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Abdalla, A (2007) Meeting housing needs in Libya: towards a responsive owner-built housing with particular reference to Benghazi City, Unpublished PhD Thesis, , University of Newcastle upon Tyne.
Agha, R H M (2016) The role of intelligent systems in traditional courtyard houses in Baghdad, Iraq, Unpublished PhD Thesis, , University of Newcastle upon Tyne.
Andam, K A (1979) Computer aided design of precast concrete industrial buildings, Unpublished PhD Thesis, , University of Newcastle upon Tyne.
Assadi, S O A (1997) An investigation of the records kept by supervisors on construction sites, Unpublished PhD Thesis, Department of Civil Engineering, University of Newcastle upon Tyne.
Beitelmal, J A (1999) Development of appropriate technology road condition monitoring system: Case study of the city of Benghazi in Libya, Unpublished PhD Thesis, Department of Civil Engineering, University of Newcastle upon Tyne.
Chen, Y (2008) Using mobile computing for construction site information management, Unpublished PhD Thesis, School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, University of Newcastle upon Tyne.
Chritamara, S (2017) An application of the real option framework to large infrastructure projects: evidence for Thailand's transportation system, Unpublished PhD Thesis, Newcastle University Business School, University of Newcastle upon Tyne.
Das, P K (2006) A sustainability impact-assessment tool for selected building technologies in rural India: the case of the Andhra Pradesh primary education project, Unpublished PhD Thesis, , University of Newcastle upon Tyne.
Fieldson, R (2007) Towards a framework for sustainability in UK retail architecture, Unpublished PhD Thesis, , University of Newcastle upon Tyne.
Ghanbari Parsa, A R (1989) The interaction of planning policies and construction technologies in Iran with reference to China & Japan, Unpublished PhD Thesis, Department of Town & Country Planning, University of Newcastle upon Tyne.
Grifa, M A (2006) The construction industry in Libya , with particular reference to operations in Tripoli, Unpublished PhD Thesis, School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, University of Newcastle upon Tyne.
Hatmoko, J U D (2008) The impact of supply chain management practice on construction project performance, Unpublished PhD Thesis, School of Civil Engineering and Geosciences, University of Newcastle upon Tyne.
Lopane, F D (2022) Spatial optimisation for resilient infrastructure services, Unpublished PhD Thesis, , University of Newcastle upon Tyne.
- Type: Thesis
- Keywords: accessibility; optimisation; personnel; population; uncertainty; wellbeing; bridge; healthcare; climate change; land use; resource allocation; risk management; New Zealand; UK; heuristic; weather; case study; natural disaster; investment; spatial planner
- ISBN/ISSN:
- URL: http://theses.ncl.ac.uk/jspui/handle/10443/5616
- Abstract:
Infrastructure networks provide crucial services to the functioning of human settlements. Extreme weather events, especially flooding, can lead to disruption or complete loss of these crucial infrastructure services, which can have significant impacts on people's health and wellbeing, as well as being costly to repair. Urban areas concentrate infrastructure and people, and are consequently particularly sensitive to disruptions due to natural (and human-made) disasters. Flooding alone constituted 47% of all weather-related disasters between 1995 and 2015, causing enormous loss of lives and economic damages. Climate change is projected to further exacerbate the impacts that natural disasters have on cities. Choices about where to site infrastructure have a significant impact on the impacts of extreme weather events. For example, investments in flood risk management have typically focussed on prioritising interventions to protect people, houses and businesses. Protection of infrastructure services has either been a bonus benefit of flood defence protection of property, or been implemented by individual infrastructure operators. Spatial planning is a key process to influence the distribution of people and activities over broad spatial scales. However, decision-making processes to locate infrastructure services does not typically consider resilience issues at broad spatial scales which can lead to inefficient use of resources. Moreover, spatial planning typically requires consideration of multiple, sometimes competing, objectives with solutions that are not readily tractable. Balancing multiple trade-offs in spatial planning with multiple variables at high spatial resolution is computationally demanding. This research has developed a new framework for multi-objective Pareto-optimal location-allocation problems solving. The RAO (Resource Allocation Optimisation) framework developed here is a heuristic approach that makes use of a Genetic Algorithm (GA) to produce Pareto-optimal spatial plans that balance a typical tradeoff in spatial planning: the maximisation of accessibility of a given infrastructure service vs the minimisation of the costs of providing that service. The method is applied to two case studies: (i) Storage of temporary flood defences, and (ii) Location of healthcare facilities. The RAO is first applied to a flood risk management case study in the Humber Estuary, UK, to optimise the strategic allocation of storing space for emergency resources (like temporary flood barriers, portable generators, pumps etc.) by maximising the accessibility of warehouses (i.e. minimising travel times from storing locations to deployment sites) and minimising costs. The evaluation of costs involves both capital and operational costs such as the length of temporary defences needed, storage site locations, number of lorries and personnel to enable their deployment, and maintenance costs. A baseline is tested against a number of scenarios, including a flood disrupting road network and thereby deployment operations, as well as variable infrastructure and land use costs, different transportation and deployment strategies and changing the priority of protecting different critical infrastructures. Key findings show investment in strategically located warehouses decreases deployment time across the whole region by several hours, while prioritising the protection of the infrastructure assets serving larger shares of population can cut costs by 30%. Moreover, the analysis of the ensemble of all scenarios provides crucial insights for spatial planners. For example, storage sites in Hull or Hedon, and in the areas of Withernsea and Drax are robust choices under all scenarios. Meanwhile, the Humber Bridge is shown to play a crucial role in enabling regional coverage of temporary barriers. The second case study shows how emergency response strategies can be enhanced by optimal allocation of healthcare facilities at a regional scale. The RAO framework allocates healthcare facilities in Northland (New Zealand) balancing the trade-off between maximisation of accessibility (i.e. minimisation of travel times between households and GP clinics) and minimisation of costs (i.e. number of clinics and doctors). Results show how c.80% of Northland's population lives within a 20 minutes drive from the closest GP, but this can be increased to 90% with strategic investment and relocation of doctors and clinics. By accounting for flood and landslide risk, the RAO is used to identify strategies that improve accessibility to healthcare services by up to 5% even during extreme events (when compared to the current business as usual service accessibility). Application to these two problems demonstrates that the RAO framework can identify optimal strategies to deploy finite resources to maximise the resilience of infrastructure services. Moreover, it provides an analytical appreciation of the sensitivity between planning tradeoffs and therefore the overall robustness of a strategy to uncertainty. The method is consequently of benefit to local authorities, infrastructure operators and agencies responsible for disaster management. Following successful application to regional scale case studies, it is recommended that future work scale the analysis to consider resource allocation to protect infrastructure at a national scale.
Mahdjoubi, L M (2001) An investigation of computer generated architectural representations on design decisions taks, Unpublished PhD Thesis, , University of Newcastle upon Tyne.
Mashamba, M S (1997) The construction industry in Zambia: opportunities and constraints under the structural adjustment programme and the enabling shelter strategy, Unpublished PhD Thesis, Department of Architecture, University of Newcastle upon Tyne.
McGinty, L N (2020) Business model innovation for green urban infrastructure, Unpublished PhD Thesis, , University of Newcastle Upon Tyne.
Muzir, A K K (2017) School buildings maintenance in Malaysia: Current practices, key challenges and implications, Unpublished PhD Thesis, , University of Newcastle upon Tyne.
Riano Cruz, J D (2022) Investigating formation of social capital benefits for value creation and strategy enhancement: the case of SMEs in the UK's construction industry, Unpublished PhD Thesis, , University of Newcastle upon Tyne.
Royapoor, M (2015) An investigation into the energy and control implications of adaptive comfort in a modern office building, Unpublished PhD Thesis, , University of Newcastle upon Tyne.
Salagoor, J Y (1990) The influence of building regulations on urban dwelling in Jeddah, Unpublished PhD Thesis, , University of Newcastle upon Tyne.
Scott, S (1991) Project plans and record-keeping on construction sites in the United Kingdom, Unpublished PhD Thesis, Department of Civil Engineering, University of Newcastle upon Tyne.
Shaaban, S M (2004) A user-centric approach for the development and evaluation of a visual interface to online information in the construction industry, Unpublished PhD Thesis, , University of Newcastle upon Tyne.
Shar, B K (2002) Application of it to improve the design process in the construction sector of Pakistan: A case of the specification management process, Unpublished PhD Thesis, , University of Newcastle upon Tyne.
Stoyell, J L (2004) Eco-design decision-making: towards sustainable engineering design of large made-to-order products, Unpublished PhD Thesis, School of Civil Engineering and Geosciences, University of Newcastle upon Tyne.
Sun, M (1993) Technology transfer, architectural design and integrated building design systems, Unpublished PhD Thesis, Department of Architecture, University of Newcastle upon Tyne.
Tangtinthai, N (2016) Extraction, use and disposal of construction materials in Great Britain and Thailand, Unpublished PhD Thesis, School of Civil Engineering and Geosciences, University of Newcastle upon Tyne.
Tarhuni, S M (2013) An investigation into the management of knowledge in a historic building conservation organisation in Tripoli, Libya, Unpublished PhD Thesis, , University of Newcastle upon Tyne.
Wiguna, I P A (2005) The influence of risk on project performance in Indonesian building contracts, Unpublished PhD Thesis, , University of Newcastle upon Tyne.
Williams, G A (1992) Contract as organisation: an economic analysis of the Joint Contracts Tribunal's Standard Form of Building contract 1980, Unpublished PhD Thesis, Faculty of Law, University of Newcastle upon Tyne.