Place makers : contemporary Queensland architects [book]

Editors: Miranda Wallace, Sarah Stutchbury

"A collection of 55 of the most arresting residential, public and institutional buildings designed by Queensland architects over the past two decades." - cover.

Click here to request a copy through your library.

Call number: 720.9943 PLA 2008

Delivering e-learning : a complete strategy for design, application and assessment [book]

Author: Kenneth Fee

"Presents a complete strategy for training and development. From deciding when to use, how to design, tips on selecting suppliers, and how to measure its effectiveness. Delivering E-Learning describes a new and better way of understanding e-learning. The author looks at overcoming objections to e-learning and acknowledging poor past practice before presenting a new strategic approach. It places the emphasis firmly on learning, not the technology, de-mystifying the jargon and de-bunking industry myths. The current way most people look at e-learning is flawed, and this means they are missing its full potential.

This book provides a clear framework to better understand e-learning. Proposing a strategic approach to implementing e-learning, the author demonstrates how to align e-learning strategy with learning and business strategies. It offers a complete resource for applying e-learning to any organization.

Find it at: 371.334 DEL 2009 or Click here, and request a copy from the library!

Cities, Towns and Renewable Energy : Yes In My Front Yard [online]

Authors: International Energy Agency & OECD

Local governments have the power to influence the energy choices of their citizens. Many cities and towns have already encouraged energy efficiency measures. Even so, as demand for energy services continues to grow, the energy infrastructure that every city and town depends on will need to be expanded, upgraded or replaced. This provides the opportunity to increase the deployment of renewable energy technologies and decentralised energy systems, and hence gain the multi-benefits of increased energy security, climate change mitigation and sustainable development, but also the social benefits of reduced air pollution, such as improved health and employment. ...

The goals of this report are to inspire city stakeholders by showing how renewable energy systems can benefit citizens and businesses, assist national governments to better appreciate the role that local municipalities might play in meeting national and international objectives, and help accelerate the necessary transition to a sustainable energy future.

Indicator development as 'boundary spanning' between scientists and policy-makers (journal article)
By Helga Pülzl and Ewald Rametsteiner
from Science and Public Policy Vol 36 Number 10 Dec 2009, pp. 743-752
"In sustainability impact assessments the development of widely accepted indicators that structure the subject area and provide the framework for assessing sustainability impacts is clearly important. We argue that the development of sustainability indicators in science-based initiatives works across the science/policy interface where social and natural scientists as well as stakeholders and policy-makers both translate concepts and ideas to each other and thus make value judgments about the selection of indicators and related sub-classes. This explains why pure scientific indicator initiatives based on simple 'knowledge transfer' models are unlikely to succeed. Instead, sustainability indicator development requires a 'knowledge transaction model' which spans the boundary between the scientific and the political domains."

Gartner Identifies Four Information Management Roles IT Departments Need to Remain Effective (article)
from WebWire, Jan 18 2010
“Over the next two years, business demand for IT-driven growth and innovation will outstrip the supply of qualified people to fulfill job roles and as result traditional IT tasks are moving outside the IT department,” said Debra Logan, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner. “The future of IT lies outside the IT department. Increasingly CIOs are coming from “the business” and “users” are taking control of their own information delivery infrastructure.” By the end of 2010, Gartner predicts that 40 per cent of people who report into IT in a matrixed fashion or directly will have substantial business and non-IT experience.
Organisations need staff with different skills from the ones they were originally hired for. These are not IT people as organisations know them.

Groundwork for growth : building the infrastructure that Australia needs [book]

Author: Rob Sims, Business Council of Australia

"The report warns that as economic growth returns and the population continues to expand, infrastructure bottlenecks that appeared towards the end of the last boom are certain to reappear. Infrastructure efficiency and capacity is particularly important to Australia because of our small and dispersed population and distance from markets." - press release.

Find it at: 363.60994 GRO 2009 or Click here, and request a copy from the library!

Population growth and Australia's 2020 greenhouse gas emission commitments (journal article)
by Bob Birrell and Ernest Healy
from People and Place Vol 17 No 4 pp.18-28
"The Australian Government has stated an unconditional commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by five per cent on year 2000 levels by 2020. However, in the absence of new abatement measures, Treasury-led modelling indicates that Australia's emissions will grow from 553 milion tonnes in 2000 to 774 million tonnes in 2020. This article disaggregates the Treasury modelling in order to estimate the contribution of population expansion to this growth. It shows that 83 per cent of the forecast will be attributable to population growth. This article concludes that it is very unlikely we will achieve the target by 2020 in the absence of attention to the population growth factor."

Lessons from multi-agency information management projects: Case of the Online Business Licensing Service (OBLS) Project, Singapore (journal article)
By Thompson Teo and Tat Koon Koh
from International Journal of Information Management Vol. 30 Issue 1 Feb 2010, pp. 85-93
"Multi-agency information management projects are becoming increasingly common. Yet, there is relatively limited research in this area, particularly in the context of electronic government (e-government). This paper fills this gap in the literature by examining a successful information management project called the Online Business Licensing Service (OBLS) that aims to streamline the various licenses (managed by different agencies) required to operate a business in Singapore. The findings suggest that multi-agency projects are inherently more complex than single agency projects. A set of lessons on managing such projects is presented and these lessons should prove useful to researchers and practitioners as multi-agency information management projects become increasingly more widespread."
Contact the Library for a copy of this article.

Greening our built environment : costs, benefits, and strategies [book]

Authors: Greg Kats, Principal author ; Jon Braman and Michael James

“Green” buildings—buildings that use fewer resources to build and to sustain—are commonly thought to be too expensive to attract builders and buyers. But are they? The answer to this question has enormous consequences, since residential and commercial buildings together account for nearly 50% of American energy consumption—including at least 75% of electricity usage—according to recent government statistics.

This eye-opening book reports the results of a large-scale study based on extensive financial and technical analyses of more than 150 green buildings in the U.S. and ten other countries. It provides detailed findings on the costs and financial benefits of building green. According to the study, green buildings cost roughly 2% more to build than conventional buildings—far less than previously assumed—and provide a wide range of financial, health and social benefits. In addition, green buildings reduce energy use by an average of 33%, resulting in significant cost savings.

Find it at: 720.47 GRE 2009 or, Click here to request a copy through your library.

How Carbon Offsets Will Change The World As We Know It (article)
by Mark Schapiro
from New Matilda, January 22 2010
"With a preserve designed in large part to safeguard stored carbon, a new set of imperatives comes into play. Turning trees into carbon credits requires knowing how to extrapolate from carbon measurements to determine a forest's potential as a carbon sink. It requires knowing as precisely as possible how many trees there are and of what size — which means minimising the unpredictable activities of human beings, as small scale as they might be. "

Has Anyone Told The Transport Planners About Climate Change? (article)
by Elliot Fishman
from New Matilda, 22 January 2010
"Government investment in transport and land-use planning needs to reflect the new reality of oil depletion and climate change. Outer suburbs without rail lines and streets without bicycle lanes need to become a thing of the past. Without a change in mindset and investment, by 2030 we might just be left with empty freeways, perhaps better described as gigantic bike lanes, several bankrupt toll road operators and a number of energy analysts saying "I told you so". Let's make 2010 the year in which we confront the reality of peak oil and climate change. "

Future files : a history of the next 50 years [book]

Author: Richard Watson

"Prediction is a dangerous game - the future is never a straight, linear extrapolation from the present. Unexpected innovations and events will conspire to trip up the best-laid plans - but it's better than not thinking about the future at all. ... Filled with provocative forecasts about how the world might change in the next half century. It examines emerging patterns and developments in society, technology, economy, and business, and makes educated speculations as to where they might take us." - cover.

Want to read this book? Click here, & request a loan through your library.

Or find this book in the collection at: 303.49 FUT 2009

Retrofitting suburbia : urban design solutions for redesigning suburbs [Find this book at: 307.760973 RET 2009]

Authors: Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Williamson

"While there has been considerable attention by practitioners and academics to development in urban cores and new neighborhoods on the periphery of cities, there has been little attention to the redesign and redevelopment of existing suburbs. Here is a comprehensive guidebook for architects, planners, urban designers, and developers that illustrates how existing suburbs can be redesigned and redeveloped. The authors, both architects and noted experts on the subject, show how development in existing suburbs can absorb new growth and evolve in relation to changed demographic, technological, and economic conditions."--BOOK JACKET.

Interested in borrowing this book? Click here, and send an email to the library!

Total quality in the construction supply chain [book]

Authors: John Oakland & Morton Marosszeky

"Organizations in the construction industry struggle with three key issues: quality management or better meeting customer expectations, supply chain management or more effectively working with suppliers to provide a seamless service to customers, and knowledge management, the challenge of learning between collaborating organisations and between people working on similar projects around the world. Excellence in these key aspects of business is the hallmark of great companies. This book tackles each of these themes, demonstrating their significance as strategic concepts for the construction sector and illustrating how development goals in each of the areas can be met." - cover.

Want to read this book? Click here, & request a loan through your library.

The Effect of IT Governance Maturity on IT Governance Performance (journal article)
By Mårten Simonsson, Pontus Johnson and Mathias Ekstedt
from Information Systems Management Vol. 27 Issue 1 Winter 2010, pp. 10-24
"There are several best practice based frameworks that detail effective arrangements for the internal structure of an IT organization. Although it is reasonable that there is a correlation
between the quality of the internal structure of an IT organization – labeled IT governance maturity, and the external impact of the same IT organization on the business – labeled IT governance performance, this has not been validated. The results, based on 35 case studies, confirm the hypotheses of a positive correlation between IT governance maturity and IT governance performance. Among IT processes described in 34 references, the internal structure of the IT organization, clearly defined organizational structures and relationships, mature quality management, and cost allocation show the strongest positive correlation to IT governance performance. The maturity of project management and service level management, as well as performance and capacity management, show almost no correlation to IT governance
performance. The findings can be used to improve current frameworks for IT governance."

Balanced Scorecard Implementation of Security Strategies: A Framework
for IT Security Performance Management (journal article)
By Tejaswini Herath Hemantha Herath and Wayne G Bremser
from Information Systems Management Vol. 27 Issue 1 Winter 2010, pp. 72-81
"The article develops a conceptual framework for strategic implementation of IT security using a balanced scorecard (BSC) approach. Current research has mostly looked at economics of IT security, technical considerations, and behavioral aspects of what counter measures are available to firms instead of how successful or cost effective the investments or counter measures are. More specifically, our article provides a framework for building and implementing scorecards for information security performance management."

Rising Tigers, Sleeping Giant (journal article)
from Issues in Science & Technology Vol. 26 Issue 2 Winter 2010, pp. 81-84
"The article focuses on the competition regarding clean energy markets of Asia and the U.S. It speculates that Asian countries China, Japan and South Korea will outperform the U.S. for clean energy market dominance due to its big government investments as a support for research and innovation, domestic markets, manufacturing capability, and related infrastructures. It projects that the U.S. will be out-invested by those Asian countries with three-to-one margin in 2015 albeit the passing of the former's climate and energy legislation bill. It notes that the Chinese government provides free land, research and development (R&D) money, and loans with lower interest rates for clean technology firms than the U.S. Several graphs are also presented depicting the energy-related data of the countries."

Changing Climate, More Damaging Weather (journal article)
By Robert Repetto and Robert Easton
from Issues in Science & Technology Vol. 26 Issue 2 Winter 2010, pp. 67-74
"The article discusses the impact of changing climate on infrastructure and public safety investments in the U.S. It notes that the failure to acknowledge the effects of climate change results to dangerously inaccurate guidance for significant infrastructure and public safety investments. It suggests to speed up research programs which associate climate change and extreme weather events on the embodiment of its estimates. It states that underestimation of future weather probabilities can lead to unreliable decisions regarding investment and programs that make communities and infrastructure resist extreme weather. It explains that climatic change impact will heighten the possibilities that New York will be hit by more severe hurricanes in which infrastructure investors will be affected."

Enforcement of planning and environmental laws in Queensland [book]

Author: Leanne O'Brien

This book provides a detailed guide to handling enforcement issues and proceedings in the planning and environment jurisdiction in Queensland.

Written for lawyers, compliance officers and local government prosecutors who are new to the field, topics covered include planning and environmental offences, conditions of development approvals, investigations, statutory notices, duplicity, negotiations, compromising prosecutions, court proceedings, defences and sentencing. Explanations of the law are supported by analyses of cases, practical commentary and practice tips. While aimed primarily at new-comers to the jurisdiction, the text's extensive scope and analyses mean aspects of the work will also be of interest to experienced practitioners.

Click here to request a copy through your library.

Can Technology Really Save Us from Climate Change? (journal article)
By Alex Rau, Rob Toker and Joanne Howard
from Harvard Business Review Vol 88 Iss 1 Jan 2010, pp. 21-23
"The article presents the authors' views on the outlook for the development of technological innovations and entrepreneurial industries that can reverse global warming. The discussion focuses on Moore's Law in the context of how long it takes to develop and implement energy-related innovations. The efficient use of capital investment and government regulations for clean technology and cost-benefit analysis for projections of emission rates and abatements in new energy technologies such as wind energy and solar photovoltaics are discussed."