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Fyvie Castle is an A-listed building in the northeast of Scotland which is in the custodianship of the National Trust for Scotland and operated as a heritage attraction. Caring for our listed heritage buildings is an important task, one which is undertaken for the benefit of our nation and its people. This requires a conservation-led approach and a deep understanding of the site and application of conservation philosophy. The translation of philosophy into practice can, however, prove challenging and open to interpretation, particularly to the surveyor who is new to conservation. This paper explores the history and development of Fyvie Castle and demonstrates why obtaining this understanding is important in the considered response to key condition challenges. It also outlines the practical steps taken in the application of conservation philosophy to allow the development of a programme of major conservation works and considers the decisions to be made in the care of the castle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The search for water on Mars has long been a theme of intense exploration, as it represents a means of addressing Mars' current climate as well as its evolution in the recent and more distant past. Since the 1970s, several missions have carried instruments to track water in the atmosphere, leading to the conceptualization of a water cycle on Mars characterized by intense seasonal variability in water vapor abundance across the planet. After Mariner 9, Viking, Phobos 2 and Mars Global Surveyor, Mars Express has become the fifth orbiter capable of detecting water vapour, with unique features: measurements by several instruments, each probing a distinct wavelength region from near-infrared to thermal infrared, altitude-dependent profiling of water thanks to solar occultation, and observation in the exosphere of its by-product, hydrogen atoms, which can escape into space, depriving Mars of its primordial water reservoir. Thanks to Mars Express, a new vision of Mars' water cycle and escape processes has emerged. The achievements of Mars Express, as well as the legacy of other missions, which established the foundations of our understanding of Mars' water cycle are presented in this article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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London experienced rapid urban growth in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with much of its housing built speculatively. These houses have often been regarded as an example of vernacular architecture, made by craftsmen using standard templates, so-called pattern books, without an architect or otherwise professional design. This article investigates the question of who designed these buildings by evaluating a sample of recently catalogued building applications in Richmond between 1886 and 1939. The study sheds new light on roles and relationships in the design of speculative housing of the period, which can be seen as part of a broader process of professionalisation in construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the writings of a prominent Canadian nineteenth-century land surveyor and scientist to show the continuity of settler colonial narratives from his time until ours. As a Dominion Lands Surveyor, Otto Julius Klotz (1851–1923) was part of the vanguard of his white-supremacist, expansionistic, industrializing society; a group of front-line invaders who facilitated the taking of land from Indigenous people and nations, and transferred it to mostly white men. Employing a biographical microhistorical approach to settler colonialism, this research examines Klotz's personal diary and the events contained in it. Klotz was able to live the ideals of heteropatriarchal white masculinity and middle-class respectability, and his voluminous, life-long diary demonstrates the ways in which his privilege was actively advanced by dehumanizing others. I show the ways this land surveyor mourned the world he was destroying at the same time as he celebrated the world he was bringing into being, and how this apparent contradiction is central to settler colonialism and anti-Indigenous racism, and is still with us today. I argue that understanding the continuity of settler colonial narratives can help us to better understand our world while we strive to construct decolonial narratives and find ways to reconnect to one another and the land. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to set out the current state of the law on the duties and responsibilities of party wall surveyors, in the context of historic and recent case law, with a particular focus on Welter v McKeeve (2018) and Walsh v PSB Management & others (2022), and based on that to give the reader a practical guide to dealing with the difficulties of being instructed by one party but having duties to that party jointly with others. It identifies a trend in case law on party wall surveyors' duties of having particular regard to the rights and interests of the adjoining owner and notes a potential inconsistency with the client-facing duties owed by party wall surveyors appointed by building owners. It discusses the extent to which, and manner in which, party wall surveyors should include their appointing owners in their investigation and decision-making process. It concludes that these might best be resolved by acting as impartially as possible commensurate with the surveyor's duties to their appointing owner, keeping the parties reasonably informed, but at all times retaining control over the decision-making process. The law is stated as at February 2024. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although vacancies in the real estate market have always been of key interest to both private and public stakeholders, measuring the impact of vacancy rates on property prices is challenging. This study attempts to quantify the extent of the influence of vacancy rates on the price decline of commercial properties. The dataset used in this study was collected and collated by valuation experts. We attempt to alleviate the bias inherent in the price estimates provided by the surveyors. A Bayesian multilevel estimation model was employed, and the results revealed that while some experts do not show deviations from the standard tendency of a peer group, others do diverge from this norm. Based on these findings, a bias-controlling price decline rate was derived. As many real estate statistics are produced based on survey data compiled by experts, the approach adopted in this study is expected to be applied to various real estate practices to mitigate the inherent and inevitable surveyor bias. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we propose logarithmic type direct and synthetic estima- tors for the estimation of domain mean under simple random sampling. The properties such as bias and mean square error of the proposed direct and synthetic estimators are obtained up to first order approximation. The efficiency conditions are obtained under which the proposed direct and synthetic estimators outperform their conventional counterparts. The performance of the proposed direct and synthetic estimators is examined with the help of comprehensive computational study using real and artificially drawn populations. Some appropriate suggestions are also provided to the surveyors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The lives and careers of early medical doctors have long been studied, and early women lawyers have been the subject of considerable academic and professional activity particularly in the years leading up to the centenary of the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919, but comparatively little attention has been paid to early chartered surveyors. This paper introduces Irene Barclay, the first woman to qualify as a chartered surveyor, in 1922. Her family background informed her politics and ethos and her career choice will be set against a consideration of the career options available, the preparation for a professional life laid by Octavia Hill's house manager training system and the development and professionalisation of housing management after Hill's death. Barclay's place in urging and mentoring other women to professional qualification is reviewed, along with the role of professional and women's networks. The paper draws on Barclay's work in the public and private sector (simultaneously) over a career lasting from just after World War I until her retirement in 1972 and finds that, after the opportunities opened from 1919, the progress of women in chartered surveying was, into the twenty-first century, still very slow and continues to be low (with on 15% female in 2020). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Party Wall etc. Act 1996 is an important piece of legislation which adjudicates in the midst of what are often the competing needs of neighbouring parties. Party wall surveyors are charged with the role of facilitating the exercise of the building owner's rights while simultaneously safeguarding the interests of the adjoining owner. The Act confers upon the party wall surveyor the power and jurisdiction to properly discharge this role and laid out within the Act are a set of rules and directions that guide the surveyor as to the execution of that role. Nowhere within the four corners of the Act, however, is the party wall surveyor guided as to how to address the discharging of their role in the throes of a dispute between the parties as to the location of the boundary that separates their properties. The difficulty that arises is that much of the Act is predicated upon the location of the boundary being of settled knowledge or agreement. Indeed, knowledge of where the boundary lies goes in many instances to the heart of the operation of the Act. In his roles as third surveyor, the author is often met with referrals from appointed surveyors with differing views as to how to address a party wall matter in an instance in which there is disagreement between the parties as to the location of the boundary. This paper examines the arguments often put by surveyors in such circumstances, examines the extent of the surveyor's powers in this regard under the Act, considers industry and judicial treatment of the matter, and sets out what is in the author's view the conclusive position. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Earth‐based telescopes and Mars‐orbiting spacecraft have revealed Mars to be a dynamic body with periodic changes spanning hours to years, and other changes that present no discernible pattern. Understanding these surface and atmospheric variations requires observing and tracking them, and that requires global, consistent image data that spans several years. In support of that goal, the Mars Orbiter Camera Wide Angle "daily global map" images, in both red and blue, have undergone a modern processing with photometric corrections. They have been projected and blended into equirectangular and polar stereographic monochromatic and synthetic three‐color mosaics in intervals of 1 day and ΔLs = 2°, 5°, 10° (approximately 4 days, 10 days, and 2.5 weeks, respectively). The full data set presents three dimensions of Mars—location, time, and color—while ranges or values within each dimension can be combined in different ways, presenting a highly complex interplay for exploration. In this work, the methods to generate the data are presented along with an overview of the data set. In the companion paper (Robbins, 2023a, https://doi.org/10.1029/2022JE007621), several new observations are made along with replication of known, previously described phenomena. Plain Language Summary: Earth today is under constant monitoring by satellites, providing views of our dynamic world. The data collected range from visible wavelengths of light we can see with our eyes to other light such as infrared and ultraviolet. This global data set gives researchers an unprecedented way to understand our dynamic planet and, for the last roughly two decades, we have been able to do the same at Mars. The first modern craft to orbit Mars was NASA's Mars Global Surveyor, which had the Mars Orbiter Camera. A wide‐angle component of that camera took red‐ and blue‐color images globally and daily during the camera's lifetime, from 1999 through 2006. That data set has been reprocessed with more recent software, mosaicked, and grouped into several different time intervals for different types of scientific investigations. Additionally, synthetic green images were created which allow approximate true‐color views of what Mars looked like during the seven Earth years that data were taken. The data reveal a dynamic world of huge cloud systems, changing surface dust patterns, seasonal changes in frost and ice cover, and vast polar cloud systems as each hemisphere slips into winter. Key Points: Mars' resolved, approximate red and blue reflectivity was derived for Earth years 1999–2006 using Mars Orbiter Camera Wide‐Angle imagesDaily, ΔLs = 2°, 5°, and 10° mosaics and synthetic three‐color composites in equirectangular, north, and south polar projections were madeThe data show a dynamic planet with seasonal patterns and secular changes to surface reflectivity, color, clouds, and ice [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurate forest density estimates based on United States Public Land Surveys have long been questioned because of doubts about randomness of both the surveyors' selection of witness trees and the underlying tree dispersion. This study analyzes the surveyor sampling of witness trees in six Midwestern states in the mid‐1800s. It develops universal methods for identification, quantification, and correction of bias, and then calculation of unbiased density. Applying these techniques produces unbiased site‐specific densities before Euro‐American settlement, which are the essential baseline for determining historic changes in forest structure. Previous analysts used untested assumptions, inaccurate estimators, unknown or unrealistic sampling designs, and omitted or poorly corrected surveyor bias, resulting in hundreds of unreliable density estimates. The surveyors' recording of the empirical distance, bearing, and diameter of witness trees documented the exact sampling design. The intended design and deviation from it are investigated with a combination of descriptive statistics, probability theory, computer simulations, analogue geometric models, and modern stand conditions. Herein, analyst bias is eliminated using the robust Morisita II density estimator matching the predominant sampling design of two trees in opposing semicircles. Six widespread surveyor biases deviating from the nearest tree to the corner are evaluated. Quadrant bias and diameter bias for medium‐sized trees are subsumed under newly framed design and small tree biases. Two novel surveyor positional biases (pair angle and near‐post) are introduced here. Previously recognized azimuthal and species biases are analyzed with new techniques. Widely postulated surveyor bias for certain species was found to be minimal. Bias correction and density estimation are applied in detail over 68 townships in northern Wisconsin. The estimated historical forest density in northern Wisconsin, corrected for bias and small tree truncation, averaged 323 trees/ha ≥20 cm. Over 80 Midwestern subregions, surveyors bypassed an estimated 17% of the nearest trees due to their position, resulting in an average bias correction of +24% over the base density. If censored trees below a 20‐cm "veil‐line" are considered, the surveyors bypassed 48% of the nearest trees >12.7 cm in diameter. This study resolves a 70‐year‐old conundrum of surveyor and analyst biases in historical density estimation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The construction of a stadium that has a fairly high level of complexity with the use of an integrated design and build contract demands an acceleration of execution time, the modernization of the job procurement system and easier project delivery. Not a few of these conditions trigger disputes one of the problems that arise due to the absence of standards in determining the calculation of the volume of work which causes different views from various parties regarding the measurement of the volume of work. This study was conducted to compile and develop a Standard Measurement Method (SMM) of the volume of mechanical electrical work in the stadium area based on Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) and to model the relationship between the method of measuring the volume of mechanical electrical work on the level of accuracy of calculating the volume of work using Structural equation modeling (SEM). The results of this study are expected to serve as a guide in measuring volume to create a consistent measurement method and produce a measurement method that can be accepted by various parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]