Actor-relational planning in deprived areas : challenges and opportunities in luchtbal Antwerpen, Belgium

In this article we report and discuss our experience with actor relational approaches in the regeneration of a post war housing estate in Luchtbal, Antwerp, Belgium. Actor relational approaches are informed by post-structuralist ideas of space, complexity theory and actor network theory. Although ARA itself is not new, the application of ARA to deprived area’s such as Luchtbal is novel. We report how the approach has been elaborated, its process and outcome. We conclude with our evaluation from an insider’s perspective

The critical relationship between collective space and collective use

Ponència presentada a: Session 8: Post-ocupación / Post-occupancy: buildings and citie

Radio-Frequency communication in a SCADA system for the monitoring and control of intelligent building and office blocks

The efficient use of electricity and how people approach it, is a topic that has a big impact on the environment and society. The consumption management will be improved by the monitoring and the controlling of electrical installations. By creating a management of the industrial installations people will use the existing and new energy resources more careful. Communication is a key part in this process and that is why the improvement of data transmission is very important to obtain a controlled process. Transferring data is achieved by sending an electromagnetic signal by means of radio waves, electrical voltage, etc. by means of different types of communications channels. The main goal of this report is to contribute GECAD developing a connection between a superior network and an external one to create the possibility of monitoring and controlling devices linked to the networks. The communication devices used are modems which use radio waves to make the transmission. The two advanced radio modems (ARM-SE) that are used during this assignment have the ability to connect with slave devices using different types of communication protocols. All the different protocols to achieve a data transfer between the two networks have been investigated and analyzed to find the best solution to connect a programmable logic controller to the network of GECAD. A program has been created to access the data of an analyzer to obtain knowledge on how to implement analyzers in a SCADA system to improve monitoring of an electrical installation. This assignment will achieve a better understanding of the different protocols and operation modes used in the industrial sector to create intelligent buildings and office blocks. The whole assignment is set up to monitor the data of a power analyzer (CIRCUTOR) which makes it possible to test all the operation modes and develop the program to retrieve data from the analyzer. Thereafter the program was used to create a SCADA system to retrieve data from other analyzers (PM130) connected to a PLC on an extern location. This is made possible because both analyzers are compatible so after changing some parameters, data could be retrieved easily. Despite a lot of difficulties with the modems, which creates a doubt of their reliability, it concludes that they are useful devices to transmit data for the intelligent buildings

Parametric Modelling Within Immersive Environments: Building a Bridge Between Existing Tools and Virtual Reality Headsets

Even though architectural modelling radically evolved over the course of its history, the current integration of Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality(VR) components in the corresponding design tasks is mostly limited to enhancing visualisation. Little to none of these tools attempt to tackle the challenge of modelling within immersive environments, that calls for new input modalities in order to move away from the traditional mouse and keyboard combination. In fact, relying on 2D devices for 3D manipulations does not seem to be effective as it does not offer the same degrees of freedom. We therefore present a solution that brings VR modelling capabilities to Grasshopper, a popular parametric design tool. Together with its associated proof-of-concept application, our extension offers a glimpse at new perspectives in that field. By taking advantage of them,one can edit geometries with real-time feedback on the generated models, without ever leaving the virtual environment. The distinctive characteristics of VR applications provide a range of benefits without obstructing design activities. The designer can indeed experience the architectural models at full scale from a realistic point-of-view and truly feels immersed right next to them.Comment: 6 pages, 36th eCAADe conferenc

Radio-Frequency communication in a SCADA system for the monitoring and control of intelligent building and office blocks

The efficient use of electricity and how people approach it, is a topic that has a big impact on the environment and society. The consumption management will be improved by the monitoring and the controlling of electrical installations. Communication is a key part in this process and that is why the improvement of data transmission is very important to obtain a controlled process. Transferring data is achieved by sending an electromagnetic signal by means of different types of communications channels. This paper presents a connection between a superior network and an external one to create the possibility of monitoring and controlling devices linked to the networks in a research institution (GECAD). The communication devices used are modems which use radio waves to make the transmission. A program has been created to access the data of an energy meter to obtain knowledge on how to implement analyzers in a SCADA system to improve monitoring of an electrical installation. This assignment will achieve a better understanding of the different protocols and operation modes.This work has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 641794 (project DREAMGO) and from FEDER Funds through COMPETE program and from National Funds through FCT, under the project UID/EEA/00760/2013.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Automatic discovery of high-level provenance using semantic similarity

As interest in provenance grows among the Semantic Web community, it is recognized as a useful tool across many domains. However, existing automatic provenance collection techniques are not universally applicable. Most existing methods either rely on (low-level) observed provenance, or require that the user discloses formal workflows. In this paper, we propose a new approach for automatic discovery of provenance, at multiple levels of granularity. To accomplish this, we detect entity derivations, relying on clustering algorithms, linked data and semantic similarity. The resulting derivations are structured in compliance with the Provenance Data Model (PROV-DM). While the proposed approach is purposely kept general, allowing adaptation in many use cases, we provide an implementation for one of these use cases, namely discovering the sources of news articles. With this implementation, we were able to detect 73% of the original sources of 410 news stories, at 68% precision. Lastly, we discuss possible improvements and future work

PBL for Sustainable Cities. Results of the CITYLAB LA Project

“PBL for sustainable cities” is a three day academic conference held from 19th until 21st of September 2018. The conference will be hosted by the University del Rosario in Bogota, Colombia. The academic conference is open to all academic fields involved in sustainable and urban development in relation to Problem Based Learning experiences. The conference themes are: • PBL experiences in Architecture and Planning Schools , Geography, Sociology, Engineering, Political Science, Urban Management, Economics etc. • Other innovative teaching/learning methods and tools. • Teaching governance and participatory approaches. • Collaborative process with external actors: relationships between stakeholders (universities/ public and private agents/citizens…) • Collaborative process with international exchanges between univesities • Potential from the point of view of the scalability of processes and experiences • Sustainable Development Goals (Sdgs). The Project “Citylab. Engaging Students with Sustainable Cities in Latin America”, co-funded by the Erasmus + Programme of the European Union (www.citylab-la.eu), is aimed at enhancing the quality of HEI’s in Latin America through problem based-learning. Problem-based learning is assumed as an innovative approach for introducing real-world problems into educational programs with huge possibilities to transform the quality of teaching and learning. In order to introduce and spread PBL, the partners of the project (12 Latin American and 5 European) have worked on specific problems through multidisciplinary approaches, with the support of campus teams formed by teaching and administrative staff and policy makers from the different faculties. The Project works on typical urban problems, such as urban planning, conservation, energy and climate change, poverty and crime, employment, etc. which are in general complex, and wicked problems that can only be properly addressed through multi-disciplinary and trans-disciplinary working methods. This academic conference is characterised by a wide range of inspiring lectures, discussions and networking opportunities with experts in the field of Problem Based Learning, researchers and key actors in Sustainable Cities development