Environmental assessment of buildings

Since the building sector started to recognise the impact of their activities on the environment in the 1990s, environmentally related issues have been an extremely popular research area. However, the research has partly been incoherent and inconsistent; researchers have excessively been focusing on their own topics neglecting possible collaboration, including the collaboration in interdisciplinary fields. The field of building environmental assessment tools is vast. The use of the tools is diverse. They are almost taken as a given; their contents have not been critically analysed. How the definitions of the assessment tool affect the results has been neglected. The interest lies excessively with the end results, without further clarification. The aim of this study is to clarify the field of building environmental assessment tools by analysing the current situation and future challenges. The relationship between environmental assessment and service life planning is critically analysed. Many building environmental assessment tools require an estimation of the building's lifetime. The service life of a building, however, has not been emphasised within the tools; rather it is taken as a given without further analysis. Therefore, the service life planning needs to be included in the environmental assessment of buildings. The existing methods and tools should not be underestimated. However, they should not be considered the sole possibilities. New ideas and interdisciplinary discoveries should also be welcomed in order to keep up-to-date; something worth researching may appear. If the new aspects are neglected, there is a possibility that "the high quality building" of today will be "the low quality building" of the future. The results of this doctoral thesis improve the understanding of the environmental assessment of buildings, the service life planning, their relationship, and also the factors affecting them. The results can be utilised in the development of the environmental assessment of buildings and service life planning. Furthermore, the results are beneficial for standardisation work, and research in the interdisciplinary fields

Omakotitalon kuntotutkimus ja korjaussuunnitelma

Ylöjärven Siivikkalassa sijaitsevaan 1950-luvulla rakennettuun ja 1970-luvulla laajennettuun yhden perheen omakotitaloon tehtiin kuntotutkimus asukkaiden toivomuksesta. Opinnäytetyön tarkoituksena on antaa asukkaille lisätietoa talonsa kunnosta ja kertoa, mitä seuraavaksi olisi talon kunnossapidon puolesta tehtävä. Talossa ei ollut päällepäin nähtävissä pahoja puutteita, eikä niitä myöskään pintapuolisilla tutkimuksilla löytynyt. Kaikkia rakenteita ei kuitenkaan päästy avaamaan, joten pelkkien vuoden 1971 lupapiirustusten ja asukkaiden kertomusten perusteella suurimmat puutteet ovat alapohjan ja yläpohjan kosteusteknisessä kunnossa ja lämmöneristyksessä.A condition assessment and a reconstruction plan have been made to a house located in Siivikkala, Ylöjärvi by the request of the owners. The house was built in the 1950´s and the house has been renovated and extended in the 1970´s. The purpose of this thesis is to give information to its inhabitants about the current condition and give advices for future renovations and corrections which must be done in order to maintain the house in condition. At the moment there are no remarkable faults and the research did not show them either. It was impossible to open all parts of the structure, so the research lies upon the facts given by inhabitants and blueprints from the 1970’s. Based on these facts it can be concluded that the most remarkable faults are in the roofs and base floors humidity level and thermal insulation

Cardiac and cerebrovascular complications and bleeding in head and neck cancer

In head and neck surgery, there is generally a 1–1.5% risk of cardiac and cerebrovascular complications. However, risk of these events in head and neck cancer surgery is less well established. Smoking and heavy alcohol consumption increase the risk of head and neck cancer, and they are also significant risk factors of cardiac and cerebrovascular comorbidity. There is evidence that age and comorbidity in general increase the risk of major adverse cardiac and cerebrovascular events (MACCE), but the effect of specific comordities remains unknown. Furthermore, it would be useful to identify modifiable peri- and postoperative variables in order to decrease the risk of MACCE. This thesis sought to assess the incidence of MACCE and means to predict adverse events during and after head and neck surgery. Secondly, specific comorbidities and modifiable peri- and postoperative risk factors influencing MACCE risk were identified. This retrospective study included all head and neck patients treated in Turku University Hospital in 1999-2008 (n=456). Data was collected from patient files. Results of this study support the data that increasing age and comorbidities play a significant role in MACCE, and there is an unmet need for a good predictive tool to assess patients at high risk of MACCE. ASA-classification and CHA2DS2-VASc score seemed to predict the risk of postoperative 30-day MACCE. and the easy-to-use CHA2DS2-VASc score could be used by the multidisciplinary team to estimate patients’ peri- and postoperative risk of MACCE. Futhermore, excessive fluid administration exceeding 4000mL/24h and red blood cell infusion increased the risk of 30-day MACCE nearly 5- fold. Other peri- and postoperative risk factors were microvascular surgery, treatment in the intensive care unit, and tracheostomy, all referring to major surgery. Nevertheless, MACCE also occurred in minor head and neck surgery. However, re-operation due to bleeding did not increase the risk of MACCE, but increased the risk of 30-day mortality more than 5-fold, and in all cases the cause of death was cardiovascular. By addressing the high-risk patients and controlling the known modifiable risk factors, we might be able to decrease morbidity and mortality due to MACCE in head and neck cancer surgery in the future. For example, and the easy-to-use CHA2DS2-VASc score could be used by the multidisciplinary team to estimate patients’ peri- and postoperative risk of MACCE

Ageing with Smartphones in Japan

Older adults in Japan, one of the most ageing countries in the world, are starting to adopt the smartphone. What does this mean for friendship, gendered labour, multigenerational living, internal migration, health and indeed purpose in life (ikigai)? Based on 16 months of ethnographic research in urban Kyoto and in rural Kōchi Prefecture, Ageing with Smartphones in Japan follows people as they navigate social and personal shifts post-retirement. Examining how older women and men negotiate oppressive structures within society, the smartphone emerges as both challenging and perpetuating gender-based norms around care. In witnessing the response of older adults to the wider context of societal ageing and the various forms of precarity that it can engender, this book observes how people creatively navigate the challenges and opportunities of later life to define their own experience of ageing. The rise of digital visual communication among people in their 50s and older opens new possibilities for sociality and proximity among friends and family. It also presents a methodological challenge for researchers. This book responds with a series of graphic methodological experimentations, including co-created comics, participant drawings, and the author’s own fieldwork sketches and imaginative illustrations, to explore this fundamental shift in communication towards digital images

Proactive Legal Design for Health Data Sharing Based on Smart Contracts

© 2021 Hart Publishing, Bloomsbury Publishing.fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Introduction : ＜Special Theme : Ethno-graphic Collaborations : Crossing Borders with Multimodal Illustration＞

journal articl

Contracts as Interfaces

The world of contracts is undergoing fundamental changes. This is partly due to technology: there can be tremendous benefits from self-enforcing, machine-readable contracts. But these technologies are not used everywhere. Many contracts continue to be performed by people. In the context of commercial deals and relationships,1 a vast number of contracts still need to be planned, understood, approved, implemented, and monitored by people.2 Initiatives across the world seek to innovate contracting processes and documents and develop more effective, engaging ways for people to work with them. This chapter focuses on these initiatives and the need to make contracts truly human-readable.© Cambridge University Press 2021. This material has been published in Legal Informatics edited by Katz, D. M., Dolin, R. & Bommarito, M. J. (Editors), https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316529683. This version is free to view and download for private research and study only. Not for re-distribution or re-use.fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Emotion work via digital visual communication: A comparative study between China and Japan

Through the smartphone, the production and circulation of digital visual media have become as costless and accessible as audio and text-based communication. It would be challenging to be a contemporary ethnographer without engaging with digital practices which in Japan and China at least, tend towards being highly visual. Digital visual communication is recognised in literature as an effective and accessible form of communication, with an increasing number of studies in the field of digital anthropology, media studies and Internet studies exploring the consequences of digital images on social media. There is a pressing need to understand local forms of visual communication in the digital age, where the visual has become an essential part of daily communication. This article deals particularly with the rise of visual digital communication among older adults in China and Japan. Drawing on 16-month ethnographies conducted simultaneously between 2018 and 2019 in China and Japan, this article contributes to the discussion of visual communication in light of this semiotic shift happening online, which is then contextualised within people’s offline lives. The ethnographies in both China and Japan find that, first of all, visual communication via digital media enables more effective and efficient phatic communication and emotion work. In addition, the ethnographies point to a question about ‘authenticity’ in interpersonal communication. The ethnographies show that in some cases, the deployment of visual communication via the smartphone is not so much about being able to express ‘authentic’ personal feelings but rather, in being able to effectively establish a digital public façade according to social norms

A critical analysis of building sustainability assessment methods for healthcare buildings

The healthcare building project contains different aspects from the most common projects. Designing a healthcare environment is based on a number of criteria related to the satisfaction and well-being of the professional working teams, patients and administrators. Mostly due to various design requirements, these buildings are rarely designed and operated in a sustainable way. Therefore, the sustainable development is a concept whose importance has grown significantly in the last decade in this sector. The worldwide economic crisis reinforces the growing environmental concerns as well as raising awareness among people to a necessary and inevitable shift in the values of their society. To support sustainable building design, several building sustainability assessment (BSA) methods are being developed worldwide. Since healthcare buildings are rather complex systems than other buildings, so specific methods were developed for them. These methods are aimed to support decision-making towards the introduction of the best sustainability practices during the design and operation phases of a healthcare environment. However, the comparison between the results of different methods is difficult, if not impossible, since they address different environmental, societal and economic criteria, and they emphasize different phases of the life cycle. Therefore, the aim of this study was to clarify the differences between the main BSA methods for healthcare buildings by analysing and categorizing them. Furthermore, the benefits of these methods in promoting a more sustainable environment will be analysed, and the current situation of them within the context of standardization of the concept sustainable construction will be discussed.The authors acknowledge the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology and POPH/FSE for the financial support for this study under the Reference SFRH/BD/77959/2011