Development of the Rental Housing Market in Latin America and the Caribbean

Experience in northern and developed countries suggests that a well functioning rental sector (potentially including both social and private renting) is an important component of a complete and effective housing system, offering more solutions to meet a full spectrum of demands and needs. As such, it is appropriate to explore the opportunities for the Bank to support the rental options alongside the traditional lending and program focus that has generally favored homeownership. This paper seeks to outline the existing tenure patterns across Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries, identify the prerequisite features of effective rental sectors- based on experience in developed OECD countries-, and outline the necessary steps to develop and expand the rental sector in LAC countries. This includes consideration of both the private (private investors) and community rental sector (community based nonprofit and cooperative ownership).Housing, Rental Housing Market; Latin America and the Caribbean; Latin America; Caribbean, LAC

Unmanned aerial system for use in environmental monitoring of water body wave motion

This paper details the research conducted on an open source flight controller for the use of monitoring surface and wave motion of water bodies. Testing was preformed on an industrial FANUC robotic arm, where a Pixhawk 2 was tested using pre-preprogrammed circles of varying sizes to mimic the amplitude of sinusoidal waveforms. Results show good to excellent comparability between the circle radii programmed, and the calculated displacement from the Pixhawk's reported acceleration. This was achieved through the use of Fourier Transforms, filtering and integration of the acceleration logged by the Pixhawk during tests. Such a system is envisaged to be used in the reduction of flow noise a hydrophone experiences from surface deployments, where real time monitoring of the surface would raise and lower a deployed hydrophone in the water column to reduce or eliminate flow noise. Further to this, this system could be used for an early warning tsunami detection system, which could compliment systems already deployed, as well as being a cost effective solution for areas where no systems are currently in place

Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) for marine mammal detection and underwater noise assessment

Conventional underwater based acoustic deployment platforms, such as boats, drifting systems or moored long term acoustic data loggers are often expensive, complex and are usually deployed in dangerous environments. A novel alternative involving the use of a waterproof Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) for the deployment of underwater acoustic sensors is presented. The system has the capability of overcoming the limitations of current deployment methods, while also being able to self-deploy and self-retrieve, and will improve deployment and redeployment times

Use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV’s) for underwater noise assessment [Poster]

The underwater and airborne acoustic environment forms a critical part of many marine mammals life cycles. Assessment and development of understanding of these acoustic soundscapes is often vital in understanding many marine life and human operation interactions as well as species to species interactions in the natural acoustic environments. Traditional passive acoustic methodologies used for underwater sound and noise measurements include static hydrophones, autonomous loggers, boat-based deployments, towed arrays, drifter systems etc. Most of these systems however also rely on expensive and sometimes hazardous deployments and retrieval methods. The rapid growth in Unmanned Ariel Vehicles (UAV) technologies in recent years has lead to investigation of these platforms to act as enhanced aerial visual platforms for observing marine mammal behaviour, abundance estimation etc. These systems are however often limited by battery life to relatively short in flight deployments. However these platforms can also offer the opportunity for rapid deployment of smart hydrophone systems over a relatively large spatial areas to include acoustic behaviours and sound scape analysis by flying to a site landing on the water and then deploying underwater sensors. Whilst on the waters surface relative power consumption is significantly lower than in-flight allowing significantly longer deployments. Smart systems will then return to some base point with minimal human interaction. A prototype multi-rotor system has been developed and tested in an open water site, capable of flying to site, landing on the water, deploying a wideband hydrophone for underwater noise assessment and then returning to base. Measurements include underwater noise self-noise analysis in-flight, landing, static and take-off and potential implications to marine wildlife. These developments and trials have demonstrated the overall feasibility of wide-scale rapid hydrophone deployment using UAVs for sound field and marine mammal behaviour analysis

Evaluation of UAVs as an underwater acoustics sensor deployment platform

Marine surveys carried out by Passive Acoustic Monitors conventionally use towed hydrophone arrays, which requires dedicated surface observation boats. This is a costly and slow process, which could be made cheaper and quicker by using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). Presented in this paper are the initial findings from using UAVs to capture underwater acoustic signals from an acoustic test tank