While high-rise construction serves as one of the most challenging projects undertaken by society each year, tall buildings are one of the few constructed facilities whose design relies solely upon analytical and scaled models, which, though based upon fundamental mechanics and years of research and experience, have yet to be systematically validated in full-scale. In response to this deficienc...

We attempt to compute the dynamic wind loads on tall buildings in close proximity with large-eddy simulation. Computation is attempted on two building geometries on which strong interference effects have been reported in previous wind tunnel studies. The computation uses a commercial code and a simple model of turbulence characteristics of the incident wind flow. The computed along-wind and acr...

Micro-geographic data capturing the spatial distribution of economic activity within cities in history are difficult to access. This paper discusses how tall and durable buildings can be exploited as a source “big data” trace structure cities. To this end, we provide stylized evidence on building heights correlate with land values over space time cities, review related nascent literature, sugge...

The purpose of this paper is to solve the simple sentence puzzle about proper names. (1) Superman leaps more tall buildings than Clark Kent. (2) Superman = Clark Kent. (3) Superman leaps more tall buildings than Superman. Even when (1) and (2) are true, (3) is false. It will be shown that this is not a real puzzle, because (i) (1) and (3) do not express singular propositions, and (ii) the ident...

George, a 23-year-old Greek student, was referred by a psychiatrist for treatment to a University Counseling Centre in Athens. He was diagnosed with social anxiety disorder and specific phobia situational type. He was complaining of panic attacks and severe symptoms of anxiety. These symptoms were triggered when in certain social situations and also when travelling by plane, driving a car and v...

In cities with tall buildings, emergency responders need an accurate floor level location to find 911 callers quickly. We introduce a system to estimate a victim’s floor level via their mobile device’s sensor data in a two-step process. First, we train a neural network to determine when a smartphone enters or exits a building via GPS signal changes. Second, we use a barometer equipped smartphon...

The interference and proximity effects on the dynamic response of prismatic bluff bodies are investigated in a series of wind tunnel tests. The results show that the presence of a single, or a pair of upstream prisms of the same size can increase the interaction factor. The effects are more pronounced in a boundary layer flow with a lower level of turbulence, especially near the reduced velocit...