Effects of Furniture Ergonomics on Student’s Satisfaction in a Library Facility

Building occupants are not immune to ill-health as a result of time they spend in a building.This paper seeks to examine the effects furniture ergonomics have on student’s satisfaction in the library of Universiti Teknologi Malaysia.A pilot survey was initially conducted in the library through a one-to-one interaction with students to fetch their opinions on the general effects of the furniture.An observation through several walkthroughs was also conducted by the researchers to compare and validate responses obtained.Two hundred and sixty-five students that come from fifteen nationalities are surveyed.A structured questionnaire is used to collect data on the respondents’opinions on the size,shape,arrangement and comfort of the furniture.Eta cross tabulation,Spearman’s rho and Kendall’s Tau-b are used to establish relationships.Results show that amongst the effects studied,there are significant positive relationships between students’satisfaction of furniture ergonomics as against back-strain and lack of concentration.This implies that the more the furniture arrangements,size and shape are perceived unsatisfactory,the more their effects on back-strain and lack of concentration towards the students.This paper further recommends that library management should see to designing IEQ(Indoor Environmental Quality)guidelines that will mitigate the effects of furniture ergonomics thus improving student’s satisfaction.

Structural Interpretation of Lineaments Uses Satellite Images Processing: A Case Study in North-Eastern Tunisia

This paper presents a lineament detection method using multi-band remote sensing images. The main objective of this work is to design an automatic image processing tool for lineament mapping from Landsat-7 ETM + satellite data. Five procedures were involved: 1) The Principal Component Analysis;2) image enhancement using histogram equalization technique 3) directional Sobel filters of the original data;4) histogram segmentation and 5) binary image generation. The applied methodology was contributed in identifying several known large-scale faults in the Northeast of Tunisia. The statistical and spatial analyses of lineament map indicate a difference of morphological appearance of lineaments in the satellite image. Indeed, all the lineaments present a specific organization. Five groups were classified based on three orientations: NE-SW, E-W and NW-SE. The overlapping of lineament map with the geologic map confirms that these lineaments of diverse directions can be identified and recognized on the field as a fault. The identified lineaments were linked to a deep faults caused by tectonic movements in Tunisia. This study shows the performance of the satellite image processing in the analysis and mapping of the accidents in the northern Atlas.

Determination of Potential Runoff Coefficient Using GIS and Remote Sensing

Flash floods in arid environments are a major hazard feature to human and to the infrastructure. Shortage of accurate environmental data is main reason for inaccurate prediction of flash flooding characteristics. The curve number (CN) is a hydrologic number used to describe the storm water runoff potential for drainage area. This study introduces an approach to determine runoff coefficient in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia using remote sensing and GIS. Remote sensing and geographic information system techniques were used to obtain and prepare input data for hydrologic model. The land cover map was derived using maximum likelihood classification of a SPOT image. The soil properties (texture and permeability) were derived using the soil maps published my ministry of water and agriculture in Saudi Arabia. These soil parameters were used to classify the soil map into hydrological soil groups (HSG). Using the derived information within the hydrological modelling system, the runoff depth was predicted for an assumed severe storm scenario. The advantages of the proposed approach are simplicity, less input data, one software used for all steps, and its ability to be applied for any site. The results show that the runoff depth is directly proportional to runoff coefficient and the total volume of runoff is more than 136 million cubic meters for a rainfall of 103.6 mm.

Biodeterioration of Building Timbers in the High-Water-Activity Built Environment of Nigeria

Moulds have been reported to destroy volumes of timbers in buildings annually. As a result, timber components within the built environment decline and fail to fulfill their basic requirements. This research focused on the isolation and evaluation of the prevalence and effects of deteriorating moulds in the rain forest and swampy rain forest regions of Nigeria where the water activity is as high as 0.7. To accomplish this, decayed timber samples were aseptically collected on buildings from six strategic locations. The samples were serially diluted and inoculated onto Sabouraud Dextrose Agar medium in Petal dishes. The Petri dishes were incubated for 72 h at 30 ~C. Thereafter, moulds were isolated through visual and microscopic observations. The commonly encountered moulds were evaluated and analyzed. It was observed that, prevalence of moulds on buildings used for non residential purpose were higher. There was no significant difference between the prevalence on the components located inside the building and those outside the building. Ceiba pentandra exhibited highest degradation while Masonia altissima resisted most. The most deteriorating moulds were Aspergillus, Mucor, Rhizopus and Gliocladium. The deteriorations of Ceiba pentandra, Afzelia africana, Lophira alata, Anogessus leocarpus and Gossweilerodendron balsamiferum timbers under Aspergillus attack were projected.

Impact of Urban Areas on Historical and Archaeological Buildings

The present paper is talking about the recent situation of the archeological buildings which exist through modern urban environments. Urban expansion has a large effect on the archeological buildings continuity since such type of development impresses several serious challenges which conservation plans as well as preservation polices must deal with. A number of that main challenges are mega-constructions （tunnels, damps, roads, etc.）, pollution, socio-cultural impacts and traffic. Within Um Qias, the archeological buildings face similar challenges consistent with the urban environment where it is presented and that challenges are reviewed in the local community behavior.

Accuracy Evaluation of Long-Range Reflectorless Distance Measurement

Reflectorless total station (RLTS) has made it possible for only one person to carry out field measurements and inaccessible points can be measured with relative ease. There is no sufficient information about the accuracy of these instruments for the long range measurements. This paper attempts to evaluate the accuracy of reflectorless distance measurements ranging up to 1000 m and to determine the surface area needed for such measurements at different incidence angles. An experiment was carried out to examine what effect surface material, target size and incidence angle had on distance measurement. In this experiment 10 different distances were measured using targets of 6 different materials and 4 different sizes at 5 different incidence angles. To properly evaluate the results, a special supporting base was designed and manufactured for holding the reflecting targets to ensure accuracy in the evaluation. Based on the accuracy analysis of a lot of testing results, the conclusions that were drawn indicated that the target size had a great effect on the accuracy if the incidence angle was between 15&#176 and 30&#176.

Development of a GIS Based Public Transport Composite Social Need Index in Jeddah

Provision of public transport is critical for all social groups with high need. The provision of effective public transport system in Jeddah is at the top priorities of the national, regional and local plans. This paper attempts to develop a public transport composite social need index in Jeddah using GIS. Population density, car ownership, family size and income level indicators were considered for identifying the social need in Jeddah. Results indicate that Jeddah is in high social need for public transport and the provision of an efficient public transport is crucial for the city. The composite social need index has shown both dispersed and clustered patterns of high need for public transport in Jeddah. The results of this study facilitate the identification of the high social need for public transport in Jeddah. Further studies are highly recommended to include other social need indictors in Jeddah city.

Flood Risk Code Mapping Using Multi Criteria Assessment

Flash flood is a dangers natural disaster causes lots of structure damage, traffic collapse, economic defects and human life loss. An efficient way to reduce its effects is preparing flash flood mapping to identify zones at risk due to flood. Flash flood mapping is a powerful tool for urban planners, traffic and infrastructure engineers, emergency and rescue services. This article proposes an approach utilizes remote sensing (RS) and geographic information system (GIS) to prepare flood risk code (FRC) map for Jeddah city, Saudi Arabia. The proposed approach applied the Curve Number (CN) method of flood modelling and uses runoff depth, land use, soil hydrological parameters, surface slope, and longest flow path to generate FRC. SPOT satellite image of the study area was classified to generate land use map, Digital Elevation Model (DEM) was used for generating slope map and for hydrology analysis using HEC-GeoHMS tool, and soil properties were generated from scanned soil maps. All data were integrated in ArcGIS 10.4.1 to prepare the final flood risk map. The results show that a precipitation of 106.3 mm will generate 136.5 million m3 of flood water. The results according to the developed flood risk code show that due to this amount of precipitation, about 1 million people live in Jeddah are prone to extreme flood risk and about 2 million of population are at major risk, the rest of population (about 0.5 million) are vulnerable to moderate to minor fold risk. The approach was verified using ground truth data and proofed precision.

Recreational Access Management Planning: Understanding Perceptions Regarding Public Forest Lands in SW Alberta

Management of recreational access on public forest lands is a complex issue of growing global importance. The provision of public recreation opportunities is part of the suite of ecological goods and services that must be considered by many forest managers. Effective access management is predicated on understanding the attitudes and perceptions of recreation users in order to predict and influence visitor behaviour and gauge the acceptance of new management strategies. Potential access management strategies vary given the nature of recreation activities and include: restricting the amount, type, and spatial distribution of use, visitor education, temporal restrictions and enhancing site durability. In this research we examined the views of recreation users on public lands in southwestern Alberta, Canada through implementation of an online survey (n = 945) with a focus on access management options. The results indicate a strong belief that the quality of the recreation experience is declining and that increased management and enforcement are required. More detailed analysis indicates that demographic and user-type variables strongly influence ideas about appropriate management. Forest managers need to engage with, understand, and respond to a wide variety of recreation user needs and preferences.

Urban Regeneration： Better Cities for Sustainable Development

With the increasing growing of the environmental issues and climatic change, sustainable urban development of cities became an urgent demand. Urban development relied on four pillars; the institutional, social, environmental and economic pillars. Urban regeneration is not a single concept; it is a group of strategies. This study concluded that those strategies include; the public action, certification programs and corporate responsibility theories.

Alternative Solutions for RTK-GPS Applications in Building and Road Constructions

Currently, Global Positioning System (GPS) techniques are becoming a much larger part of the surveying industry. Many companies are now using GPS in their everyday work activities. The Real Time Kinematic (RTK) positioning is an integral part of topographic surveys, road surveying, constructions and most civil engineering applications. Normally, RTK can be used to collect the positioning data successfully and quickly. The civil and construction projects are designed in ground distances while RTK measurements are done in grid coordinate system, in which the distances between points are different from ground. The RTK measurements should be converted to ground for compatibility with the designed. In this paper, the accuracy of three alternatives for converting RTK measurements to ground was studied. These alternatives are, using scale factor, using two ground reference points and using Low Distortion Projection (LDP) surface. For the accuracy investigation purpose, a traverse of 14 points elongated for a distance of about 1400 m was constructed. Its coordinates were measured using total station, then the misclosure error was computed and the coordinates were adjusted. The traverse points coordinates were measured again using RTK_GPS considering one of them as base point. The three studied alternatives were applied and the results were compared. The results show that the accuracy of the three alternatives is ranging from 2.1 to 2.9 cm in the relative position of points to the base point. For absolute position accuracy, the two ground reference points alternative is the most accurate alternative with an average error of 3.8 cm while the other two alternatives are almost the same with an average error of 12.3 cm.