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The importance of identifying and improving the distinctiveness of historical urban landscapes as a means of reinforcing place identity and supporting economic development has been widely acknowledged. However, research on the economic and social performance of heritage conservation areas is slow to develop, especially in New Zealand. In connection to the examination of Special Character Areas (SCAs) in Auckland, this paper seeks to quantify the value of the historical urban landscape and improve its management. A property value analysis is used to assess the impact of SCA designation on property values and an online questionnaire survey gathers information on homeowners' experiences of living in an SCA. The results indicate that designated SCA properties have higher average values than non-designated properties and homeowners are appreciative of a sense of community and having certainty about the look and feel of their neighbourhood in the future. However, the majority of people who had gone through the processes of building and planning applications found it to be a negative experience because of the high cost in terms of time and money. A historic urban landscape approach to the development of management plans and design guidelines is recommended to improve the implementation of the Special Character Areas in Auckland and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inhalation of asbestos fibres can cause lung inflammation and the later development of asbestosis, lung cancer, and mesothelioma, and the use of asbestos is banned in many countries. In most countries, large amounts of asbestos exists within building stock, buried in landfills, and in contaminated soil. Mechanical, thermal, and chemical treatment options do exist, but these are expensive, and they are not effective for contaminated soil, where only small numbers of asbestos fibres may be present in a large volume of soil. Research has been underway for the last 20 years into the potential use of microbial action to remove iron and other metal cations from the surface of asbestos fibres to reduce their toxicity. To access sufficient iron for metabolism, many bacteria and fungi produce organic acids, or iron-chelating siderophores, and in a growing number of experiments these have been found to degrade asbestos fibres in vitro. This paper uses the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) and 16S amplicon sequencing to investigate the fungal and bacterial diversity found on naturally-occurring asbestos minerals, asbestos-containing building materials, and asbestos-contaminated soils with a view to later selectively culturing promising species, screening them for siderophore production, and testing them with asbestos fibres in vitro. After filtering, 895 ITS and 1265 16S amplicon sequencing variants (ASVs) were detected across the 38 samples, corresponding to a range of fungal, bacteria, cyanobacterial, and lichenized fungal species. Samples from Auckland (North Island, New Zealand) asbestos cement, Auckland asbestos-contaminated soils, and raw asbestos rocks from Kahurangi National Park (South Island, New Zealand) were comprised of very different microbial communities. Five of the fungal species detected in this study are known to produce siderophores. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The age–period–cohort problem has been studied for decades but without resolution. There have been many suggested solutions to make the three effects estimable, but these solutions mostly exploit non-linear specifications. Yet, these approaches may suffer from misspecification or omitted variable bias. This paper is a practical-oriented study with an aim to empirically disentangle age–period–cohort effects by providing external information on the actual depreciation of housing structure rather than taking age as a proxy. It is based on appraisals of the improvement values of properties in New Zealand to estimate the age-depreciation effect. This research method provides a novel means of solving the identification problem of the age, period, and cohort trilemma. Based on about half a million housing transactions from 1990 to 2019 in the Auckland Region of New Zealand, the results show that traditional hedonic prices models using age and time dummy variables can result, ceteris paribus, in unreasonable positive depreciation rates. The use of the improvement values model can help improve the accuracy of home value assessment and reduce estimation biases. This method also has important practical implications for property valuations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New Zealand state housing includes a significant portion of problematic buildings constructed after the public housing scheme launched in 1936. Most of these houses are still uninsulated, thus, cold, draughty, mouldy, and progressively decaying; however, as they are fundamental elements of the country's culture, society, and environment, and are built with good quality materials and sound construction, they are suitable candidates for effective energy upgrades. This paper presents findings of a study on problems and opportunities of retrofitting the state houses built between 1940 and 1960 in the Auckland region. It advocates strategic national policies and initiatives for retrofitting, based on more challenging performance thresholds. The research defines and virtually implements an incremental intervention strategy including different retrofit packages for a typical 1950s stand-alone house. Indoor and outdoor environmental parameters were monitored over a year, and data used to establish a base case for thermal simulation. The upgrade packages were then modelled to assess their impact on the house's thermal performance, comparing heating requirements and comfort of various insulation and ventilation options. The paper reports on effective ways of preserving the integrity of such a house, while improving its thermal performance to the EnerPHit standard, and discusses the benefits of introducing this holistic approach into New Zealand retrofit practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increase in geoheritage studies has secured recognition globally regarding the importance of abiotic natural features. Prominent in geoheritage screening practices follows a multicriteria assessment framework; however, the complexity of interest in values often causes decision making to overlook geoeducation, one of the primary facets of geosystem services. Auckland volcanic field in New Zealand stretches through the whole area of metropolitan Auckland, which helps preserve volcanic cones and their cultural heritage around its central business district (CBD). They are important sites for developing tourist activities. Geoeducation is becoming a significant factor for tourists and others visiting geomorphological features, but it cannot be achieved without sound planning. This paper investigates the use of big data (FlickR), Geopreservation Inventory, and Geographic Information System for identifying geoeducation capacity of tourist attractions. Through landform classification using the Topographic Position Index and integrated with geological and the inventory data, the underpromoted important geoeducation sites can be mapped and added to the spatial database Auckland Council uses for urban planning. The use of the Geoeducation Capacity Map can help resolve conflicts between the multiple objectives that a bicultural, metropolitan city council need to tackle in the planning of upgrading open spaces while battling of growing demand for land. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Metabolomics is one of the latest omics technologies that has been applied successfully in many areas of life sciences. Despite being relatively new, a plethora of publications over the years have exploited the opportunities provided through this data and question driven approach. Most importantly, metabolomics studies have produced great breakthroughs in biomarker discovery, identification of novel metabolites and more detailed characterisation of biological pathways in many organisms. However, translation of the research outcomes into clinical tests and user-friendly interfaces has been hindered due to many factors, some of which have been outlined hereafter. This position paper is the summary of discussion on translational metabolomics undertaken during a peer session of the Australian and New Zealand Metabolomics Conference (ANZMET 2018) held in Auckland, New Zealand. Here, we discuss some of the key areas in translational metabolomics including existing challenges and suggested solutions, as well as how to expand the clinical and industrial application of metabolomics. In addition, we share our perspective on how full translational capability of metabolomics research can be explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Featured Application: Coupling of very high-resolution NWP and CFD models, as outlined here, could be applied to the study of bias correction in NWP models, natural hazard studies, risk assessment under different extreme weather conditions, and urban and environmental design studies. In this study, the resilience of large cities and their built infrastructure in New Zealand to extreme winds, is investigated by coupling the outputs of a very high-resolution, 333-m resolution, numerical weather prediction (NWP) model with computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations. Following an extreme wind event on 18 September 2020 in Auckland, in which two trucks travelling over the Auckland Harbour bridge tipped over and damaged the bridge structure, a CFD simulation of airflow over the bridge using the Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) method and NWP wind speed forecasts as the inlet profile is conducted. The 333 m NWP forecasts were validated against four nearby observation sites, showing generally high correlations of greater than 0.8 and low mean bias ( ± 3 m s−1) and RMSE ( < 3 m s−1) values. The CFD-based estimates of the mean wind speed-up over the bridge showed that the mean wind speed could increase by a factor of 1.15–1.20 in the vicinity of the road where the toppled vehicles were travelling. Additionally, NWP forecasts and CFD estimates of wind gusts at the maximum bridge height, within the area not affected by the bridge structure, agreed well with a value of about 25 m s−1. An anemometer mounted at the top of the bridge arch measured a higher gust wind speed of about 35 m s−1 that could have been influenced by the gust speed-up resulting from the flow separation from the bridge arch, which is demonstrated in the CFD results. The results demonstrate the importance of understanding localised wind speed-up effects and distinguishing them from the approaching undisturbed airflow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Commuting behaviour has been intensively examined by geographers, urban planners, and transportation researchers, but little is known about how commuting behaviour is spatially linked with the job and housing markets in urban cities. New Zealand has been recognised as one of the countries having the most unaffordable housing over the past decade. A group of middle-class professionals called 'key workers', also known during the pandemic as 'essential workers', provide essential services for the community, but cannot afford to live near their workplaces due to a lack of affordable housing. As a result, these key workers incur significant sub-optimal commuting. Such job-housing imbalance has contributed to a so-called spatial mismatch problem. This study aims to visualise the excess commuting patterns of individual workers using the Integrated Data Infrastructure (IDI) from Statistics New Zealand. The visualisation suggests that over the last demi-decade, housing unaffordability has partially distorted the commuting patterns of key workers in Auckland. More of the working population, in particular those key workers, are displaced to the outer rings of the city. While there is an overall reduction in excess commuting across three groups of workers, key workers remain the working population with a disproportionate long excess commute. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New Zealand kauri trees are threatened by the kauri dieback disease (Phytophthora agathidicida (PA)). In this study, we investigate the use of pan-sharpened WorldView-2 (WV2) satellite and Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) data for detecting stress symptoms in the canopy of kauri trees. A total of 1089 reference crowns were located in the Waitakere Ranges west of Auckland and assessed by fieldwork and the interpretation of aerial images. Canopy stress symptoms were graded based on five basic stress levels and further refined for the first symptom stages. The crown polygons were manually edited on a LiDAR crown height model. Crowns with a mean diameter smaller than 4 m caused most outliers with the 1.8 m pixel size of the WV2 multispectral bands, especially at the more advanced stress levels of dying and dead trees. The exclusion of crowns with a diameter smaller than 4 m increased the correlation in an object-based random forest regression from 0.85 to 0.89 with only WV2 attributes (root mean squared error (RMSE) of 0.48, mean absolute error (MAE) of 0.34). Additional LiDAR attributes increased the correlation to 0.92 (RMSE of 0.43, MAE of 0.31). A red/near-infrared (NIR) normalised difference vegetation index (NDVI) and a ratio of the red and green bands were the most important indices for an assessment of the full range of stress symptoms. For detection of the first stress symptoms, an NDVI on the red-edge and green bands increased the performance. This study is the first to analyse the use of spaceborne images for monitoring canopy stress symptoms in native New Zealand kauri forest. The method presented shows promising results for a cost-efficient stress monitoring of kauri crowns over large areas. It will be tested in a full processing chain with automatic kauri identification and crown segmentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the thermal efficiency of a solar air heater (SAH), when it was mounted on a custom-made support frame, and was operated under different air mass flow rate. This SAH is composed of a transparent polycarbonate cover plate, a felt absorber layer, a perforated aluminium back plate and an aluminium frame. The ambient inlet air of this SAH is heated as it passes through the perforated back plate and over the felt absorber layer. The heated air is blown out through the outlet. Studies of SAHs with a similar design to this SAH were not found in the literature. The experiment was carried out at Massey University, Auckland campus, NZ (36.7° S, 174.7° E). The global horizontal solar irradiance, the ambient temperature and the wind speed were recorded using an on-site weather station. Temperature and velocity of the air at the outlet were measured using a hot wire anemometer. During the experiment, the air mass flow rate was between 0.022 ± 0.001 kg/s and 0.056 ± 0.005 kg/s. Results showed that when the SAH was operated at the airflow between 0.0054 kg/s and 0.0058 kg/s, the inlet air temperature and the wind speed (between 0 and 6.0 m/s) did not impact the temperature difference between the outlet air and the inlet air. The thermal efficiency of the SAH increased from 34 ± 5% at the airflow between 0.021 kg/s and 0.023 kg/s, to 47 ± 6% at the airflow ranging from 0.032 kg/s to 0.038 kg/s, to 71 ± 4% at the airflow of 0.056 ± 0.005 kg/s. The maximum thermal efficiency of 75% was obtained at the airflow of 0.057 kg/s. The effective efficiency of the SAH was 32 ± 5% at the airflow between 0.021 kg/s and 0.023 kg/s, 42 ± 6% at the airflow ranging from 0.032 kg/s to 0.038 kg/s, and 46 ± 11% at the airflow of 0.056 ± 0.005 kg/s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the main challenges of operating a smart city (SC) is collecting the massive data generated from multiple data sources (DSs) and transmitting them to the control units (CUs) for further data processing and analysis. These ever-increasing data demands require not only more and more capacity of the transmission channels but also results in resource over-provision to meet the resilience requirements, thus the unavoidable waste as a result of the data fluctuations throughout the day. In addition, the high energy consumption (EC) and carbon discharge from these data transmissions posing serious issues to the environment we live in. Therefore, to overcome the issues of intensive EC and carbon emission (CE) of massive data dissemination in SCs, we propose an energy-efficient and carbon reduction approach by using the daily mobility of the existing vehicles as an alternative communications channel to accommodate the data dissemination in SCs. To illustrate the effectiveness and efficiency of our approach, we take the Auckland City in New Zealand as an example, assuming massive data generated by various sources geographically scattered throughout the Auckland region, to the control centres located in the city. Results obtained show that our proposed approach can provide up to four times faster transferring the large volume of data by using the existing daily vehicles' mobility, than the conventional transmission network. Moreover, our proposed approach offers about 32% less EC and CE than that of conventional network transmission approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]