Cities at risk? Exploring the synergies between smartphones and everyday vulnerabilities

Smartphones present new forms of spatiality and sociality for cities worldwide. The sudden outburst in smartphone technologies has revolutionised human relations creating new possibilities of encounter and connectivity. This paper examines people's smartphone usage patterns and highlights how this is increasing human vulnerabilities in cities with resultant wider societal implications. Drawing on the theory of vulnerability, Hofstede's cultural dimension theory and carrying out semi-structured interviews in the United Kingdom and Ghana, the paper reveals that the current scale of usage and addiction to smartphones and social media are fostering emerging forms of everyday vulnerabilities. Victimisation, privacy breach, home emergencies and road accidents are prevalent vulnerabilities in both Accra and London. By comparing participants' smartphone usage patterns and their motives for adopting or ignoring certain social media practices, the study illustrates how the concept of attitudinal vulnerability extends our understanding of Hofstede's theory of collectivism and individualism. While the finding from Accra complicates Hofstede's collectivism label as there seems to be a loss of genuine sense of care and people-centeredness among participants it confirms individualism tendencies among the participants in London though some tendencies of ‘virtual collectivism’ were observed. In conclusion, the study emphasises how significant behavioural changes among smartphone users can reduce human-induced vulnerabilities in cities. By so doing, we add weight to the literature that focuses on the importance of developing context-specific cutting edge ICT policies vis-a-vis building smart, safe and sustainable cities

Actions, attitudes and beliefs of occupants in managing dampness in buildings

Dampness in buildings affects the health of occupants, structural stability and energy efficiency of buildings. Solutions to managing dampness focus on promoting the use of damp-proof construction materials, enhancing methods to avoid the introduction of moisture during construction and creating the awareness on the health effect of dampness. These solutions are incomplete without the identification of behaviours that occupants require to manage dampness. Given that dampness is characterised by the availability of a source, a route for the moisture to travel and driving force for moisture movement, the occupants can be said to play a significant role in contributing to dampness. As a result, this study seeks to examine the behaviours of occupants manifested to manage dampness in residential buildings. To achieve the aim, a qualitative research method was employed, under which interviews were carried out. Occupants in households in the northern and southern parts of England were interviewed to identify the actions, attitudes and beliefs in managing dampness. The findings revealed actions such as aeration and the use of anti-damp sprays. From the findings, dampness instilled attitudes such as anger, moodiness and unhappiness. In addition, dampness instilled cleaning habits in occupants due to the lack of comfort moulds create and the awareness of its health impact. The identification of these behaviours creates the awareness for occupants on their roles in managing dampness and how dampness affects their behaviours in addition to the health impact. This research also contributes to existing debates on dampness reduction specifically in residential buildings

Mechanisms for preventing rising damp in new building infrastructure

Purpose: Capillary rise of water in buildings has been an issue of concern among past and present researchers. Despite the research efforts devoted to the proper elimination of the problem in masonry construction, it still remains a challenge that needs to be addressed. This study explores treatment mechanisms that can be used to prevent rising damp in new building infrastructure. Methodology: Fourteen test walls are constructed, conditioned, subjected to various treatments, and monitored for four years. The treatments applied to the walls include the use of polyethylene damp proof courses, damp proof coatings, and dense concrete bases. The walls are then monitored with reference to the two climate seasons in Ghana. Findings: The results highlights that rising damp is present, as suggested by the constant increase and decrease in the height of the water levels in the walls during the rainy and dry seasons respectively. The findings further reveal that within the four-year period, the walls treated with the damp proof coatings, together with those with the dense concrete bases performed better than those treated with the polyethylene damp proof courses. Limitations: The economic and commercial impact of these preventive mechanisms were not considered in this study. A future research can be directed at these issues. Practical implication: The proposed treatment mechanisms highlights the effectiveness of some treatments applied to walls to prevent the capillary rise of water from the ground into the superstructure. Social implications: Building regulations, especially in Ghana and other tropical settings should be amended to include ways to prevent rising damp phenomena by including effective methods against rising damp during the building design or construction. Originality/Value: Series of studies worldwide have been conducted in laboratories to simulate the capillary rise of water in walls of buildings. This is among the few studies that look at how water rises from actual ground conditions into the walls of buildings

Managing change in BIM-Level 2 projects: benefits, challenges, and opportunities

Purpose: The aim of this paper is to validate perceived benefits and challenges of BIM-Level 2 in managing change in projects and identify opportunities for enhancing these benefits and reducing the challenges. This research is timely because, these benefits and challenges remain largely unvalidated following the passing of the BIM-Level 2 mandate in the UK, and the opportunities for enhancing the benefits and reducing challenges remain relatively unexplored. Design/methodology/approach: To achieve the aim, questionnaires were sent to BIM-Level 2 practitioners in the UK; in all, 41 responses were received. Following that, interviews with 10 BIM practitioners were carried out to identify opportunities for reducing challenges and increasing benefits. Findings: From the findings, the benefits from the literature were all validated. Beyond these, some emergent benefits were identified, such as cost saving and risk reduction. Most challenges from the literature were validated with emergent challenges identified, largely to do with the social dimension in the BIM-Level 2 process. Opportunities identified to enhance benefits and reduce challenges were mainly socially driven. These opportunities were classified as either reactive or proactive. Research limitations/implications: Opportunities for reducing challenges and increasing benefits identified from this research can inform the change management processes in BIM-Level 2. Practical implications: Findings show the processes and requirements for managing change in BIM-level 2. Social implications: The identification of behaviours reveals the social requirements for BIM-level 2. Originality/value: This research identifies opportunities required to reconstruct the change management process in BIM-Level 2. This forms a basis for future work to explore the antecedents of these social requirements

Information resilience in a digital built environment.

Information is the underpinning driver in the Digitised Built Environment and crucial to the Centre for Digital Built Britain’s agenda. Threats to information affect the intrinsic, relational and security dimensions of information quality. Therefore, the DBE requires capabilities of people, and requirements of the process, software and hardware for threat prevention and reduction. Existing research and protocols seldomly outline the capabilities and requirements needed to reduce threats to information. The aim of this report is to develop an information resilience framework which outlines the capabilities and requirements needed to ensure the resilience of information throughout its lifecycle; creation, use, storage, reuse, preserve and destroy. The findings highlight the need for people’s (stakeholder) competencies and behaviours which are driven by cognitive abilities such as attention, learning, reasoning and perception. Furthermore, process’ requirements such as embedding validation check process, standard requirements for Level of Detail, digital upskilling, among others, were identified. Additionally, identified software requirements include its ability to be customised to meet the project needs, detect conflicts and provide context of information. Finally, hardware requirements encompass facilitating backup, having a high capacity system and being inaccessible to peripherals. This research will be further extended to the development of a decision-making assessment tool to measure capabilities and requirements in the entire lifecycle of built assets

Social value in the digitalised construction environment

The construction industry has been under increasing pressure by clients to demonstrate its social contribution to the community. This social contribution has been termed as Social Value (SV). Although SV has been currently explored in non-digitalised construction environments, less is known about how digitalised construction environments can ensure the delivery of SV within a socio-technical systems approach. This paper aims to identify how digitalised construction environments could bring social outcomes within the internal stakeholders. To achieve this aim, a comprehensive literature review of the existing conceptualisation of SV in the construction industry was carried out and synthesised into a conceptual framework for integrating SV in the digitalised construction process. The literature reveals that construction stakeholders do not conceptualise SV in the same way. SV is commonly shaped by short-term compliance to fulfil the requirement for procuring contracts. Also, there is a lack of common approaches for internal stakeholders to integrate the delivery process of SV. The conceptual framework proposes an early integration of SV in the design phase to identify alternative methods to co-generate, monitor and communicate SV. Thus far, this study advances the knowledge about how digitalised construction environments can ensure Social Value delivery. This paper highlights the need for further research to integrate Social Value delivery in digital construction environments among internal stakeholders. A future study could validate the framework with internal stakeholders across the design phase

Comparing resilience in organisations and projects

Comparing resilience in organisations and project

List of references of Social Value definitions in the Digitalised Construction Environment

This is a list of reference product of a literature review. The reference show the definition of Social Value in construction.</div

The information resilience framework: Vulnerabilities, capabilities and requirements.

The quality of information is crucial to the success of asset delivery, management and performance in the Digitised Architecture, Engineering, Construction and Operations (DAECO) sector. The exposure and sensitivity of DAECO information to threats during its lifecycle leaves it vulnerable, affecting the intrinsic, relational and security dimensions of information quality. A resilient information lifecycle perspective which identifies capabilities and requirements is therefore needed to assure information quality amid threats. This research develops and presents an information resilience (IR) framework by drawing on the theories of resilience, information quality and vulnerability. In developing the framework, the critical incident technique was employed in interviewing 30 professionals (average of 40-minutes) in addition to reviewing 7 project-documents across three digitally-driven infrastructure projects (making up 324-pages of data). The validated capabilities and requirements identified from this study have been collated into the framework and this highlight the need for cognitive-driven capabilities and process-driven requirements in DAECO. </p

A process model for collaboration at the design stage of rail project delivery

The absence of a clear collaboration process at the design stage of rail projects hinders the ability to provide the right information at the right time for the right purposes. The scope and complexity of rail projects make them particularly sensitive to problems arising from poor collaboration. Within projects, collaboration is a key enabler for effective decision making and rework reduction and this leads to time and cost savings. Strategies and technologies such as Building Information Modelling (BIM) and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) facilitate collaboration among project stakeholders during the asset delivery phase but require a roadmap to ensure successful implementation. Using collaboration as a theoretical lens, and applying collaboration technologies, this paper conceptualizes the collaboration processes for rail delivery with the focus on the design stage. The aim of this research is to develop a collaboration process model at the design stage of rail delivery. Ten in-depth interviews with BIM, GIS and rail delivery experts were carried out to identify the dimensions and characteristics of the collaboration process model. The collaboration process emerging from the results was modelled using Integrated Definition (IDEF) notation and reveals the project activities, key players’ roles and responsibilities for effective BIM-GIS19 based collaboration in the design stage of rail projects. The process was operationalized by customizing a commercial Common Data Environment platform and was validated using a focus group and in-depth interview to establish the trustworthiness of the theoretically modelled collaboration process for rail delivery. The precise model of the collaboration process, based on integrated use of BIM and GIS, constitutes a significant original contribution of this research. This model should facilitate smoother implementation of these technologies, timely information flows between project participants, and ultimately more effective delivery of rail projects.</p