This paper investigates the once ubiquitous vernacular earth-built structures of Scotland and how perceptions of such buildings were shaped and developed through periods of intense cultural and environmental change. We focus upon the past exploitation of traditional resources to construct vernacular architectures and on changes in the perception of the resultant buildings. Historic earth-built ...

Nowadays, there is a huge proliferation of software based on traditional image-based 3D reconstruction methods which use multiple images to extract 3D models. However, sometimes it is not possible to obtain such images, mainly when damaged or destroyed buildings need to be documented and only single photographs or paintings exist or even when working with multiple images, parts of the scene app...

Nowadays mobile robots are being used in various fields of academic research as well as real applications. Semiautonomous space exploration and underwater exploration are two applications of mobile robots. They are also being used in rescue process e.g. in semi-destroyed buildings after a disaster that is unsafe for human to enter and try to find and rescue victims. These robots should be highl...

At 7:51 p.m. on 17 April 2013, an explosion rocked the town of West, Texas, when fertilizer-grade ammonium nitrate stored at the West Fertilizer Company blew up with the explosive force of 12.5 tons of TNT. Fifteen people died, and 260 were injured. More than 150 offsite buildings were destroyed by the blast and subsequent fire, among them a middle school, a high school, a nursing home, and an ...

the deeper we go into the history of architecture, the less physical evidences are found; ceilings are collapsed, walls are fallen and the foundations are faded out over the time. however, there is no trace of some of these buildings, but they are not completely destroyed and they have been surviving in written documentations. the period of ghaznavid empire (997-11860) encompasses one of the mo...

Simulating the evolution of cities suggests the ability to understand and model the laws governing urban dynamics. The approach presented in this paper uses a multi-agent system to model the self-organising properties of urban systems and aims at providing a tool to study the evolutions of the modelled system. The proposed multi-agent system is a hierarchy of topographic agents (e.g. buildings,...

Extreme weather August 2005 Tulane University, United States Closed for 4 months as a result of Hurricane Katrina April 2011 University of Alabama, United States School called off for the rest of the school year due to tornado March 11, 2011 Northeastern Japan 7,735 school buildings damaged or destroyed February 2011 Queensland, Australia More than 60 schools across north and far north Queensla...