Modelling workplace contact networks: the effects of organizational structure, architecture, and reporting errors on epidemic predictions

Face-to-face social contacts are potentially important transmission routes for acute respiratory infections, and understanding the contact network can improve our ability to predict, contain, and control epidemics. Although workplaces are important settings for infectious disease transmission, few studies have collected workplace contact data and estimated workplace contact networks. We use contact diaries, architectural distance measures, and institutional structures to estimate social contact networks within a Swiss research institute. Some contact reports were inconsistent, indicating reporting errors. We adjust for this with a latent variable model, jointly estimating the true (unobserved) network of contacts and duration-specific reporting probabilities. We find that contact probability decreases with distance, and research group membership, role, and shared projects are strongly predictive of contact patterns. Estimated reporting probabilities were low only for 0-5 minute contacts. Adjusting for reporting error changed the estimate of the duration distribution, but did not change the estimates of covariate effects and had little effect on epidemic predictions. Our epidemic simulation study indicates that inclusion of network structure based on architectural and organizational structure data can improve the accuracy of epidemic forecasting models.Comment: 36 pages, 4 figure

Urban fabric and social participation in community-based elderly care facilities

Apart from providing essential care for elderly inhabitants, a well addressed purpose of community-based elderly care facilities is to promote social integration through encouraging visitors from the neighbourhood to continuously participate in activities and use services offered by the facility. The location of care facilities and their local environment have been widely argued to constitute a critical factor for older people’s continuous participation, which induces the formation and maintenance of personal networks between the different user groups, as well as a sense of attachment. However, existing literature on care facility location and older people’s participation predominantly uses qualitative methods, and often applied to a single case. This causes ambiguity and controversy when comparing findings from different cases and also makes the generalisation of study findings problematic. This paper introduces a spatial network model which based on Space Syntax theory to explicitly describe spatial relations between care facilities and urban fabric. With a large dataset of social participation records from 91 community-based elderly care facilities in the Chinese city of Nanjing, the study will investigate how differentiated locational properties exert influence on patterns of older people’s social participation. Findings indicate that local-scale spatial properties could influence occurrence patterns of social participation in care facilities, and the mechanism local-scale spatial properties exert influence varies in differentiated global-scale spatial contexts

Evidence-Based Design: Theoretical and Practical Reflections of an Emerging Approach in Office Architecture

Evidence-based design is a practice that has emerged only relatively recently, inspired by a growing popularity of evidence-based approaches in other professions such as medicine. It has received greatest attention in design for the health sector, but has received less in office architecture, although this would seem not only to be beneficial for clients, but increasingly important in a changing business environment. This paper outlines the history and origins of evidence-based practice, its influence in the health sector, as well as some of the reasons why it has been found more difficult to apply in office architecture. Based on these theoretical reflections, data and experiences from several research case studies in diverse workplace environments are presented following a three part argument: firstly we show how organisational behaviours may change as a result of an organisation moving into a new building; secondly we argue that not all effects of space on organisations are consistent. Examples of both consistent and inconsistent results are presented, giving possible reasons for differences in outcomes. Thirdly, practical implications of evidence-based design are made and difficulties for evidence-based practice, for example the problem of investment of time, are reflected on. The paper concludes that organisations may be distinguished according to both their spatial and transpatial structure (referring to a concept initially introduced by Hillier and Hanson in their study of societies). This means that evidence-based design in office architecture needs to recognise that it deals with a multiplicity of possible organisational forms, with specific clients requiring case-dependent research and evidence gathering. In this evidence-based design practice differs markedly from evidence-based medicine. Finally, we suggest a framework for systematic review inclusion criteria in the development of Evidence-Based Design as a field of practice. We argue that it is only through the development of an approach tailored to the specific nature of design practice and organisational function that research evidence can properly be brought to bear. Keywords: Architecture; Design Practice; Evidence-Based Design; Workplace; Research; Case Study.</p

Affordances of the Spatial Design of School Buildings for Student Interactions and Student Self-Directed Learning Activities

The importance of school buildings is rooted in the vitality of education for societal development. Literature perceives learning as a social process, enriched by student interactions and self-directed activities, and the school design should afford those learning practices. The term afford refers to spatial affordances which are defined, in this paper, as the set of possibilities for activities offered by the spatial design to students. Therefore, research on school buildings requires a broad investigation of the spatial design, to uncover the design potentiality and explore the actuality of school operation, in terms of the occurring student interactions and self-directed activities (as representations of social learning). This investigation outlines the research scope, while more attention is drawn towards informal learning spaces outside classrooms, including corridors, open-plan studios and social spaces. This paper focuses on the affordances of the spatial design of secondary school buildings. It presents the outcome of quantitative spatial analysis (using Space Syntax tools) on eleven UK schools, designed by three architecture firms, supported by qualitative interviews with the architects of those schools. This data set explores the school design potentiality for possible learning practices. The paper, thereafter, presents quantitative recording of student interactions and self-directed activities in two of the eleven schools, supported by qualitative interviews with the school managements and teachers; and student questionnaires. This data set explains the actuality of student interactions and self-directed activities, relative to operational managerial schemes and student preferences. Findings discuss the influence of functionalities allocation and configurational accessibility on student interactions, activity types and distribution. This is portrayed through the example of school corridors which afford interactive learning if being highly accessible and connected to open learning spaces. Nevertheless, operational managerial schemes and student preferences still influence the occurring activities. The research outcome explains the school actual operations, and how they correspond to (or divert from) the original design potentiality. This outcome contributes to the existing knowledge on the student social life in schools, and how the spatial design and school rules impact activity types across informal spaces. This possibly links to futur e work on interactive design processes that include architects, teachers and school managements to reduce the gap between school design intentions and operation

The challenges of hybrid work: an architectural sociology perspective

An unwanted experiment of prolonged periods of working away from the office was forced on many societies by the COVID-19 pandemic. In the three years since the COVID outbreak, many organisations have shifted to hybrid work practices by mixing working from home with office-based work. Unsurprisingly, a plethora of both academic and grey literature has been published on hybrid work since 2020. This paper scans that literature in order to understand some of the most important questions emerging and compares these with the experience of a small sample of UK-based participants living and managing in this rapidly changing environment. Considering different disciplinary domains (human resources, management, architecture, real estate, technology), the literature in conjunction with the lived experience highlights real tensions surfacing between individual choices, worker wellbeing and organisational needs. Stuck in the middle of these perpetual conflicts are middle managers trying to make things work day-to-day. It is argued that the implications of hybrid work are potentially as profound as those of Taylorism in the early 20th century. Based on the foundations of architectural sociology, a holistic socio-spatial approach is proposed that responds to the rapidly changing world of work

Correspondence and Non-Correspondence:Using office accommodation to calculate an organisation's propensity for new ideas

Correspondence or non-correspondence is one of the early space syntax concepts, originally proposed by Hillier and Hanson in 1984 in ‘The Social Logic of Space’. Describing the overlap between spatial and transpatial solidarities, Hillier and Hanson argued that socio-spatial systems with high degrees of correspondence are systems in which the transpatial category of people (kinship, gender, profession, beliefs, etc.) tightly overlap with their ordering in space, hence similar people occupy proximate spaces. This creates an exclusive system with strong boundaries. The opposite case, a non-correspondence system thrives on openness, is inclusive and brings people together across multiple scales. We maintain that this essential description of socio-spatial relations has received relatively little scholarly attention over the last decades. Reviewing the literature, we argue that the theory of non-correspondence can unlock why and how organizations are able to innovate and enable the emergence of new ideas. Thus, in this paper we provide a fresh perspective on correspondence by examining organizations occupying office space. On the basis of an odds ratio, we propose a way to calculate the degree of correspondence or non-correspondence in the socio-spatial system of organisational workplace accommodation using various data sets including the office layout of an organisation, the organization chart, the seating plan, visitor counts, observed space usage and observed interaction data within and across transpatial groupings. Bringing detailed data on two case studies to bear – a law firm and a research organisation – we highlight different interaction profiles of correspondence or non-correspondence. We use this quantitative analysis in conjunction with qualitative data identifying organisational cultures and operational contexts those organisations were placed in, so that we can judge innovative potential and the propensity for new ideas to emerge in these organisations. Findings suggest that the law firm operated predominantly as a correspondence system and the research organisation showed high degrees of non-correspondence, particular towards visitors. In both cases, however, subgroups with the contrasting organising principles of correspondence and non-correspondence were found nested inside at the group level. In both organisations correspondence offers the key to understanding how and why innovation emerged or did not emerge. Therefore, we provide a new way of understanding organisational innovations arising from spatial and social conditioning. Rather than treating spatial and social factors in separation, we bring them together. Embedding spatial thinking in management theory and management thinking in spatial theory allows us to make a truly novel and interdisciplinary contribution, which is valuable for further theory development, but also to practitioners in both domains. By developing a rigorous and repeatable method for quantifying the degree of correspondence or non-correspondence in the socio-spatial system of an organization’s workplace accommodation, we can highlight the contribution an office layout makes to the emergence of new ideas in organizations

Spatial network morphology and social integration of the elderly : the socio-spatial 'embeddedness' of community-based elderly care facilities

Moving from the outskirts of cities into urban neighbourhoods, so called community-based elderly care facilities are regarded as a shift from a traditional medical model of care to a social model of care, with an aim of fostering social interactions between facility inhabitants and local residents. This strategy of achieving social integration through spatial integration involves spaces at multiple scales, including not only the interior environment of facilities, but also the exterior urban fabric surrounding facilities. However, most existing research focuses on the building interior of facilities. Local authorities tacitly assume that allocating facilities within an urban community means the realisation of spatial integration, hardly addressing the spatial complexity of urban communities from a morphological perspective, which results in contradictory findings with respect to the social outcomes of implementing such policies. Urban morphology can be a structural factor affording or eliminating opportunities of social interaction among inhabitants, which is particularly applicable to the ageing population, for whom social connections are largely realised via physical environments. Taking over 140 care facilities in the Chinese city of Nanjing as cases, this study develops a spatial network model to quantitatively identify the morphological patterns of urban communities in which facilities are located, thus considering the urban environment as an opportunity structure. It also disentangles to what extent facilities are connected or isolated from surrounding urban fabrics at various scales. Results show that being located within communities does not necessarily imply spatial embeddedness. Spatial network morphology may constrain social connection opportunities of facility inhabitants at global or local scales. Findings indicate that urban communities should not be regarded as spatially homogeneous entities when allocating care facilities. Differentiated morphological factors should be considered to optimise opportunities for social connection via spatial embeddedness

Schulen als Soziale Komplexe. Raumangebot für ein selbstgesteuertes Lernen = Schools as Social Complexes. How Space affords Self-directed Learning

Gebäude sind soziale Gebilde. Sie kanalisieren und verteilen Bewegungsströme und strukturieren, wem wir wo und wann begegnen. Architekt*innen haben es in der Hand, wie offen für soziale Interaktionen ein Gebäude durch seine räumliche Anlage und sein Vermögen, Menschen zusammenzubringen oder voneinander zu trennen, werden kann. Folgt man diesem Gedanken von Bill Hillier und Julienne Hanson, den diese in den 1980er-Jahren als Theorie der Raumsyntax (space syntax) entwickelten, könnte man meinen, die räumliche Anlage selbst orchestriere das Zustandekommen, die Frequenz und die Verteilung von Aktivitäten im Raum. Trifft diese Annahme auch in Bezug auf das Thema der Lernräume zu

The challenges of hybrid work: an architectural sociology perspective

An unwanted experiment of prolonged periods of working away from the office was forced on many societies by the COVID-19 pandemic. In the three years since the COVID outbreak, many organisations have shifted to hybrid work practices by mixing working from home with office-based work. Unsurprisingly, a plethora of both academic and grey literature has been published on hybrid work since 2020. This paper scans that literature in order to understand some of the most important questions emerging and compares these with the experience of a small sample of UK-based participants living and managing in this rapidly changing environment. Considering different disciplinary domains (human resources, management, architecture, real estate, technology), the literature in conjunction with the lived experience highlights real tensions surfacing between individual choices, worker wellbeing and organisational needs. Stuck in the middle of these perpetual conflicts are middle managers trying to make things work day-to-day. It is argued that the implications of hybrid work are potentially as profound as those of Taylorism in the early 20th century. Based on the foundations of architectural sociology, a holistic socio-spatial approach is proposed that responds to the rapidly changing world of work. Practice relevance Leaders of organisations need to pay attention to how profound are the changes imposed by hybrid work and to monitor their potential impacts. The dangers of not doing so are manifest as organisations run the risk of inadvertent discrimination and marginalisation, of creating siloes, of damaging their innovative capacity, and of burning out their employees. Middle managers are living with the tensions and conflicts caused by this revolution on a day-to-day basis. The changes in physical space and technology, although evident, are rarely quick or radical enough to strengthen the working practices already in place. Supporting the workforce by investing in these areas will help the transition to more effective hybrid work practices for everyone

Prevalence of Chlamydia trachomatis in the general population in Germany – a triangulation of data from two population-based health surveys and a laboratory sentinel system

Background Chlamydia trachomatis (chlamydia) is a common, frequently asymptomatic, sexually transmitted infection. It can result in severe sequelae, such as ectopic pregnancy and infertility. In Germany, chlamydia is not notifiable. An opportunistic screening program for women < 25 years was introduced in 2008. The aim of this research was to triangulate different data sources to describe the epidemiological situation of chlamydia in Germany and to investigate whether the current target group of the chlamydia screening program aligns with these findings. Methods Urine specimens from participants from population-based health examination surveys of children (2014–17) and adults (2008–11) were tested for chlamydia, using nucleic acid amplification testing. These data were used to generate weighted chlamydia prevalence estimates by age group and sex. Data from a nationwide chlamydia laboratory sentinel system (2014–16) were used to calculate the positive proportion among individuals tested for chlamydia by age, sex and test reason. Results Using data from the population-based surveys, we found a chlamydia prevalence estimate of 2.8% (95% confidence interval (CI) 1.0–7.5%) among all 15- to 17-year-old girls and of 9.6% (95% CI 0.0–23) among those reporting to be sexually active. In adult women, we found the highest prevalence among 18- to 24-year-olds (all: 2.3%; 95% CI 1.0–5.3%; sexually active: 3.1%; 95% CI 1.3–7.0%). In adult men, we found the highest prevalence among 25- to 29-year-olds (all: 3.5%; 95% CI 1.6–7.7%; sexually active: 3.3%; 95% CI 1.3–7.8%). Data from the chlamydia laboratory sentinel showed the highest positive proportion among those opportunistically screened in 19-year-old women (6.1%; 95%- CI 5.9–6.4%), among those screened due to pregnancy in 15-year-old girls (10%; 95% CI 8.5–12%), and among those tested due to symptoms or a positive partner in 19-year-old women (10%; 95% CI 9.8–11%) and 19-year-old men (24%; 95% CI 22–26%). Conclusions Chlamydia seems to mainly affect adolescents and young adults in Germany, with similar overall prevalence in men and women, but with slightly different age distributions. Women at highest risk of chlamydia are covered by the current screening program but given the on-going discussions in high-income countries on cost-effectiveness and benefit-to-harm ratio of these programs, the program-aim needs reconsideration.Peer Reviewe