Business plan development for electronic house call system

Issued as Final report, Project B-03-62

Expanding the Conceptualization And Applied Role of Shame

Prior research has shown shame to be a key component of a variety of mental health issues, symptoms, and disorders; however, a growing body of research also found it to be integral in the process of seeking to atone, ameliorate, or repair a prior transgression. This study sought to further explore what factors influenced this process. By utilizing a posttest-only control group experimental design and the Gausel and Leach (2011) model as a framework, this study was able to operationalize and investigate the role shame had in motivating a prosocial versus self-defensive response. Additionally, this study advanced this model by testing the potential moderating impact of social competence. Results of a 131 participants indicated that people generally reported strong intentions to behave prosocially regardless of feeling ashamed and, furthermore, did not find evidence that social competence moderated this process. The data did demonstrate associations between secure attachment and the Gausel and Leach model’s prosocial pathway and found a significant relationship between shame-proneness and the self-defensive pathway

Material Requirements for Infrastructure Development

This literature review aims to identify published studies providing projections of the global demand for, and remaining stock of, materials important for construction that could be constraints to the development of infrastructure worldwide. Our review found very little evidence and few projections addressing this issue. Although a wide variety of materials could potentially constrain infrastructure development, in our research we were only able to identify good quality projections for four materials: aluminium, cement, steel, and wood. Estimates of the energy needs, water requirements and likely carbon emissions of mining and processing these resources are also provided

Small Town Water Supply Infrastructure Costs

The growth in urban populations has facilitated an increase in demand for urban water supply. This report examines the costs of construction for urban water supply in small/medium towns (population 10 000 to 40 000) in Africa, including costs per capita for water supply systems and unit costs of key water supply infrastructure items. The literature reviewed identifies three major factors influencing the costs of small town water systems: population density, types of technology and contract packaging. The capital costs of water supply infrastructure vary widely both on a per-capita basis for water supply systems and on a per-unit basis for specific infrastructure items. Examples of capital expenditure per capita for some water supply systems were found to vary by as much as 19-fold within a single country (for mechanised boreholes in Ghana), and unit costs of water supply system components varied by more than 4-fold (for boreholes with hand pumps in Ghana)

Applications of digital and innovative construction techniques in lower-income countries

Construction technology has experienced rapid changes in recent years associated with the growing use of computers, software development, automation and offsite construction. These advances are helping to address two common problems associated with the industry, namely project delay and safety. A lack of communication between stakeholders and the uncertainties associated with construction sites and processes have been identified as the main causes of construction delays for a number of years. However, recent developments in information and communications technologies (ICT), new cutting-edge technologies (NCETs) and modern methods of construction (MMC) are helping the construction industry to complete projects on time and to budget by improving communications between stakeholders and their pre-engagement with a project. This report reviews examples of successful adoption of digital and innovative construction technologies in low-income countries in the three areas of 1) Building Information Modelling (BIM), 2) Offsite construction, and 3) New cutting-edge technologies (NCETs)