Search results for: network backbone

Authors: Elena Mugarza, Stephanie Glendinning, Ross Stirling, Colin Davies

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The effects of climate change and increased rainfall events on UK-based infrastructure are observable, with an increasing number being reported on in the national press. The fatal derailment at Stonehaven in 2020 prompted a wider review of Network Rail-owned earthworks assets. The event was indicated by the Rail Accident Investigation Branch (RAIB) to be caused by mis-installed drainage on the adjacent cutting. The slope failure on Snake Pass (public highway A57) was reportedly caused by significant water ingress following numerous storm events and resulted in the road’s closure for several months. This problem is only projected to continue with greater intensity and more prolonged rainfall events forecasted in the future. Subsequently, this project is designed to evaluate effective drainage trench design within infrastructure embankments, considering the capillary barrier phenomenon that may govern their deterioration and resultant failure. Theoretically, the differential between grain sizes of the embankment clays and gravels, customarily used in drainage trenches, would have a limiting effect on infiltration. As such, it is anticipated that the inclusion of an additional material with an intermediate grain size should improve the hydraulic conductivity across the drainage boundary. Multiple drainage designs will be studied using instrumentation within the drain and surrounding clays. Data from the real-world installation at the BIONICS embankment will be collected and compared with laboratory and Finite Element (FE) simulations. This research aims to reduce the risk of infrastructure slope failures by improving the resilience of earthwork drainage and lessening the consequential impact on transportation networks.

Keywords: earthworks, slope drainage, transportation slopes, deterioration, capillary barriers, field study

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Authors: Durjoy Lahiri, Vishal Madhukar Sawale, Ashwani Bhat, Souvik Dubey, Gautam Das, Biman Kanti Roy, Suparna Chatterjee, Goutam Gangopadhyay

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Crossed aphasia has been an area of considerable interest for cognitive researchers as it offers a fascinating insight into cerebral lateralization for language function. We conducted an observational study in the stroke unit of a tertiary care neurology teaching hospital in eastern India on subjects with crossed aphasia over a period of four years. During the study period, we detected twelve cases of crossed aphasia in strongly right-handed patients, caused by ischemic stroke. The age, gender, vernacular language and educational status of the patients were noted. Aphasia type and severity were assessed using Bengali version of Western Aphasia Battery (validated). Computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging and angiography were used to evaluate the location and extent of the ischemic lesion in brain. Our series of 12 cases of crossed aphasia included 7 male and 5 female with mean age being 58.6 years. Eight patients were found to have Broca’s aphasia, 3 had trans-cortical motor aphasia and 1 patient suffered from global aphasia. Nine patients were having very severe aphasia and 3 suffered from mild aphasia. Mirror-image type of crossed aphasia was found in 3 patients, whereas 9 had anomalous variety. In our study crossed aphasia was found to be more frequent in males. Anomalous pattern was more common than mirror-image. Majority of the patients had motor-type aphasia and no patient was found to have pure comprehension deficit. We hypothesize that in Bengali-speaking right-handed population, lexical-semantic system of the language network remains loyal to the left hemisphere even if the phonological output system is anomalously located in the right hemisphere.

Keywords: aphasia, crossed, lateralization, language function, vascular

Procedia PDF Downloads 192

Authors: Abbas Raza Ali

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Big Data technology is gradually becoming a dire need of large enterprises. These enterprises are generating massively large amount of off-line and streaming data in both structured and unstructured formats on daily basis. It is a challenging task to effectively extract useful insights from the large scale datasets, even though sometimes it becomes a technology constraint to manage transactional data history of more than a few months. This paper presents a framework to efficiently manage massively large and complex datasets. The framework has been tested on a communication service provider producing massively large complex streaming data in binary format. The communication industry is bound by the regulators to manage history of their subscribers’ call records where every action of a subscriber generates a record. Also, managing and analyzing transactional data allows service providers to better understand their customers’ behavior, for example, deep packet inspection requires transactional internet usage data to explain internet usage behaviour of the subscribers. However, current relational database systems limit service providers to only maintain history at semantic level which is aggregated at subscriber level. The framework addresses these challenges by leveraging Big Data technology which optimally manages and allows deep analysis of complex datasets. The framework has been applied to offload existing Intelligent Network Mediation and relational Data Warehouse of the service provider on Big Data. The service provider has 50+ million subscriber-base with yearly growth of 7-10%. The end-to-end process takes not more than 10 minutes which involves binary to ASCII decoding of call detail records, stitching of all the interrogations against a call (transformations) and aggregations of all the call records of a subscriber.

Keywords: big data, communication service providers, enterprise data warehouse, stream computing, Telco IN Mediation

Procedia PDF Downloads 175

Authors: Michael Ayomoh, Adriaan Roux, Oyindamola Omotuyi

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This paper presents an efficient robot navigation model in a multi-target domain amidst static and dynamic workspace obstacles. The problem is that of developing an optimal algorithm to minimize the total travel time of a robot as it visits all target points within its task domain amidst unknown workspace obstacles and finally return to its initial position. In solving this problem, a classical algorithm was first developed to compute the optimal number of paths to be travelled by the robot amidst the network of paths. The principle of shortest distance between robot and targets was used to compute the target point visitation order amidst workspace obstacles. Algorithm premised on the standard polar coordinate system was developed to determine the length of obstacles encountered by the robot hence giving room for a geometrical estimation of the total surface area occupied by the obstacle especially when classified as a relevant obstacle i.e. obstacle that lies in between a robot and its potential visitation point. A stochastic model was developed and used to estimate the likelihood of a dynamic obstacle bumping into the robot’s navigation path and finally, the navigation/obstacle avoidance algorithm was hinged on the hybrid virtual force field (HVFF) method. Significant modelling constraints herein include the choice of navigation path to selected target points, the possible presence of static obstacles along a desired navigation path and the likelihood of encountering a dynamic obstacle along the robot’s path and the chances of it remaining at this position as a static obstacle hence resulting in a case of re-routing after routing. The proposed algorithm demonstrated a high potential for optimal solution in terms of efficiency and effectiveness.

Keywords: multi-target, mobile robot, optimal path, static obstacles, dynamic obstacles

Procedia PDF Downloads 281

Authors: Isabelle Snyder

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Microgrid protection presents challenges to conventional protection techniques due to the low induced fault current. Protection relays present in microgrid applications require a combination of settings groups to adjust based on the architecture of the microgrid in islanded and grid-connected mode. In a radial system where the microgrid is at the other end of the feeder, directional elements can be used to identify the direction of the fault current and switch settings groups accordingly (grid connected or microgrid connected). However, with multiple microgrid connections, this concept becomes more challenging, and the direction of the current alone is not sufficient to identify the source of the fault current contribution. ORNL has previously developed adaptive relaying schemes through other DOE-funded research projects that will be evaluated and used as a baseline for this research. The four protection techniques in this study are the following: (1) Adaptive Current only Protection System (ACPS), Intentional (2) Unbalanced Control for Protection Control (IUCPC), (3) Adaptive Protection System with Communication Controller (APSCC) (4) Adaptive Model-Driven Protective Relay (AMDPR). The first two methods focus on identifying the islanded mode without communication by monitoring the current sequence component generated by the system (ACPS) or induced with inverter control during islanded mode (IUCPC) to identify the islanding condition without communication at the relay to adjust the settings. These two methods are used as a backup to the APSCC, which relies on a communication network to communicate the islanded configuration to the system components. The fourth method relies on a short circuit model inside the relay that is used in conjunction with communication to adjust the system configuration and computes the fault current and adjusts the settings accordingly.

Keywords: adaptive relaying, microgrid protection, sequence components, islanding detection, communication controlled protection, integrated short circuit model

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Authors: M. S. Jouini, A. Al-Sumaiti, M. Tembely, K. Rahimov

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Characterizing rock properties of carbonate reservoirs is highly challenging because of rock heterogeneities revealed at several length scales. In the last two decades, the Digital Rock Physics (DRP) approach was implemented successfully in sandstone rocks reservoirs in order to understand rock properties behaviour at the pore scale. This approach uses 3D X-ray Microtomography images to characterize pore network and also simulate rock properties from these images. Even though, DRP is able to predict realistic rock properties results in sandstone reservoirs it is still suffering from a lack of clear workflow in carbonate rocks. The main challenge is the integration of properties simulated at different scales in order to obtain the effective rock property of core plugs. In this paper, we propose several approaches to characterize absolute permeability in some carbonate core plugs samples using multi-scale numerical simulation workflow. In this study, we propose a procedure to simulate porosity and absolute permeability of a carbonate rock sample using textures of Micro-Computed Tomography images. First, we discretize X-Ray Micro-CT image into a regular grid. Then, we use a textural parametric model to classify each cell of the grid using supervised classification. The main parameters are first and second order statistics such as mean, variance, range and autocorrelations computed from sub-bands obtained after wavelet decomposition. Furthermore, we fill permeability property in each cell using two strategies based on numerical simulation values obtained locally on subsets. Finally, we simulate numerically the effective permeability using Darcy’s law simulator. Results obtained for studied carbonate sample shows good agreement with the experimental property.

Keywords: multiscale modeling, permeability, texture, micro-tomography images

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Authors: Mohammed Abu Shquier

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This paper introduces a word segmentation method using the novel BP-LSTM-CRF architecture for processing semantic output training. The objective of web morphological analysis tools is to link a formal morpho-syntactic description to a lemma, along with morpho-syntactic information, a vocalized form, a vocalized analysis with morpho-syntactic information, and a list of paradigms. A key objective is to continuously enhance the proposed system through an inductive learning approach that considers semantic influences. The system is currently under construction and development based on data-driven learning. To evaluate the tool, an experiment on homograph analysis was conducted. The tool also encompasses the assumption of deep binary segmentation hypotheses, the arbitrary choice of trigram or n-gram continuation probabilities, language limitations, and morphology for both Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and Dialectal Arabic (DA), which provide justification for updating this system. Most Arabic word analysis systems are based on the phonotactic morpho-syntactic analysis of a word transmitted using lexical rules, which are mainly used in MENA language technology tools, without taking into account contextual or semantic morphological implications. Therefore, it is necessary to have an automatic analysis tool taking into account the word sense and not only the morpho-syntactic category. Moreover, they are also based on statistical/stochastic models. These stochastic models, such as HMMs, have shown their effectiveness in different NLP applications: part-of-speech tagging, machine translation, speech recognition, etc. As an extension, we focus on language modeling using Recurrent Neural Network (RNN); given that morphological analysis coverage was very low in dialectal Arabic, it is significantly important to investigate deeply how the dialect data influence the accuracy of these approaches by developing dialectal morphological processing tools to show that dialectal variability can support to improve analysis.

Keywords: NLP, DL, ML, analyser, MSA, RNN, CNN

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Authors: Sandra Maria Cerqueira Da Silva

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In Brazil, women are the majority of the country's population. They have advanced in terms of years of education and professional training. However, this has not prevented the differences in the labor market from being sustained, particularly the wage gap and inequalities concerning the access to command positions and promotions, i.e., in the gender relations and treatment. One of the conditions which constitute a barrier to career advancement is the necessary support chain to support women when they are in the labor market. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to demonstrate, describe, and criticize some of the current conformations of support chains and how these compete to promote the phenomenon known as glass ceiling in the country. However, this support may come even from inside a woman's own home, with a fairer division of household activities between men and women. Such behavior can free an entire network of women within the same family. In addition, it can serve as pressure to structure better conditions for women as a whole, improving the living conditions of the poor population. This can occur through programs and projects for qualification and retraining of adult women. In answer to the question that guides this study, it is concluded that a family support system is critical to the success of women in management positions. To meet this demand, one of the ways could be the development of specific gender policies by the public authorities, in accordance with the emerging global economic policies, in order to provide and structure the necessary support. This would respond to feminist manifestations - which should go on pointing needs – although the legislative assembly should also propose ideas to change this picture. This is a qualitative research, with a poststructuralist approach, featuring a cutout corpus of three interviews carried out with women holding leadership positions in the academia. Questions related to this very discussion are many. New studies could address points as the promotion of qualification and expansion of skills of women in subaltern condition. There is also need to investigate possible support systems, considering the inequalities and local economic conditions.

Keywords: gender and labor market, glass ceiling, post-structuralism, support chain

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Authors: Leng Jian-Wei, Wang Lai-Jun, Li Ye

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In order to measure and analyze the transportation situation within the counties of Shaanxi province over a certain period of time and to promote the province's future transportation planning and development, this paper proposes a reasonable layout plan and compares model rationality. The study uses entropy weight method to measure the transportation advantages of 107 counties in Shaanxi province from three dimensions: road network density, trunk line influence and location advantage in 2013 and 2021, and applies spatial autocorrelation analysis method to analyze the spatial layout and development trend of county-level transportation, and conducts ordinary least square (OLS)regression on transportation impact factors and other influencing factors. The paper also compares the regression fitting degree of the Geographically weighted regression(GWR) model and the OLS model. The results show that spatially, the transportation advantages of Shaanxi province generally show a decreasing trend from the Weihe Plain to the surrounding areas and mainly exhibit high-high clustering phenomenon. Temporally, transportation advantages show an overall upward trend, and the phenomenon of spatial imbalance gradually decreases. People's travel demands have changed to some extent, and the demand for rapid transportation has increased overall. The GWR model regression fitting degree of transportation advantages is 0.74, which is higher than the OLS regression model's fitting degree of 0.64. Based on the evolution of transportation advantages, it is predicted that this trend will continue for a period of time in the future. To improve the transportation advantages of Shaanxi province increasing the layout of rapid transportation can effectively enhance the transportation advantages of Shaanxi province. When analyzing spatial heterogeneity, geographic factors should be considered to establish a more reliable model

Keywords: traffic dominance, GWR model, spatial autocorrelation analysis, temporal and spatial evolution

Procedia PDF Downloads 89

Authors: Yuki Hara

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Healthy assets are recognized as important for all people in the world through experiencing COVID-19. Each part of life and work is important to be changed against the preceding wide-spreading of COVID-19. Furthermore, it is necessary to innovate the whole structure of a city upon the sum of the parts. This study aims at creating a comprehensive strategy from a small practice of making healthier lives with collaborating local actors for a city. This paper employs action research as the research framework. The core practice is the 'Ken’iku Festival' at Ken’iku Festival Committee. The field locates the urban-rural fringe in the northwest part of Fujisawa city, Kanagawa prefecture, Japan. The data is collected through the author's practices for three years from the observations and interviews at meetings and discussions among stakeholders, texts in municipal reports, books, and movies, 3 questionnaires for customers and stakeholders at the Ken’iku Festival. These data are analysed by qualitative methods. The results show that couples in their 40s with children and couples or friends over the 70s are at the heart of promoting healthy lifestyles. In contrast, 40% of the visitors at the festival are the people who have no idea or no interest in healthier actions, which the committee has to suggest healthy activities through more pleasing services. The committee could organize staff and local actors as the core parties involved through gradually expanding its tasks relating to the local practices. This private sectoral activity from health promotion is covering a part of the whole-city planning of Fujisawa municipality by including many people over organisations into one community. This paper concludes from local practice networking through the festival that a comprehensive strategy for a healthy city is both a practical approach easily applied to each partner and one of the holistic services.

Keywords: communal practice network, healthy cities, health & development, health promotion, with and after COVID-19

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Authors: Yasaman Samie

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The ever-increasing rate of textile and clothing (T&C) waste generation and the common ineffective waste management practices have been for long a challenge for civic waste management. This challenge stems from not only the complexity in the T&C material components but also the heterogeneous nature of the T&C waste management sector and the disconnection between the stakeholders. To date, there is little research that investigates the importance of a governmental structure and its role in T&C waste managerial practices and decision makings. This paper reflects on the impacts and involvement of governments, the Acts, and legislation on the effectiveness of T&C waste management practices, which are carried out by multiple players in a city context. In doing so, this study first develops a methodical framework for holistically analyzing a city’s T&C waste ecosystem. Central to this framework are six dimensions: social, environmental, economic, political, cultural, and educational, as well as the connection between these dimensions such as Socio-Political and Cultural-Political. Second, it delves into the political dimension and its interconnections with varying aspects of T&C waste. In this manner, this case-study takes metropolitan Melbourne as a case and draws on social theories of Actor-Network Theory and the principals of supply chain design and planning. Data collection was through two rounds of semi-structured interviews with 18 key players of T&C waste ecosystem (including charities, city councils, private sector providers and producers) mainly within metropolitan Melbourne and also other Australian and European cities. Research findings expand on the role of the politics of waste in facilitating a proactive approach to T&C waste management in the cities. That is achieved through a revised definition for T&C waste and its characteristics, discussing the varying perceptions of value in waste, prioritizing waste types in civic waste management practices and how all these aspects shall be reflected in the in-placed acts and legislations.

Keywords: civic waste management, multi-stakeholder ecosystem, textile and clothing waste, waste and governments

Procedia PDF Downloads 112

Authors: M. Lu

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The paper presents part of the results of EU-funded projects: SoCool@EU (Sustainable Organisation between Clusters Of Optimized Logistics @ Europe), DG-RTD (Research and Innovation), Regions of Knowledge Programme (FP7-REGIONS-2011-1). It will provide an in-depth review of emerging technologies for further improving urban mobility and freight transport systems, such as (information and physical) infrastructure, ICT-based Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS), vehicles, advanced logistics, and services. Furthermore, the paper will provide an analysis of the barriers and will review business models for the market uptake of innovations. From a perspective of science and technology, the challenges of urbanization could be mainly handled through adequate (human-oriented) solutions for urban planning, sustainable energy, the water system, building design and construction, the urban transport system (both physical and information aspects), and advanced logistics and services. Implementation of solutions for these domains should be follow a highly integrated and balanced approach, a silo approach should be avoided. To develop a sustainable urban transport system (for people and goods), including inter-hubs and intra-hubs, a holistic view is needed. To achieve a sustainable transport system for people and goods (in terms of cost-effectiveness, efficiency, environment-friendliness and fulfillment of the mobility, transport and logistics needs of the society), a proper network and information infrastructure, advanced transport systems and operations, as well as ad hoc and seamless services are required. In addition, a road map for an enhanced urban transport system until 2050 will be presented. This road map aims to address the challenges of urban transport, and to provide best practices in inter-city and intra-city environments from various perspectives, including policy, traveler behaviour, economy, liability, business models, and technology.

Keywords: synchromodality, multimodal transport, logistics, Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS)

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Authors: Foteini Zagklavara, Peter Jimack, Nikil Kapur, Ozz Querin, Harvey Thompson

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The invention and development of the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) technology have revolutionised molecular biology and molecular diagnostics. There is an urgent need to optimise their performance of those devices while reducing the total construction and operation costs. The present study proposes a CFD-enabled optimisation methodology for continuous flow (CF) PCR devices with serpentine-channel structure, which enables the trade-offs between competing objectives of DNA amplification efficiency and pressure drop to be explored. This is achieved by using a surrogate-enabled optimisation approach accounting for the geometrical features of a CF μPCR device by performing a series of simulations at a relatively small number of Design of Experiments (DoE) points, with the use of COMSOL Multiphysics 5.4. The values of the objectives are extracted from the CFD solutions, and response surfaces created using the polyharmonic splines and neural networks. After creating the respective response surfaces, genetic algorithm, and a multi-level coordinate search optimisation function are used to locate the optimum design parameters. Both optimisation methods produced similar results for both the neural network and the polyharmonic spline response surfaces. The results indicate that there is the possibility of improving the DNA efficiency by ∼2% in one PCR cycle when doubling the width of the microchannel to 400 μm while maintaining the height at the value of the original design (50μm). Moreover, the increase in the width of the serpentine microchannel is combined with a decrease in its total length in order to obtain the same residence times in all the simulations, resulting in a smaller total substrate volume (32.94% decrease). A multi-objective optimisation is also performed with the use of a Pareto Front plot. Such knowledge will enable designers to maximise the amount of DNA amplified or to minimise the time taken throughout thermal cycling in such devices.

Keywords: PCR, optimisation, microfluidics, COMSOL

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Authors: Liliane Samara Ferreira Leite, Francys Kley Vieira Moreira, Luiz Henrique Capparelli Mattoso

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The increasing environmental concern regarding the plastic pollution worldwide has stimulated the development of low-cost biodegradable materials. Proteins are renewable feedstocks that could be used to produce biodegradable plastics. Gelatin, for example, is a cheap film-forming protein extracted from animal skin and connective tissues of Brazilian Livestock residues; thus it has a good potential in low-cost biodegradable plastic production. However, gelatin plastics are limited in terms of mechanical and barrier properties. Cellulose nanocrystals (CNC) are efficient nanofillers that have been used to extend physical properties of polymers. This work was aimed at evaluating the reinforcing efficiency of CNC on gelatin films. Specifically, we have employed the continuous casting as the processing method for obtaining the gelatin/CNC bionanocomposites. This required a first rheological study for assessing the effect of gelatin-CNC and CNC-CNC interactions on the colloidal state of the aqueous bionanocomposite formulations. CNC were isolated from eucalyptus pulp by sulfuric acid hydrolysis (65 wt%) at 55 °C for 30 min. Gelatin was solubilized in ultra-pure water at 85°C for 20 min and then mixed with glycerol at 20 wt.% and CNC at 0.5 wt%, 1.0 wt% and 2.5 wt%. Rotational measurements were performed to determine linear viscosity (η) of bionanocomposite solutions, which increased with increasing CNC content. At 2.5 wt% CNC, η increased by 118% regarding the neat gelatin solution, which was ascribed to percolation CNC network formation. Storage modulus (G’) and loss modulus (G″) further determined by oscillatory tests revealed that a gel-like behavior was dominant in the bionanocomposite solutions (G’ > G’’) over a broad range of temperature (20 – 85 °C), particularly at 2.5 wt% CNC. These results confirm effective interactions in the aqueous gelatin-CNC bionanocomposites that could substantially increase the physical properties of the gelatin plastics. Tensile tests are underway to confirm this hypothesis. The authors would like to thank the Fapesp (process n 2016/03080-3) for support.

Keywords: bionanocomposites, cellulose nanocrystals, gelatin, viscoelastic characterization

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Authors: Amber Zahid, Fatima Naseer, Maham Atta, Fareeha Zafar

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Corporate social authority (CSR) talk, scholarly scrutinize, open arrangement and media editorials, which have thrived in the previous not many decades according to the craving to characterize the nexus between business and social order had a tendency to center primarily on expansive corporate associations which are required to act mindfully. The enormous organizations have for a long time pulled in huge volume of expositive expression on CSR. Almost no expositive expression is presently accessible to upgrade our comprehension about the engagement of little and medium-measured endeavors (SMEs) in CSR. The SMEs, regularly characterized differently regarding turnover terrible stake quality, proprietorship structure and the amount of workers, is a noteworthy part worldwide as far as monetary ecological and the social effect they make. This paper endeavoured to extend this obvious research bay, characterized the way of SMEs the total commitments of the area to economies of both advanced and advancing countries and their part engagement in CSR. The study embraced qualitative literary works review strategy. An audit of the negligible expositive expression furnished knowledge and characterized the course of examination in this significant and underexplored region of study. SMEs were discovered to perform parts connected with group improvement, representative activities, consumerism, natural movements, and production network necessities. To defeat the imperatives going up against SMEs engagement in CSR activities the paper prescribed expanded assets, preparing programs advancement of SMEs arranged instruments and guidelines to guide appropriation and execution and government mediation systems to make the fundamental motivating forces and underpin administrations for adequate engagement.

Keywords: corporate social responsibility, small and medium-sized enterprises, responsible practices, corporate citizenship

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Authors: Armando Cartenì, Ilaria Henke

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The perceived public transport quality is an important driver that influences both customer satisfaction and mobility choices. The competition among transport operators needs to improve the quality of the services and identify which attributes are perceived as relevant by passengers. Among the “traditional” public transport quality attributes there are, for example: travel and waiting time, regularity of the services, and ticket price. By contrast, there are some “non-conventional” attributes that could significantly influence customer satisfaction jointly with the “traditional” ones. Among these, the beauty/aesthetics of the transport terminals (e.g. rail station and bus terminal) is probably one of the most impacting on user perception. Starting from these considerations, the point stressed in this paper was if (and how munch) the travel experience of the overall travel (e.g. how long is the travel, how many transport modes must be used) influences the perception of the public transport quality. The aim of this paper was to investigate the weight of the terminal quality (e.g. aesthetic, comfort and service offered) within the overall travel experience. The case study was the extra-urban Italian bus network. The passengers of the major Italian terminal bus were interviewed and the analysis of the results shows that about the 75% of the travelers, are available to pay up to 30% more for the ticket price for having a high quality terminal. A travel experience effect was observed: the average perceived transport quality varies with the characteristic of the overall trip. The passengers that have a “long trip” (travel time greater than 2 hours) perceived as “low” the overall quality of the trip even if they pass through a high quality terminal. The opposite occurs for the “short trip” passengers. This means that if a traveler passes through a high quality station, the overall perception of that terminal could be significantly reduced if he is tired from a long trip. This result is important and if confirmed through other case studies, will allow to conclude that the “travel experience impact" must be considered as an explicit design variable for public transport services and planning.

Keywords: transportation planning, sustainable mobility, decision support system, discrete choice model, design problem

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Authors: Demet Ozgur-Unluakin, Busenur Turkali, S. Caglar Aksezer

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Since the age of industrialization, maintenance has always been a very crucial element for all kinds of factories and plants. With today’s increasingly developing technology, the system structure of such facilities has become more complicated, and even a small operational disruption may return huge losses in profits for the companies. In order to reduce these costs, effective maintenance planning is crucial, but at the same time, it is a difficult task because of the complexity of systems. The most important aspect of correct maintenance planning is to understand the structure of the system, not to ignore the dependencies among the components and as a result, to model the system correctly. In this way, it will be better to understand which component improves the system more when it is maintained. Undoubtedly, proactive maintenance at a scheduled time reduces costs because the scheduled maintenance prohibits high losses in profits. But the necessity of corrective maintenance, which directly affects the situation of the system and provides direct intervention when the system fails, should not be ignored. When a fault occurs in the system, if the problem is not solved immediately and proactive maintenance time is awaited, this may result in increased costs. This study proposes various maintenance methods with different efficiency measures under corrective maintenance strategy on a subsystem of a thermal power plant. To model the dependencies between the components, dynamic Bayesian Network approach is employed. The proposed maintenance methods aim to minimize the total maintenance cost in a planning horizon, as well as to find the most appropriate component to be attacked on, which improves the system reliability utmost. Performances of the methods are compared under corrective maintenance strategy. Furthermore, sensitivity analysis is also applied under different cost values. Results show that all fault effect methods perform better than the replacement effect methods and this conclusion is also valid under different downtime cost values.

Keywords: dynamic Bayesian networks, maintenance, multi-component systems, reliability

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Authors: Hsin Hua He

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The purpose of this study is to strengthen the social cohesion of the local community by injecting the cultural and creative concept into the industrial heritage transformation. The paradigms of industrial heritage research tend to explore from the perspective of space analysis, which concerned less about the cultural regeneration and the development of local culture. The paradigms of cultural quarter research use to from the perspective of creative economy and urban planning, concerned less about the social impacts and the interaction between residents and industrial sites. This research combines these two research areas of industrial heritage and cultural quarter, and focus on the social and cultural aspects. The transformation from the industrial heritage into a cultural park not only enhances the cultural capital and the quality of residents’ lives, but also preserves the unique local values. Internally it shapes the local identity, while externally establishes the image of the city. This paper uses Westergasfabriek Cultural Park in Amsterdam as the case study, through literature analysis, field work, and depth interview to explore how the cultural regeneration transforms industrial heritage. In terms of the planners’ and residents’ point of view adopt the theory of community participation, social capital, and sense of place to analyze the social impact of the industrial heritage transformation. The research finding is through cultural regeneration policies like holding cultural activities, building up public space, social network and public-private partnership, and adopting adaptive reuse to fulfil the people’s need and desire and reach the social cohesion. Finally, the study will examine the transformation of Taiwan's industrial heritage into cultural and creative quarters. The results are expected to use the operating experience of the Amsterdam cases and provide directions for Taiwan’s industrial heritage management to meet the cultural, social, economic symbiosis.

Keywords: cultural regeneration, community participation, social capital, sense of place, industrial heritage transformation

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Authors: Amaladhithyan Krishnamoorthy, Ruvaitha Banu

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Vision is considered as the most important sense in humans, without which leading a normal can be often difficult. There are many existing smart canes for visually impaired with obstacle detection using ultrasonic transducer to help them navigate. Though the basic smart cane increases the safety of the users, it does not help in filling the void of visual loss. This paper introduces the concept of Digi-Buddy which is an evolved smart cane for visually impaired. The cane consists for several modules, apart from the basic obstacle detection features; the Digi-Buddy assists the user by capturing video/images and streams them to the server using a wide-angled camera, which then detects the objects using Deep Convolutional Neural Network. In addition to determining what the particular image/object is, the distance of the object is assessed by the ultrasonic transducer. The sound generation application, modelled with the help of Natural Language Processing is used to convert the processed images/object into audio. The object detected is signified by its name which is transmitted to the user with the help of Bluetooth hear phones. The object detection is extended to facial recognition which maps the faces of the person the user meets in the database of face images and alerts the user about the person. One of other crucial function consists of an automatic-intimation-alarm which is triggered when the user is in an emergency. If the user recovers within a set time, a button is provisioned in the cane to stop the alarm. Else an automatic intimation is sent to friends and family about the whereabouts of the user using GPS. In addition to safety and security by the existing smart canes, the proposed concept devices to be implemented as a prototype helping visually-impaired visualize their surroundings through audio more in an amicable way.

Keywords: artificial intelligence, facial recognition, natural language processing, internet of things

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Authors: Ali Kadivar, Kaveh Niayesh

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The integration of green energy resources is a major focus, and the role of Medium Voltage Direct Current (MVDC) systems is exponentially expanding. However, the protection of MVDC systems against DC faults is a challenge that can have consequences on reliable and safe grid operation. This challenge reveals the need for MVDC circuit breakers (MVDC CB), which are in infancies of their improvement. Therefore will be a lack of MVDC CBs standards, including thresholds for acceptable power losses and operation speed. To establish a baseline for comparison purposes, a benchmark system for testing future MVDC CBs is vital. The literatures just give the timing sequence of each switch and the emphasis is on the topology, without in-depth study on the control algorithm of DCCB, as the circuit breaker control system is not yet systematic. A digital testing benchmark is designed for the Proof-of-concept of simulation studies using software models. It can validate studies based on real-time digital simulators and Transient Network Analyzer (TNA) models. The proposed experimental setup utilizes data accusation from the accurate sensors installed on the tested MVDC CB and through general purpose input/outputs (GPIO) from the microcontroller and PC Prototype studies in the laboratory-based models utilizing Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) equipment connected to real-time digital simulators is achieved. The improved control algorithm of the circuit breaker can reduce the peak fault current and avoid arc resignation, helping the coordination of DCCB in relay protection. Moreover, several research gaps are identified regarding case studies and evaluation approaches.

Keywords: DC circuit breaker, hardware-in-the-loop, real time digital simulation, testing benchmark

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Authors: Meenakshi Chaubey

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A principle proposed in the cross-cultural adaption of behavior among Indian and Tibetan societies in which there are not any great variations between their young adults on the mindset of day-to-day marriage, Marriage plays a dominant position in constructing the society, which in large part comprises underneath the domain of lifestyle. Way of life is a social behavior and norm located in human societies where an extensive range of phenomena can be transmitted thru social studying. It acts characteristic of the individual has been the diploma day-to-day which they have got cultivated a specific stage of class in arts, science, architecture. The existing studies preliminarily on young adults of each community, wherein we carried out a comparative observe of the mindset of daily marriage among Indian and Tibetan teens. Further, we studied statistics comprehensively on the mindset closer day by day the marriage between Indian adult males and Tibetan younger males. With the extension of a complete look, we considered the mindset of an everyday marriage of Indian girls and Tibetan young ladies. Studies 1 showed that there might be no sizable distinction within the attitude of the day-to-day marriage of Indian and Tibetan teenagers. It, in addition, showed that they followed each different marriage beliefs and customs. Studies 2 showed that there might be no important difference in the attitude toward the everyday marriage of Indian and Tibetan young males. It similarly showcased that day-to-day secular schooling gadget in Tibetan society complements their clinical approach and changes their point of view on distinct social issues along with marriage. Research three confirmed that there is no substantial difference in the mindset of the daily marriage of Indian and Tibetan younger females. It similarly spread out the strict authorities' recommendations that they may no longer be allowed day-to-day comply with their marriage practices, including polygamy and polyandry. Thus, the information showed that there's a shift of lifestyle from one network every day to some other community because of social every day, which affects the conduct and results of daily past cultural adaptation.

Keywords: culture, marriage, attitude, society, young adults, Indian, Tibetan

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Authors: Suphap Sikkhaphan, Muwanga Zake, Johnnie Wycliffe Frank

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The purposes of the study included a) investigating the authentic and transformational leadership model of the directors of tambon health promoting hospitals b) evaluating the relation between the authentic and transformation leadership of the directors of tambon health promoting hospitals and the effectiveness of their hospitals and c) assessing the invariance test of the authentic and transformation leadership of the directors of tambon health promoting hospitals. All 400 southern tambon health promoting hospital directors were enrolled into the study. Half were males (200), and another half were females (200). They were sampled via a stratified method. A research tool was a questionnaire paper containing 4 different sections. The Alpha-Cronbach’s Coefficient was equally to .98. Descriptive analysis was used for demographic data, and inferential statistics was used for the relation and invariance tests of authentic and transformational leadership of the directors of tambon health promoting hospitals. The findings revealed overall the authentic and transformation leadership model of the directors of tambon health promoting hospitals has the relation to the effectiveness of the hospitals. Only the factor of “strong community support” was statistically significantly related to the authentic leadership (p < .05). However, there were four latent variables statistically related to the transformational leadership including, competency and work climate, management system, network cooperation, and strong community support (p = .01). Regarding the relation between the authentic and transformation leadership of the directors of tambon health promoting hospitals and the effectiveness of their hospitals, four casual variables of authentic leadership were not related to those latent variables. In contrast, all four latent variables of transformational leadership has statistically significantly related to the effectiveness of tambon health promoting hospitals (p = .001). Furthermore, only management system variable was significantly related to those casual variables of the authentic leadership (p < .05). Regarding the invariance test, the result found no statistical significance of the authentic and transformational leadership model of the directors of tambon health promoting hospitals, especially between male and female genders (p > .05).

Keywords: authentic leadership, transformational leadership, tambon health promoting hospital

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Authors: Rui Wu

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In the volatile modern manufacturing environment, new orders randomly occur at any time, while the pre-emptive methods are infeasible. This leads to a real-time scheduling method that can produce a reasonably good schedule quickly. The dynamic Flexible Job Shop problem is an NP-hard scheduling problem that hybrid the dynamic Job Shop problem with the Parallel Machine problem. A Flexible Job Shop contains different work centres. Each work centre contains parallel machines that can process certain operations. Many algorithms, such as genetic algorithms or simulated annealing, have been proposed to solve the static Flexible Job Shop problems. However, the time efficiency of these methods is low, and these methods are not feasible in a dynamic scheduling problem. Therefore, a dynamic rule selection scheduling system based on the reinforcement learning method is proposed in this research, in which the dynamic Flexible Job Shop problem is divided into several parallel machine problems to decrease the complexity of the dynamic Flexible Job Shop problem. Firstly, the features of jobs, machines, work centres, and flexible job shops are selected to describe the status of the dynamic Flexible Job Shop problem at each decision point in each work centre. Secondly, a framework of reinforcement learning algorithm using a double-layer deep Q-learning network is applied to select proper composite dispatching rules based on the status of each work centre. Then, based on the selected composite dispatching rule, an available operation is selected from the waiting buffer and assigned to an available machine in each work centre. Finally, the proposed algorithm will be compared with well-known dispatching rules on objectives of mean tardiness, mean flow time, mean waiting time, or mean percentage of waiting time in the real-time Flexible Job Shop problem. The result of the simulations proved that the proposed framework has reasonable performance and time efficiency.

Keywords: dynamic scheduling problem, flexible job shop, dispatching rules, deep reinforcement learning

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Authors: Khairani Binti Supyan, Fatimah Khalid, Mas Rina Mustaffa, Azreen Bin Azman, Amirul Azuani Romle

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Perennial plant classification plays a significant role in various agricultural and environmental applications, assisting in plant identification, disease detection, and biodiversity monitoring. Nevertheless, attaining high accuracy in perennial plant image classification remains challenging due to the complex variations in plant appearance, the diverse range of environmental conditions under which images are captured, and the inherent variability in image quality stemming from various factors such as lighting conditions, camera settings, and focus. This paper proposes an adaptation approach to optimize perennial plant image classification by fine-tuning the pre-trained DNNs model. This paper explores the efficacy of fine-tuning prevalent architectures, namely VGG16, ResNet50, and InceptionV3, leveraging transfer learning to tailor the models to the specific characteristics of perennial plant datasets. A subset of the MYLPHerbs dataset consisted of 6 perennial plant species of 13481 images under various environmental conditions that were used in the experiments. Different strategies for fine-tuning, including adjusting learning rates, training set sizes, data augmentation, and architectural modifications, were investigated. The experimental outcomes underscore the effectiveness of fine-tuning deep neural networks for perennial plant image classification, with ResNet50 showcasing the highest accuracy of 99.78%. Despite ResNet50's superior performance, both VGG16 and InceptionV3 achieved commendable accuracy of 99.67% and 99.37%, respectively. The overall outcomes reaffirm the robustness of the fine-tuning approach across different deep neural network architectures, offering insights into strategies for optimizing model performance in the domain of perennial plant image classification.

Keywords: perennial plants, image classification, deep neural networks, fine-tuning, transfer learning, VGG16, ResNet50, InceptionV3

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Authors: Anuj Kumar, Kummara M. Rao, Sung S. Han

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Bone tissue engineering has emerged as a potentially alternative method for localized bone defects or diseases, congenital deformation, and surgical reconstruction. The designing and the fabrication of the ideal scaffold is a great challenge, in restoring of the damaged bone tissues via cell attachment, proliferation, and differentiation under three-dimensional (3D) biological micro-/nano-environment. In this case, hydrogel system composed of high hydrophilic 3D polymeric-network that is able to mimic some of the functional physical and chemical properties of the extracellular matrix (ECM) and possibly may provide a suitable 3D micro-/nano-environment (i.e., resemblance of native bone tissues). Thus, this proposed hydrogel system is highly permeable and facilitates the transport of the nutrients and metabolites. However, the use of hydrogels in bone tissue engineering is limited because of their low mechanical properties (toughness and stiffness) that continue to posing challenges in designing and fabrication of tough and stiff hydrogels along with improved bioactive properties. For this purpose, in our lab, polyacrylamide-based hybrid hydrogels were synthesized by involving sodium alginate, cellulose nanocrystals and silica-based glass using one-step free-radical polymerization. The results showed good in vitro apatite-forming ability (biomineralization) and improved mechanical properties (under compression in the form of strength and stiffness in both wet and dry conditions), and in vitro osteoblastic (MC3T3-E1 cells) cytocompatibility. For in vitro cytocompatibility assessment, both qualitative (attachment and spreading of cells using FESEM) and quantitative (cell viability and proliferation using MTT assay) analyses were performed. The obtained hybrid hydrogels may potentially be used in bone tissue engineering applications after establishment of in vivo characterization.

Keywords: bone tissue engineering, cellulose nanocrystals, hydrogels, polyacrylamide, sodium alginate

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Authors: Ola Jon Mork, Irina Emily Hansen

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The European Growth Strategy Program calls for more efficient methods for knowledge creation and innovation. This study contributes with new insights into the Singapore Innovation System; more precisely how knowledge processes are facilitated. The research material is collected by visiting the different innovation locations in Singapore and depth interview with key persons. The different innovation actors web sites and brochures have been studied. Governmental reports and figures have also been studied. The findings show that facilitation of Knowledge Processes in the Singapore Innovation System has a basic structure with three processes, which is 1) Idea capturing – 2)Technology and Business Execution – 3)Idea Realization. Dedicated innovation parks work with the most promising entrepreneurs; more precisely: finding the persons with the motivation to 'change the world'. The innovation park will facilitate these entrepreneurs for 100 days, where they also will be connected to a global network of venture capital. And, the entrepreneurs will have access to mentors from these venture companies. Research institutes parks work with the development of world leading technology. To facilitate knowledge development they connect with industrial companies which are the most promising applicators of their technology. Knowledge facilitation is the main purpose, but this cooperation/testing is also serving as a platform for funding. Probably this is cooperation is also attractive for world leading companies. Dedicated innovation parks work with facilitation of innovators of new applications and perfection of products for the end- user. These parks can be specialized in special areas, like health products and life science products. Another example of this is automotive companies giving research call for these parks to develop and innovate new products and services upon their technology. Common characteristics for the knowledge facilitation in the Singapore Innovation System are a short trial period for promising actors, normally 100 days. It is also a strong focus on training of the entrepreneurs. Presentations and diffusion of knowledge is an important part of the facilitation. Funding will be available for the most successful entrepreneurs and innovators.

Keywords: knowledge processes, facilitation, innovation, Singapore innovation web

Procedia PDF Downloads 297

Authors: Umit Cali

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The integration of intermittent energy sources like wind farms into the electricity grid has become an important challenge for the utilization and control of electric power systems, because of the fluctuating behaviour of wind power generation. Wind power predictions improve the economic and technical integration of large amounts of wind energy into the existing electricity grid. Trading, balancing, grid operation, controllability and safety issues increase the importance of predicting power output from wind power operators. Therefore, wind power forecasting systems have to be integrated into the monitoring and control systems of the transmission system operator (TSO) and wind farm operators/traders. The wind forecasts are relatively precise for the time period of only a few hours, and, therefore, relevant with regard to Spot and Intraday markets. In this work predictive data mining techniques are applied to identify a statistical and neural network model or set of models that can be used to predict wind power output of large onshore and offshore wind farms. These advanced data analytic methods helps us to amalgamate the information in very large meteorological, oceanographic and SCADA data sets into useful information and manageable systems. Accurate wind power forecasts are beneficial for wind plant operators, utility operators, and utility customers. An accurate forecast allows grid operators to schedule economically efficient generation to meet the demand of electrical customers. This study is also dedicated to an in-depth consideration of issues such as the comparison of day ahead and the short-term wind power forecasting results, determination of the accuracy of the wind power prediction and the evaluation of the energy economic and technical benefits of wind power forecasting.

Keywords: renewable energy sources, wind power, forecasting, data mining, big data, artificial intelligence, energy economics, power trading, power grids

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Authors: Janusz Bobulski, Mariusz Kubanek

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The main goal of the research is to develop a multimedia container structure containing three types of images: RGB, lidar and infrared, properly calibrated to each other. An additional goal is to develop program libraries for creating and saving this type of file and for restoring it. It will also be necessary to develop a method of data synchronization from lidar and RGB cameras as well as infrared. This type of file could be used in autonomous vehicles, which would certainly facilitate data processing by the intelligent autonomous vehicle management system. Autonomous cars are increasingly breaking into our consciousness. No one seems to have any doubts that self-driving cars are the future of motoring. Manufacturers promise that moving the first of them to showrooms is the prospect of the next few years. Many experts believe that creating a network of communicating autonomous cars will be able to completely eliminate accidents. However, to make this possible, it is necessary to develop effective methods of detection of objects around the moving vehicle. In bad weather conditions, this task is difficult on the basis of the RGB(red, green, blue) image. Therefore, in such situations, you should be supported by information from other sources, such as lidar or infrared cameras. The problem is the different data formats that individual types of devices return. In addition to these differences, there is a problem with the synchronization of these data and the formatting of this data. The goal of the project is to develop a file structure that could be containing a different type of data. This type of file is calling a multimedia container. A multimedia container is a container that contains many data streams, which allows you to store complete multimedia material in one file. Among the data streams located in such a container should be indicated streams of images, films, sounds, subtitles, as well as additional information, i.e., metadata. This type of file could be used in autonomous vehicles, which would certainly facilitate data processing by the intelligent autonomous vehicle management system. As shown by preliminary studies, the use of combining RGB and InfraRed images with Lidar data allows for easier data analysis. Thanks to this application, it will be possible to display the distance to the object in a color photo. Such information can be very useful for drivers and for systems in autonomous cars.

Keywords: an autonomous car, image processing, lidar, obstacle detection

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Authors: Redhouane Ghernaout, Amira Fredj, Boualem Remini

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Suspended sediment transport is a serious problem worldwide, but it is much more worrying in certain regions of the world, as is the case in the Maghreb and more particularly in Algeria. It continues to take disturbing proportions in Northern Algeria due to the variability of rains in time and in space and constant deterioration of vegetation. Its prediction is essential in order to identify its intensity and define the necessary actions for its reduction. The purpose of this study is to analyze the concentration data of suspended sediment measured at Wadi El-Abtal Hydrometric Station. It also aims to find and highlight regressive power relationships, which can explain the suspended solid flow by the measured liquid flow. The study strives to find models of artificial neural networks linking the flow, month and precipitation parameters with solid flow. The obtained results show that the power function of the solid transport rating curve and the models of artificial neural networks are appropriate methods for analysing and estimating suspended sediment transport in Wadi Mina at Wadi El-Abtal Hydrometric Station. They made it possible to identify in a fairly conclusive manner the model of neural networks with four input parameters: the liquid flow Q, the month and the daily precipitation measured at the representative stations (Frenda 013002 and Ain El-Hadid 013004 ) of the watershed. The model thus obtained makes it possible to estimate the daily solid flows (interpolate and extrapolate) even beyond the period of observation of solid flows (1985/86 to 1999/00), given the availability of the average daily liquid flows and daily precipitation since 1953/1954.

Keywords: suspended sediment, concentration, regression, liquid flow, solid flow, artificial neural network, modeling, mina, algeria

Procedia PDF Downloads 103

Authors: Claudio L. M. Souza, Milton Erthal, Aldo Shimoya, Elias R. Goncalves, Igor C. Rangel, Allysson R. T. Tavares, Elias G. Figueira

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The process of choosing a region for the implementation of wind farms involves factors such as the wind regime, economic viability, land value, topography, and accessibility. This work presents results obtained by multi-criteria decision analysis, and it establishes a hierarchy, regarding the installation of wind farms, among geopolicy regions in the state of ‘Rio de Janeiro’, Brazil: ‘Regiao Norte-RN’, ‘Regiao dos Lagos-RL’ and ‘Regiao Serrana-RS’. The wind regime map indicates only these three possible regions with an average annual wind speed of above of 6.0 m/s. The method applied was the Analytical Hierarchy Process-AHP, designed to prioritize and rank the three regions based on four criteria as follows: 1) potential of the site and average wind speeds of above 6.0 ms-¹, 2) average land value, 3) distribution and interconnection to electric network with the highest number of electricity stations, and 4) accessibility with proximity and quality of highways and flat topography. The values of energy generation were calculated for wind turbines 50, 75, and 100 meters high, considering the production of site (GWh/Km²) and annual production (GWh). The weight of each criterion was attributed by six engineers and by analysis of Road Map, the Map of the Electric System, the Map of Wind Regime and the Annual Land Value Report. The results indicated that in 'RS', the demand was estimated at 2,000 GWh, so a wind farm can operate efficiently in 50 m turbines. This region is mainly mountainous with difficult access and lower land value. With respect to ‘RL’, the wind turbines have to be installed at a height of 75 m high to reach a demand of 6,300 GWh. This region is very flat, with easy access, and low land value. Finally, the ‘NR’ was evaluated as very flat and with expensive lands. In this case, wind turbines with 100 m can reach an annual production of 19,000 GWh. In this Region, the coast area was classified as of greater logistic, productivity and economic potential.

Keywords: AHP, renewable energy, wind energy

Procedia PDF Downloads 151