The negative impacts of subdivision regulation on the residential built environment : Jeddah's experience

PhD ThesisLand subdivision plans (LSPs) are the basis of development and transform untouched lands into modern residential areas. Subdivision regulation (SR) plays a key role in the process of organisation, design, planning and development of residential areas. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) relies on a single unified SR guideline formulated by the central government that applies one conventional development LSP approach for all Saudi cities. This approach does not take account of the provision of the final product or any particular part of it (e.g. housing units, public service plots, etc.), as well as after-sale services such as maintenance and management. Situated in the American and Saudi subdivision literature, this research first examines the quality of what this type of regulated development produces at a macro (city) scale relating to the structure of the urban form being built in Jeddah. It finds that at this scale, low-density car-reliant urban sprawl results – exactly the type of development that misses the sustainable liveability rhetoric the SR documents espouse, and which undermines Jeddah’s planning department’s attempts to meet the city’s 21st century challenges of rapid demographic and economic growth, and climate change. The research then investigates the quality of the public services and facilities provision at a micro (district) level by appraising the quality of two conventionally developed subdivision districts in Jeddah. It finds the quality of the public services and facilities is poor, especially for those residents not using a car. Building plots stand vacant/semi-built for long periods of time, and soft infrastructure provision (schools, parks, community facilities) are often slow to arrive – if they arrive at all. A face-to-face survey of resident heads of households in these two districts revealed that these shortcomings made life very difficult. The research also explored the regulations’ content and implementation process and, as part of this element of the investigation, interviewed local planners and conventional developers to gain a better understanding of how they perceived their role, the quality of these localities, and the shortcomings in the system that produced this type of development. The conventional developers were of the view they already provided too much, and if anything the regulations should be relaxed, not strengthened; the planners’ iv perception was that the regulations were about right, requiring essential services but not so restrictive as to prevent development. The residents’ survey from the original case studies also revealed preferences for a number of other localities in Jeddah where provision was better. The research investigated the development practice of these localities (‘non-conventional development’), by visiting the localities and interviewing the developers and found a smart growth/New Urbanism model of development, which could provide better quality public realm and up-front infrastructure provision, albeit at a cost and rather exclusively. This thesis concludes that it is important to improve the current conventional practices of LSP development to enable Jeddah to provide a more sustainable and more liveable urban form than is currently created, and presents a set of recommendations to achieve this. These include recommendations to amend the SR guidelines based on comprehensive studies conducted with modern techniques incorporating residents’ aspirations, developers’ suggestions, officials’ ideas, inputs from urban planners, and autonomy to local regulators (increased role and responsibility of Jeddah Municipality) cumulatively aimed at provision of better public facilities and services. There are still some possible venues to conduct future researches, such as encouraging planning and consulting offices to reveal their views of the current SR code and LSP development. Moreover, residents’ perceptions should be studied and included in unconventional subdivision plans to fulfil their satisfaction. Finally, it is useful to study and analyse the views of public services and facilities providers, particularly pertaining to their role within the LSP approval process

Design and implementation of single bit error correction linear block code system based on FPGA

Linear block code (LBC) is an error detection and correction code that is widely used in communication systems. In this paper a special type of LBC called Hamming code was implemented and debugged using FPGA kit with integrated software environments ISE for simulation and tests the results of the hardware system. The implemented system has the ability to correct single bit error and detect two bits error. The data segments length was considered to give high reliability to the system and make an aggregation between the speed of processing and the hardware ability to be implemented. An adaptive length of input data has been consider, up to 248 bits of information can be handled using Spartan 3E500 with 43% as a maximum slices utilization. Input/output data buses in FPGA have been customized to meet the requirements where 34% of input/output resources have been used as maximum ratio. The overall hardware design can be considerable to give an optimum hardware size for the suitable information rate

A novel mining system for criminal issues from a video file within cloud computing environment

This paper presents a description of a novel mining system which mines the different occurrences (instances) of the same object from a video file. The framework of the system consists of four steps: segmenting the video file into stable tracks, extracting objects and their features from the tracks, grouping these tracks into clusters based on their residing objects, and finally mining the instances of each object in the shared pool of configurable computing resources within cloud environment for more security. The paper also presents a critique and feedback for the system and proposes an idea to improve its performance

The Iraqi EFL University Learners’ Recognition of the Politeness Principle

This study deals with the investigation of the Iraqi EFL university learners’ recognition of Leech’s politeness principle. The study aims at: determining whether the Iraqi EFL learners observe or flout the maxims of politeness principle, assessing the mastery of the maxims of politeness principle by the Iraqi EFL learners, and identifying which maxim(s) of politeness principle is/are usually observed and/or flouted. It is hypothesized that the modesty maxim is the most observed maxim and the generosity maxim is the most flouted one of the Iraqi EFL learners’ recognition of politeness principle, and the Iraqi EFL learners’ flouting of the maxims of politeness principle is more than their observance of such maxims at the recognition question. The sample of the current study is one hundred Iraqi EFL learners at the fourth year at University of Thi-Qar, College of Education for Humanities, Department of English. A test is the data elicitation tool that is designed to test the learners’ ability to recognize which maxims of politeness principle which are observed depending on the context of conversation in which they are indulged. It arrives at some conclusions: the most observed maxim of the Iraqi EFL learners’ recognition of politeness principle is the feeling-reticence maxim and the most flouted one is the modesty maxim. The Iraqi EFL university learners’ flouting of those maxims in the recognition question is more than their observance

Test-taking Strategies on Reading Comprehension Tests: A Review of Major Research Themes

There is a growing body of thought and research on strategy use on tests of reading comprehension. Nevertheless, there have been few research reviews that have treated major themes involved in thought and research on test-taking strategies, specifically in the context of reading comprehension. Hence, this paper reviews the themes that are central to the discussion of strategy choice and use on reading comprehension tests. Research themes that form the foci of the paper include discussion of test-taking strategies as they relate to the process of reading test-taking, formats of reading tests, validation of reading tests, level of language proficiency, and performance on tests of reading comprehension

DEVELOPMENT OF A TREATMENT SYSTEM FOR ANTIBIOTIC WASTEWATER

Antibiotics are emerging contaminants in the aquatic environment because of their adverse effects on aquatic life and humans. The problem that may be created by the presence of antibiotics at low concentration in the environment is the development of antibiotic resistant bacteria. Antibiotic sources in the environment are antibiotic industry, human excretion and excretion form livestock. No work has been reported on complete treatment of antibiotic wastewater containing amoxicillin, ampicillin and cloxacillin. The overall objective of this work was development of an effective treatment system for antibiotic wastewater from an antibiotic industry producing these antibiotics. The work was conducted in three phases. In Phase I, four advanced oxidation processes (AOPs) (Fenton, photo-Fenton, UV/TiO2 and UV/ZnO) were applied for treatment of amoxicillin, ampicillin and cloxacillin antibiotics in aqueous solution. From a technical point of view, Fenton, photo-Fenton and UV/H2O2/TiO2 processes were able to degrade the antibiotics and improve biodegradability; however, UV/ZnO process did not improve biodegradability. Based on DOC removal, the photo-Fenton process exhibited the highest rate constant (0.029 min-1) followed by the Fenton (0.0144 min-1), UV/ZnO (0.00056 min-1) and UV/H2O2/TiO2 (0.0005 min-1). From an economic point of view, the photo-Fenton process appeared to be the most cost-effective compared to the other studied processes. In Phase II, the feasibility of using three combined AOP and sequencing batch reactor (SBR) (Fenton-SBR, photo-Fenton-SBR and UV/H2O2/TiO2-SBR) for complete treatment of an antibiotic wastewater from a local antibiotic industry producing amoxicillin, ampicillin and cloxacillin, was evaluated. Combined systems were operated for several months to study the effect of AOP and SBR operating conditions on the combined system performance. From a technical point of view, both combined Fenton-SBR and photo-Fenton-SBR systems achieved an overall efficiency of 89% for sCOD removal and the final effluent met the discharge standard. However, the combined UV/H2O2/TiO2-SBR system was not a feasible combined system for treatment of the antibiotic wastewater. From an economic point of view, the combined Fenton-SBR system appeared to be more costviii effective than the combined photo-Fenton-SBR system. The Monod kinetic model was fitted to the results of biodegradation of the Fenton-treated effluent by SBR under the best operating conditions with the kinetic constants kob 0.078 hr-1, YX/S 0.60 and Kd -0.0013 hr-1. The values of kob, YX/S and Kd for biodegradation of the photo- Fenton-treated effluent under the best operating conditions were similar to those of Fenton-treated effluent. In Phase III, artificial neural network (ANN) was applied for modelling, simulation and prediction of the Fenton process performance. ANN predicted results were very close to the experimental results with correlation coefficient of 0.997 and mean square error of 0.000376. The sensitivity analysis showed that all studied variables have strong effect on COD removal and H2O2/Fe2+ molar ratio is the most influential parameter. The study showed that neural network modelling could effectively predict and simulate the behaviour of the Fenton process. The study culminated in development of an effective treatment systems for antibiotic wastewater. From technical and economic point of view, combined Fenton-SBR system was the most effective for treatment of the antibiotic wastewater