Structural seismic performance of reinforced concrete block system for two storeys safe house

Severe earthquakes in year 2004 had caused a destructive tsunami and killed more than 170,000 people in Aceh Indonesia. The disaster raises the public awareness and demand in safe house. This paper presented the structural failure behaviour, strength and performance level of two-bays double storeys safe house structure with the scaled of 1:5. Cyclic pushover test was conducted with compliance to the standard guidelines from Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA 356) in year 2000. The structural behaviour and deformation patterns under repeated cyclic lateral loads were identified through experimental test. The structural stiffness capacity, performance level, seismic energy dissipation and spectral acceleration of the safe house model were obtained through calculations from the hysteresis curves. Experimental result shows the ultimate lateral load of safe house model was 9.9 kN with roof top displacement of 49.1 mm. The model has performance level of Immediate Occupancy (IO), Life Safety (LS) and Collapse Prevention (CP) at 6.3 mm, 16 mm and 49.1 mm roof top displacement, respectively. It was found that, the safe house structure is able to withstand seismic excitation of 0.98 g spectral acceleration

The role of linked building data (LBD) in aligning augmented reality (AR) with sustainable construction

Over the years, the construction industry has been evolving to embrace the delicate balance between buildings and a sustainable environment by optimizing resource use to create greener and more energy efficient constructions. Sustainable building design and optimization is a highly iterative and complicated process. This is mainly attributed to the complex interaction between the different heterogenous but heuristic construction processes, building systems and workflows involved in achieving this goal. Augmented Reality (AR) has rapidly emerged as a revolutionary technology that could play a key role towards improving coordination of sustainable design processes. AR makes possible the real-time visualization of a three-dimensional (3D) building prototype with linked design information in a real-world environment based on a two-dimensional drawing. From past research, it is evident that this technology relies heavily on a common data environment (CDE) that syncs all construction processes with their related building information in one central model. However, due to the fragmented nature of the construction industry, different domain experts generate and exchange vast amounts of heterogenous information using different software tools outside a CDE. This paper therefore investigates the performance gap that exists within Malaysia’s construction industry towards using linked building data (LBD) with AR to improve the lifecycle sustainability of buildings. The results of this study clearly delineate how current construction practices in Malaysia do not favor the use of AR however, stakeholder perception is positive towards adoption of workflows that link heterogenous building data to streamline AR with sustainable building design and construction

Analyzing Post-Disaster Reconstruction Stakeholder Networks: Malaysian rural housing

This article uses the social network analysis to identify resource coordination and information exchange of stakeholders in the inter-organizational network by studying the project-related interactions of rural housing reconstruction in Temerloh, Pahang that were funded by the Malaysian government, His Majesty the King and NGO. The data was collected through content analysis and interviews with 23 government agencies, NGOs, and community stakeholders. Findings from the analysis established that government agencies had the highest actor centralities, with the Rural Development Ministry and the local government level being the most central among the government agencies, whereas the homeowners had the lowest centralities. Keywords: post-disaster housing reconstruction, social network analysis, rural Malaysia eISSN: 2398-4287 © 2023. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA cE-Bs by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open-access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under the responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians/Africans/Arabians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia. DOI: https://doi.org/10.21834/ebpj.v8i23.4511

Deploying a Deep Learning-based Application for an Efficient Thermal Energy Storage Air-Conditioning (TES-AC) System: Design Guidelines

Facility management and maintenance of the Thermal-Energy-Storage AirConditioning (TES-AC) system is a tedious task at a large scale mainly due to the charging load that can increase energy consumption if needed to be charged at peak hours. Besides, maintenance of TES-AC at a large scale gets complex as it contains many sensor data. By utilizing deep learning techniques on the sensor data, charging load prediction can be made possible, so facility managers can prepare in advance. However, a deep learning-based application will be unusable if it is not deployed in a userfriendly manner where facility managers can benefit from this application. Hence, this research focuses on gathering design guidelines for a deep learning-based application and further validates the design considerations with a developed application for efficient human-computer interaction through qualitative analysis. The approach taken to gather design guidelines demonstrated a positive correlation between expert-suggested features and the user-friendly aspect of the application as 67.08% of participants found the features suggested by experts to be most satisfactory. Furthermore, it evaluates user satisfaction with the advanced developed application for TES-AC according to the gathered design guidelines

Flexural strength of special reinforced lightweight concrete beam for Industrialised Building System (IBS)

Special reinforced lightweight aggregate concrete (SRLWAC) beam is designed as beam component in Industrialised Building System (IBS). It is used to overcome the difficulties during the component installation due to the heavy lifting task. This paper presents the flexural strength and performance of SRLWAC beam under vertical static load. SRLWAC beam was set-up on two columns corbel and tested under monotonic vertical load. Five Linear Variable Displacement Transducers (LVDTs) were instrumented in the model to record displacement. The ultimate flexural capacity of the beam was obtained at the end of experiment where failure occurred. Performance of the beam was evaluated in load-displacement relationship of beam and mode of failure. SRLWAC beam was then modelled and simulated by nonlinear finite element software- Autodesk Simulation Mechanical. Result from finite element analysis was verified by experimental result. Maximum mid-span displacement, Von-Mises stress, concrete maximum principal stress, and yielding strength of reinforcement were discussed in this paper. The beam was behaved elastically up to 90 kN and deformed plastically until ultimate capacity of 250.1 kN in experimental test. The maximum mid span displacement for experimental and simulation were 15.21 mm and 15.36 mm respectively. The major failure of IBS SRLWAC beam was the splitting of the concrete and yielding of main reinforcements at overlay end. Ductility ratio of IBS SRLWAC beam was 14.2, which was higher than pre-stressed concrete beam

Standard verification test for Industrialised Building System (IBS) repetitive manufacturing

New innovative Industrialised Building System (IBS) has been implemented in Malaysia. It is a sustainable approach, innovative technique and implements repetitive manufacturing using green materials. This paper presents one of the standard tests to check the design and strength of IBS components via an experimental flexural test and then verify the finite element analysis. One IBS frame was set-up, tested with two points of monotonic vertical loading, and analysed by Abaqus 6.12 software. The structural performance in nonlinear state was evaluated in load-displacement relationship of beam, crack pattern, mode of failure, and stresses at concrete and connection deformation to guide the further components inspection

The ENCODE Imputation Challenge: a critical assessment of methods for cross-cell type imputation of epigenomic profiles

A promising alternative to comprehensively performing genomics experiments is to, instead, perform a subset of experiments and use computational methods to impute the remainder. However, identifying the best imputation methods and what measures meaningfully evaluate performance are open questions. We address these questions by comprehensively analyzing 23 methods from the ENCODE Imputation Challenge. We find that imputation evaluations are challenging and confounded by distributional shifts from differences in data collection and processing over time, the amount of available data, and redundancy among performance measures. Our analyses suggest simple steps for overcoming these issues and promising directions for more robust research

Global burden of 369 diseases and injuries in 204 countries and territories, 1990–2019: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019

Background: In an era of shifting global agendas and expanded emphasis on non-communicable diseases and injuries along with communicable diseases, sound evidence on trends by cause at the national level is essential. The Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) provides a systematic scientific assessment of published, publicly available, and contributed data on incidence, prevalence, and mortality for a mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive list of diseases and injuries. Methods: GBD estimates incidence, prevalence, mortality, years of life lost (YLLs), years lived with disability (YLDs), and disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) due to 369 diseases and injuries, for two sexes, and for 204 countries and territories. Input data were extracted from censuses, household surveys, civil registration and vital statistics, disease registries, health service use, air pollution monitors, satellite imaging, disease notifications, and other sources. Cause-specific death rates and cause fractions were calculated using the Cause of Death Ensemble model and spatiotemporal Gaussian process regression. Cause-specific deaths were adjusted to match the total all-cause deaths calculated as part of the GBD population, fertility, and mortality estimates. Deaths were multiplied by standard life expectancy at each age to calculate YLLs. A Bayesian meta-regression modelling tool, DisMod-MR 2.1, was used to ensure consistency between incidence, prevalence, remission, excess mortality, and cause-specific mortality for most causes. Prevalence estimates were multiplied by disability weights for mutually exclusive sequelae of diseases and injuries to calculate YLDs. We considered results in the context of the Socio-demographic Index (SDI), a composite indicator of income per capita, years of schooling, and fertility rate in females younger than 25 years. Uncertainty intervals (UIs) were generated for every metric using the 25th and 975th ordered 1000 draw values of the posterior distribution. Findings: Global health has steadily improved over the past 30 years as measured by age-standardised DALY rates. After taking into account population growth and ageing, the absolute number of DALYs has remained stable. Since 2010, the pace of decline in global age-standardised DALY rates has accelerated in age groups younger than 50 years compared with the 1990–2010 time period, with the greatest annualised rate of decline occurring in the 0–9-year age group. Six infectious diseases were among the top ten causes of DALYs in children younger than 10 years in 2019: lower respiratory infections (ranked second), diarrhoeal diseases (third), malaria (fifth), meningitis (sixth), whooping cough (ninth), and sexually transmitted infections (which, in this age group, is fully accounted for by congenital syphilis; ranked tenth). In adolescents aged 10–24 years, three injury causes were among the top causes of DALYs: road injuries (ranked first), self-harm (third), and interpersonal violence (fifth). Five of the causes that were in the top ten for ages 10–24 years were also in the top ten in the 25–49-year age group: road injuries (ranked first), HIV/AIDS (second), low back pain (fourth), headache disorders (fifth), and depressive disorders (sixth). In 2019, ischaemic heart disease and stroke were the top-ranked causes of DALYs in both the 50–74-year and 75-years-and-older age groups. Since 1990, there has been a marked shift towards a greater proportion of burden due to YLDs from non-communicable diseases and injuries. In 2019, there were 11 countries where non-communicable disease and injury YLDs constituted more than half of all disease burden. Decreases in age-standardised DALY rates have accelerated over the past decade in countries at the lower end of the SDI range, while improvements have started to stagnate or even reverse in countries with higher SDI. Interpretation: As disability becomes an increasingly large component of disease burden and a larger component of health expenditure, greater research and developm nt investment is needed to identify new, more effective intervention strategies. With a rapidly ageing global population, the demands on health services to deal with disabling outcomes, which increase with age, will require policy makers to anticipate these changes. The mix of universal and more geographically specific influences on health reinforces the need for regular reporting on population health in detail and by underlying cause to help decision makers to identify success stories of disease control to emulate, as well as opportunities to improve. Funding: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an Open Access article under the CC BY 4.0 licens

Mortality of emergency abdominal surgery in high-, middle- and low-income countries

Background: Surgical mortality data are collected routinely in high-income countries, yet virtually no low- or middle-income countries have outcome surveillance in place. The aim was prospectively to collect worldwide mortality data following emergency abdominal surgery, comparing findings across countries with a low, middle or high Human Development Index (HDI). Methods: This was a prospective, multicentre, cohort study. Self-selected hospitals performing emergency surgery submitted prespecified data for consecutive patients from at least one 2-week interval during July to December 2014. Postoperative mortality was analysed by hierarchical multivariable logistic regression. Results: Data were obtained for 10 745 patients from 357 centres in 58 countries; 6538 were from high-, 2889 from middle- and 1318 from low-HDI settings. The overall mortality rate was 1⋅6 per cent at 24 h (high 1⋅1 per cent, middle 1⋅9 per cent, low 3⋅4 per cent; P < 0⋅001), increasing to 5⋅4 per cent by 30 days (high 4⋅5 per cent, middle 6⋅0 per cent, low 8⋅6 per cent; P < 0⋅001). Of the 578 patients who died, 404 (69⋅9 per cent) did so between 24 h and 30 days following surgery (high 74⋅2 per cent, middle 68⋅8 per cent, low 60⋅5 per cent). After adjustment, 30-day mortality remained higher in middle-income (odds ratio (OR) 2⋅78, 95 per cent c.i. 1⋅84 to 4⋅20) and low-income (OR 2⋅97, 1⋅84 to 4⋅81) countries. Surgical safety checklist use was less frequent in low- and middle-income countries, but when used was associated with reduced mortality at 30 days. Conclusion: Mortality is three times higher in low- compared with high-HDI countries even when adjusted for prognostic factors. Patient safety factors may have an important role. Registration number: NCT02179112 (http://www.clinicaltrials.gov)

Behavioural Study of Shear Wall with Correlational to Bracing under Seismic Loading

The reinforced concrete structures, not designed for seismic conditions, amid the past earthquakes have shown us the significance of assessment of the seismic limit state of the current structures. During seismic vibrations, every structure encountered seismic loads. Seismic vibrations in high rise building structure subjects horizontal and torsional deflections which consequently develop extensive reactions in the buildings. Subsequently, horizontal stiffness can produce firmness in the high rise structures and it resists all the horizontal and torsional movements of the building. Therefore, bracing and shear wall are the mainstream strategies for reinforcing the structures against their poor seismic behaviours. It is seen before that shear wall gives higher horizontal firmness to the structure when coupled with bracing however it will be another finding that in building model, which location is most suitable for shear wall and bracing to get better horizontal stability. In this study, a 15 story residential reinforced concrete building is assessed and analyzed using building code ACI 318-14 for bracing and shear wall placed at several different locations of the building model. The technique used for analysis is Equivalent Static Method by utilizing a design tool, finite element software named ETABS. The significant parameters examined are lateral displacement, base shear, story drift, and overturning moment