A graphical method of presenting property rights, building types, and residential behaviors: A case study of Xiaoxihu historic area, Nanjing

One of the main reasons for the decline of urban historic areas in China is the coexistence of multiple property rights.It also deeply affects conservation and regeneration practice.This paper aims to propose a graphical method that illustrates the association between property rights,space,and resident behavior.Based on typological maps and justified graphs,a three-step method was proposed to visualize the relationships between these three elements.The final graph and quantitative data were used to observe the evolution of the courtyard building from a diachronic perspective,as well as to compare the residential behavior in different types from a synchronic perspective.The results show that following the subdivision of property rights,the building layout become more diverse due to various illegal additions,while the residential behavior within different building types tends to be consistent.Moreover,the study observed the traditional Chinese courtyard buildings’adaptability.The findings contribute to understand the evolution of Chinese urban historic areas and internal motivation,and provide guidance for the conservation and regeneration practice.

EXPLORING THE DIVERSITY OF GREEN BUILDINGS

INTRODUCTION 25 years of experience in sustainable architecture and 10 years of experience in designing LEED-certified buildings and providing LEED consulting to projects has allowed our firm,Prairie Architects Inc.,to collect a great deal of experience on green buildings.Through the years,we have come to realize the great diversity of what it means to be a green building and the multitude of avenues that can be followed in order to pursue that end goal.Factors such as building type,location,and owner representation can have a dramatic impact on what sustainability opportunities are available to a project.This article examines the process of determining the path to a green building through three case studies of recently constructed projects in Manitoba,Canada.Through each case study we will reflect on the challenges encountered as well as highlight the successes and opportunities that were found.

Assessment of Urban Morphology through Local Climate Zone Clas­sification and Detection of the Changing Building States of Siliguri Municipal Corporation and Its Surrounding Area, West Bengal

Progressive population concentration to the urban centres has fuelled urban expansion in both horizontal as well as vertical direction,consequences in the urban landscape change.This growth resulted in posing many complexities towards sustainable urban development which can be counted by observing the changing proportions of natural landscapes and built up areas.Local climate zones(LCZs),a systematic classification of natural lands and built up lands,are identified in Siliguri Municipal Corporation(SMC)and its surrounding region to explore the spatio temporal complexity of urban growth in recent years.Rapid urbanization and population growth of SMC have led to change the building states from low rise to mid and high rise which added an important feature to the urban landscape dynamics of the area.The work intends to provide the vision of spatial urban morphology of the area through investigation of its changing land use and changing urban built space using the LCZ classification.The study shows that the WUDAPT method can accurately generate LCZs,especially the built type LCZs.The results of the proposed LCZ classification scheme are tested using error matrix for the year 2001 and 2021 having coefficient values of 0.79 and 0.81 respectively.The study explores the changing pattern of building states of SMC using LCZ products,which is essential for proper urban planning implementations.

Types and Characteristics of Pavilions in Wu'an:A Case Study of Traditional Market Towns in Wu'an

Through the field survey and mapping of the existing Wu’an pavilions in Wu’an traditional market towns, the architectural subdivision of typology is carried out, and the location, architectural characteristics, functional bias and cultural connotation of different types of pavilions are deeply analyzed and summarized. It is a compilation of information on existing historical buildings, and also provides suggestions for further creative and sustainable protection and inheritance of Wu’an pavilions.

A research on building block type miniature harvester

In this invention, the procedure of cutting, conveying, threshing and transporting stalks are carried out by a set of conveying chains ( see figure). The axis of the main drum 2 is placed horizontally transverse (vertical to the forward direction). The upper and the lower conveying chains 8, 10 as well as cutterbar 11 are mounted in the lower part of the axial feed opening. Several star well 9 and plastic stalk-pressing rod are filled at the front of the lower conveying chain, and a spring stalk pressing assembly at the rear. The residue after threshing is discharged by star seels 18, 34. The staiks are placed near the cutterbar 11. Once the stalks are cut off by the cutterbar, they

Automatic identifcation of building structure types using unmanned aerial vehicle oblique images and deep learning considering facade prior knowledge

Building structural type information is the foundation for seismic risk assessment and management since it reflects the behavior of buildings under seismic load.However,in earthquake-prone regions,most of this information is out-of-date or nonexistent.This paper proposes a deep learning-based method for automatically identifying building structural types from unmanned aerial vehicle(UAV)oblique images.The method consists of four steps:(1)collect facades of buildings with different structural types by web crawler technology as a sample set;(2)construct a convolutional neural network with a facade prior knowledge attention branch and train the model using the sample set;(3)extract building facades from UAV oblique images based on the georeferencing results of feature points as the test set;(4)identify building structural types by inputting the test set into the trained model.Three cases have been selected to verify the feasibility and applicability of the method.The average recall rate of 85%and the average F1 score of 83%have been achieved in areas with regular building distribution.This method integrates multidisciplinary knowledge to provide a solution for rapid collection of building vulnerability information,and expands the role of oblique photography data in urban management and disaster prevention planning.

Analyzing the extent and use of impervious land in rural landscapes

The amount of impervious surface is increasing rapidly worldwide.Although urban expansion has been studied extensively,the alteration of impervious land cover in rural regions remains under-examined.In particular,insights into the utilization of these sealed surfaces are crucially needed to unravel the underlying dynamics of land use changes beyond urban areas.This study focuses on rural regions from a Swiss case study and presents an analysis of the use of sealed surfaces in such regions,rather than solely quantifying the extent of sealed surfaces.Utilizing a synergistic approach that merges detailed cadastral plans with very-high-resolution remote sensing imagery and sophisticated deep learning algorithms,we characterized the uses of sealed surfaces,including buildings and their surroundings.Our findings reveal that 2.1%of the study area’s rural regions comprises sealed surfaces-an area comparable to the sealed surfaces in the urban regions.Within these rural regions,transport infrastructure represents 68%of this impervious surface.Buildings account for 12%,and their surroundings,constituting 13%,are utilized primarily for agricultural purposes,including farming and livestock activities.The deep learning approach achieved a classification accuracy of 72%for a shallow model and 79%for a deeper model,indicating that mapping building types is possible with reasonable accuracy.The outcomes of this study underscore the critical need to factor in the presence and utilization of impervious land cover within rural regions for the sustainable management of land resources.

Archetype identification and urban building energy modeling for city-scale buildings based on GIS datasets

Urban building energy modeling has become an efficient way to understand urban building energy use and explore energy conservation and emission reduction potential.This paper introduced a method to identify archetype buildings and generate urban building energy models for city-scale buildings where public building information was unavailable.A case study was conducted for 68,966 buildings in Changsha city,China.First,clustering and random forest methods were used to determine the building type of each building footprint based on different GIS datasets.Then,the convolutional neural network was employed to infer the year built of commercial buildings based on historical satellite images from multiple years.The year built of residential buildings was collected from the housing website.Moreover,twenty-two building types and three vintages were selected as archetype buildings to represent 59,332 buildings,covering 87.4%of the total floor area.Ruby scripts leveraging on OpenStudio-Standards were developed to generate building energy models for the archetype buildings.Finally,monthly and annual electricity and natural gas energy use were simulated for the blocks and the entire city by EnergyPlus.The total electricity and natural gas use for the 59,332 buildings was 13,864 GWh and 23.6×10^(6) GJ.Three energy conservation measures were evaluated to demonstrate urban energy saving potential.The proposed methods can be easily applied to other cities in China.

China and the United States Should Build A New Type of Major Powers Relations——A Study on China’s U.S. Policy Thinking since the New Century

Since the reform and opening-up to the outside world, China has formed a series of guidelines and policies towards the United States, which are the theoretical foundation of China’s U.S. policy thinking in the New Century. Entering the new century, the international situation has undergone profound and complicated changes, the national strength gap between China and the United States has narrowed, their common interests have expanded, differences and contradictions have increased. Therefore, China stands for both countries to adhere to the direction of developing cooperative partnership, respect each other, abide by the promises, seek equal and mutual benefits and win-win cooperation, and mutually respect each others core interests. The future development of China-U.S. relations still face many challenges and China’s U.S. policy thinking needs to keep abreast with the times.