventually cease to exist. The Japanese people and their Prime Ministers are still divided in embracing national memorials and museums of war to represent their nation. This makes it difficult for peace and war memorials and museums to play a much more significant role in the future of Japan’s national narrative.

This thesis aims to investigate the stresses at mid-ocean ridge offsets, and particularly at the particular class of offsets represented by oceanic microplates. Amongthese, the Easter microplate is one of the best surveyed. This thesis first studies the stress field associated with mid-ocean ridges and simple types of ridge offsets, and then uses the stress field observed at Easter to constrain the driving mechanism of microplates. Two-dimensional finite element modelling is used to predict the lithospheric stress indicators, which are then compared with observations. Extensional structures at high angles (> 35 ) to ridge trends are often observed at ridge-transform intersections and non-tranform offsets, but remained unexplained until now. This study proposes that the topographic loading created by the elevation of mid-ocean ridges relative to old seafloor is a source of ridge parallel tensile stresses, and shows they can be explained by the rotation of ridge parallel tensile stresses at locked offsets. The elasto-plastic rheology is used to investigate the evolution of normal faults near mid-ocean ridges. It is shown that variations in the lithospheric strength, caused entirely by variations in the brittle layer thickness, can account for the observed variations in fault character with spreading rate and along-axis position. Plasticity is shown to prevent the achievement of large fault throws in thin brittle layers. Consequently, it may be important at fast spreading ridges. A new dynamic model is proposed for Easter microplate. It mainly consists of: 1) driving forces along the East and West Rifts, resulting from the combination of a regional tensile stress with an increasing ridge strength towards rift tips, 2) mantle basal drag resisting the microplate rotation, and contributing with less than 20% to the total resisting torque, and 3) resisting forces along the northern and southern boundaries. To explain both the earthquake focal mechanism evidence and theexistence of compressional ridges in the Nazca plate, the boundary conditions alongthe northern boundary are required to change with time, from completely locked tolocked in the normal direction only. This study does not invalidate the microplate kinematic model proposed by Schouten et al. (1993), but shows that normal resisting forces along the northern and southern boundaries of Easter microplate must exist in order to explain the stress observations. Also, it suggests that ridge strength variations play an important role in the dyamics of mid-ocean ridge overlap regions.