Silent Persuasion

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Preferences for housing attributes in Saudi Arabia: A comparison between consumers’ and property practitioners’ views

Due to rapid urbanisation, population growth and limited supply of housing, the housing sector in Saudi Arabia is facing significant challenges. There have been attempts to provide large-scale housing projects to combat this issue. However, there are concerns that short-term policies to provide large quantities of housing can result in low-quality units which are underside by consumers. Therefore, understanding consumer preferences with regard to housing is crucially important if housing projects are to be successful in the long term. This paper explores consumer preferences for housing attributes in Saudi Arabia and compares these against the views of property professionals. Data was gathered via quantitative surveys from 752 housing consumers and 101 property practitioners from across Saudi Arabia. Descriptive analysis and the Mann-Whitney U test are used to determine the mean importance of the housing attributes and to compare the findings from each group. The results of the study provide an analysis on the importance of various housing attributes and highlights similarities and disparities in opinions. The analysis found significant differences between consumers’ and property practitioners’ views on what consumers believe are important housing attributes. Given this lack of alignment, the findings should offer housing providers with a better understanding of consumer preferences in the Saudi Arabia context

Countering SMS Attacks: Filter Recommendations

In this paper we summarize the findings of our investigation on security issues of Short Message Service (SMS) clients on mobile phones. We realized that firmware updates will not be available on a large scale and thus see filtering of SMS traffic as the only possible counter measure against large scale attacks based on SMS messages. This paper presents our ideas on filtering SMS features by the mobile network operators

CRITERIA FOR SUSTAINABLE HOUSING AFFORDABILITY

The affordability of housing is a pressing problem that not only affects individual households but also has implications for the wider economy and environment, e.g. employment, health and sustainability. Thus it is evident that providing affordable housing is not simply about cheap and decent homes, it entails having regard for a broad range of factors. Housing affordability is traditionally defined and assessed in terms of economic criteria; namely housing costs in relation to incomes. Areas are therefore often regarded as affordable simply because they are low cost. However this indicates nothing about the quality of the housing or the environment in which the housing is situated. An integral part of the research is the theory that affordability is not only affected by housing costs and incomes, but by a wider range of criteria that also influence a household’s quality of life. It is the view of the authors that housing affordability must be evaluated in a wider context if more sustainable outcomes are to be derived from housing policy. In a bid to create more successful communities for the future the paper seeks draw closer links between affordability and sustainability issues, rather than viewing affordability as a purely monetary concern. The research aims to develop a criteria system that represents sustainable housing affordability. The paper presents findings from questionnaire surveys, distributed to housing and planning professionals, which sought to verify and prioritise the criteria that are important to sustainable housing affordability. Keywords: affordable housing, housing affordability, sustainable communities, sustainable housing, sustainable living environment

An introductory review to the Special Issue: Attractive Places to Live

Presently, almost 75% of Europeans live in cities and urban areas, and this figure is expected to rise an additional 5% by 2020 (European Commission, 2010). Therefore, it is not surprising that national governments across Europe are committed to making their cities more attractive and sustainable in order to increase citizens’ quality of life, now and in the future (DETR, 2000; European Commission, 2010; ODPM, 2005; Urban Task Force, 1999). But what makes an attractive urban living environment? Attraction is a subjective preference and people of different ages, cultures and gender, for example, may have diverse views on what is attractive. Accordingly, the elements that contribute to making places attractive to live in are wide ranging and may be different for each person. Nevertheless, it has been suggested that the attractiveness of an urban area appears to centre on the quality of life of its users (Van den Berg et al., 1999). In order to increase quality of life, principles of good urban design, planning, regeneration and sustainable communities are widely promoted (DETR and CABE, 2000; DTLR and CABE, 2001; ODPM, 2003a, 2005; Urban Task Force, 1999). Good urban design is central to creating high-quality and attractive places to live (DETR and CABE, 2000; DTLR and CABE, 2001). Well-planned, well-designed and well-managed living environments are likely to create a far superior quality of life than for those who live elsewhere (DTLR and CABE, 2001)

Feedback on feedback practice: perceptions of students and academics

While feedback is widely considered central to student learning, students across the higher education sector commonly report dissatisfaction with the feedback they receive. In contrast, academics often feel they provide quality and informative feedback. This article explores and compares the perceptions of students and academics with regard to feedback practice. The paper presents the results of questionnaire surveys conducted with academics and students at the School of the Built Environment, Liverpool John Moores University. It highlights the perceptions of academics and students with regard to preferences for different types of feedback, timeliness of feedback, students’ engagement and interest in feedback, quality feedback and satisfaction with current practice. The findings indicate a significant discord between staff and students in relation to certain aspects of feedback practice, namely opinions on students’ engagement and interest in feedback, satisfaction with current practice and feedback preference. Similarities in viewpoints were also found in relation to quality feedback. © 2015 Taylor & Franci

What Attributes Determine Housing Affordability?

The concept of housing affordability is a contested issue, but a pressing and widespread problem for many countries. Simple ratio measures based on housing expenditure and income are habitually used to defined and assess housing affordability. However, conceptualising and measuring affordability in this manner focuses only on financial attributes and fails to deal with wider issues such as housing quality, location and access to services and facilities. The research is based on the notion that the housing affordability problem encompasses more than the financial costs of housing and a households ability to meet such costs and must address larger issues such as social and environmental sustainability and the welfare of households. Therefore, the need arises for a broad and more encompassing set of attributes by which housing affordability can be assessed. This paper presents a system of criteria by which the affordability of different housing locations could be assessed in a comprehensive and sustainable manner. Moreover, the paper explores the way in which such criteria could be measured

Community-Based Security for the Internet of Things

With more and more devices becoming connectable to the internet, the number of services but also a lot of threats increases dramatically. Security is often a secondary matter behind functionality and comfort, but the problem has already been recognized. Still, with many IoT devices being deployed already, security will come step-by-step and through updates, patches and new versions of apps and IoT software. While these updates can be safely retrieved from app stores, the problems kick in via jailbroken devices and with the variety of untrusted sources arising on the internet. Since hacking is typically a community effort? these days, security could be a community goal too. The challenges are manifold, and one reason for weak or absent security on IoT devices is their weak computational power. In this chapter, we discuss a community based security mechanism in which devices mutually aid each other in secure software management. We discuss game-theoretic methods of community formation and light-weight cryptographic means to accomplish authentic software deployment inside the IoT device community

EC71-799 Engineering the Irrigation Pumping Plant

Extension Circular 71-799: Engineering the irrigation pumping plant; pumps selection, pump drives, setting up the drives, power units, and direction for matching an electric motor to an irrigation pump