A thermal bridge is a part of the building envelope where the otherwise uniform thermal resistance is significantly changed by: • Full or partial penetration of the building envelope by materials with a different thermal conductivity and/or • A change in thickness of the structure and/or • A difference between internal and external areas, such as occur at wall-floor-ceiling junctions. INTRODUCT...

This paper investigates the induced stresses in circular single deck roofs floating on seismically excited storage tanks. Equations of motion are derived using variational principle. Response of deck floating roofs is evaluated for two different classes of ground motions; near-source and long-period far-field records. Besides time histories and frequency contents for a specific tank, peak value...

Green infrastructure ameliorates the urban heat island effect, contributes positively to liveability and enables sustainability in higher density urban environments. Greenskins (living architectures) are a more specific form of green infrastructure, including green walls and green roofs, for dense urban areas. These offer a new approach for sustainable urban biophilia and some forms can be buil...

It has been considered a fact that GPS performs too poorly inside buildings to provide usable indoor positioning. We analyze results of a measurement campaign to improve on the understanding of indoor GPS reception characteristics. The results show that using state-of-the-art receivers GPS availability is good in many buildings with standard material walls and roofs. The measured root mean squa...

In this paper we describe a procedure for generating building models from large scale vector maps and laser altimeter data. In contrast to other approaches the map information is not used to form hypotheses about the roofs. Our approach permits the recognition of additional structures as superstructures which can not be derived from building outlines shown in the map. First the vector map is an...

Background: Concrete buildings on Guam are exceptionally strong but also accumulate large amounts of heat. In the tropical environment of Guam, where 24 h average temperature ranges from 28 to 29oC year round, air conditioning is used every day and continuously. Concrete roofs are often painted light colors, which make them more reflective and accumulate less heat. They are also suitable for es...