Public Participation in the Process of Improving Quality of the Urban Frame

The different tools for analysing the quality of public space are coincident when showing that a healthy urban space is conditioned by a proper urban structure. It is needed a balance between urban uses and a proper connectivity among the different parts of the city. At the same time, the users of the public space must have an adequate perception of the urban space it occupies; a good sense of identification of the user over the urban frame allows a proper use of the public space. The development of urban analysis in the city of Orihuela, using tools as RGBG Strategic Model, showed junk urban spaces around the Mount St. Michael. The application of the RGBG allowed the identification of social conflictive areas that had a limited connectivity with the rest of the city and inhabitants with a low feeling of identification with the closest urban area. The municipality of Orihuela used the knowledge acquired with these analysis tools for developing interventions over the public urban space focused on the detected social conflictive areas. With them, the municipality tried to improve the perception that inhabitants had over their closest urban environment. Public employment initiatives were developed with the participation of local inhabitants in order to integrate them in the process of recovering the conflictive urban areas. This paper describes the process developed and shows that once these interventions were finished, it is possible to validate the data obtained with the urban simulation tools. It is confirmed that the perception of the quality of public space is improved when the inhabitants are involved in the process of its recovery and when urban factors as connectivity are improved

Energy Efficiency of Flooded Roofs: The University of Alicante Museum

Inverted flat roofs were adopted as a common construction solution throughout the Modern Movement. They require greater protection of the waterproofing layer and sufficient thermal insulation. Depending on the climate conditions, a thicker or thinner thermal layer is installed and energy saving in keeping with the climatic conditions, regulations or national or regional energy policies is obtained. However, the common construction systems tend to be focused on minimising the construction costs of each project, using thermal insulation layers of extruded polystyrene, a modified bitumen waterproofing layer and a finishing layer of 5 cm of gravel. In the case of trafficable roofs, this layer is substituted with ceramic or hydraulic concrete paving. These solutions have given rise to an enormous reduction in the thermal mass of the roof layers located above the isolation layer and consequently, a lack of thermal inertia with which to cushion the effect of the thermal wave of the outdoor environment produced in the indoor climate of the building. Roofs flooded with water in climatologies which allow their application generate significant thermal inertia depending on the depth of the water. They reduce the amplitude of the thermal wave produced in the inside temperature of the buildings by the external thermal variations, generating a considerable increase in comfort and a reduction in energy consumption. This paper outlines the research carried out in the Alicante University Museum. The whole building and its flooded roof have been monitored over a full year cycle and data has been obtained regarding the dry interior temperatures of each layer of the walls, outdoor temperatures and solar radiation, relative humidities, etc. Through the use of simulation tools, comparative results of this roof with respect to inverted flat roofs have been obtained, such as the decrement factor and the heat wave

Contribution of New Digital Technologies to the Digital Building Logbook

According to the European Commission, the Digital Building Logbook (DBL) is a repository of all of the relevant data of a building. It was first introduced at the European scale in the Renovation Wave strategy and was first defined in the proposal for the recast of the energy performance of buildings Directive in December 2021. The European DBL has not been implemented yet, since a common model does not yet exist. Even though great efforts are being made to establish it, some relevant issues need to be addressed first. One of them is the identification of data sources that will feed the DBL. Existing digital data sources have already been explored in some countries and they have been found to be insufficient. In this paper, new digital data sources suitable for the logbook are identified, and their contribution in terms of indicators and interoperability is analysed. The analysis shows that these sources have great potential to contribute to the DBL, because they bring the possibility to collect a great amount of real data on buildings. However, the main barrier for these tools to be incorporated into the DBL is that their linkage still requires further research

Computer assisted focus on form to minimise lexical errors in young learners

El componente léxico juega un papel muy importante en los primeros estadios de la adquisición de lenguas. Por lo tanto es esencial aprender y usar las palabras de manera apropiada. Basándonos en los resultados obtenidos en un estudio sobre competencia léxica en inglés de 283 alumnos de primaria hispanohablantes, en este artículo mostramos una forma de enseñanza de vocabulario a aprendices jóvenes de inglés. Con el fin de disminuir la producción de errores léxicos y motivar al alumnado se aplica un Enfoque en la Forma combinado con un tipo de Enseñanza de Lenguas Asistida por Ordenador. Ilustramos esta práctica con dos tipos de actividades, una de ellas centrada en errores ortográficos y la otra en errores de elección de palabra debidos a transferencia. Palabras clave: Error léxico, Enfoque en la Forma, Enseñanza de Lenguas Asistida por Ordenador, Educación primaria, Lengua inglesa.The lexical component plays a paramount role in the first stages of language acquisition. Hence, it is crucial to learn and use words appropriately. Based on the results obtained on a study carried out on the lexical competence in English of 283 Spanish speaking primary learners, the present article investigates a way of teaching vocabulary to young Spanish learners of English. With the aim of diminishing lexical error production and motivate learners, we adopt a Focus on Form approach enhanced by the use of computer assisted language teaching. Two types of activities are proposed to illustrate this practice: one of them focuses on spelling errors and the other on word choice errors due to transfer

A new functionality for the digital building logbook: Assessing the progress of decarbonisation of national building sectors

The EU has set itself demanding objectives to achieve complete decarbonisation by 2050. The building sector plays an important role for this purpose, hence monitoring its progress towards decarbonisation is essential to identify measures that work and to readjust policies when necessary. However, collecting information to monitor the building sector is a complex task due to the scarcity and low quality of available data. The European digital building logbook (DBL) has great potential in this regard because it allows the collection of data at the building scale, which could be combined at a national level. Thus, this paper proposes a new functionality for the DBL -as an enabler for the collection of data for the assessment of the progress of the main EU policy objectives related to the building sector decarbonisation-, and it evaluates the potential of the DBL for it. To do so, the main policy objectives were associated to a set of progress indicators –mandatory and optional- and matched to DBL indicators. Mandatory indicators are for all Member States and they have been included in the 2023 amended version of the proposal for the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive recast. Optional indicators are considered country-specific in this paper and are sourced from various literature references. Here we have studied the optional progress indicators for the case of Spain. Results show that the DBL has great potential to contribute to the collection of more than half of the mandatory indicators and a very high share of the optional ones for Spain

Computer assisted focus on form to minimise lexical errors in young learners

El componente léxico juega un papel muy importante en los primeros estadios de la adquisición de lenguas. Por lo tanto es esencial aprender y usar las palabras de manera apropiada. Basándonos en los resultados obtenidos en un estudio sobre competencia léxica en inglés de 283 alumnos de primaria hispanohablantes, en este artículo mostramos una forma de enseñanza de vocabulario a aprendices jóvenes de inglés. Con el fin de disminuir la producción de errores léxicos y motivar al alumnado se aplica un Enfoque en la Forma combinado con un tipo de Enseñanza de Lenguas Asistida por Ordenador. Ilustramos esta práctica con dos tipos de actividades, una de ellas centrada en errores ortográficos y la otra en errores de elección de palabra debidos a transferencia. Palabras clave: Error léxico, Enfoque en la Forma, Enseñanza de Lenguas Asistida por Ordenador, Educación primaria, Lengua inglesa.The lexical component plays a paramount role in the first stages of language acquisition. Hence, it is crucial to learn and use words appropriately. Based on the results obtained on a study carried out on the lexical competence in English of 283 Spanish speaking primary learners, the present article investigates a way of teaching vocabulary to young Spanish learners of English. With the aim of diminishing lexical error production and motivate learners, we adopt a Focus on Form approach enhanced by the use of computer assisted language teaching. Two types of activities are proposed to illustrate this practice: one of them focuses on spelling errors and the other on word choice errors due to transfer

Water-Covered Roof Versus Inverted Flat Roof on the Mediterranean Coast: A Comparative Study of Thermal and Energy Behavior

Reservoir, or water-collecting roofs present greater thermal inertia than inverted flat roofs due to the mass of water they contain. This feature gives them better thermal performance and leads to greater stability in the indoor air temperature Ti and the wall surface temperatures. In the summer, they can dampen the effect of solar radiation and regulate external thermal loads thanks to their greater effusivity and thermal capacity. This research compares the thermal behavior of the roofs of two buildings located in Alicante on the Spanish Mediterranean coast: a loft flat in the city center and a water-covered roof in the Museum of the University of Alicante (MUA). Values for effusivity, diffusivity, thermal capacity, decrement factor, time lag and internal, as well as external thermal admittance were obtained. After monitoring both roofs during 2014, behavior simulations were performed in Design Builder using 6 different scenarios reflecting different combinations in both buildings of water-covered, inverted and conventional roofs and marble or terrazzo paving. The water-covered roof led to a higher decrement factor and time lag, as well as to a reduction of annual energy demands between 8.86% and 9.03%.This research was funded by the Vice-rectorate of Campus and Technology of the University of Alicante, in grants awarded by the Own Programme in 2014

Energy retrofit of social housing with cultural value in Spain: Analysis of strategies conserving the original image vs. coordinating its modification

Two renovation strategies were considered and compared in this paper for the energy renovation of social housing in condo buildings built in 1945-1969, situated in residential estates that have been declared urban areas of interest. One of the strategies, named here the image conservation approach, consists of renovating the building with very efficient solutions, except for the brick-facing walls, which will only have insulation in the existing cavities. The other strategy, the image coordination approach, consists of renovating the whole building with efficient solutions, including external insulation for existing brick-facing walls, and drawing up coordination plans for each of the residential estates in order to guarantee a coordinated new image of the residential estates. By means of three case studies in the city of Zaragoza and four scenarios of improvement, the two strategies are compared regarding the regulation compliance, the energy use, the emissions reduction, the thermal comfort, and the cost-effectiveness of the measures. The results show that the image coordination approach is the best strategy in regard to the studied aspects, achieving a 69%-79% reduction of CO2 emissions and a 75%-97% reduction of heating use, as well as being the only one capable of transforming these buildings into nearly zero energy buildings (nZEBs)

Differences in the Written Production of Young Spanish and German Learners: Evidence from Lexical Errors in a Composition

This study investigates quantitative and qualitative differences in the production of lexical errors in the English written performance by young Spanish and German learners of English. The essays produced by the subjects were analysed and lexical errors identified, classified, and quantified. A t-test was performed on the data. Results revealed that Spanish learners commit significantly fewer lexical errors than their German counterparts, t = 2.94 at a significance level

Estudio de las estrategias para la rehabilitación de Los Almacenes Alstom de Nantes. Caso de estudio Escuela de Bellas Artes.

El objetivo principal del trabajo se basa en el conocimiento de las estrategias y las tomas de decisiones que se han llevado a cabo para la rehabilitación de los Almacenes Alstom y su transformación en la nueva Escuela de Bellas Artes de Nantes. Para ello se estudia el contexto de la ciudad y la situación ésta genera para realizar la rehabilitación de los almacenes. Además se estudian con profundidad las estrategias seguidas en el caso de una de las naves de los almacenes, rehabilitada para albergar la nueva Escuela de Bellas Artes. Este estudio de caso se realiza con la base de los libros de composición arquitectónica de Juan Calduch.<br /