Poster exhibited at GPSC Student Showcase, November 7th, 2014, University of Arizona. Winner of the Arid Land Resource Science Award.

America was the leader in quantity and quality of high school diplomas. Today, it is ranked thirty six in the world. Some of the main factors that affect education in America are witnessing us on a daily basis. These factors affect our visual, thermal and auditory comfort levels. As environmentalists we strive to find solutions to these problems. Unfortunately, some designers aim their designs to merely aesthetics. Leaving out the environmental factor of thermal comfort to be dictated by mechanically engineers and not paying attention to how occupants interact with sound within the built environment. Today I will discuss how to design for the ears, and how sound has a major role in education promoting Children's health and wellbeing. Education reach its way to our minds through listening in adequate environment. Optimum design appreciates and is tailored to experiencing all five senses. Goal of this research: Design proper noise levels for classrooms to provide students with an optimal learning environment is imperative. Reverberation times need to be carefully sized and calculated, particularly in the primary grades when the young student's ears are not fully developed. Conduct background noise and reverberation time measurements in classrooms to assess the problem and recommend solutions. Acoustic performance design is vital. Good Sound = Happy Sound.

There is an investment of hand-pump technology to improve provision of safe drinking-water for the stakeholder end-users in rural sub-Saharan regions of Africa, yet there are challenges to maintain the assets. In rural drinking-water projects, end-users also assume the responsibility of hand-pump maintenance after projects are handed over to them by project sponsors. This study uses a realist philosophy to analyse the issues that hinder or facilitate effective end-user participation in a successful maintenance of drinking-water projects in Nkhoma and Bvumbwe, Lilongwe and Thyolo Districts of Malawi respectively. Data collection was done by employing secondary data (literature review) and primary data collection using documents, observation, and interviews to establish factors facilitating or inhibiting hand-pump maintenance. Interviews which were the main data collection instrument, recruited 12 Convergence Interviews (CI), followed by 39 Individual Case Interviews (ICIs) and two sets of Focus Groups (FGs) in operational and non-functional hand-pumps. CI processes developed categories related to hand-pump maintenance factors and associated challenges. The CI developed maintenance categories were further cross checked in ICIs that used semi-structured interviews and finally confirmed in FGs, documentary and observational analysis. Convergence Interviews data was analysed using a matrix while ICIs were analysed using likert-type ranking scales to identify the most occurring hand-pump maintenance factors. Focus Groups, observations and documents used content analysis to analyse the hand-pump maintenance factors. Results show that end-users maintain small- medium hand-pumps faults effectively if they pay a contribution towards maintenance costs and if local political structures are trained to repair the hand-pumps. Moreover, the study identifies lack of sponsor supports as the main factor leading to failure in the management of major faults and hand-pump rehabilitation, as this is beyond local capacity technically as well as economically. Hence, the study introduces a business approach to improving hand-pump maintenance by recommending some minimum standards on the demand-side (end-user level) as well as the supply-side (project sponsor and policy levels).

The growing recognition amongst local authorities of the potential of asset management to improve property management practice has led to its increased adoption. The growing trend has been supported by the development of asset management frameworks. However, evidence indicates that local authorities are failing to achieve the full benefits from their asset management implementation. The factors contributing to some of the property management problems such as reactive management, lack of leadership support, ineffective corporate landlord approach, remain. The available frameworks are incapable of mitigating the identified problems by failing to provide understanding of local authority differences. Therefore, this research aimed to develop an adaptable and flexible operational property asset management framework for local authorities in England and Scotland. The strategic management theory, review of existing literature findings and evaluation of available asset management frameworks especially the Total Asset Management Process model helped to identify, define and establish the causal logic of the asset management concepts underpinning the developed conceptual framework. Face to face semi-structured interviews followed by large scale questionnaire surveys were used to gather primary data. The key research findings are that the following are the key factors limiting asset management practice improvements in local authorities: ineffective leadership support, asset management capabilities and corporate landlord approach; inadequate asset management information systems and performance management arrangements. Principal components factor analysis was utilised to help establish underlying factors that account for flexible and adaptable asset management framework. The findings suggest that asset management processes associated with an adaptable and flexible asset management framework include a board level cross functional asset management structure; strong leadership support for both direct and indirect property; an enabling environment; an effective corporate landlord approach; an effective performance management arrangement; and availability of an appropriate management information system. The framework has been validated to be robust and can be utilised and flexibly adapted by different local authorities and provides the basis for improving the process and outcome of asset management practice.

A functionally connected urban tree infrastructure (UTI) contributes to ecosystem function, resilience, and the provision of Ecosystem Services (ES). Variation in tree height is an important attribute influencing movement of passerines, habitat quality and landscape patterns. UTI provided ES are particularly beneficial in the most deprived areas of a city. Presented in this thesis is an exploration into the social-ecological shape of a UTI using a holistic, multi-scale and dimensional, landscape approach. The potential landscape connectivity of a UTI in the City of Salford, UK was quantified and compared using the integral index of connectivity (IIC) across vertically stratified canopies existing in 2005, 2009, and 2013. System resilience was assessed through landscape graph network analysis and by the identification of canopies critical in maintaining connectivity (dIIC). The index of multiple deprivation (IMD) was related to UTI landscape composition and configuration through a series of statistical tests. The connectivity of Salford’s vertically stratified UTI was low (IIC = <0.000001 – 0.0045), besides this the temporal change in connectivity was complex with no discernible overall pattern. The rate of connectivity increase decreased after a 90-120m gap-crossing threshold. The resilience of Salford’s UTI relies on the connectivity of canopies within 4 to 5 sub-connected regions, depending on passerine perception, increasing to 10 -16 smaller regions for canopies above 17.1m. The resilience and stability of these sub-connected regions were often reliant on a central canopy patch. UTI composition is related negatively with deprivation, UTI configuration is related positively, while structural diversity of canopy heights revealed no correlation with deprivation. The research in this thesis contributes to the debates on how to best manage the UTI for both people and nature. The findings of this thesis have a number of important implications for future urban landscape management, especially as previously unknown landscape patterns have been identified.

Social-ecological systems describe interactions between humans and nature. The ecosystem approach provides a holistic system to manage and understand these interactions, and to maintain and enhance ecosystem services - the benefits nature provides to humans. While much theoretical discourse posits various approaches to the ecosystem approach and ecosystem services, there exists a lack of practical applications examining these approaches, especially in urban and peri-urban environments. The current research used a case study to examine the efficacy of integrating environmental management and ecosystem services within an urban greenspace social-ecological system. Initially, the most pertinent ecosystem services and management options were established. This was achieved through expert opinion, a rapid assessment, and a literature search which enabled the identification of a preferred management approach. This resulted in conservation grazing cattle over a 5 hectare salt marsh, typical of the Upper Mersey Estuary in the UK and situated within an urban area. The effects of cattle grazing on four relevant ecosystem services: (i) wild species diversity, (ii) environmental settings, (iii) carbon storage, and (iv) immobilisation of pollutants, were evaluated over two years. The aim of the evaluation was to examine how the grazing intervention affected ecosystem services. Both quantitative and qualitative measures - reflecting the interdisciplinarity of the ecosystem services concept - were used in the evaluation. For the ecosystem services examined, the results add significant knowledge to the current discourse, and are used to inform new avenues for research. There was an increase in the cultural services (wild species diversity and environmental settings), regulatory services of carbon storage showed no change while differences in the immobilisation of pollutants observed were explained by local variation at the site. These findings show that by integrating ecosystem services and environmental management, larger scale benefits to humans from management options can be recognised and planned for in future natural spaces management, thereby increasing the positive rewards nature provides in abundance.

In construction many problems exist that lead to poor quality of the built environment, for example, lack of integration between service and facility design and poor requirements management. Aiming to mitigate these problems, academics and practitioners have engaged in debating ways of improving the process of designing new facilities. One of the approaches that has been investigated is the use of scientific evidence to support decision makers within the design process. This process is called evidence-based design (EBD). In this respect, a range of studies developed in healthcare sectors encourages the application of EBD in order to add value to the design of these environments and to produce better building outcomes for patients and staff. In this respect, this study was designed to address this issue and is aimed at better understanding how evidence supports design. The achievement of the aim was based on (a) revisiting the philosophical debate about the definitions of evidence and knowledge formation to propose a conceptual framework that can be used to classify evidence within the design domain; (b) investigating the proposed use of evidence within prescriptive design methods of design; (c) understanding how evidence has been used in design practice (specifically in the design of healthcare facilities) and to propose a taxonomy for different categories of evidence that support building design and their advantages and disadvantages; and (d) exploring the existence of opportunities to improve design practice with a basis on a better understanding of evidence. The focus of the research was the design process of healthcare facilities and the unit of analysis was the role of evidence within design. The findings of this research enhance our understanding of design as a knowledge formation system. In this respect, the use of this approach opens opportunities for future studies related to the interpretation and the development of tools that assist design. This research also provides insights related to analysis and synthesis as the proto-theory of design as well as distributed intelligence in design.

The ecosystem services approach is a set of institutional practices which aim to improve natural resource management and policy making, by highlighting the relationship between well-functioning ecosystems and human wellbeing. Within the approach, cultural services (CS) signify the psycho-social aspects of people-nature interrelations. This concept is an understudied area, and is recognised to exhibit high levels of complexity which make it difficult to evaluate. This thesis deconstructs, explores, clarifies and enhances the CS concept. A flexible, phased research design explores cultural services in relation to a specific case-study site, 'Aspley Woods and Heaths' (England). Cultural services are examined through a series of lenses: as an interdisciplinary construct, as an experience of place, as context, as a resource regime, as a discursive resource and as a personal discourse. Mixed qualitative methods identify how CS is constructed through action, speech and text; via an in depth analysis of primary data from semi-structured visitor and expert interviews, unstructured key informant interviews, and marginal participant observation. Additional data informs the enquiry, from a discourse analysis of key study site documents, and a review of site-related historic, ecological, land management, and policy documents. Results from this thesis subsequently challenge the current published definition and subcategorisation of cultural services. The notion that cultural services are nonmaterial is disputed due to the centrality of physical activities, physical sensations, and access management regimes which require material inputs. The benefits premise is challenged since CS experiences included references to anxiety, injury and conflict. The notion that CS are obtained is disputed due to the reciprocal nature of information exchange between people and features of the environment. The idea that CS are solely from ecosystems is challenged due to the part played by interpretative socio-cultural contexts, and natural and social processes which occur outside site boundaries and specified time frames. Instead, this thesis recommends that cultural services be redefined as the ways that humans use discourse to construct and communicate perceptions of nature. CS arise from processes of interaction (activities) and reciprocal information exchange (information functions) with ecosystems. CS subcategories are hence a series of cognitive, retrospective, intuitive, creative, communicative and regenerative interpretative repertoires, which form the basis of social practices such as designation, restoration and policy. The propensity of environments to embody discourse is concluded to be crucial in defining what is valuable about natural ecosystems, and how these contribute to wellbeing.

Therapeutic footwear is provided to patients with the primary aims of reducing foot pain and improving foot health. Therefore, it is of concern that patients choose not to wear it. This choice has been attributed to its poor appearance. However, there may be other reasons for this choice and the reasons may be more complex than previously acknowledged. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the users’ experiences of this footwear. In the context of this study the ‘users’ are women with rheumatoid arthritis. This study was based on an interpretive phenomenological approach (IPA) that employed conversational style interviews to gather data. Ten women with RA and experience of wearing the footwear were recruited and following ethical approval the interviews were carried out, transcribed, organised and analysed. Five organising themes emerged as findings. These were the participants: • feelings about themselves, • feelings about the footwear, • unmet needs and expectations, • behaviour with the footwear and • feelings about the consultation with the practitioner. The final, global theme was that the patient/practitioner consultation has a powerful influence on the women’s feelings about themselves, the footwear, their expectations of it and their behaviour with it. This study has provided insight into their experiences of this footwear in that, unlike any other intervention, it replaces something that is normally worn and is part of an individual’s perception of self and their perception of how others see them. The footwear impacts more on women’s emotions than previously acknowledged and in addition, it has been found that the consultation influences their emotions and behaviour with the footwear. As well as improvements in footwear design and the service that delivers it, the training of the practitioners in a more patient focussed consultation style could improve the women’s experience and engagement in the footwear as a health intervention, as well as something that is ‘worn’.

Occupational therapists believe that identity is shaped by engagement in occupations but this relationship has yet to be fully understood. This thesis is an account of a study which aimed to investigate how narratives told about occupations contribute to the construction of identity. Narratives, extracted from interviews with 17 leisure enthusiasts, were subject to systematic analysis of content, form and interactive elements. This was based on an understanding that identity is expressed in the meanings attributed to the events told in a narrative. The meanings were used to construct a framework which provides a basis for conceptualising the ‘occupied self’. The framework is organised around three dimensions. The dimension of the ‘active self’ enables people to present themselves in terms of morality, competence and agency. The ‘located self’ enables them to present a sense of location in time, place, society and the body. The ‘changing self’ enables the individual to present the self as changing in itself and in relation to occupation. These facets of the self are manifested and foregrounded differently by each individual. Based on a narrative perspective, the framework provides a unique and useful theoretical development, structuring and enhancing what is currently understood about the relationship between occupation and identity. The findings of the research contribute to the debate about how occupation is defined and how the meanings of occupations are understood. Other implications are also explored in the thesis. The framework offers practitioners a structured way of understanding the ways in which occupation can contribute therapeutically in the reconstruction of damaged identities. The method of analysing narratives used in this study has much to offer in understanding occupational engagement. Further research is needed to understand the various manifestations of the parts of the framework, and to explore its potential for use as a practice tool.