Kai Chen Goh

Importance of Sustainability-Related Cost Components in Highway Infrastructure: Perspective of Stakeholders in Australia

Highway infrastructure development typically requires major capital input. Unless planned properly, such requirements can cause serious financial constraints for investors. The push for sustainability adds a new dimension to the complexity of evaluating highway projects. Finding environmentally and socially responsible solutions for highway construction will improve its potential for acceptance by the society and in many instances the infrastructure’s life span. Even so, the prediction and determination of a project’s long-term financial viability can be a precarious exercise. Existing studies in this area have not indicated details of how to identify and deal with costs incurred in pursuing sustainability measures in highway infrastructure. This paper provides insights into the major challenges of implementing sustainability in highway project development in terms of financial concerns and obligations. It discusses the results from recent research through a literature study and a questionnaire survey of key industry stakeholders involved in highway infrastructure development. The research identified critical cost components relating to sustainability measures based on perspectives of industry stakeholders. All stakeholders believe sustainability related costs are an integral part of the decision making. However, the importance rating of these costs is relative to each stakeholder’s core business objectives. This will influence the way these cost components are dealt with during the evaluation of highway investment alternatives and financial implications. This research encourages positive thinking among the highway infrastructure practitioners about sustainability. It calls for the construction industry to maximize sustainability deliverables while ensuring financial viability over the life cycle of highway infrastructure projects.

MANAGING COST IMPLICATIONS FOR HIGHWAY INFRASTRUCTURE SUSTAINABILITY

Highway construction works have significant bearings on all aspects of sustainability. With the increasing level of public awareness and government regulatory measures, the construction industry is experiencing a cultural shift to recognise, embrace and pursue sustainability. Stakeholders are now keen to identify sustainable alternatives and the financial implications of including them on a life cycle basis. They need tools that can aid the evaluation of investment options. To date, however, there have not been many financial assessments on the sustainability aspects of highway projects. This is because the existing life cycle costing analysis models tend to focus on economic issues alone and are not able to deal with sustainability factors. This paper provides insights into the current practice of life cycle cost analysis, and the identification and quantification of sustainability-related cost components in highway projects through literature review, questionnaire surveys and semi-structured interviews. The results can serve as a platform for highway project stakeholders to develop practical tools to evaluate highway investment decisions and reach an optimum balance between financial viability and sustainability deliverables.

Wind Prediction in Malaysia

The wind speed prediction in Kudat, Malaysia had been done by using Mycielski-1 approach and K-mean clustering statistical method. There is some improvement in obtaining the random number of Mycielski-1. Besides, the comparison of K-means clustering with the optimal number of K is presented in this paper. The wind prediction is important to study a favorable site’s wind potential. The prediction is based on 3 years history data provided by Meteorology Department of Malaysia and 1 year data as the reference to check the accuracy of both algorithms. The basic concept of Mycielski-1 algorithm is to predict the next value by looking to history data. Meanwhile, the K-means clustering can group the values with similar mean into the same group, and the prediction can be done by getting the probability of occurrence. The result shows the prediction of Mycielski-1 algorithm and K-means clustering are promising. The wind speed is predicted in order to obtain the mean power for energy planning.

Evolution of Precision Agriculture Computing towards Sustainable Oil Palm Industry

Received Mar 3, 2018 Revised Apr 11, 2018 Accepted Apr 21, 2018 Paintball has gained a huge popularity in Malaysia with growing number of tournaments organized nationwide. Currently, Ideal Pro Event, one of the paintball organizer found difficulties to pair a suitable opponent to against one another in a tournament. This is largely due to the manual matchmaking method that only randomly matches one team with another. Consequently, it is crucial to ensure a balanced tournament bracket where eventual winners and losers not facing one another in the very first round. This study proposes an intelligent matchmaking using Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and tournament management system for paintball organizers. PSO is a swarm intelligence algorithm that optimizes problems by gradually improving its current solutions, therefore countenancing the tournament bracket to be continually improved until the best is produced. Indirectly, through the development of the system, it is consider as an intelligence business idea since it able to save time and enhance the company productivity. This algorithm has been tested using 3 size of population; 100, 1000 and 10,000. As a result, the speed of convergence is consistent and has not been affected through big population.N. N. S. Abdul Rahman, N.M. Saad, A. R. Abdullah, M. R. M. Hassan, M. S. S. M. Basir, N. S. M. Noor 1,2,4,6Faculty of Electronic and Computer Engineering, Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka, Hang Tuah Jaya, 76100 Durian Tunggal, Melaka, Malaysia 2,3Center for Robotics and Industrial Automation, Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka, Hang Tuah Jaya, 76100 Durian Tunggal, Melaka, Malaysia 3,5Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka, Hang Tuah Jaya, 76100 Durian Tunggal, Melaka, MalaysiaLight rail transit (LRT), or fast tram is urban public transport using rolling stock similar to a tramway, but operating at a higher capacity, and often on an exclusive right-of-way. Indonesia as one of developing countries has been developed the LRT in two cities of Indonesia, Palembang and Jakarta. There are opinions toward the development of LRT, negative and positive opinions. To reveal the level of LRT development acceptance, this research uses machine learning approach to analyze the data which is gathered through social media. By conducting this paper, the data is modeled and classified in order to analyze the social sentiment towards the LRT development.Mohamad, S., Nasir, F.M., Sunar, M.S., Isa, K., Hanifa, R.M., Shah, S.M., Ribuan, M.N., Ahmad, A. 1,4,6,7,8Faculty of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia, Johor, Malaysia 1,2,3UTM-IRDA Digital Media Centre, Media and Game Innovation Centre of Excellence, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Johor, Malaysia 1,2,3Faculty of Computing, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Johor, Malaysia 5Centre for Diploma Studies, Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia, Johor, Malaysia 6Research Centre for Applied Electromagnetics, Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia, Johor, MalaysiaReceived Jan 31, 2018 Revised Apr 21, 2018 Accepted Apr 30, 2018 Bluetooth is an emerging mobile ad-hoc network that accredits wireless communication to connect various short range devices. A single hop network called piconet is the basic communication topology of bluetooth which allows only eight active devices for communication among them seven are active slaves controlled by one master. Multiple piconets are interconnected through a common node, known as Relay, to form a massive network called as Scatternet. It is obvious that the performance of Scatternet scheduling is highly dependent and directly proportionate with the performance of the Relay node. In contrary, by reducing the number of Relays, it may lead to poor performance, since every Relay has to perform and support several piconet connections. The primary focus of this study is to observe the performance metrics that affects the inter-piconet scheduling since the Relay node’s role is like switch between multiple piconets. In this paper, we address and analyze the performance issues to be taken into consideration for efficient data flow in Scatternet based on Relay node.

DETERMINING BARRIERS IN SUSTAINABLE REFURBISHMENT PROJECTS: COMMERCIAL BUILDING OWNER PERSPECTIVES

Existing commercial buildings in Malaysia account for one third of the total electricity consumption. They present a great opportunity for refurbishment to reduce carbon dioxide. However, sustainably refurbished commercial buildings that is Green Building Index (GBI) certified is still low. This study aims to investigate barriers that impede commercial building owners to implement sustainable refurbishment and explore ways to increase numbers of sustainable refurbishment implementation. Qualitative data were collected through semistructured interviews. The respondents were commercial building owners’ representative, who were mainly building managers. The findings indicated that higher cost of sustainable refurbishment than conventional method and lacking of sustainability awareness among Malaysian were the main barriers of sustainable refurbishment. This study will be useful in helping building owners and developers to enhance economic, social and environmental benefits of sustainable refurbishment.

Impacts of flood on children and adults’ health and ways to sustainable development

One of the events that will remain fresh in the minds of Kelantanese is the 2014 massive flood that occurred at the end of that year. Heavy rains fell initiating vast flooding in most areas of Kelantan leading to great destruction of livelihood of local communities. Natural hazard such as floods are not only caused by natural processes but also by human activities. The flood recorded severe fatalities, injuries and exposed many vulnerable to diseases. This paper through critical review of literature considered the long-term impact of floods on humans health as the effects could meaningfully contribute to the worldwide burden of disease. Also, its outcomes are relentless hence need to be adequately comprehended and addressed through sustainability. This study revealed vulnerability to flood inclined ailments as psychological distress in the survivors is liable for a quota of all physical ailments. Hence, sustainable approach to flood preparedness and prevention is instantly needed. Accolades should be given to the Malaysian government for taken bold steps in that direction in recent time but success will be achieved if implementation is in compliance with sustainability agenda spelt in the New Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030.

Sustainable Impact of Landfill Siting towards Urban Planning in Malaysia

Landfill is one of the most common, widely used waste management technique in Malaysia. The ever increasing of solid waste has made the role of landfill become prominent despite the negative impacts that caused by the landfill is unavoidable. The public and government regulations are getting more aware with the negative impacts that could be brought by the landfill towards the community. It led to the cultural shift to integrate the concept of sustainability into the planning of siting a landfill in an urban area. However, current urban planning tends to emphasize more on the environmental aspect instead of social and economic aspects. This is due to the existing planning guidelines and stakeholders understandings are more on the environmental aspect. This led to the needs of incorporating the concept of sustainability into the urban planning. Thus, this paper focuses on the industry stakeholders view on the negative impacts that will cause by the landfill towards the urban planning. The industry stakeholders are those who are related to the decision-making in the selection of a landfill site in the government department. The scope of the study is within the country of Malaysia. This study was conducted through the semi-structured interviews with a total of fifteen industry stakeholders to obtain their perspective on the issues of impacts of siting a landfill in the urban area. The data obtained was analysed using the software, QSR NVivo version 10. Results indicate that landfill bought significant sustainability-related impacts towards landfill siting in urban planning. The negative impacts stated by the respondents are categorized under all three sustainable aspects such as environmental, social and economic. Among the results are such as the pollution, such as the generation of leachate, the objection in siting a landfill site against by the public, and the negotiating and getting money contribution from local authorities. The results produced can be served as a guideline for the industry stakeholders to have a holistic overview of the impacts that could lead by the landfill in siting into the urban area in terms of sustainability aspects. Moreover, it serves as a platform for the developing a holistic guideline for urban planning in the consideration of sustainability aspect of the selection for a landfill site.

Multilevel inverter for standalone application with selective harmonic elimination

Renewable energy demand increases due to environmentally friendly. Power electronics development enhance the power quality produced. Standalone application multilevel inverter can help in improve rural area which is no electrified. For a multilevel inverter, the output required low total harmonics distortion and voltage boosting character. However, the conventional multilevel inverter are high distortion with high switching frequency. This paper is presenting multilevel inverter with selective harmonics elimination on reduce total harmonics distortion (THD) apply in standalone concept. 9-level cascaded H-bridge multilevel inverter is applied with optimize harmonics stepped waveform (OSHW) to compare performance with sinusoidal pulse width modulation (SPWM). In OSHW, selective harmonics elimination is used to reduce the low harmonics component which is 3rd, 5th and 7th harmonics. Genetic algorithm are applied to solve the non-linear equation on solving the best switching angle. The result show OHSW have lower THD then SPWM. Meanwhile OHSW eliminated low harmonics component by the aid of genetic algorithm which exist due to the low switching frequency.

Information processing and knowledge discovery framework for sustainable building environment using multiple sensor network

Building environment plays an important role in ensuring a healthy and productive environment for indoor occupants. However, with the increasing demand for comfortable thermal environment and the call for sustainable building operation, achieving a balance between energy consumption and users thermal preference is challenging. From the informatics perspective, previous studies mainly focused on intelligent building system and occupants activity analysis, while the research on knowledge discovery from building information for optimized building operation is less emphasized. In this paper, we propose a framework for information processing and knowledge discovery for sustainable building environment. Using ubiquitous wireless sensor networks, we showcase how we can feasibly collect and analyze sensory data for the benefit of building environmental assessment and building system control. A case study involving indoor environmental monitoring at two university offices is presented to showcase our approach. We then conclude our work with some discussion on future works.

Greenhouse gas forecast in Barton Water injection reinstatement project

Discovery the most effectual resolution to control the greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions is one of the most essential long-term challenges sophisticated by the society. Efficacious frameworks for CO2 management will definitely advantageous on reducing CO2 emission while promoting the technologies and investments to enhance energy efficiencies and decrease the CO2 intensities. Therefore, the GHG management from oil and gas facilities is still a priority. Continuous various efforts such as reduction in flaring, waste-water treatment before discharging to the environment, and oil spill prevention have encouraged the waste management to follow the model of prevention, such as reuse, recycle, recovery, etc. Those countermeasure techniques are widely implemented by oil and gas industries towards environmental performance at the work site and its surrounding area. This paper is mainly focused on the Barton field located at the off coast of Sabah, Malaysia. Due to the advancement at Barton field, overabundance of GHG emission is one of the main issues. Therefore, the main intension of this paper is to provide the forecasted GHG emissions for Barton Water Injection Reinstatement Project (BTWI). The predicted GHG emissions will be very handy to provide an insight for the future improvement on water injection system in BTWI project.