The COPE (cost-effective open plan environments) project investigates the effect of open-plan office design on the indoor environment and on the occupant satisfaction with that environment. COPE is sponsored by a consortium of North American public and privatesector organizations and relies on field, laboratory and simulation studies to address design aspects like acoustics, lighting quality, i...

The Atacama and Peruvian Deserts form a continuous belt for more than 3500 km along the western escarpment of the Andes from northern Peru to northernmost Chile. These arid environments are due to a climatic regime dominated by the cool, north-flowing Humboldt (Peruvian) Current. Atmospheric conditions influenced by a stable, subtropical anticyclone result in a mild, uniform coastal climate nea...

Saudi Arabia is one of the largest countries in the Middle East region in terms of population, geographic area and scale of economy. It has a fast growing energy sector with over 76% of the total electricity being consumed in the building sector. Domestic buildings account for 51% of total electricity consumption. Predominantly due to hot climatic conditions, most of the energy consumption in b...

Metrics that synthesize the complex effects of climate change are essential tools for mapping future threats to biodiversity and predicting which species are likely to adapt in place to new climatic conditions, disperse and establish in areas with newly suitable climate, or face the prospect of extirpation. The most commonly used of such metrics is the velocity of climate change, which estimate...

Climatic niche shifts have been documented in a number of invasive species by comparing the native and adventive climatic ranges in which they occur. However, these shifts likely represent changes in the realized climatic niches of invasive species, and may not necessarily be driven by genetic changes in climatic affinities. Until now the role of rapid niche evolution in the spread of invasive ...

Climate is one of the main drivers of species distribution. However, as different environmental factors tend to co-vary, the effect of climate cannot be taken at face value, as it may be either inflated or obscured by other correlated factors. We used the favourability models of four species (Alytes dickhilleni, Vipera latasti, Aquila fasciata and Capra pyrenaica) inhabiting Spanish mountains a...

Objective:  Presents a business goal-driven requirements engineering approach for IT to better understand system requirements, as requirements are generated from the business goals and provide assistance for analyzing business goals quickly.

Requirements Engineering (RE) contains many different practices to elicit, communicate and document customer requirements. Developers need to understand these requirements properly in order to achieve project success by fulfilling them [1]. A prerequisite for developers’ understanding of relevant requirements and their meaning is successful requirements communication [2]. Therefore, the selecte...

Hydrology does not yet possess a generally agreed upon catchment classification system. Such a classification framework should provide a mapping of landscape form and hydro-climatic conditions on catchment function (including partition, storage, and release of water), while explicitly accounting for uncertainty and for variability at multiple temporal and spatial scales. This framework would pr...

BACKGROUND Heat stress evaluation and timely notification, especially using meteorological data is an important issue attracted attention in recent years. Therefore, this study aimed at answering the following research questions: 1) can enthalpy as a common environmental parameter reported by meteorological agencies be applied accurately for evaluation of thermal condition of outdoor settings, ...