Office of Sustainability

Permanent URI for this community

https://prism.ucalgary.ca/handle/1880/110517

Browse

Browsing Office of Sustainability by Subject "Architecture"

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    Birds, Buildings and LEED Mitigation Design at the University of Calgary Campus
    (2014-05-05) Wood, Jessica Suzanne; Draper, Dianne
    This appears to be the first study at the University of Calgary to assess bird collisions with buildings. Through an exploratory approach the intention was to gain an understanding of birds colliding with buildings at the university. Bird collisions were documented at the University of Calgary during the 2013 spring and fall bird migration. Only five birds were found to collide with four building structures. The low sample size posed challenges in undertaking statistical analysis. This research contributes a new vegetation density matrix and additions to Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Pilot Credit 55. The information in this study may be built upon in order to conduct confirmatory research that accurately determines the extent of bird-building collisions at the University of Calgary and will, in turn, contribute to conservation of resident and migratory bird populations.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    Using smartphone data to design urban spaces: visualization, modeling, and public engagement
    (2020-05-21) Rout, Angela; Galpern, Paul; Maurer, Frank; Willett, Wesley J.; Tsenkova, Sasha
    University campuses contain outdoor spaces that, when well-designed, can support student well-being. It may be easier to design campuses that benefit students if designers are aware of student movement and campus use patterns. Until quite recently, precise data about how students move around their campuses has not been widely available. However, the near ubiquity of smartphones, and their capacity to collect location data, presents new opportunities both to understand student movements, and more generally, the movements of people across urban areas. While the data are abundant and seemingly available, much work remains to demonstrate the value of this resource in real-world urban design applications. This thesis presents four stand-alone manuscripts that address different aspects of the urban design process, using a single university campus as a model system. The first provides a review of how location data have been used to understand human behaviour in urban settings. The remaining three draw on a data set of smartphone locations collected from 300 students, tracking their individual movements on a university campus. One study, using these data, considers how best to incorporate location data in public engagement. Another demonstrates a tool for visualizing location data intended for use by design experts. And a final study investigates patterns in the use of design features by modelling the data. These studies demonstrate that location data derived from smartphones (for example, smartphone-GPS data) can be used by non-experts in public engagement scenarios, that it can also help architects to understand flows of human movement, and that it can guide designers towards better-informed decisions about design features. The introduction of the thesis provides the context for this research, and provides an overview of each chapter. The thesis concludes by discussing how all four studies provide insights for future researchers and more specifically, to designers of campus plans.