Over the past two decades, gulf cities have been rapidly growing, mainly after the discovery of oil. Large-scale urban projects have been constructed as a result of globalization, which has affected the built environment and the urban fabric of gulf cities. Doha, the capital city of the State of Qatar, has been substantially influenced by globalization. The city has experienced great transformation in its environment since the 1950s, after the discovery of oil. Therefore, Doha has faced the challenge of keeping pace with urban developments that have been increasing and taking over the existing heritage embedded in buildings and traditional neighborhoods. Al-Hitmi is one of the neighborhoods affected by urbanization and sprawling. This research study investigates Al-Hitmi neighborhood and its features, opportunities, constraints, and relationship with the surrounding areas, specifically Qatar National Museum and the Museum Metro Station. The research design is based on the review of the literature, site analysis of the selected case, and surrounding context in order to (1) find opportunities and challenges and (2) to propose a strategy for the urban regeneration of the neighborhood of AlHitmi.

Automatic focusing is very important to high-quality image acquisition for camera system. This paper proposes a new automatic focusing method using skin-color face detection to automatically determine focusing area. In order to overcome the influence of color temperature on the face detection method, we propose a new color correction method by learning a color temperature curve with statistical methods. The color temperature curve is a concise representation of the inverse relation between light sources in the logarithmic color space. The method compensates color shifts of images by locating a set of compensation gains from the trained color temperature regression curve. A comparative setup of experiments is built to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method. Controlled experimental factors include light source, object distance and initial lens position. Modulation transfer function of images is applied to objectively evaluate the image quality before and after the new automatic focusing method. Experimental results show our method has high success rate of face localization, and effectively achieves automatic focusing.

Over the past three decades, rapid urban sprawl, a changing economy, and shifting demographics have caused rapid developments, which included the urban regeneration of existing neighborhoods. In the 1940s, after oil and natural gas discoveries in the State of Qatar, Doha experienced massive transformations on social, economic, cultural and environmental levels. These transformations have created (A) the need for creating sustainable neighborhoods and (B) raised questions related to how existing neighborhoods can be more sustainable in the future. This study investigates the neighborhood of Msheireb Downtown Doha and the reasons which have caused its urban regeneration. The study investigates (1) practical forms of sustainable urbanism principles by analyzing the Msheireb project and (2) how this urban project can be enhanced according to these principles. The research design encompasses a summary of the literature, the site analysis, structured interviews and a resultant vision of a sustainable concept for Msheireb to define the actions needed to implement the sustainable neighborhood concept. The findings reveal that, comparing the image of old Msheireb with the current regenerated one, the later neighborhood is compact, pedestrian-friendly and mixed use, which in turn encourage people to engage and promote a higher level of social interaction and therefore, contribute to enhancing the urban livability of the neighborhood.

Preservation of the aesthetical aspects of the traditional buildings especially the traditional Malay house is relatively unsolved due to the limitation of the material used specifically the timber. The traditional Malay house system is basically a modular system in terms of measurement, panel dismantle-reassemble method, expandable and moveable as well. Modular system allows many advantages in construction process and final production. Some of the lists are cost-effectiveness in terms of time consuming in site, labour, product materials and many more. The quality of modular system also can be monitored wisely as it is develop in factory in mass production according to the design. This paper proposes the adaptation of modular system in modern housing that integrated with the traditional Malay house component specifically the non-structural component such as the wall system. The issues of modular using the traditional components will be analysed using observation and site visit and analysis. The system generated can be applied to the housing development in Malaysia and in the meantime preserving the aesthetic elements of the traditional Malay house. The outcome of this paper will acknowledge a concept of modular housing system adapting the traditional wall element in building environment, and appreciating the aesthetic value of the traditional Malay house as well.

This paper introduces the application of fuzzy control in system modeling and utilizes the Linear Graph of mechanism modeling method to build the system model, and employs Simulink’s S-function to build the system controller and object to conduct simulation. In this paper, the double-ended component system is taken as an example to describe the linear graph theory commonly used in modeling, and the state space equation and the transfer function of the system are established and simulated based on the linear graph method. In the meantime, this paper also analyzes the merits and demerits of linear graph method and other mechanism modeling methods.