RSS 1.0Faculty Research and Publications
Recent Submissions
-
Applications of Artificial Intelligence in Medical ImagingArtificial intelligence (AI) plays an important role in the field of medical image analysis, including computer-aided diagnosis, image-guided therapy, image registration, image segmentation, image annotation, image fusion, and retrieval of image databases. With advances in medical imaging, new imaging methods and techniques are needed in the field of medical imaging, such as cone-beam/multi-slice CT, MRI, positron emission tomography (PET)/CT, 3D ultrasound imaging, diffuse optical tomography, and electrical impedance tomography, as well as new AI algorithms/applications. To provide adequate results, single-sample evidence given by the patient’s imaging data is often not appropriate. It is usually difficult to derive analytical solutions or simple equations to describe objects such as lesions and anatomy in medical images, due to wide variations and complexity. Tasks in medical image analysis therefore require learning from examples for correct image recognition (IR) and prior knowledge. This book offers advanced or up-to-date medical image analysis methods through the use of algorithms/techniques for AI, machine learning (ML), and IR. A picture or image is worth a thousand words, indicating that, for example, IR may play a critical role in medical imaging and diagnostics. Data/information can be learned through AI, IR, and ML in the form of an image, that is, a collection of pixels, as it is impossible to recruit experts for big data.
-
Mosque Architecture: A Transdisciplinary DebateAgainst a backdrop of environmental and societal concerns, best captured by the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), this book brings together the leading voices on Mosque architecture to make a case for its role as a purveyor of culture, heritage, and sustainability in the modern world. The Mosque, as an institution, continues to serve as the epicenter of spiritual, moral, and cultural life in Muslim societies. Recognizing that the popular understanding of Muslim culture and archetypes is, at best, minimal among the broader public worldwide, this book has two objectives: ie,(i) to explore Masjid architecture as a carrier of culture, heritage, and the sustainability of Muslim communities; and (ii) to offer a bias-free introduction to the intricacies of Muslim architecture, culture, and heritage today. The papers featured in this collection were presented at the 5th Memaryat International Conference (MIC), held at Effat University, Jeddah. The MIC’s objective is to build bridges between research communities engaged with diverse aspects of science, technology, and innovation, seen as the key levers for attaining the SDGs.
-
Smart energy solutions: two-way energy information exchange between utility companies, consumers, and prosumersSmart cities are gradually but surely developing the infrastructure and system architecture required for integrating public and private energy services. With the mounting evidence that fossil fuels are detrimental to the environment, it is imperative to integrate renewable energy sources with existing utility infrastructure. The monopoly of utility companies on energy production and distribution is being eroded due to the proliferation of renewable energy sources (RES) from private prosumers (producers/consumers). Prosumers have developed some capacity to generate a power surplus that exceeds their immediate needs. Individuals and group prosumers have created energy communities with infrastructural and technological ecosystems that allow them to generate, control, monitor, and trade power over private and public utility networks. Multi-layered wireless mesh networks (WMN) that connect multi-sensor modules (MSM) and big data analytics servers with built in AI capacity are facilitating the development of smart energy solutions. They will revolutionize the energy sector and reconfigure the process of energy production, distribution, and information sharing among individuals, communities, and existing utility companies. Considering the fact that (i) the pace of urbanization increases, (ii) energy demand in (smart) urban spaces grows, and (iii) prosumers and, so energy communities, play an ever more important role also in the (smart) city context space, the objective of this chapter is to review the existing smart energy systems and the prospect of their application in the smart city space. The notions of energy supply and demand for energy and the role of energy communities will form the thread of the discussion in this chapter.
-
Mosque Architecture: A Transdisciplinary DebateThe Mosque (Masjid) is the center of the spiritual, moral, and cultural life in Muslim societies. Having retained its key spatial, visual, and physical characteristics over the centuries, the Mosque has also been a subject of a sublime transformation. While the key features, and most profoundly, the symbolism of the Mosque remain intact, the Mosque design and architecture follow and adapt to the evolution of the Muslim society and its context. The Mosque, and so the Mosque architecture, serve as evidence of resilience and sustainability inherent in Muslim culture and heritage. This chapter offers an insight into the book’s content and objectives, and hence should serve as a useful guide for anyone interested in exploring the Mosque architecture as a carrier of culture, heritage, and sustainability of Muslim communities; and seeking a bias-free introduction to the intricacies of the Muslim culture.
-
Livable City: Broadening the Smart City Paradigm, Insights from Saudi ArabiaQuality of life, or Livability, is one of the most important objectives for any community worldwide. Over decades, people have recognized that some features can make places more or less livable. Whereas urbanism is the transformation of rural society into an urban one, the smart city is a paradigm that aims at employing technology to improve, in essence, Livability through sustainable integration of technology, the natural environment, and people’s needs. In line with the Saudi Vision 2030 objectives, which aim to take its cities to a level of sustainable urbanization that improves the Quality of Life, the Saudi Green initiative was announced early in 2021 to be the solid foundation for livable cities. This paper examines these developments and, against this backdrop, introduces a new feature to the smart cities paradigm, i.e., Livability.
-
Modeling Tactical Urbanism: A Contemporary Approach for Urban RegenerationUrban regeneration aims, among other objectives, to revive the city’s declined and sluggishly animated public spaces. Nevertheless, most of these projects target the city’s principal public spaces, such as central parks, squares, downtown, and waterfronts. Whether selectively, consecutively, or collectively carried out, the magnitude of these projects usually drains the city’s budget as they consume extended times, resulting in a few numbers being implemented in those primary spaces and fewer directed to the city’s secondary spaces. This paper focuses on developing a strategic multi-tiered framework to revive underutilized public spaces considering the time and cost layers. Such a framework builds on the employment of “local events” as a viably flexible and low-cost “Temporary Urbanism” tactic to revive poorly utilized city spaces of different grades. The research employs a qualitative and a desktop analysis approach to develop a framework to assist the city’s stakeholders in taking necessary and efficient actions to activate the city’s spaces as a parallel tool for traditionally used urban regeneration approaches.
-
THE ROLE of LEGISLATIONS in UPGRADING URBAN ENVIRONMENT of SLUMS AREAS in ARAB COMMUNITIES: Applied study on slums at Kingdom of Saudi Arabiaتعاني أغلب المجتمعات العربية من التوسع العمراني العشوائي الذي تواكب مع التنامي الشديد في معدلات النمو السكاني بها خلال العقود القليلة الماضية، ويعتبر من أكبر التحديات التي تواجه مجتمعات العالم النامي بصفة عامة والمجتمعات العربية بصفة خاصة، حيث تعد المناطق العشوائية أحد أهم المشاكل التي تواجه إدارات المدن - بمختلف مسمياتها - في العالم العربي، فإضافة لكونها صعبة التطوير والتفاعل مع المجتمع والإندماج في النسيج العمراني المنتظم، فإنها غالباً ما تكون بؤرا للمخاطر الاجتماعية والبيئية والصحية وعقبة في تطوير المدن عمرانياً واجتماعياً، لذا فإن مساعدة إدارات المدن على حل مشكلة العشوائيات تمثل أهمية كبرى، ولما كانت التشريعات من الأدوات الرئيسة التي تستخدمها إدارات المدن في تنظيم شئون المدينة بما في ذلك تنظيم العمران، فلابد أن يكون للمعالجات التشريعية دور مؤثر في حل هذه المشكلة. يناقش البحث ويحلل دور التشريعات في التعامل مع البيئة العمرانية العشوائية، ويطبق ذلك الدور في المدينة بصفة عامة والمدينة العربية بصفة خاصة؛ من خلال دراسة متسلسلة لمفهوم العشوائيات عالمياً وبالمجتمعات العربية، ثم دراسة وافية لعدد من التجارب العالمية والعربية في المعالجة التشريعية للتعامل مع البيئة العمرانية للمناطق العشوائية، وصولا إلى تحديد دور التشريعات العمرانية في الارتقاء بالبيئة العمرانية للمناطق العشوائية في المجتمعات العربية، ثم تحديد الأسس الرئيسة والفرعية للمعالجات التشريعية للتعامل مع البيئة العمرانية بالمناطق العشوائية بالمدينة العربية.
-
How to Think Architecture: Inspirational Note to Architecture StudentsThis bilingual book addresses both the Arabic speaker and international student in a methodic four-sectioned journey. It takes the reader from theory to practice by knocking on the doors of multiple architecture-related avenues. It addresses a range of theoretical and applied architectural issues. These start from how a student should think and how to be creative, as well as to show the context in which graduates will work. It then takes the reader through the main basic pillars of architecture. This is imbued with a pragmatic tackling of how architects design. The final section is dedicated to a hand-picked number of selected projects that are analyzed.
-
Child-Friendly Open Spaces: Towards Safety in Residential NeighborhoodsRapid urbanization, high traffic density, and lack of open spaces are noticeable challenges that impose several repercussions on children within the urban context and restrict them from living a normal childhood. Independent mobility is reduced according to the spatial deprivation of children from pedestrian experiences in urban environments. Consequently, children’s opportunities for active engagement and participation in social life will be diminished. Residing in safe environments is a fundamental right that should be granted to all children around the world. Recently, child-friendly urban design has gained a lot of attention due to its remarkable advantages as it brings children’s needs and desires into practice. Creating safe, child-friendly open spaces contributes to protecting children from traffic injuries and crimes while at the same time stimulating their imagination and nurturing communication skills. This paper addresses the topic of safe, child-friendly open spaces in residential neighborhoods, which can significantly improve the life, health, and growth of children with a focus on social and traffic aspects within the urban context. Identifying the design principles of safe, child-friendly open spaces is the main aim that will be tackled. To achieve this goal, the research will follow a theoretical approach by applying a qualitative research methodology through historical interpretation and understanding of the main characteristics and design principles of child-friendly open spaces. This would be followed by an evaluative analysis of a related case-study. The expected results of this research are planned to introduce an adapted design model for safe child-friendly open spaces in residential neighborhoods for the local context of Saudi cities with more focus on both social and traffic safety aspects.
-
The Role of Criticism in Architectural Education: An Experimental Model for Enhancing the Architectural Students' Critical Skills in Design StudioThe study descends from the group of studies that bragged about the development of the architectural education process. It focuses on enhancing the cognitive panes and dimensions in the education process. The study raises some questions about the architectural design objectives and philosophies and its success in achieving the goals of the educational process, where architectural design is referred to as being at the ‘core’ of architectural education. The study gives attention to the architectural design approach to scrutinize the defective features to struggle to solve one of these panes. It relies on a collective methodology that manages architectural design as a creative process, which tries to acquire suitable solutions for the problems of the surrounding society and environment within a collective framework. The study argues the problem of the absence of a structured framework to develop the critical skills of the architectural student as a mean for enhancing his/her higher mental skills. Consequently, the study aims to structure an experimental model to improve the self-critical skills of architectural students. The study adopted an empirical approach that relies on two main axes: The first axis is the analytical study with a preliminary chapter followed by three theoretical parts; the second axis is the applied study with one part, While the final chapter focuses on the results and recommendations.
-
Building Technology Sustainablism—New VisionThe concern of the world at present to preserve the environment and the life of human societies on earth represents the most important global trends, and the subsequent trend towards sustainability that aims at the development that enables the enjoyment of the environmental resources and natural values that we use now. Therefore, development must be dealt with broad insight in terms of the temporal dimension, as well as advanced methods and creative ideas for dealing with natural resources require the concerted efforts of both architects, constructors, planners, and researchers in cooperation with decision-makers to focus on environmentally friendly technologies, especially in the field of building and construction technology. According to this vision, the paper analyzes the technical revolution in building technology from a sustainable perspective, then monitored its implications on architecture and associated urbanism, considering the promotion of sustainable architecture and the rationalization of building methods and energy consumption, to propose new pillars Building Technology Sustainablism Framework.
-
Cities of the Future: Challenges and OpportunitiesPreface Cities are where ideas form, where innovation glows, and where economic growth largely flourishes. They are where most people live and where significant risks can emerge as well as where challenges can be magnified. In the age of urban digitization, new and complex issues are emerging, and today's cities are likely on the cusp of the largest global social and economic transformation. Facing the pressing challenges of the unprecedented rates of urban expansions, it becomes inevitable to adopt a shared responsibility to create healthier, more accessible, and intelligent cities to better use human resources, promote needs and capacities, and advance a decent quality of life. Considering the fact that the kingdom of Saudi Arabia is currently witnessing rapid growing urbanization due to demographic, social, and economic growth in the country that increased the number of cities. In addition to the current implementation of the Future Saudi Cities Program in line with the 2030 Saudi Arabia's vision and the National Transformation Program. The 6th Annual Memaryat International Conference (MIC 2022) seeks to address the key challenges and opportunities of "future cities" to embrace novel approaches and grounded technologies in pursuing a vision for smart, inclusive cities. This volume contains papers presented at the 6th Annual Memaryat International Conference (MIC 2022). While the key objective of MIC is to build bridges between science, technology, and innovation, the 2022 MIC focused on cities of the future, whereby cities appear to be in a state of continuous expansion; their population growth has historically occurred in cycles. Innovations have generally addressed the challenges posed by rising populations, only to be replaced by new hurdles. The thrust of the discussion in the proceedings is formed by multiple areas addressing challenges and opportunities of the future cities at the local, national, and international levels and how these challenges can hinder the development objectives planned to be achieved by the cities of the future. Accordingly, the papers included in this volume revolve around three sections: The first section discusses the future of the Saudi cities and addresses different aspects and dimensions of the future cities at the local, national, and international levels. The papers also tackled critical challenges facing the current cities and how these challenges can hinder the development objective planned to be achieved by the cities of the future. The focus of the papers varied from managing a handling food in cities of tomorrow, cities and tourism, intelligent cities of the future, problems of efficient exploitation of land in cities, and maintaining a city's identity in the cities of the future. The second section revolves around smart, inclusive, and livable cities. Few papers tackled the role the social dimension can play in future cities. Future cities are not only places where smart technologies, advanced communication, and creativity meet but also cities that facilitate spaces and venues which can contribute to the residents' quality of life and social cohesion. Investigating the social dimension in future cities was the core of many presentations. Sense of community, safety, physical health and wellbeing, and economic activities are all aspects that proved to be significant to the planning and design of our future cities. Future cities are also characterized by workforce development, which helps bridge skill mismatches and gaps between the job opportunities and local workers, linking the domestic workforce and the economic development with high-impact and well-suited workforce training and development services. The third section discusses environmental issues and smart solutions for future cities recognizing the benefits of a green approach to urban planning and design and the potential to lower urban temperatures, mitigate air pollution and build natural environmental resilience. Sustainability experts predict carbon-neutral cities full of electric vehicles and bike-sharing schemes, with improved air quality. The Editors hope that the selected papers for this volume will lead to a better understanding of the challenges and opportunities of future cities. Viewed in this way, this volume is intended to promote research in the domains of architecture, urban design, and urban planning.
-
Sick Neighborhood Syndromes in Hot Dry ClimateThe neighborhood has become the focus of attraction of urban planners, designers and architects. Over the last two decades, the field of study of the neighborhood and its relationship with health has witnessed an explosion of interest. Several researchers investigated neighborhood problems and its impacts on well-being. Different urban problems vary in mental and physical health impacts. A lot of longitudinal and cross-sectional research linked the characteristic of neighborhood whether physical or social to the health condition of the community. Furthermore, heart disease, skin disorder, cancer diabetes, depression and drug use are some of the health problems that an individual might face while living in an insufficient neighborhood particularly in harsh climate conditions. In desert climate, thermal low performance can lead to urban problems such as the well-known phenomenon “Urban Heat Island (UHI)”. The later can lead to several illness syndromes for residents. Reviewing the literature revealed a gap in the knowledge on the detailed relationship between the urban design elements and the sick health syndrome. This paper discusses the negative impact of the neighborhood design elements and its interconnection with illness syndromes. Similar to the Sick Building Syndrome (SBS), the paper introduces a new term to define the relationship between the urban design elements and the sick health syndromes which is “Sick Neighborhood Syndrome” (SNS).
-
Promoting Social Interaction Through Jeddah’s Neighborhood Parks DesignThis research examines the design attributes with potential impact on social interactions in neighborhood parks. This includes accessibility, plants, maintenance, shading devices, lighting, walking paths, active and passive activities, seating, as well as water elements. It develops a theoretical framework of the neighborhood park design that promotes social interaction for assessing neighborhood park design and the level of social interaction in this park within the context of Jeddah city, KSA. It adopts the case study approach to investigate one study site in Jeddah city. It uses an array of qualitative strategies for data collection to test the validity of the theoretical framework in actual context including self-directed/closed-ended questionnaires, direct observation, and physical documentation. In addition to this, a non-participative, structured observation method will be used to record basic data about the level of social interaction in the selected case study. The main findings of this research contribute to generating design guidelines for neighborhood parks within the urban context of Jeddah City in Saudi Arabia to promote social interaction.
-
Investigating the Effect of Urban Form on Heat Island Phenomena: Case Study of Jeddah, KSAThis study is to debate urban forms embraces urban heat island adaptation and mitigation actions. It also aims to investigate the effect of urban design impacts, to develop strategies for reducing urban heat island influences with a good preparation for climate change adaptation, and to contribute in improving quality of urban life. In order to achieve the objectives of this study, the scientific methodology was used due to its suitability to the nature of the research, which depends mainly on three stages; record facts from the field build a preliminary theory from the literature review, and experimental situations. Several approaches have been used: data collection, literature review, preparation through data bases, probability analysis using SPSS program, and Space Syntax analysis. The study investigates two districts in Jeddah which are Al-Balad and Al-Basateen. The results show differences in temperature between the two districts at the same time schedule. The factors impacting this urban heat island’s result were attributed to different urban fabric between the two districts. The study recommends decreasing urban heat island by using robust structures, increasing the use of plants in design, and implementing an effective urban design. Design Strategy Properties of urban materials, particularly, solar, reflectance, thermal emissivity and heat capacity, also influence the development of urban heat island as they determine how the suns energy is reflected, emitted, and absorbed. The contribution of this study is the formulation of asset of strategies and principles that can help directing designers to transform these defunct downtowns into sustainable urban cores for people to live, work, play and visit.
-
The dynamic relationship among technological innovation, international trade, and energy productionThe primary objective of this study is to analyze the dynamic association among the green energy production (GEP), green technological innovation (GTI), and green international trade (GIT). This study uses fully modified least square (FMOLS) and dynamic least square (DOLS) for data analysis. This study uses the panel data set starts from 2000 to 2020 for eight south Asian countries. This study find a negative relationship between GEP and EFP. However, green technological innovation and green international trade have positive significant association. This study recommends several policy implications regarding the economies of south Asia (SA) based on empirical findings: to subsidize the industries for the installation of renewable projects for the production of renewable energies.
-
Methodology to Improve Energy Efficiency of Heritage Buildings Using HBIM-Sabil Qaitbay: A Case Study from EgyptOver the last few decades, reducing energy consumption in existing buildings became vital. Although architectural heritage values do not allow typical retrofit interventions, research and practice have demonstrated that heritage buildings can be energy efficient without compromising the building’s heritage values. This article shows the results of energy analysis performed on heritage buildings with HBIM-based simulations such as Revit, Insight, and Green Building Studio. These tools were used to study the energy performance and thermal comfort of Sabil Qaitbay in Cairo, a heritage building built in the fifteenth century, and it is currently used as a library and school for cinema and television. The building history and the conservation values of the current project were studied. Then, the methodology to improve the energy efficiency of heritage buildings using HBIM was discussed. Moreover, two proposals were applied to the current base case, and the potential energy saving for each proposed intervention was investigated. The simulation confirmed a possible reduction of 18.7% in energy consumption with the lowest-cost interventions and 33% with the highest-cost interventions.
