The Lesser Kestrel, a colonial migratory falcon, is one of the most endangered birds in Europe and, due to a sharp population decline across much of the breeding range, is globally threatened. The reasons for this decline are unclear, but reduced nest-site availability might be a major cause. To test this hypothesis we looked at nest-site availability within Portuguese colonies in rural and urb...

On April 6, 2009, an earthquake of 6.3 magnitude struck central Italy with its epicentre near L'Aquila, at 42.3502° N, 13.3762°E. The earthquake damaged 3,000 to 11,000 buildings in the medieval city of L'Aquila. Several buildings totally collapsed, 308 people were killed. The post emergency phase till now is just at its beginning step. Conventional surveying techniques using high precision tot...

Abstract—Buildings with floating column are highly undesirable built in seismically active areas. Many urban multi-storey buildings today have floating column buildings which are adopted to accommodate parking at ground floor or reception lobbies in the first storey. The earthquake forces developed at different floor levels in a building need to be brought down along the height to the ground by...

It has been proven that roof runoff water plays an important role in the high metallic concentration levels in urban rainwater since metallic elements are generated by corrosion of roof materials before being swept away by rainwater. The aim of TOITEAU project is therefore to model this phenomenon, evaluating the metallic flows from roofs in rainwater. To achieve this goal, an important work ha...

Looking from an historical perspective, it can be seen that many civilizations have lived in the country and consequently produced many different cultures and architectural products. One of the oldest cities which contain such historical examples which have lived until present is Tabriz. Its traditional houses are the most important places to represent the life style of the past. Lack of recogn...

We propose a system for user-aided image localization in urban regions by exploiting the inherent graph like structure of urban streets, buildings and intersections. In this graph the nodes represent buildings, intersections and roads. The edges represent “logical links” such as two buildings being next to each other, or a building being on a road. We generate this graph automatically for large...

Latest European Union programs related to energy efficiency underline the need for retrofitting existing buildings, which are responsible for 40% of EU final energy consumption. Although new buildings can be constructed with high performance levels, the majority of the building stock, characterized by a low energy performance, still needs renovation. Thanks to its potential to deliver high ener...

This paper is a progress report of a MCEER research project on the development of multihazard protection technologies for critical facilities. One important component is to consider earthquake and earthquake induced hazards (e.g. fire, haz-mat leakage, power outrage, etc). This paper is concerned with earthquake and subsequent fire hazards. Records from historical earthquakes show that sometime...