bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Realigning Lifestyle: An integrated approach to ecology, production and living within rural subdivision
Authors:   , Wong Monica 
Published: November 2021

<p>The Kapiti Coast is changing. The long awaited expansion of the state highway will see rapid growth along the coast and with it, the rural landscape will face a new set of challenges. As the demand for rural land increases, so does land-use tension. Productive land, which was once converted from an extensive wetland network, is slowly being redeveloped into residential subdivisions in order to fulfil an increasing demand for the country lifestyle. However, lifestyle blocks usually have little productive value and subdivisions fragment natural habitats and ecological systems. The typical method of dealing with land-use is the district plan, which designates the most appropriate land-use to the most appropriate area. However, despite good intentions, it has become increasingly apparent that this planning process is no longer reaching its desired outcome. This thesis will explore new strategies for designing rural-residential subdivision, aiming to address land-use issues through increasing diversity. Set in the beach hamlet of Peka Peka, the design investigates one of the last undeveloped areas of private coastal land in the district. This area is prime real estate, but also holds a high capacity for production. It is situated on the remnants of the Great Swamp, a large network of interconnecting wetlands that used to span the length of the coast, providing the potential to significantly increase the ecological value of this land. The design embraces the opportunity to use the residential development as an economic driver to help this degraded landscape and turn these investments into something that is not only beneficial to its residents, but beneficial to the larger region.</p>
Development of an Underground Mine Scout Robot
Authors:   , Molyneaux Lance 
Published: November 2021

<p>Despite increased safety and improved technology in the mining industry, fatal disasters still occur. Robots have the potential to be an invaluable resource for search and rescue teams to scout dangerous or difficult situations. Existing underground mine search and rescue robots have demonstrated limited success. Identified through literature, the two primary concerns are unreliable locomotion systems and a lack of underground mine environment consideration. HADES, an underground mine disaster scout, addresses these issues with a unique chassis and novel locomotion. A system level design is carried out, addressing the difficulties of underground mine environments. To operate in an explosive atmosphere, a purge and pressurisation system is applied to a fibre glass chassis, with intrinsic safety incorporated into the sensor design. To prevent dust, dirt and water damaging the electronics, ingress protection is applied through sealing. The chassis is invertible, with a low centre of gravity and a roll-axis pivot. This chassis design, in combination with spoked-wheels allows traversal of the debris and rubble of a disaster site. Electrochemical gas sensors are incorporated, along with RGB-D cameras, two-way audio and various other environment sensors. A communication system combining a tether and mesh network is designed, with wireless nodes to increase wireless range and reliability. Electronic hardware and software control are implemented to produce an operational scout robot. HADES is 0.7 × 0.6 × 0.4 m, with a sealed IP65 chassis. The locomotion system is robust and effective, able to traverse most debris and rubble, as tested on the university grounds and at a clean landfill. Bottoming out is the only problem encountered, but can be avoided by approaching obstacles correctly. The motor drive system is able to drive HADES at walking speed (1.4 m/s) and it provides more torque than traction allows. Six Lithium-Polymer batteries enable 2 hours 28 minutes of continuous operation. At 20 kg and ~$7000, HADES is a portable, inexpensive scout robot for underground mine disasters.</p>
Guiding Light: The Architecture of Sleep for Dementia
Authors:   , Kluger Scott 
Published: November 2021

<p>Disruptive sleeping behaviours are a key symptom of dementia that accelerates transition from the home towards full time institutional care. For thousands of families in New Zealand, respite facilities offer a temporary relief from this symptom in an attempt to prolong care at home. However the predominant use of pharmaceutical therapy coupled with unstimulating care environments leads to sleeping behaviours deteriorating upon returning home. In order to provide an alternative approach to pharmaceutical therapy and research towards treating disruptive sleep behaviour, this thesis addresses pre-existing inter-disciplinary literature, field trips, international precedents and an iterative method of design to investigate: How can the architecture of a respite facility improve sleeping behaviours and instigate meaningful environmental research within dementia care? Environmental strategies involving light, movement and community were identified as key objectives towards improving sleep behaviour within the design. Introducing a shared courtyard with the public that facilitated continuous movement alongside the circadian rhythms of the sun, allowed a design that would engage with all three objectives in order to improve sleep behaviour of residents with mild symptoms of dementia. As symptoms progress, the adoption of an artificial lighting environment in a purpose built sleep lab allowed a space for scientific enquiry to the nature and treatment of sleep for those with later stages of dementia. The final design integrates both natural and artificial environments into a single respite facility, strengthening its therapeutic potential to prolong home care for the thousands of families affected by dementia in New Zealand.</p>
Oceanic Creative Practice: Re-evaluating indigenous spatial strategies as relevant to twenty-first century creative exploration and practice
Authors:   , Meadows Jodi Marie 
Published: November 2021

<p>“Oceania is vast, Oceania is expanding, Oceania is hospitable and generous, Oceania is humanity rising from the depths of brine and regions of fire deeper still, Oceania is us.”¹ ­‐ Epeli Hau’ofa This research investigates how indigenous visual spatial strategies can be used to assist in the definition of a framework that helps characterise Oceanic perspectives and methods of creative practice. Cultural diversity in the New Zealand context holds important potential for explaining expressions of use and continuing the development of Oceanic creative practice. I will assert that the indigenous spatial strategy known as vā (space) holds important potential to help understand the significance of collective relationships within the Oceanic creative community. Vā is an indigenous spatial strategy that captures the process of engaging with and nurturing connections that, I argue, should be at the forefront of the definition for Oceanic creative practice. By comparing established Eurocentric understandings of creative disciplines and processes to indigenous understandings and methodologies, this research will posit indigenous spatial strategies as not only relevant but pivotal to 21st-century creative exploration and practice. This research will contribute to the outlining of a framework that helps to define the authentic values held within Oceanic creative practice. ¹ Epeli Hau'ofa, "Our Sea of Islands," The Contemporary Pacific 6, no. 1 (1994): 160.</p>
A Shore Thing - Flipping the Coast
Authors:   , Inwood Thomas 
Published: November 2021

<p>A Shore Thing explores an alternative approach to the way future development can occur within New Zealand’s coastal hinterland regions. As global cities continue to expand in size and population, the desire and necessity to move ‘away’ is becoming increasingly prevalent. Wellington is a city that is densifying, yet due to its natural topography, it cannot expand. Townships within the Greater Wellington region are already growing and developing with a lack of developmental strategies to deal with more ermanent residents. As part of this growth, Transmission Gully motorway is a major infrastructural development occurring within the region to improve the connection between the Kapiti Coast and Wellington. Questions are raised…How will this infrastructure affect the townships? Can they withstand an influx of residents? What will happen to the natural process within this landscape? The main intention of this thesis is to develop a scheme for how people could settle within hinterland regions, specifically Paekakariki on the Kapiti Coast. The implementation of Transmission Gully stimulates Kapiti’s potential as a satellite region to Wellington city. This thesis will explore how infrastructure and landscape urbanism can be employed within a rural landscape to achieve a considered strategy that mitigates future pressures on a growing region. The role of landscape architecture plays an important role when exploring and understanding the varying scales within the scheme to ensure a legible framework is generated that integrates ecology, infrastructure, housing and public life.</p>
Data for Surf's Sake - Illustrating a subculture through interactive data visualisation and action sports trackers
Authors:   , Everitt Matthew 
Published: November 2021

<p>Over the last two years action sports trackers have emerged for those seeking thrills in risk-taking sports (Mitchell, 2014). The data generated by these trackers is creating digitised representations of communities participating in action sports such as surfing. The surfing database comprises of activity all over the globe, and due to its size and complexity it can be categorised as big data. Understanding this complex database requires specific data visualisation methods which visually map relationships and patterns. This research asked: can an interactive data visualisation illustrate hierarchical, nomadic, and experiential aspects of the surfing subculture? This thesis is based on ethnographic research which focuses on exploring qualitative visualisations of the quantitative databases generated by action sports trackers for surfing. The research focused on the design of data visualisations which explored contemporary methods and principles of data visualisation and their applicability to communicate aspects of the surfing subculture. This manifested in the design of an interactive web application, Gone Surfing, which focused on global, local, and personal views which communicate Stranger’s (2011) substructure model of the surfing subculture. The hierarchical, nomadic, and experiential aspects of the surfing subculture are only known from long term immersion in the subculture itself. This design made these aspects explicit through the visualisation of the database. For example, pilgrimage’s to revered surfing locations and hierarchy within local communities, and a surfer’s relationship with the waves are forms of implicit knowledge which were made explicit. The final creative output, Gone Surfing, visualises these aspects in an interactive web application consisting of global, local, and personal views to each communicate an aspect effectively. The interactive visualisation allows non-surfers to explore the subculture while enhancing a surfer’s understanding of their position within the surfing nation.</p>
Costing the cold: Connecting fuel poverty & supplier switching in Wellington, New Zealand
Authors:   , McLean Sam 
Published: November 2021

<p>Fuel poverty describes the inability of households to afford adequate energy services, such as space heating. In New Zealand, where 25% of households are estimated to be ‘fuel poor’, high electricity prices in a restructured electricity market have an important influence on fuel poverty. However, the ability of the New Zealand Government to regulate these high electricity prices is constrained. Consequently, there is a strong reliance on consumers to switch energy suppliers, which promotes competitive prices and in turn regulates the price of electricity. In contrast to energy efficiency improvements, switching offers fuel poor households a low-cost opportunity to improve the short-term affordability of energy services. Yet, switching is suggested to not benefit fuel poor households who are in most need of affordable energy. This thesis explored the relationship between fuel poverty and supplier switching in Wellington, New Zealand through a geographic lens. First, a new approach to identifying fuel poverty in New Zealand was applied. Using geographic information systems (GIS), a fuel poverty index was calculated to identify fuel poverty in Wellington at meshblock level. Spatial analysis of the index revealed the complexity of identifying fuel poverty and the extent to which the spatial distribution of fuel poverty in Wellington is shaped by the city’s colonial history. The index was then used to identify survey participants through which a survey was conducted exploring Wellington households’ switching behaviours. In a competitive market, consumers are expected to switch according to economically rational behaviours. However, switching behaviours in the survey sample were influenced by factors other than these economically rational behaviours. Integrating the findings of this thesis supports suggestions that switching is not benefiting the fuel poor. Finally, this thesis sheds light on the extent to which an understanding of the geography of fuel poverty can be applied towards improving the effectiveness of policy and equitable outcomes for fuel poor households.</p>
Settling Treaty Claims: The Formation of Policy on Treaty of Waitangi Claims in the Pioneering Years, 1988-1998
Authors:   , Crocker Therese 
Published: November 2021

<p>For the past quarter-century the New Zealand government has negotiated with Māori groupings to find ways of compensating for the Crown’s historical breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi. The negotiations take place between mandated claimant negotiators and officials who represent the executive arm of government; the resultant settlements are then endorsed by legislation that declares them to be ‘full and final’ resolutions of historical grievances. This thesis analyses the way New Zealand governments conceived, introduced and implemented policies to address the claims during the pioneering years 1988–1998. The foundational policies worked out in this decade bedded-in the Treaty claims settlement processes which are now nearing their end. Through examining official archives, the thesis finds that these processes initially emerged as policy-driven responses to a combination of factors, such as the broad context of the ‘Māori Renaissance’, social shifts in understanding the past, legal cases and political pressure from iwi. The thesis goes on to explore several years of experimental negotiations and policy formulation which culminated in the Crown’s presentation in 1994 of both a suite of draft policies intended to offer a comprehensive approach to the negotiations process and a notional quantum of $1 billion to settle all historical claims (the ‘fiscal envelope’). It demonstrates that while this package was introduced to shape and contain the emergent settlement mechanisms and their outcomes, policies continued to be modified in highly significant ways. The major settlements negotiated with Waikato-Tainui and Ngāi Tahu, in particular, led to new developments which established the broad shapes of Treaty settlements, and key aspects of them, from the end of the twentieth century onwards. Over 1988–1998, then, the Treaty settlements process transitioned from ad-hoc development of policies and arrangements into an entrenched system, yet one that was flexible enough to change in the course of negotiations with new claimant groups.</p>
Return to Vernacular Origins through Parametric Interpretation
Authors:   , Zhang Yunjing 
Published: November 2021

<p>Without any doubts, China has made a remarkable development in various fields in a last decade, and there are no any signs of that the paces of rapid development happened to China will slow down in the next decades. As a result, every city in China are entering into a boom period in term of urbanization and modernization. No matter it is a super metropolis, for instant, Shanghai, Beijing or it is a small city as Yangzhou, the one chosen for this research thesis, they are all a part of this rapid booming trending and progress. Parametric architecture has been playing a significant role in this booming period: avant-garde forms, incredibly large scale, starchitect such as Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas etc, and extra economic value added, all these features had made parametric architecture to be considered as the symbol of the rapid development. At same time, the voice of critical on this has never stopped: lack of traditions, absence of “Chineseness”, cities identity damaged caused by parametric architecture. Unfortunately, there seems neither nothing going to stop numerous parametric architecture raised up, nor provide a convincible solution to the issues in the contemporary cites in China. This thesis explores the conflict between Chinese vernacular manner and parametric architecture, and investigate how the parametric architecture is able to well fit in the Chinese environment context and express Chinese vernacular ideas which needs to be redefined. It argues the so called ‘Chineseness’ is blur and unclear, or most of people ‘s understanding toward ‘Chineseness’ always stay at the iconic level. It further argue the essences of Chinese vernacular ideas which could be merged into parametric architecture and help to deal with the issues which the contemporary city in China has such as inhumanity scale, lack of green space and public space. The aim is not only to find a way to combine the parametric design and Chinese vernacular ideas harmoniously but also via this combination to solve the issues in Yangzhou which is a representative and typical China contemporary city.</p>
Adopting Agile Project Management Methods in Software Projects Involving Outsourcing
Authors:   , Warnakulasooriya Nivarthana 
Published: November 2021

<p>With the evolvement of how software was built, how quickly the initial requirements change, how fast new technologies were appearing in tech world and evolving innovation needs of dynamic businesses, the software industry was feeling the need for a better way of managing projects. In 2002 a group of well-known software professionals got together to develop a set of industry guidelines now known as ‘The Agile Manifesto’ to help standardize this new way of managing projects which helped lay foundations to now widely used ‘The Agile Project Management methodology’. While Agile was gaining momentum, the software development world saw the rise of another way of developing software which is known as outsourcing. Outsourcing in commonly referred form involves two or more geographically dispersed teams collaborating to develop the same software. However the fusion of agile methodology with outsourcing opens up new challenges which includes cultural, geographical and time barriers. This study tries to understand how well agile works with outsourced projects using a quantitative approach. The study will also look at how factors physical distance, time and culture impact success of agile in outsourced projects using a quantitative approach. Identifying factor/factors which has the biggest impact on success of agile in outsourced project will also help identify and prioritize which principles and practices need to be fixed first. Data collected through a questionnaire was quantitatively analysed using correlation, simple and multiple regression analysis. Data was sourced from industry professionals and practitioners who had enough experience with outsourced agile projects to be able to provide insights through a questionnaire. Correlation tests, simple regression and multiple regression analysis tests between time difference, culture difference, physical distance and success of agile methodology in outsourced projects were then carried out in a bid to understand the relationship of three independent variables and the dependent variable. The study contribute towards quantitatively understanding how well agile methodology works in outsourced projects. Identifying dominant factor/factors that hinder success of agile methodology in outsourced projects also help users of agile project management to prioritize the principles that should be fixed first to better fit agile methodology in outsourced projects. Using agile methods that are based on modified principles are expected to contribute to overall success of the outsourced projects. Last but not least this study identifies further research avenues towards improved work in the related area.</p>
Taking the Roof off a Modern Building
Authors:   , Brunskill Helen 
Published: November 2021

<p>Taking the Roof off a Modern Building explores ways to appropriately reactivate modernist architecture, acknowledging the social, economic and contextual constraints of a contemporary provincial New Zealand township. This research is motivated by the lack of use and maintenance of aging Kapiti modern architecture. Like many small towns, Waikanae, in the Kapiti Coast region, has a variety of buildings which are often up for lease. Within this catalogue, the modernist buildings stand out as ones that theoretically should be adaptable for changing requirements. The aim of the research is to develop a design solution to preserve the Parker Building, situated in Mahara Place, understanding the potential implications for the wider region. The research is completed through design experiments which pursue reactivation, examining modernism, preservation and programme. The exploration of spatial possibilities focus on how the Mahara Place shopping precinct may function for social and economic needs of the current society, which differs from when it was built, in the 1970s. Designing is done through a process of research into physical and social constraints, while iterating design ideas, feeding off each other to develop the outcome. New Zealand Modernist Architecture is a relevant research topic due to the prominent place of these buildings in our cities and towns, and their association with many great New Zealand architects. While isolating a site within the Kapiti Region, Mahara Place was highlighted as a strip of buildings not used to their fullest potential. Many buildings similar to these are at risk of demolishment, but research is needed to explore how the interior can function appropriately for the users.</p>