Journal Articles

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://mro.massey.ac.nz/handle/10179/7915

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Author: search.filters.author.Flemmer CStart date: 2020

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Now showing 1 - 6 of 6
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    Perceptions of People with Disabilities on the Accessibility of New Zealand’s Built Environment
    (MDPI (Basel, Switzerland), 2025-09-01) Flemmer C; McIntosh A; Frawley P
    Accessing the built environment poses many challenges for people with disabilities, severely affecting their independence and quality of life. A panel of experts with a lived experience of disabilities co-designed a survey capturing the challenges in New Zealand’s public places. There were 319 survey respondents with impairments related to mobility (66.5%), vision (18.8%), hearing (5.0%), sensory processing and cognition (8.8%). They perceived sports stadiums as the least accessible venue, followed by bars, boutique shops and public toilets. The most accessible venues were supermarkets, libraries and shopping malls. The type of disability affected the main accessibility challenges. Significant outdoor barriers included uneven and cluttered paths, inadequate provision of curb cuts, seating and accessible parking spaces, and obscure wayfinding. Entrance barriers included heavy doors, complex access control, remote ramps and narrow, obscure entrances. Interior problems included cluttered paths and poor signage. The top priorities for improvement were simplifying layouts, keeping paths clear, and providing clear, inclusive signage, communication and assistance for people with varying impairments. Providing lower counters, better colour contrast, hearing loop facilities and better control of lighting and acoustics also improve accessibility. This research contributes novel experiential data from people with disabilities that is critical to achieving an inclusive built environment.
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    The Effect of Job Status on Stressors and Stress Coping Strategies in the New Zealand Construction Sector
    (Taylor and Francis Group on behalf of the Associated Schools of Construction, 2025-04-11) van Heerden A; Flemmer C; Boulic M; McDonald BW
    The construction sector is a substantial employer but has a reputation for having stressful jobs. This study investigates whether stress is affected by job status within the hierarchical structure of construction teams from highest status executives to managers with intermediate status to tradespersons (both skilled and unskilled) with the lowest status. Statistical analysis of survey responses from 300 New Zealand construction workers explores the effect of job status on significant stressors and identifies key stress coping strategies for the different roles. Tradespersons are primarily stressed by physical job demands and are most likely to turn to maladaptive stress responses. They would benefit from site safety and stress reduction training. Relationship-based stressors are problematic for managers, and this could be addressed in communication and role-specific skills training. Both managers and tradespersons would benefit from an organization culture that fosters supportive management, career development, flexible work hours, and counseling services. Executives face stress from long hours, operational problems and managing contractors. If they prioritize financial success, then they may be reluctant to implement costly training programs and flexible work schedules. However, reducing job stress amongst all team members can improve job satisfaction, reduce employee turnover and increase productivity of the whole team.
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    Evaluating the Accessibility and Inclusiveness of Community Playgrounds in Australia for Children with Disabilities
    (MDPI (Basel, Switzerland), 2024-12) Glass C; Flemmer C; Frawley P; Cordier R
    Play is vital to the wellbeing of children, but playgrounds can be inaccessible to children with disabilities and limit their physical and social participation. This study evaluated the accessibility/inclusivity of twenty-five free-entry playgrounds in two Australian states and investigated whether location, construction age, and regional socioeconomic status affected accessibility/inclusivity. The New South Wales Government’s Everyone Can Play: Playspace Evaluation Checklist was used as the assessment tool with a maximum score of 156 points. Playground scores ranged from 29% to 96% of available points. The average score for destination playgrounds was significantly higher (78.0% ± 16.6%) than that for neighborhood playgrounds (54.5% ± 20.7%). Modern playgrounds generally scored higher than older playgrounds. Regional socioeconomic status did not correlate with playground score. The audit tool inadequately addresses the needs of children with disability, allocating just 24 points (15.4%) to features they need and mostly considering mobility impairment. More inclusive audit tools that capture the needs of a wide range of impairment should be developed. Main areas for improving playground accessibility include wayfinding, layout, signage (including braille, auditory, and pictorial information), and sensory and cognitive play opportunities. These findings are useful for stakeholders involved in the design, provision, and maintenance of community playgrounds.
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    Wind turbine infrasound: Phenomenology and effect on people
    (Elsevier B.V., 2022-11-25) Flemmer C; Flemmer R
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    Validity and reliability of life cycle assessment: A case study of new zealand dairy production
    (1/01/2020) Flemmer C
    The purpose of this work is to evaluate the validity and reliability of life cycle assessment as a research methodology to measure the ecological footprint of New Zealand’s dairy production (by the dairy farming and dairy processing sectors). Environmental Input-Output Analysis was used as a macro-level life cycle assessment tool and applied to the dairy production over a period of six years. Eco-efficiencies were used as performance metrics to assess the sustainability of the dairy production. Over the six year period, New Zealand’s annual milk production increased from 11.4 to 15.1 million tonnes and its annual production of dairy products increased from 1.9 to 2.6 million tonnes. Eco-efficiencies indicate that over this time dairy farming became significantly more efficient in terms of land use (-27%), electricity use (-12%), water use (-21%) and lime use (-16%) and produced significantly less water-based effluent (-20%). At the same time fuel and fertilizer use were slightly less efficient (increasing by 2% and 6% respectively). The dairy processing industry used 21% less water and discharged 21% less effluent water. Fuel used in milk transportation was 14% more efficient. The internal validity of the research was good despite significant structural chang-es to the dairy processing sector but commercial sensitivity had a negative impact on the results. External validity was affected by different boundaries, different climates and different time frames for published studies but some comparisons were possible. The underlying data was generally accurate, reproducible and representative of the entire sectors with checks for anomalies to ensure good reliability. The choice of Environmental Input-Output Analysis for the life cycle assessment tool and error analysis of all underlying data contributed to both the validity of the research method and the reliability of the data. These, in turn, give good credibility to the research findings.
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    Analysis of the stochastic excursions of tumbling apples
    (1/09/2021) Flemmer C; Bakker H; Flemmer R
    There are strong economic pressures to improve automated inspection of apples. A considerable difficulty, acknowledged in the literature, but not adequately quantified, is the question of the extent to which the surface of apples, tumbling randomly on rollers, is covered by camera views during inspection. This work demonstrates a method to measure the roll, pitch and yaw of tumbling apples by tracking features on the skin between succeeding camera images and then to use the measured data to provide precise statistical descriptions of the tumbling process. The method was tested on an image library of four apple varietals; Eve and Granny Smith, which have mostly uniform skin colour, and Royal Gala and Braeburn which have a variegated skin colour. The images included apples that rotated stem-over-calyx (as the starting position) and apples that rotated equatorially for all varietals. The variegated varietals had many more trackable skin features (1,731–2,065 image pairs) than the mono-coloured varietals (238–859 image pairs) and stem-over-calyx rotation produced more tracking image pairs (723–2,065 image pairs) than equatorial rotation (238–2,041 image pairs), because the stem and calyx provided trackable features. Probability histograms are presented for the normalized incremental rotation in pitch, roll and yaw for each varietal and each direction of initial rotation. Skew-Gaussian distributions are fitted to the probability data to give the mean, standard deviation, skew and mean square error for the pitch, roll and yaw for each of the four varietals in each of two initial orientations (stem-over-calyx and equatorial). These stochastic characterisations can be used in future Monte Carlo simulations to provide precise determination of camera coverage during the inspection of apples tumbling on rollers. This is an important contribution to the field of automated apple inspection.