An investigation of the effects of large houses on occupant behaviour and resource-use in New Zealand

<p>According to Statistics New Zealand the average size of new New Zealand houses almost doubled from 1974‐2011 at the same time that occupancy reduced, meaning fewer people live in larger houses. Features of large houses are extra bedrooms, specialised rooms (e.g. study, media room), more than one living space, several bathrooms (including en‐suites), and double/triple garages. This contrasts with what is defined in this thesis as the “core house”, which is a house (or part of a house) consisting of a living room, a dining room, a kitchen, and a bedroom for each occupant (assuming couples share a bedroom). Based on this, houses with more space than the appropriate core house for each household are considered as living in some level of large housing. Living in larger houses than necessary means use of more natural resources in terms of construction materials, operating energy and the additional furniture and appliances needed. This study, therefore, aimed to measure resource‐use efficiency in different sized houses and rooms found in NZ houses to show the significance of human decisions on housing energy use. To do this, it used a life‐cycle energy approach to measure resource‐use and reveal the long term environmental impact of house size decision. A 100 year cycle was used to cover typical human lifespan. Using grounded theory, the research developed into four studies: 1‐ An observation of the features of New Zealand houses: Houses advertised for sale in TradeMe website were studied to show the features of New Zealand houses and types of furniture and appliances people keep in their houses. 2‐ Study 1: Based on the observation study, a questionnaire was prepared for a pilot study of 7 households living in small and large houses asking about occupants, type/number of rooms and types/number/location of furniture/appliances in their house. Each occupant also reported where he/she spend his/her time at home indoor for 14 consecutive days. This study revealed any problems with the preliminary questionnaire and also set strategy for the large time‐use survey. 3‐ Study 2: Based on the results of study 1, an online questionnaire based survey was undertaken by families with 4 or fewer members living in NZ owner‐occupied houses. The questionnaire asked for information about family members, type/number of spaces in their home, furniture and its location and the time spent in each room of the house, outdoors, and out of home by each occupant over one day. This survey provided a reliable data set about the features of New Zealand owner‐occupied houses and their occupants, the type an number of furniture items, appliances and tools in them and where/for how long each household member spent his/her daily time in the house. 4‐ Floor plan study: To get a better understanding of the size of rooms in NZ houses, a floor plan study of 287 houses was performed. Floor plans were redrawn in AutoCAD and the floor area of each room and the whole house were extracted for mapping with house size in SPSS. Results of the time‐use study indicate New Zealanders on average spend 15.94 hours/day at home indoor and house size does not affect this. On average 54.7% of this is spent in usual bedrooms, 29.9% in the usual living room, dining room and kitchen, and use of other rooms including bathrooms accounts for 15.4% of time at home indoors. Using a life cycle analysis approach, selecting to live in a house with 3 extra rooms, a single person, couple, couple with one child and couple with two children will use 66%, 66%, 75% and 66% more energy for housing over 100 years. By combining time‐use and energy use results, a sample person living in a house with no extra rooms for their whole life will have a housing energy of 1.59GJ/hour which increases to 2.68GJ/hour by living in a house with 3 extra rooms. Based on resources for construction, refurbishment and heating and the time occupants spend in each room over the life the house, for each hour of using a master bedroom New Zealanders use 0.9MJ, and this increases to 9.3MJ for an hour of using a study and 5.1MJ for a play room. This research suggests more public awareness is needed regarding the role of human behaviour in achieving a sustainable architecture and perhaps it is time for governments to control use of natural resources by restricting house sizes where applicable.</p>

An investigation of the effects of large houses on occupant behaviour and resource-use in New Zealand

<p>According to Statistics New Zealand the average size of new New Zealand houses almost doubled from 1974‐2011 at the same time that occupancy reduced, meaning fewer people live in larger houses. Features of large houses are extra bedrooms, specialised rooms (e.g. study, media room), more than one living space, several bathrooms (including en‐suites), and double/triple garages. This contrasts with what is defined in this thesis as the “core house”, which is a house (or part of a house) consisting of a living room, a dining room, a kitchen, and a bedroom for each occupant (assuming couples share a bedroom). Based on this, houses with more space than the appropriate core house for each household are considered as living in some level of large housing. Living in larger houses than necessary means use of more natural resources in terms of construction materials, operating energy and the additional furniture and appliances needed. This study, therefore, aimed to measure resource‐use efficiency in different sized houses and rooms found in NZ houses to show the significance of human decisions on housing energy use. To do this, it used a life‐cycle energy approach to measure resource‐use and reveal the long term environmental impact of house size decision. A 100 year cycle was used to cover typical human lifespan. Using grounded theory, the research developed into four studies: 1‐ An observation of the features of New Zealand houses: Houses advertised for sale in TradeMe website were studied to show the features of New Zealand houses and types of furniture and appliances people keep in their houses. 2‐ Study 1: Based on the observation study, a questionnaire was prepared for a pilot study of 7 households living in small and large houses asking about occupants, type/number of rooms and types/number/location of furniture/appliances in their house. Each occupant also reported where he/she spend his/her time at home indoor for 14 consecutive days. This study revealed any problems with the preliminary questionnaire and also set strategy for the large time‐use survey. 3‐ Study 2: Based on the results of study 1, an online questionnaire based survey was undertaken by families with 4 or fewer members living in NZ owner‐occupied houses. The questionnaire asked for information about family members, type/number of spaces in their home, furniture and its location and the time spent in each room of the house, outdoors, and out of home by each occupant over one day. This survey provided a reliable data set about the features of New Zealand owner‐occupied houses and their occupants, the type an number of furniture items, appliances and tools in them and where/for how long each household member spent his/her daily time in the house. 4‐ Floor plan study: To get a better understanding of the size of rooms in NZ houses, a floor plan study of 287 houses was performed. Floor plans were redrawn in AutoCAD and the floor area of each room and the whole house were extracted for mapping with house size in SPSS. Results of the time‐use study indicate New Zealanders on average spend 15.94 hours/day at home indoor and house size does not affect this. On average 54.7% of this is spent in usual bedrooms, 29.9% in the usual living room, dining room and kitchen, and use of other rooms including bathrooms accounts for 15.4% of time at home indoors. Using a life cycle analysis approach, selecting to live in a house with 3 extra rooms, a single person, couple, couple with one child and couple with two children will use 66%, 66%, 75% and 66% more energy for housing over 100 years. By combining time‐use and energy use results, a sample person living in a house with no extra rooms for their whole life will have a housing energy of 1.59GJ/hour which increases to 2.68GJ/hour by living in a house with 3 extra rooms. Based on resources for construction, refurbishment and heating and the time occupants spend in each room over the life the house, for each hour of using a master bedroom New Zealanders use 0.9MJ, and this increases to 9.3MJ for an hour of using a study and 5.1MJ for a play room. This research suggests more public awareness is needed regarding the role of human behaviour in achieving a sustainable architecture and perhaps it is time for governments to control use of natural resources by restricting house sizes where applicable.</p>

Concert hall: acoustic design comparing analytical results and ray tracing

With the intention of designing architecture for music and inspired by music, the J.C. Martins Concert Hall was created with 1008 seats and an approximate volume of 49400 ft³. Among all the architectural aspects considered, such as strategic location analyzed from the mass plan, study of volumetries, acoustics is the highlight due to its importance and complexity of the project. The Concert Hall is the object of the present study, the purpose of the article is to compare the simulated results in the EASE software with the analytical results of the reverberation time calculated by the Sabine and Eyering equations for the Concert Hall. Acoustic parameters such as reverberation time, clarity, among others, were simulated to verify the acoustic quality of the room in question. With that, it was possible to analyze and discuss the limitations of the analytical method and the simulations. Even so, the results were satisfactory to reach the adequated indexes of the acoustic parameters.

The Effect of Background Noise on a “Studying for an Exam” Task in an Open-Plan Study Environment: A Laboratory Study

Students can be disturbed by background noise while working in an open-plan study environment. To improve the acoustic quality of open-plan study environments a study was done on the influence of different sound scenarios on students working on a typical student task, “studying for an exam”. Three sound scenarios and a quiet reference sound scenario were developed, based on the sound environment of a real open-plan study environment, with a varying number of talkers in the background and different reverberation times of the study environment. Seventy students worked on a set of tasks simulating a “studying for an exam” task while being exposed to the sound scenarios. This task comprises a reading comprehension task with text memory by delayed answering questions about the text, with additional tasks being performed in the gap between studying the text and retrieving. These additional tasks are a mental arithmetic task and a logical reasoning task. Performance, self-estimated performance and disturbance of students were measured. No significant effect of the sound scenarios was found on performance of students working on the reading comprehension task with text memory and the mental arithmetic task. However, a significant effect of sound was found on performance of students working on the logical reasoning task. Furthermore, a significant effect of the sound scenarios was found on self-estimated performance and perceived disturbance for all tasks from which the reading comprehension task with text memory was the most disturbed task. It is argued that the absence of a detrimental sound effect on the performance of students working on a reading comprehension task with text memory is a result of focusing due to task engagement and task difficulty, both aspects working as a “shield against distraction”.

A Methodological Approach to Designing a Theory: The Journey of the Four Zone Professional Learning Model

The Four Zone Professional Learning Model is a practical, comprehensive approach to striving towards equity through professional learning within gifted education programs. Grounded in equity literacy and funds of knowledge frameworks, and in best practices in culturally responsive gifted professional learning, the zones address the knowledge and skills necessary for proficient teachers of the gifted and address the process of systemic change. The model was designed and developed over several years utilizing the plan-study-do-act action research model; this article discusses the methodological evolution of the model, the research and theoretical frameworks in which it is grounded, and future implications.

Case study on the National Aquaculture Strategic Plan in Malawi.

This case study provides an analysis of the implementation of the National Aquaculture Strategic Plan (NASP) for Malawi. The NASP is a strategic document for aquaculture development in Malawi that was created in response to a request from the Government of Malawi (GoM) to the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) to conduct a Master Plan Study on Aquaculture Development. The NASP was set to improve aquaculture development from 2005 to 2015. The aquaculture sector plays a significant role as a source of food, income and employment to Malawi's population. It is estimated that the sector provides about 2% of the nation's fish production and, among fish farming households, to contribute up to 17% of household income, depending on fish farming activities. Fish from both aquaculture and capture fisheries contribute about 4% to the country's GDP and provide almost 70% of animal protein and 40% of total protein thereby contributing to the country's food security and livelihood strategies. The purpose of the case study was to provide a clear understanding of the existing state of the NASP. The case study involves a number of stakeholders that were chosen randomly from the NASP document as partners in its implementation. The study analyses the progress of the NASP implementation by looking at whether the implementation structure was functioning, it also assessed the knowledge of the stakeholders on the document, the linkage of the stakeholders, the coordination among stakeholders and developments in fish production through aquaculture. The results show that the institutional structures that were proposed to implement and monitor all the NASP strategies and activities have not been formed. This has led to lack of knowledge of the document by some stakeholders. Poor coordination and networking among the stakeholders has also led to the failure of the strategic plan. The case study concludes that there is an urgent need for the formulation of a separate institutional structure to look into aquaculture development in Malawi with the help of the Departement of Fisheries (DoF) and all the stakeholders so as to help review and process the NASP action plans if quantitative progress is to be achieved.

A case study on the experiences of innovative, small-scale fish farmers in Malawi.

The Innovative Fish Farmers Network Trust (IFFNT) comprising of 25 farmers was established as part of the Master Plan Study on Aquaculture Development in Malawi (ADiM) with funds from the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in 2004. ADiM aimed at promoting aquaculture development by establishing model farmers through financial and technical support from JICA and the Department of Fisheries (DoF). Farmers attended training facilitated by Bunda College, University of Malawi, and farmer exchange and study tours to Zambia and Egypt. They also received small grants to implement pilot on-farm projects. Production increased from about 0.7 tons/ha/year in 2003, to over 2 tons/ha/year in 2005. Other farmers adopted the technologies. However, as ADiM phased out in 2006, IFFNT became dormant. Its linkages with DoF weakened. There was no proper phase out strategy. Both ADiM and DoF needed to facilitate IFFNT until it was properly established; a change that should be adopted in any future IFFNT facilitation.

Mitigating provider burnout due to infusion center delays: Analysis of sustainability.

235 Background: Physician burnout affects over 50% of physicians in the US and is related to the high workload and loss of anonymity. The result is physical exhaustion, moral distress, and increased rates of suicide. At our institution, burnout was identified in 42.1% of providers & 55.6% of staff surveyed using AMA/ASCO burnout questionnaires with treatment delays in the infusion center (IC) implicated as the biggest culprit. Methods: We tracked causes of delay in starting chemotherapy in the IC and utilizing Pareto Chart identified that over 80% of delays were due to missing chemotherapy orders on the day of IC appointment. Process flow charts for providers noted significant variations in practices. Retrospective chart review, 6/21/2019 to 8/30/ 2019, revealed that an average of 13.18% of patients scheduled to receive chemotherapy at the IC had missing orders on the day of the infusion, resulting in up to a 111-minute delay in starting chemotherapy. We set out to sustainably decrease the number of missing chemotherapy orders in the IC by 50%, decreasing the resultant stress on providers and IC nurses. Results: Four interventions were implemented over 2 plan-study-do-act (PDSA) cycles and resulted in decreasing the average number of missing orders on the day of IC appointment to 7% achieving our aim (Table). To ensure sustainability of results, we continued the interventions and maintained faculty engagement via periodic updates. Sustainability analysis revealed that the median number of patients with missing orders between 12/2/2019 and 2/28/2020 remained at 5% effectively achieving our goal. The effects of this intervention on physician/staff burnout will be reassessed after 1 year of intervention implementation using the same AMA/ASCO burnout questionnaires. Conclusions: Systematically standardizing a process achieves a sustainable impact, promotes a more effective workplace environment and decreases burnout on physicians and staff. [Table: see text]