The debate and discourse for the need to align spatial planning, transportation planning and environmental management strategically, functionally and operationally to inform modelling is ongoing internationally since the early 2000s.This incorporates the articulation of the planning instruments used by the professionals within these functional fields and the way in which it is coordinated and applied as to enhance strategic planning and decision making.With the approval of the Spatial Planning and Land Use Management Act (SPLUMA) (Act 16 of 2013) and the SPLUMA Regulations (23 March 2015) in South Africa, the last bastion of 'Apartheid' planning legislation from the previous political dispensation was reformed.Although this process is still legislatively being finalized at provincial and municipal levels of government through adapting new transformation structures, guidelines, policies and regulations, the opportunity exists to assess the impacts of alignment to improve strategic planning, modelling, coordination and decision making.In this chapter the alignment between the policy and legislative frameworks, guidelines, processes and the need for integration will be discussed.The approach presented in this paper will especially guide planning within developing countries based on the learning experiences from spatial systems in developed countries.
The economy is modeled as an engineering pumping system.At the start, no control is used; thus, the open-loop system is established.Flow, or analogously GDP, is sent from a pump to a storage tank (analogously, inventories).Control is then applied where investment (flow out of the tank) is controlled via the interest rate.Thus, the open loop becomes a closed loop.It is shown from simple example that frequent government interference in the economy causes more instability than less government interference.Dynamic systems tend toward steady-state systems and government interference should be very selective and careful.In this work, the interest rate is used to control the economy by the Federal Reserve, ceteris paribus.Simulations indicate that when the Fed attempts to control the economy using interest rates, the net effect is that economic equilibrium is delayed with respect to an economy that comes to equilibrium naturally.
There was an unprecedented development of cities, both in 19th and 20th century.Especially, late 20th century faced the moment in which urban population exceeded rural population only to accelerate this trend at the turn of the 21st century.Cities have become extremely fragile, technologically densified, extremely saturated with men and their artifacts, and too much extent very random, chaotic in its emergent patterns, either expanding the city or transforming its existent parts.Simultaneously, these complex urban patterns encouraged the elaboration of sophisticated systems of urban management.But these systems work only in some areas of the world, most often unable to follow the quick rate of expansion.Therefore, substandard urban areas, undeveloped or overdeveloped, poor areas, segregation, exclusion zones, economically inefficient areas which cannot gain resources to get renovated, refurbished, and renewed.The work discusses small-scale intervention in chaotic urban areas -Ariadne's Thread system intended to provide signage, telecommunication support, emergency reactive platform with surveillance options, and lighting integrated and dedicated to areas currently having none of these systems appropriately developed.The cluster of pylons connects to permanent local node, compulsory hard infrastructural element.The role of the latter, tasks to perform, the equipment used to analyze signals from cluster and respond in an appropriate manner is a significant supplementing and coordinating hub of the system.This paper will present the structure of the system, its working patterns, and methodology applied.
Manufacturing companies respond to the customers' demand for more individualized products and enhanced functionality by increasing product variety and integrating multiple technologies in their products.Consequently, complexity in new product development (NPD) projects increases as more and more interdependencies and framework conditions have to be considered.A systematic evaluation of the parameters that drive the complexity of an NPD project prior to project kick-off would enable project management to identify critical issues up-front and adjust the project setup accordingly.There are several recent studies that analyze project complexity and identify complexity drivers.However, there is still a lack of a holistic approach that helps project managers to analyze the complexity of NPD projects and at the same time derive specific measures in order to adjust project complexity.This paper presents an approach for complexity evaluation of NPD projects during project preparation.The approach is based on complexity drivers that have been determined through literature research, classified according to their impact on the complexity of NPD projects and influenceability by project management as well as on the analysis in terms of their interdependencies.Through individual assessment of the complexity drivers and through portfolio analysis, the focal points of complexity in an NPD project can be identified.Measures to level complexity according to the company's positioning can be derived from studying the portfolio of complexity drivers taking into account their impact on first order interactions between complexity drivers.
Global health as a discipline is at a moment of tremendous achievements and general optimism, but faces enduring questions, notably about the sustainability of its endeavours.The field of global health defines itself through enumerated goals, targets, and indicators to track progress of complex changes.With this comes a broad panoply of objective-driven strategies resting on assumed control over chains of cause and effect.We present areas where emergence and self-organization play an important role in determining the sustainability of positive outcomes at scale and behaviours of both the population and its service providers.The role of self-organization and emergence seem under-appreciated by the field and we consider three reasons for a possible "blind spot" of global health decision makers and influencers: (1) the culture of command and control inherent to central planning, (2) the structural limitations of large complex institutional edifices in processing information (variety), and (3) epistemological/cognitive constraints.More pro-active allowance for the conditions of positive self-organization and emergence may be required to avoid unintended and negative long-term consequences of global strategies, in spite of best intentions.Observational, analytical and computational multi-disciplinary studies are needed to bring clarity to these questions, and to inform a parallel process of dialogue, provocation, and learning to evolve the institutional culture of global health at both national and international levels.
During development, the teeth, jaws and facial structures emerge in a process that has the characteristics of a complex adaptive system (CAS). The outcome is the mature stomatognathic system which is an interactive network of teeth, their occlusion and supporting mechanisms, the upper and lower jaws, the temporomandibular (jaw) joints, the muscles, the blood and nerve supplies, and the salivary glands. The aim of this paper is to explore whether this mature network also demonstrates the characteristics of a CAS. This network is a carefully balanced mechanism with functions required throughout the lifespan of the individual. It is exposed to a series of mechanical and chemical environmental challenges. Tooth wear is an example of the impact of such challenges, resulting in loss of surface enamel and dentine. The response is spread through the network: repara- tive secondary dentine occurs on the inner pulpal walls of the tooth; secondary cementum is formed and bone remodelling occurs in the suspensory mechanism; and the masticatory pattern of dental occlusion adapt under neuromuscular control. These adaptive changes arise from interactions at molecular and cellular levels. They are evidence of ongoing emergence and robustness in the network as it functions. Considering these changes to be positive responses that enable both maintenance of function and adaptation to age changes in the component parts of the network, represents a paradigm shift. It has major implications for oral health teaching and clinical practice. Attempting to restore teeth to the size and detailed cuspal shape, they showed when they first erupted is not only unnecessary for late adult function but can also place excessive loads on other subnetworks such as on the jaw joints and muscles. Thus, appreciating that both the developmental and mature stomatognathic networks are CAS establishes their value as exemplars for biological systems in general and has important implications for enhancing health care.
This paper considers the effect of the discontinuity of electrolyte electrical conductivity on the distribution of potential and protective current density in cathodic protection systems with galvanic anodes.Its aim is to present a simultaneous application of both analytical and numerical models for the calculation of the distribution of protective potential and current density in the cases of homogeneous and double-layer electrolyte.For non-linear boundary conditions at the electrode surface (secondary distribution of protective current density), the indirect boundary element method is used, because of the complexity of calculation for which collocation at the point method was used.The calculation is further complicated due to the nonlinearity of boundary conditions at the electrode surfaces.In order to show the importance of this analysis, calculations for the observed system as well as of errors caused by neglecting the boundary discontinuity of the soil conductivity are provided.Based on these calculations and error analyses, the impact of the double-layer electrolyte on the correct calculation of the cathodic protection system with galvanic anodes is evaluated.This paper also provides the analysis when the double-layered nature of the electrolyte can be practically ignored, which is of great importance to designers of these systems.
Companies in the twenty first century are required to continually adapt to an uncertain and ever-changing environment, which requires a more organic and flexible organization, without losing the benefits of volume production and economies of scale.The Organizational Network is a tool that allows the company to study the channels through which materials, money, and information resources flow between jobs, unlike the traditional Organizational Chart that only shows the hierarchy of power.Analyzing these links like a complex network will allow the manager to identify bottlenecks and agglomerations of power and measure the entropy generated in the organization.This gives a quantitative measure of the complexity of the business and, therefore, both its organic growth and efficient growth can be managed.
The application of polymeric nano-particles for corrosion control in reinforced cement-based systems was studied.As an initial investigation, steel electrodes (St37) were tested in modified cement extract (CE), which is a model pore solution of pH 12.9 and chemical composition: 201 mg/l Ca; 3.85 mg/l K; 1.33 mg/l Na; 4 mg/l Al, Fe < 1 mg/l.Corrosion initiating factor was 5% NaCl.PEO 113 -b-PS 780 vesicles at 0.0024 wt.% in the CE were employed.These are nano sacs of 220 nm, enclosing a volume with a thin membrane, thus able to effectively entrap water-soluble compounds.Ion binding (bulk liquid medium), steel surface adsorption and/or participation in oxide layers formation were the expected mechanisms of particles' involvement.Both "empty" and "Cacontaining" vesicles were studied to evaluate "barrier" effects only vs. selfhealing mechanisms.Increased steel corrosion resistance in the presence of both vesicle types was observed, however, it was more pronounced when Cacontaining ones were involved.CVA and XPS analysis, substantiate the selfhealing phenomena, through a direct evidence of pitting formation and propagation and consecutive healing (and no further pit formation) when Cacontaining vesicles are present.
The phenomena of vertical and horizontal emergence are analysed in terms of functional differentiation (FD), the concept of fractal functionality (FF), the concept of the zone of proximate development and an application to iterative map techniques.These theoretical components are used to trace an evolution of structures at various levels of organization and to derive several universal evolutionary principles.The implications of these principles are: (1) "building blocks" of natural systems are performed uniquely and only once, they emerge, change and disappear, and therefore cannot be considered as Lego-like "bricks" for these systems; (2) "building blocks" develop not prior to, but simultaneously with the emergence of a macro-system, to which they are associated, and may continue to change even after the macro-system is established; (3) the existence of functional groups "on the diagonal" affects the subdivisions of horizontal distributions; (4) soft associations of elements to functional systems of several levels of complexity speaks against a vertical division of complexity levels and against a horizontal division of building blocks.
This paper is the next logical step in discovering the algorithm for inventing new algorithms, the Algorithm of Discovery.This research is within the scope of investigation of the structure of the Primary Language of the human brain as introduced by J. von Neumann in 1957.In this paper, we revise our hypothesis that the Primary Language is a collection of algorithms crucial for survival and development of humanity including two major components, the algorithm optimizing warfighting, Linguistic Geometry (LG), and the Algorithm of Discovery.We suggest that the Primary Language is the Language of Visual Streams ("mental movies") that empower directly both of those components as well as all the human symbolic languages and sciences.The Algorithm of Discovery is based on multiple thought experiments, which manifest themselves via visual streams.Those streams can run concurrently and exchange information between each other.The streams may initiate additional thought experiments, program them, and execute them in due course.The streams may operate employing the algorithm of "a child playing a construction set" that includes a construction model, a construction set and the Ghost.The streams are focused employing several types of reasoning including proximity and mosaic reasoning.In this paper we introduce a concise discovery program generated as a result of execution of the Algorithm of Discovery.A discovery program consists of a recorded series of thought experiments in a way that every experiment either builds new theme of visual streams or utilizes themes built previously.A series of themes of streams is the key for making discoveries.
As service rates increase, the corroded rebar stands out as a major problem for existing reinforced concrete (RC) columns in a corrosion-inducing environment.The corrosion of stirrups is more serious than that of longitudinal bars, due to smaller clear concrete cover and smaller diameter.It deteriorates the confinement behaviour and thus decreases the shear resistant capacity, potentially changing the failure modes from ductile flexural failure mode to brittle flexural-shear failure mode, or even shear failure mode.Therefore, the evolution of the seismic damage pattern of existing corroded RC columns and its service-year related fragility analysis are becoming heated research topics in the field of structure hazard prevention research.The objectives of this paper will be to focus on how to use FEM software to numerically simulate the seismic behaviour of corroded columns accounting for materials deterioration and bond degradation.Pushover curves shown that a transverse rebar corrosion level above 10% could reduce the seismic capacity of columns by a great extent.In addition, the stiffness, ductility and energy dissipation capacity declines.It also demonstrated the transition of failure mode from flexure failure to shear failure as the corrosion level of stirrups increased.The fragility analysis based on the FEM results indicated that the RC column with corroded stirrups is much more vulnerable.
The interface between environmental management and land-use management forms the focal point to attain sustainable development and resilience within spatial systems.The principle of sustainable development is not a new phenomenon and is being applied by professional practitioners in theory but often not understood in formulation of planning instruments and its application as to promote resilience as a common goal and objective.Environmental practitioners and planning professionals have realized that there is a delicate balance between environments, human, economic, institutional, transportation and spatial planning in articulation of planning, development and management.This balance is however negatively being impacted upon, due to the collapse of this relationship and trans-disciplinary approaches and practices.The purpose of this chapter is to report on the historic development of the environmental management domain linked to the transformation in spatial planning and land-use management systems from an integration perspective within democratized South Africa and the lessons it holds for developing countries and spatial systems that have emerged from colonialized countries.The timelines in development and transformation between environmental and spatial planning differ in focus, role and functional impact as far as statutory requirements and processes are concerned.This interface is however most important in all planning cycles applied within spatial systems.In this chapter an assessment is made of the process in terms of its evolution and the need to align its processes in the enhancement of sustainability and promotion of resilience.The enhancement of this interface through application of strategic planning methodologies, processes, procedures and planning tools are being discussed to deal with environmental management and spatial planning complexities, challenges and opportunities.The conclusions consist of recommendations to grow and built this interface.It includes improved integration of the policy and legislative frameworks; capacity building amongst the different professions; improved alignment in education, training and professional practice and integrated simulation and modelling techniques, methodologies and the need to formulate trans-disciplinary plans as to promote the integration of the interface.
Transportation planning and modelling can appear to be a complex process when first encountered.Transportation planning is a process that develops information to help make decisions on the future development and management of transportation systems.It involves the determination of the need for new or expanded highways, public transport systems, freight facilities, transportation terminals, their location, their capacity and the management of their demand.Typically, transportation planning involves a forecast of travel patterns and demand 15 to 25 years into the future with an aim to develop a future transportation system that will support spatial growth at that time.Travel demand occurs as a result of thousands of individual travellers making individual decisions on how, where and when to travel.These decisions are affected by many factors such as family situations, characteristics of the person making the trip, and the choices (destination, route and mode) available for the trip.Transportation modelling is used to forecast travel patterns and demand and includes numerous mathematical equations to simulate or represent how people travel.This chapter explains how the process works, the assumptions made and the steps taken.It also provides an insight into how transportation modelling is applied in practice in demonstrating its role in the inter-relationship between spatial development and transport provision and planning.
Supply chains compete and not products, commodities or companies.Transport is of particular importance in logistics and supply chain management as transport costs are the largest cost component and probably the most important logistics function in the supply chain.The design of logistics networks and the development of appropriate channel strategies should consequently be an integral part of transportation planning and modelling.This chapter starts with an introduction that explains the importance of network design and channel strategies in transportation modelling.It continues with a description of logistics and supply chain management and follows with the importance of the planning hierarchy.The next part covers the distribution channel and the different alternative options with practical examples.It also includes the implication of using intermediaries in the distribution channel as well as the role of third-party and fourth-party logistics service providers.Location analysis covers some of the relevant theories on macro level as well as specific questions to be addressed on micro level.Logistics network design explains the trade-offs in determining the number of facilities and it also suggests typical outbound distribution strategies that are used.The next part covers centre-of-gravity analysis.This type of heuristic modelling is done with spreadsheets without dedicated optimisation software.Mathematical formulae for the optimisation of the locations are explained and a practical example was included showing the calculations in tabular and graphical format.This is followed with a discussion on total logistics costs.This chapter ends with reference to different channel strategies once the location and total logistics costs have been determined.
Oral development is a complex adaptive system influenced by genetic, epigenetic and environmental factors. The dental arch develops from 6 weeks in utero until adult life, forming an accessible record to study general growth and development. Increased tooth size in female dizygotic opposite-sex (DZOS) twins compared with female dizygotic same-sex (DZSS) twins provides evidence for the masculinisation of females gestated with a male co-twin, possibly due to the intrauterine influence of male sex hormones: the “Twin Testosterone Transfer” (TTT) hypothesis. This study aimed to investigate the potential influence of intrauterine male hor mones on dental arch size of female DZOS twins. Serial dental models of the primary and permanent dentitions of 69 female DZOS and DZSS twins were examined. Intercanine width, intermolar width, arch length and arch circumference were measured using a customised 2D image analysis system. Unpaired t-tests showed signifi cant differences for mandibular intercanine width (p = 0.03; effect size = 0.6) and borderline differences for mandibular intermolar width and arch circumference (p = 0.05; effect size = 0.5). No significant differences were found in the permanent dentition. These findings provide support for the TTT hypothesis with some arch dimensions being larger in female DZOS twins. We have developed a model of assessing the effects of intrauterine male hormones on the epigenetic changes that last into postnatal life. Our evidence suggests that this is a moderate effect possibly interacting with numerous other environmental factors that may influence arch size.
Dental development is a complex adaptive system influenced by genetic-epigenetic-environmental factors.The mature dentition is a paradigm for general development and is an accessible, permanent record of interactions affecting development from 6 weeks in-utero to 20 years of age.Published research on the dentition of a large group of Romano-Britons has indicated that three major environmental insults acting throughout the developmental period are associated with high frequencies of dental variations.Based on those studies and the literature, the aetiological network incorporates the effects of excessive lead ingestion, poor nutrition and infections on the endocrine and immune systems, epigenome and gene expression.The environmental insults act independently and synergistically on both the endocrine and immune systems, which in turn have reciprocal interactions with each other, as well as on the epigenome.Thus, a complex subnetwork influences the epigenome and modifies one or more of three mechanisms by which it controls gene expression, that is, DNA methylation, post-translational histone modification and microRNA expression.The environmental-epigeneticgenetic interactions behave as a complex adaptive system that can be illustrated in a network diagram.The epigenetic modifications can have long-term health effects in the individual and some may also be heritable.
The aim of this study is to illustrate the advantage of using agent based models (ABM) in order to deepen the understanding of crowd phenomena and help manage design strategies and egress operations on the field. The crowd stream, recognised as a proper nonlinear system, is in fact able to produce characteristic patterns that interact with the environment in recurring shapes. In particular, the free stream and the multi-leader stream are chosen as two mostly representative patterns that develop under typical conditions in a real life egress environment, so that the ABM engineering may bring an added value also in the development of the environment layout. The first part of the study describes the features of these emerging patterns in one geometrical enclosure typical of a Mall. Such issues as queuing, clogging generation, paths of crowd spreading are, for instance, the primary goal upon which to compare the modelling. The overall outcomes, in terms of travel times and people fluxes, complete the scene. The second part of the study describes the connected evolution of these emerging patterns in an environment typical of the landside space in an Airport terminal. Such issues as people advancement, emotions transport, and change of direction are, for instance, the primary goal for the modelling. The overall outcomes of the travel times and people fluxes are the remaining issues to be assessed. The comparison between the results coming from the various ABM packages (Evac, Pathfinder) completes the study, showing how a proper choice in modelling can be based depending on the foreseen goal of the design stage.
Also motivated by the topical problem of growing economic inequality, we propose and investigate models describing the formation process of income distribution in a closed society.Our approach fits in with a complex system perspective.We look at society as a system composed by a large number of individuals, divided into income classes.The information we derive on observable "macroscopic" features results from the interplay of a whole of interactionsmoney exchanges, payment of taxes, redistribution of benefits, payment of fines -occurring between individuals, i.e. at the "microscopic" level.In order to show the flexibility and the exploratory aspect of the models, we consider and compare cases characterized by different tax rates or in which means-tested welfare policies, tax evasion, taxpayer audits are present.
