This paper demonstrates the application and usage of current remote sensing techniques for estimating and depicting Urban Environmental Quality at detailed level from satellite images. Temperature data derived from Landsat ETM+, Vegetation Index derived from high resolution IKONOS multispectral images, digitized data of the city urban infrastructure and 3-D virtual reality models were integrate...

We investigate the existence of the principal-agent (PA) problem in non-government, non-mall commercial buildings in the U.S. in 2003. The analysis concentrates on space heating and cooling energy consumed by centrally installed equipment in order to verify whether a market failure caused by the PA problem might have prevented the installation of energy-efficient devices in nonowner-occupied bu...

We introduce a construction turning some Coxeter and Davis realizations of buildings into systolic complexes. Consequently groups acting geometrically on buildings of triangle types distinct from (2, 4, 4), (2, 4, 5), (2, 5, 5), and various rank 4 types are systolic.

The emergence of intelligent buildings is founded on the rapid development of microcomputer and internet technology as well as the advance of information and communication technology. With the help of these technologies, office affairs have shifted from the traditional pattern of labor intense and large volume to the flexible, diverse, efficient, user-friendly, and highly reliable operations. M...

The paper describes aspects of research being undertaken on the determination and processing of digital elevation models. A 2-D Kalman filter has been developed based on dynamic and functional models for a grid DEM, to produce optimal estimates of terrain attributes of a DEM point using the relevant observations, and predictions derived from its orthogonal neighbouring points. A further method ...

This paper describes an approach to retrieve images containing specific objects, scenes or buildings. The image content is captured by a set of local features. More precisely, we use so-called invariant regions. These are features with shapes that self-adapt to the viewpoint. The physical parts on the object surface that they carve out is the same in all views, even though the extraction procee...

A prefabricated lightweight element was designed for a strip foundation that was used on site as the bases of two small residential buildings, in this case single-family houses; one was built with a double-brick exterior wall separated by mineral fiber insulation and the other was built with a wood-stud exterior wall with mineral fiber insulation. The element was placed on a stable surface unde...

Until recently terrain models were developed in a GIS, and built-up structures were modelled using a CAD system. Extending the current “2.5D” TIN model by incorporating CAD functions is a necessary development, while preserving topological integrity. A solid-modelling CAD system may be excessive for our “extended 2D” mapping needs, but the CAD “boundary representation” (brep) design, based on m...

In many urban settings, groundwater contains volatile organic compounds, such as tricholoroethene, tetrachloroethene, benzene, etc., at concentrations that are at or slightly below non-potable groundwater standards. Some non-potable groundwater standards do not protect against human health risks that might result from vapor intrusion. Vapor intrusion is a process by which vapor phase contaminan...

In this paper a method for deriving urban topography from multi-baseline SAR (synthetic aperture radar) interferometric phase coherence images is presented. This work is based on the premise that for flat (smooth) surfaces, coherence is retained even for large spatial baselines when the common band filter is applied. However, for rough terrain and elevated features this does not hold and cohere...