Recent Ph.D. Theses in the Netherlands

Statistica Neerlandica has decided to encourage the reporting on theses in probability, statistics, biometrics, econometrics, and operations research, submitted to Dutch universities. The main purpose of this section is to inform the reader briefly of the nature, the practical and theoretical importance, the methods used, and the results presented in recent theses. It is understood that contributions to this section meet with the approval of the supervisor(s) of the thesis.
Notes (not exceeding 300 words) should be sent to the column editor.     

Mobile Dwelling Unit Developed by a Group of Mechanical Engineering Design Students

The increasing number of homeless people is one of the most burning problems of nowadays world. Society has to find the way to fight against it and provide help to those people that have no place to stay. For short-term interventions, the application of the mobile dwelling units seems to be the only possible solution. However, existing mobile dwelling units are rather limited to specific areas of application. A group of students faced this problem and decided to develop an alternative, more universal mobile dwelling unit that will fulfil a wide range of different technical and social requirements at a reasonable price. The paper describes a systematic approach to development of the mobile dwelling unit, which was performed as a part of the education process at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, University of Maribor. The project presented is interdisciplinary. In addition to the educational aspect that is emphasized in this paper, technical, economic and social aspects of the project have also a very important role. From educational point of view, the project was concluded successfully. Moreover, we believe our proposal for a mobile dwelling unit is both novel and suitable for general application. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.