Energy simulations of a transparent-insulated office facade retrofit in London, UK

Purpose – Transparent insulation materials (TIMs) have been developed for application to building facades to reduce heating energy demands of a building. The purpose of this research is to investigate the feasibility of TI-applications for high-rise and low rise office buildings in London, UK, to reduce heating energy demands in winter and reduce overheating problems in summer. Design/methodology/approach – The energy performance of these office building models was simulated using an energy simulation package, Environmental Systems Performance-research (ESP-r), for a full calendar year. The simulations were initially performed for the buildings with conventional wall elements, prior to those with TI-systems (TI-walls and TI-glazing) used to replace the conventional wall elements. Surface temperatures of the conventional wall elements and TI-systems, air temperature inside the 20mm wide air gaps in the TI-wall, dry-bulb zone temperature and energy demands required for the office zones were predicted. Findings – Peak temperatures of between 50 and 70°C were predicted for the internal surface of the TI-systems, which clearly demonstrated the large effect of absorption of solar energy flux by the brick wall mass with an absorptivity of 90 percent behind the TIM layer. In the office zones, the magnitude of temperature swings during daytime was reduced, as demonstrated by a 10 to 12 h delay in heat transmission from the external façade to the office zones. Such reduction indicates the overheating problems could be reduced potentially by TI-applications. Originality/value – This research presents the scale and scope of design optimisation of TI-systems with ESP-r simulations, which is a critical process prior to applications to real buildings

A Practitioner’s Approach to Drucker’s Knowledge - Worker Productivity in the 21st Century: A New Model (Part One)

This article examines productivity in the context of the 21st century, focusing on Drucker’s prophecy of knowledge-worker productivity, the power of ‘unified strategy’, organisational interdependence and a practitioner’s approach to knowledge-worker productivity based on Drucker’s six determining factors. From these six factors, a nine building-block based questionnaire survey is developed to establish knowledge-worker productivity readiness status; a knowledge-worker review session to plan towards organisational interdependence and a Drucker-based knowledge-worker productivity implementation framework to manage organisational change. This proposal, intended for business organisations, should also accommodate non-business organisations. Knowledge-worker productivity practice is designed to improve productivity, the quality of work, empowers knowledge workers to accomplish their ‘tasks’ and, consequently, the ‘organisation tasks’ by following an organisational ‘unified strategy’ in an interdependent way that brings about a doing the right thing, the right way approach. This article provides answers to ‘what and how organisations can do to enhance productivity’ from their knowledge-workers, to embrace creativity and develop innovation to provide strategic advantage in sustaining growth in the current new economy of global competition. Team commitment is envisaged through the concept of organisational interdependence. In conclusion, a Drucker-based knowledge-worker productivity implementation framework is proposed, as a management practice to enhance knowledge worker productivity for creativity and commitment. It further demonstrates its competitive power by achieving a unified strategy with implication for organisational change and future applications.knowledge worker; creativity; commitment; productivity; change management; organisational interdependence; unified strategy.

Organisational impact of developing reablement services

Under the Community Act, Local Authorities have a legal responsibility to provide an assessment of need to people that require assistance and subsequently commission services that will meet the assessed needs. In 1997 Central Government started to implement a number of social care reforms which prioritised independent living, the building of sustainable communities and empowering service users to have more control and say about the services that they wished to use and access. As part of these changes Central Government made it compulsory through the National Health Act for Local Authorities and the National Health Service to work closely together to deliver services through partnership working. One of the joint strategic aims is to develop reablement and prevention services to increase people’s level of independence thereby reducing the demand for traditional long term care support. Reablement services are designed to offer short term intensive support which aim to maximise an individual’s ability for independence thereby reducing reliance on the need for either residential or nursing care. The development of reablement services presents a massive challenge for the Local Authority and the National Health Service as the change means that two very different organisations have to find a way to overcome a number of organisational barriers to enable workers from both organisations to work successfully together. This study will analyse the impact of developing reablement services through partnership working and critique how different Primary Care Trusts and Local Authorities are working together to deliver reablement services. This will involve examining different models of reablement, identifying what is required to make a successful model work and determining how the organisations overcome organisational and cultural differences. The study is based on Liverpool City Council and its work with Allied Health Professionals to deliver reablement services the study will also undertake a comparison exercise with 2 other Local Authorities within England

Three-dimensional Photoacoustic Tomography System Design Analysis and Optimization

Photoacoustic tomography (PAT) is an emerging imaging modality capable of mapping optical absorption in tissues. It is a hybrid technique that combines the high spatial resolution of ultrasound imaging with the high contrast of optical imaging, and has demonstrated much potential in biomedical applications. Conventional PAT systems employ raster scanning to capture a large number of projections, thus improving image reconstruction at the cost of temporal resolution. Arising from the desire for real-time 3D PA imaging, several groups have begun to design PAT systems with staring arrays, where image acquisition is only limited by the repetition rate of the laser. However, there has been little emphasis on staring array design analysis and optimization. We have developed objective figures of merit for PAT system performance and applied these metrics to improve system design. The results suggested that the developed approach could be used to objectively characterize and improve any PAT system design

Octahedron-based Projections as Intermediate Representations for Computer Imaging: TOAST, TEA, and More

This paper defines and discusses a set of rectangular all-sky projections that have no singular points, notably the Tesselated Octahedral Adaptive Spherical Transformation (or TOAST) developed initially for the WorldWide Telescope. These have proven to be useful as intermediate representations for imaging data where the application transforms dynamically from a standardized internal format to a specific format (projection, scaling, orientation, etc.) requested by the user. TOAST is strongly related to the Hierarchical Triangular Mesh pixelization and is particularly well adapted to situations where one wishes to traverse a hierarchy of images increasing in resolution. Because it can be recursively computed using a very simple algorithm it is particularly adaptable to use with graphical processing units