Search results for: 3D building models

Authors: Gebreselassie Sebhatleab

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According to the Global Peace Index report (GPI, 2023), global peacefulness has deteriorated by more than 0.42%. Old and new conflicts, COVID-19, and political and cultural polarization are the main drivers of conflicts in the world. The 2022 was the deadliest year for armed conflict in the history of the GPI. In Ethiopia, over half a million people died in the Tigray war, which was the largest conflict death event since the 1994 Rwandan genocide. In total, 84 countries recorded an improvement, while 79 countries recorded a deterioration in peacefulness across the globe. The Russia-Ukraine war and its consequences were the main drivers of the deterioration in peacefulness globally. Both Russia and Ukraine are now ranked amongst the ten least peaceful countries, and Ukraine had the largest deterioration of any country in the 2023 GPI. In the same year, the global impact of violence on the economy was 17 percent, which was equivalent to 10.9% of global GDP. Besides, the brutal conflict in Tigray started in November. 2020 claimed more than half a million lives lost and displaced nearly 3 million people, along with widespread human rights violations and sexual violence has left deep damage on the population. The displaced people are still unable to return home because the western, southern and Eastern parts of Tigray are occupied by Eritrean and Amhara forces, despite the Pretoria Agreement. Currently, armed conflicts in Amhara in the Oromya regions are intensified, and human rights violations are being reported in both regions. Meanwhile, protests have been held by war-injured TDF members, IDPs and teachers in the Tigray region. Hence, the general objective of this project is to explore the challenges of peace-building processes in the border woredas of the Eastern Zone of the Tigray Region. Methodologically, the project will employ exploratory qualitative research designs to gather and analyze qualitative data. A purposive sampling technique will be applied to gather pertinent information from the key stakeholders. Open-ended interview questions will be prepared to gather relevant information about the challenges and perceptions of peacebuilding in the study area. Data will be analyzed using qualitative methods such as content analysis, narrative analysis and phenomenological analysis to deeply investigate the challenges of peace-building in the study woredas. Findings of this research project will be employed for program intervention to promote sustainable peace in the study area.

Keywords: peace building, conflcit and violence, political instability, insecurity

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Authors: Ali Reza Sattarzadeh, Ronny J. Kutadinata, Pubudu N. Pathirana, Van Thanh Huynh

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Traffic congestion has become a severe worldwide problem, affecting everyday life, fuel consumption, time, and air pollution. The primary causes of these issues are inadequate transportation infrastructure, poor traffic signal management, and rising population. Traffic flow forecasting is one of the essential and effective methods in urban congestion and traffic management, which has attracted the attention of researchers. With the development of technology, undeniable progress has been achieved in existing methods. However, there is a possibility of improvement in the extraction of temporal and spatial features to determine the importance of traffic flow sequences and extraction features. In the proposed model, we implement the convolutional neural network (CNN) and long short-term memory (LSTM) deep learning models for mining nonlinear correlations and their effectiveness in increasing the accuracy of traffic flow prediction in the real dataset. According to the experiments, the results indicate that implementing Conv-LSTM networks increases the productivity and accuracy of deep learning models for traffic flow prediction.

Keywords: deep learning algorithms, intelligent transportation systems, spatiotemporal features, traffic flow prediction

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Authors: Praveen Vayalamkuzhi, Veeraragavan Amirthalingam

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Studies on safety on highways are becoming the need of the hour as over 400 lives are lost every day in India due to road crashes. In order to evaluate the factors that lead to different levels of crash severity, it is necessary to investigate the level of safety of highways and their relation to crashes. In the present study, an attempt is made to identify the factors that contribute to road crashes and to quantify their effect on the severity of road crashes. The study was carried out on a four-lane divided rural highway in India. The variables considered in the analysis includes components of horizontal alignment of highway, viz., straight or curve section; time of day, driveway density, presence of median; median opening; gradient; operating speed; and annual average daily traffic. These variables were considered after a preliminary analysis. The major complexities in the study are the heterogeneous traffic and the speed variation between different classes of vehicles along the highway. To quantify the impact of each of these factors, statistical analyses were carried out using Logit model and also negative binomial regression. The output from the statistical models proved that the variables viz., horizontal components of the highway alignment; driveway density; time of day; operating speed as well as annual average daily traffic show significant relation with the severity of crashes viz., fatal as well as injury crashes. Further, the annual average daily traffic has significant effect on the severity compared to other variables. The contribution of highway horizontal components on crash severity is also significant. Logit models can predict crashes better than the negative binomial regression models. The results of the study will help the transport planners to look into these aspects at the planning stage itself in the case of highways operated under heterogeneous traffic flow condition.

Keywords: geometric design, heterogeneous traffic, road crash, statistical analysis, level of safety

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Authors: Shamm Kidane, Ibrahim Abdella, Fitsum Gaim, Simon Mulugeta, Sirak Asmerom, Natnael Ambasager, Yoel Ghebrihiwot

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The call for natural language processing (NLP) systems for low-resource languages has become more apparent than ever in the past few years, with the arduous challenges still present in preparing such systems. This paper presents an improved dataset version of the Nagaoka Tigrinya Corpus for Parts-of-Speech (POS) classification system in the Tigrinya language. The size of the initial Nagaoka dataset was incremented, totaling the new tagged corpus to 118K tokens, which comprised the 12 basic POS annotations used previously. The additional content was also annotated manually in a stringent manner, followed similar rules to the former dataset and was formatted in CONLL format. The system made use of the novel approach in NLP tasks and use of the monolingually pre-trained TiELECTRA, TiBERT and TiRoBERTa transformer models. The highest achieved score is an impressive weighted F1-score of 94.2%, which surpassed the previous systems by a significant measure. The system will prove useful in the progress of NLP-related tasks for Tigrinya and similarly related low-resource languages with room for cross-referencing higher-resource languages.

Keywords: Tigrinya POS corpus, TiBERT, TiRoBERTa, conditional random fields

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Authors: C. Bateira, J. Fernandes, A. Costa

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The Douro Demarked Region (DDR) is a production Porto wine region. On the NE of Portugal, the strong incision of the Douro valley developed very steep slopes, organized with agriculture terraces, have experienced an intense and deep transformation in order to implement the mechanization of the work. The old terrace system, based on stone vertical wall support structure, replaced by terraces with earth embankments experienced a huge terrace instability. This terrace instability has important economic and financial consequences on the agriculture enterprises. This paper presents and develops cartographic tools to access the embankment instability and identify the area prone to instability. The priority on this evaluation is related to the use of physically based mathematical models and develop a validation process based on an inventory of the past embankment instability. We used the shallow landslide stability model (SHALSTAB) based on physical parameters such us cohesion (c’), friction angle(ф), hydraulic conductivity, soil depth, soil specific weight (ϱ), slope angle (α) and contributing areas by Multiple Flow Direction Method (MFD). A terraced area can be analysed by this models unless we have very detailed information representative of the terrain morphology. The slope angle and the contributing areas depend on that. We can achieve that propose using digital elevation models (DEM) with great resolution (pixel with 40cm side), resulting from a set of photographs taken by a flight at 100m high with pixel resolution of 12cm. The slope angle results from this DEM. In the other hand, the MFD contributing area models the internal flow and is an important element to define the spatial variation of the soil saturation. That internal flow is based on the DEM. That is supported by the statement that the interflow, although not coincident with the superficial flow, have important similitude with it. Electrical resistivity monitoring values which related with the MFD contributing areas build from a DEM of 1m resolution and revealed a consistent correlation. That analysis, performed on the area, showed a good correlation with R2 of 0,72 and 0,76 at 1,5m and 2m depth, respectively. Considering that, a DEM with 1m resolution was the base to model the real internal flow. Thus, we assumed that the contributing area of 1m resolution modelled by MFD is representative of the internal flow of the area. In order to solve this problem we used a set of generalized DEMs to build the contributing areas used in the SHALSTAB. Those DEMs, with several resolutions (1m and 5m), were built from a set of photographs with 50cm resolution taken by a flight with 5km high. Using this maps combination, we modelled several final maps of terrace instability and performed a validation process with the contingency matrix. The best final instability map resembles the slope map from a DEM of 40cm resolution and a MFD map from a DEM of 1m resolution with a True Positive Rate (TPR) of 0,97, a False Positive Rate of 0,47, Accuracy (ACC) of 0,53, Precision (PVC) of 0,0004 and a TPR/FPR ratio of 2,06.

Keywords: agricultural terraces, cartography, landslides, SHALSTAB, vineyards

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Authors: Sridara Tipian, Henry Skates Jr., Antika Sawadsri

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It is widely recognized that universal design should be implemented as broadly as possible to benefit as many groups and sub groups of people within a society. In Thailand, public buildings such as public universities are obvious places where the benefits of universal design principles are easily appreciated and applied, but there are other building types such as private universities where the benefits may not be just as obvious. In these buildings, the implementation of universal design is not always achieved. There are many reasons given for this among which is the perceived additional cost of implementation. This paper argues that social capital should be taken into consideration when such decisions are being made. The paper investigates the background, principles and theories pertaining to universal design and using a case study of a private university, investigates the implementation of universal design against the background of current legislation and the perceptions of the private university administrators. The study examines the physical facilities of the case study university in the context of current theories and principles of universal design alongside the legal requirements for same. A survey of building users evaluates knowledge of and attitudes to universal design. The research shows that although administrators perceive the initial cost of investment to be prohibitive in the short term, in the long term, changes in societal values in relation to social inclusiveness are changing and that the social capital of investing in universal design should not be underestimated. The results of this study should provide greater incentive for the enforcement of the legal requirements for universal design in Thailand.

Keywords: public buildings, physical facilities, social capital private university, investment, decision making, value, enforcement, legal requirements

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Authors: Hadia Abdel Aziz, Raghda El Ebrashi

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Business models are shaped by their design space or the environment they are designed to be implemented in. The rapidly changing economic, technological, political, regulatory and market external environment severely affects business logic. This is particularly true for social enterprises whose core mission is to transform their environments, and thus, their whole business logic revolves around the interchange between the enterprise and the environment. The context in which social business operates imposes different business design constraints while at the same time, open up new design opportunities. It is also affected to a great extent by the impact that successful enterprises generate; a continuous loop of interaction that needs to be managed through a dynamic capability in order to generate a lasting powerful impact. This conceptual research synthesizes and analyzes literature on social enterprise, social enterprise business models, business model innovation, business model design, and the open system view theory to propose a new business model design process for social enterprises that takes into account the critical role of environmental factors. This process would help the social enterprise develop a dynamic capability that ensures the alignment of its business model to its environmental context, thus, maximizing its probability of success.

Keywords: social enterprise, business model, business model design, business model environment

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Authors: Kayode E. Oyetade, Seraphin D. Eyono Obono

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Age ratings are very helpful in providing parents with relevant information for the purchase and use of digital technologies by the children; this is why the non-definition of age ratings for the use of ICT's by children in schools is a major concern; and this problem serves as a motivation for this study whose aim is to examine the factors affecting the perceptions of educators on the learners’ youngest age for the introduction of ICT's in schools. This aim is achieved through two types of research objectives: the identification and design of theories and models on age ratings, and the empirical testing of such theories and models in a survey of educators from the Camperdown district of the South African KwaZulu-Natal province. A questionnaire is used for the collection of the data of this survey whose validity and reliability is checked in SPSS prior to its descriptive and correlative quantitative analysis. The main hypothesis supporting this research is the association between the demographics of educators, their personality, and their perceptions on the learners’ youngest age for the introduction of ICT's in schools; as claimed by existing research; except that the present study looks at personality from three dimensions: self-actualized personalities, fully functioning personalities, and healthy personalities. This hypothesis was fully confirmed by the empirical study conducted by this research except for the demographic factor where only the educators’ grade or class was found to be associated with the personality of educators.

Keywords: age ratings, educators, e-learning, personality theories

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Authors: Mustafa Tufekci, Caner Guven

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In Automotive Industry, sliding door systems that are also used as body closures, are safety members. Extreme product tests are realized to prevent failures in a design process, but these tests realized experimentally result in high costs. Finite element analysis is an effective tool used for the design process. These analyses are used before production of a prototype for validation of design according to customer requirement. In result of this, the substantial amount of time and cost is saved. Finite element model is created for geometries that are designed in 3D CAD programs. Different element types as bar, shell and solid, can be used for creating mesh model. The cheaper model can be created by the selection of element type, but combination of element type that was used in model, number and geometry of element and degrees of freedom affects the analysis result. Sliding door system is a good example which used these methods for this study. Structural analysis was realized for sliding door mechanism by using FE models. As well, physical tests that have same boundary conditions with FE models were realized. Comparison study for these element types, were done regarding test and analyses results then the optimum combination was achieved.

Keywords: finite element analysis, sliding door mechanism, element type, structural analysis

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Authors: C. S. Subhashini, H. L. Premaratne

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Landslides are the most recurrent and prominent disaster in Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka has been subjected to a number of extreme landslide disasters that resulted in a significant loss of life, material damage, and distress. It is required to explore a solution towards preparedness and mitigation to reduce recurrent losses associated with landslides. Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) and Hidden Markov Model (HMMs) are now widely used in many computer applications spanning multiple domains. This research examines the effectiveness of using Artificial Neural Networks and Hidden Markov Model in landslides predictions and the possibility of applying the modern technology to predict landslides in a prominent geographical area in Sri Lanka. A thorough survey was conducted with the participation of resource persons from several national universities in Sri Lanka to identify and rank the influencing factors for landslides. A landslide database was created using existing topographic; soil, drainage, land cover maps and historical data. The landslide related factors which include external factors (Rainfall and Number of Previous Occurrences) and internal factors (Soil Material, Geology, Land Use, Curvature, Soil Texture, Slope, Aspect, Soil Drainage, and Soil Effective Thickness) are extracted from the landslide database. These factors are used to recognize the possibility to occur landslides by using an ANN and HMM. The model acquires the relationship between the factors of landslide and its hazard index during the training session. These models with landslide related factors as the inputs will be trained to predict three classes namely, ‘landslide occurs’, ‘landslide does not occur’ and ‘landslide likely to occur’. Once trained, the models will be able to predict the most likely class for the prevailing data. Finally compared two models with regards to prediction accuracy, False Acceptance Rates and False Rejection rates and This research indicates that the Artificial Neural Network could be used as a strong decision support system to predict landslides efficiently and effectively than Hidden Markov Model.

Keywords: landslides, influencing factors, neural network model, hidden markov model

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Authors: Yang Yang, Dan Liu

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Anomaly detection models for network flow based on machine learning have poor detection performance under extremely unbalanced training data conditions and also have slow detection speed and large resource consumption when deploying on network edge devices. Embedding multi-teacher knowledge distillation (mKD) in anomaly detection can transfer knowledge from multiple teacher models to a single model. Inspired by this, we proposed a state-of-the-art model, mKDNAD, to improve detection performance. mKDNAD mine and integrate the knowledge of one-dimensional sequence and two-dimensional image implicit in network flow to improve the detection accuracy of small sample classes. The multi-teacher knowledge distillation method guides the train of the student model, thus speeding up the model's detection speed and reducing the number of model parameters. Experiments in the CICIDS2017 dataset verify the improvements of our method in the detection speed and the detection accuracy in dealing with the small sample classes.

Keywords: network flow anomaly detection (NAD), multi-teacher knowledge distillation, machine learning, deep learning

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Authors: Hedyeh Gamini, Hadi Abdus

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Tsunami, as a natural disaster, is composed of waves that are usually caused by severe movements at the sea floor. Although tsunami and its consequences cannot be prevented in any way, by examining past tsunamis and extracting key points on how to deal with this incident and learning from it, a positive step can be taken to reduce the vulnerability of human settlements and reduce the risk of this phenomenon in architecture and urbanism. The method is reviewing and has examined the documents written and valid internet sites related to managing and reducing the vulnerability of human settlements in face of tsunami. This paper has explored the tsunamis in Indonesia (2004), Sri Lanka (2004) and Japan (2011), and of the study objectives has been understanding how they dealt with tsunami and extracting key points, and the lessons from them in terms of reduction of vulnerability of human settlements in dealing with the tsunami. Finally, strategies to prevent and reduce the vulnerability of communities at risk of tsunamis have been offered in terms of architecture and urban planning. According to what is obtained from the study of the recent tsunamis, the authorities' quality of dealing with them, how to manage the crisis and the manner of their construction, it can be concluded that to reduce the vulnerability of human settlements against tsunami, there are generally four ways that are: 1-Construction of tall buildings with opening on the first floor so that water can flow easily under and the direction of the building should be in a way that water passes easily from the side. 2- The construction of multi-purpose centers, which could be used as vertical evacuation during accidents. 3- Constructing buildings in core forms with diagonal orientation of the coastline, 4- Building physical barriers (natural and synthetic) such as water dams, mounds of earth, sea walls and creating forests

Keywords: tsunami, architecture, reducing vulnerability, human settlements, urbanism

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Authors: Adrian Ionita, Ana-Maria Ghimes

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The lack of features, design and the lack of promoting an integrated booking application are some of the reasons why most online travel platforms only offer automation of old booking processes, being limited to the integration of a smaller number of services without addressing the user experience. This paper represents a practical study on how to improve travel applications creating user-profiles through data-mining based on neural networks and genetic algorithms. Choices made by users and their ‘friends’ in the ‘social’ network context can be considered input data for a recommendation engine. The purpose of using these algorithms and this design is to improve user experience and to deliver more features to the users. The paper aims to highlight a broader range of improvements that could be applied to travel applications in terms of design and service integration, while the main scientific approach remains the technical implementation of the neural network solution. The motivation of the technologies used is also related to the initiative of some online booking providers that have made the fact that they use some ‘neural network’ related designs public. These companies use similar Big-Data technologies to provide recommendations for hotels, restaurants, and cinemas with a neural network based recommendation engine for building a user ‘DNA profile’. This implementation of the ‘profile’ a collection of neural networks trained from previous user choices, can improve the usability and design of any type of application.

Keywords: artificial intelligence, big data, cloud computing, DNA profile, genetic algorithms, machine learning, neural networks, optimization, recommendation system, user profiling

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Authors: Muhammad Rizwan, Naveed Ahmad, Akhtar Naeem Khan

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Seismic behavior factors are evaluated for the performance assessment of low rise reinforced concrete RC frame structures based on experimental study of unidirectional dynamic shake table testing of two 1/3rd reduced scaled two storey frames, with a code confirming special moment resisting frame (SMRF) model and a noncompliant model of similar characteristics but built in low strength concrete .The models were subjected to a scaled accelerogram record of 1994 Northridge earthquake to deformed the test models to final collapse stage in order to obtain the structural response parameters. The fully compliant model was observed with more stable beam-sway response, experiencing beam flexure yielding and ground-storey column base yielding upon subjecting to 100% of the record. The response modification factor - R factor obtained for the code complaint and deficient prototype structures were 7.5 and 4.5 respectively, which is about 10% and 40% less than the UBC-97 specified value for special moment resisting reinforced concrete frame structures.

Keywords: Northridge 1994 earthquake, reinforced concrete frame, response modification factor, shake table testing

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Authors: Melissa Ramirez, Mohammad Awal

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The Inflow Performance Relationship (IPR) of a well is a relation between the oil production rate and flowing bottom-hole pressure. This relationship is an important tool for petroleum engineers to understand and predict the well performance. In the petroleum industry, IPR correlations are used to design and evaluate well completion, optimizing well production, and designing artificial lift. The most commonly used IPR correlations models are Vogel and Wiggins, these models are applicable to homogeneous and isotropic reservoir data. In this work, a new IPR model is developed to determine inflow performance relationship of oil wells in a naturally fracture reservoir. A 3D black-oil reservoir simulator is used to develop the oil mobility function for the studied reservoir. Based on simulation runs, four flow rates are run to record the oil saturation and calculate the relative permeability for a naturally fractured reservoir. The new method uses the result of a well test analysis along with permeability and pressure-volume-temperature data in the fluid flow equations to obtain the oil mobility function. Comparisons between the new method and two popular correlations for non-fractured reservoirs indicate the necessity for developing and using an IPR correlation specifically developed for a fractured reservoir.

Keywords: inflow performance relationship, mobility function, naturally fractured reservoir, well test analysis

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Authors: Andreas Stollwitzer, Lara Bettinelli, Josef Fink

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The expansion of the high-speed rail network over the past decades has resulted in new challenges for engineers, including traffic-induced resonance vibrations of railway bridges. Excessive resonance-induced speed-dependent accelerations of railway bridges during high-speed traffic can lead to negative consequences such as fatigue symptoms, distortion of the track, destabilisation of the ballast bed, and potentially even derailment. A realistic prognosis of bridge vibrations during high-speed traffic must not only rely on the right choice of an adequate calculation model for both bridge and train but first and foremost on the use of dynamic model parameters which reflect reality appropriately. However, comparisons between measured and calculated bridge vibrations are often characterised by considerable discrepancies, whereas dynamic calculations overestimate the actual responses and therefore lead to uneconomical results. This gap between measurement and calculation constitutes a complex research issue and can be traced to several causes. One major cause is found in the dynamic properties of the ballasted track, more specifically in the persisting, substantial uncertainties regarding the consideration of the ballasted track (mechanical model and input parameters) in dynamic calculations. Furthermore, the discrepancy is particularly pronounced concerning the damping values of the bridge, as conservative values have to be used in the calculations due to normative specifications and lack of knowledge. By using a large-scale test facility, the analysis of the dynamic behaviour of ballasted track has been a major research topic at the Institute of Structural Engineering/Steel Construction at TU Wien in recent years. This highly specialised test facility is designed for isolated research of the ballasted track's dynamic stiffness and damping properties – independent of the bearing structure. Several mechanical models for the ballasted track consisting of one or more continuous spring-damper elements were developed based on the knowledge gained. These mechanical models can subsequently be integrated into bridge models for dynamic calculations. Furthermore, based on measurements at the test facility, model-dependent stiffness and damping parameters were determined for these mechanical models. As a result, realistic mechanical models of the railway bridge with different levels of detail and sufficiently precise characteristic values are available for bridge engineers. Besides that, this contribution also presents another practical application of such a bridge model: Based on the bridge model, determination equations for the damping factor (as Lehr's damping factor) can be derived. This approach constitutes a first-time method that makes the damping factor of a railway bridge calculable. A comparison of this mathematical approach with measured dynamic parameters of existing railway bridges illustrates, on the one hand, the apparent deviation between normatively prescribed and in-situ measured damping factors. On the other hand, it is also shown that a new approach, which makes it possible to calculate the damping factor, provides results that are close to reality and thus raises potentials for minimising the discrepancy between measurement and calculation.

Keywords: ballasted track, bridge dynamics, damping, model design, railway bridges

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Authors: Yung C. Lin, Kung D. Wu, Wei C. Shih, Jui P. Hung

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High speed and high precision machining have become the most important technology in manufacturing industry. The surface roughness of high precision components is regarded as the important characteristics of the product quality. However, machining chatter could damage the machined surface and restricts the process efficiency. Therefore, selection of the appropriate cutting conditions is of importance to prevent the occurrence of chatter. In addition, vibration of the spindle tool also affects the surface quality, which implies the surface precision can be controlled by monitoring the vibration of the spindle tool. Based on this concept, this study was aimed to investigate the influence of the machining conditions on the surface roughness and the vibration of the spindle tool. To this end, a series of machining tests were conducted on aluminum alloy. In tests, the vibration of the spindle tool was measured by using the acceleration sensors. The surface roughness of the machined parts was examined using white light interferometer. The response surface methodology (RSM) was employed to establish the mathematical models for predicting surface finish and tool vibration, respectively. The correlation between the surface roughness and spindle tool vibration was also analyzed by ANOVA analysis. According to the machining tests, machined surface with or without chattering was marked on the lobes diagram as the verification of the machining conditions. Using multivariable regression analysis, the mathematical models for predicting the surface roughness and tool vibrations were developed based on the machining parameters, cutting depth (a), feed rate (f) and spindle speed (s). The predicted roughness is shown to agree well with the measured roughness, an average percentage of errors of 10%. The average percentage of errors of the tool vibrations between the measurements and the predictions of mathematical model is about 7.39%. In addition, the tool vibration under various machining conditions has been found to have a positive influence on the surface roughness (r=0.78). As a conclusion from current results, the mathematical models were successfully developed for the predictions of the surface roughness and vibration level of the spindle tool under different cutting condition, which can help to select appropriate cutting parameters and to monitor the machining conditions to achieve high surface quality in milling operation.

Keywords: machining parameters, machining stability, regression analysis, surface roughness

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Authors: Gichun Cha, Dongwan Lee, Junkyeong Kim, Aoqi Zhang, Seunghee Park

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All the world are studying the construction technology of double deck tunnel in order to respond to the increasing urban traffic demands and environmental changes. Advanced countries have the construction technology of the double deck tunnel structure. but the domestic country began research on it. Construction technologies are important. But Safety evaluation of structure is necessary to prevent possible accidents during construction. Thus, the double deck tunnel was required the shape management of middle slabs. The domestic country is preparing the construction of double deck tunnel for an alternate route and a pleasant urban environment. Shape management of double deck tunnel has been no research because it is a new attempted technology. The present, a similar study is bridge structure for the shape management. Bridge is implemented shape model using terrestrial laser scanning(TLS). Therefore, we proceed research on the bridge slabs because there is a similar structure of double deck tunnel. In the study, we develop shape management method of bridge slabs using TLS. We select the Test-bed for measurement site. This site is bridge located on Sungkyunkwan University Natural Sciences Campus. This bridge has a total length of 34m, the vertical height of 8.7m from the ground. It connects Engineering Building #1 and Engineering Building #2. Point cloud data for shape management is acquired the TLS and We utilized the Leica ScanStation C10/C5 model. We will confirm the Maximum displacement area of middle slabs using Least-Squares Fitting. We expect to raise stability for double deck tunnel through shape management for middle slabs.

Keywords: bridge slabs, least squares, safety evaluation, shape management method, terrestrial laser scanning

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Authors: A. Felimban, A. Prieto, U. Knaack, T. Klein

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This study aims to present an overview of recent research in building energy-retrofitting strategy applications and analyzing them within the context of hot arid climate regions which is in this case study represented by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The main goal of this research is to do an analytical study of recent research approaches to show where the primary gap in knowledge exists and outline which possible strategies are available that can be applied in future research. Also, the paper focuses on energy retrofitting strategies at a building envelop level. The study is limited to specific measures within the hot arid climate region. Scientific articles were carefully chosen as they met the expression criteria, such as retrofitting, energy-retrofitting, hot-arid, energy efficiency, residential buildings, which helped narrow the research scope. Then the papers were explored through descriptive analysis and justified results within the Saudi context in order to draw an overview of future opportunities from the field of study for the last two decades. The conclusions of the analysis of the recent research confirmed that the field of study had a research shortage on investigating actual applications and testing of newly introduced energy efficiency applications, lack of energy cost feasibility studies and there was also a lack of public awareness. In terms of research methods, it was found that simulation software was a major instrument used in energy retrofitting application research. The main knowledge gaps that were identified included the need for certain research regarding actual application testing; energy retrofitting strategies application feasibility; the lack of research on the importance of how strategies apply first followed by the user acceptance of developed scenarios.

Keywords: energy efficiency, energy retrofitting, hot arid, Saudi Arabia

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Authors: Omar Qaftan

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Earthquakes can cause tremendous loss of human life and can result in severe damage to a several of civil engineering structures especially the tall buildings. The response of a multistory structure subjected to earthquake loading is a complex task, and it requires to be studied by physical and numerical modelling. For many circumstances, the scale models on shaking table may be a more economical option than the similar full-scale tests. A shaking table apparatus is a powerful tool that offers a possibility of understanding the actual behaviour of structural systems under earthquake loading. It is required to use a set of scaling relations to predict the behaviour of the full-scale structure. Selecting the scale factors is the most important steps in the simulation of the prototype into the scaled model. In this paper, the principles of scaling modelling procedure are explained in details, and the simulation of scaled multi-storey concrete structure for dynamic studies is investigated. A procedure for a complete dynamic simulation analysis is investigated experimentally and numerically with a scale factor of 1/50. The frequency domain accounting and lateral displacement for both numerical and experimental scaled models are determined. The procedure allows accounting for the actual dynamic behave of actual size porotype structure and scaled model. The procedure is adapted to determine the effects of the tall multi-storey structure on a raft foundation. Four generated accelerograms were used as inputs for the time history motions which are in complying with EC8. The output results of experimental works expressed regarding displacements and accelerations are compared with those obtained from a conventional fixed-base numerical model. Four-time history was applied in both experimental and numerical models, and they concluded that the experimental has an acceptable output accuracy in compare with the numerical model output. Therefore this modelling methodology is valid and qualified for different shaking table experiments tests.

Keywords: structure, raft, soil, interaction

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Authors: Chun-Lang Chang, Chun-Kai Liu

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In this study, the patients that have undergone total knee replacement surgery from the 2010 National Health Insurance database were adopted as the study participants. The important factors were screened and selected through literature collection and interviews with physicians. Through the Cross Entropy Method (CE), Genetic Algorithm Logistic Regression (GALR), and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), the weights of the factors were obtained. In addition, the weights of the respective algorithms, coupled with the Excel VBA were adopted to construct the Case Based Reasoning (CBR) system. The results through statistical tests show that the GALR and PSO produced no significant differences, and the accuracy of both models were above 97%. Moreover, the area under the curve of ROC for these two models also exceeded 0.87. This study shall serve as a reference for medical staff as an assistance for clinical assessment of infections in order to effectively enhance medical service quality and efficiency, avoid unnecessary medical waste, and substantially contribute to resource allocations in medical institutions.

Keywords: Case Based Reasoning, Cross Entropy Method, Genetic Algorithm Logistic Regression, Particle Swarm Optimization, Total Knee Replacement Surgery

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Authors: Syazreen N. Shair, Saiful A. Ishak, Aida Y. Yusof, Azizah Murad

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In this paper, we forecast age-specific Malaysian mortality rates and life expectancy at births by gender and ethnic groups including Malay, Chinese and Indian. Two mortality forecasting models are adopted the original Lee-Carter model and its recent modified version, the product ratio coherent model. While the first forecasts the mortality rates for each subpopulation independently, the latter accounts for the relationship between sub-populations. The evaluation of both models is performed using the out-of-sample forecast errors which are mean absolute percentage errors (MAPE) for mortality rates and mean forecast errors (MFE) for life expectancy at births. The best model is then used to perform the long-term forecasts up to the year 2030, the year when Malaysia is expected to become an aged nation. Results suggest that in terms of overall accuracy, the product ratio model performs better than the original Lee-Carter model. The association of lower mortality group (Chinese) in the subpopulation model can improve the forecasts of high mortality groups (Malay and Indian).

Keywords: coherent forecasts, life expectancy at births, Lee-Carter model, product-ratio model, mortality rates

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Authors: Karim Hamidi Machekposhti, Hossein Sedghi

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This study was designed to find the best stochastic model (using of time series analysis) for annual extreme streamflow (peak and maximum streamflow) of Karkheh River at Iran. The Auto-regressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) model used to simulate these series and forecast those in future. For the analysis, annual extreme streamflow data of Jelogir Majin station (above of Karkheh dam reservoir) for the years 1958–2005 were used. A visual inspection of the time plot gives a little increasing trend; therefore, series is not stationary. The stationarity observed in Auto-Correlation Function (ACF) and Partial Auto-Correlation Function (PACF) plots of annual extreme streamflow was removed using first order differencing (d=1) in order to the development of the ARIMA model. Interestingly, the ARIMA(4,1,1) model developed was found to be most suitable for simulating annual extreme streamflow for Karkheh River. The model was found to be appropriate to forecast ten years of annual extreme streamflow and assist decision makers to establish priorities for water demand. The Statistical Analysis System (SAS) and Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) codes were used to determinate of the best model for this series.

Keywords: stochastic models, ARIMA, extreme streamflow, Karkheh river

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Authors: Mehdi Behbahani, Sebastian Rible, Charles Moulinec, Yvan Fournier, Mike Nicolai, Paolo Crosetto

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Computational Fluid Dynamics blood-flow simulations are increasingly used to develop and validate blood-contacting medical devices. This study shows that numerical simulations can provide additional and accurate estimates of relevant hemodynamic indicators (e.g., recirculation zones or wall shear stresses), which may be difficult and expensive to obtain from in-vivo or in-vitro experiments. The most recent FDA (Food and Drug Administration) benchmark consisted of a simplified centrifugal blood pump model that contains fluid flow features as they are commonly found in these devices with a clear focus on highly turbulent phenomena. The FDA centrifugal blood pump study is composed of six test cases with different volumetric flow rates ranging from 2.5 to 7.0 liters per minute, pump speeds, and Reynolds numbers ranging from 210,000 to 293,000. Within the frame of this study different turbulence models were tested including RANS models, e.g. k-omega, k-epsilon and a Reynolds Stress Model (RSM) and, LES. The partitioners Hilbert, METIS, ParMETIS and SCOTCH were used to create an unstructured mesh of 76 million elements and compared in their efficiency. Computations were performed on the JUQUEEN BG/Q architecture applying the highly parallel flow solver Code SATURNE and typically using 32768 or more processors in parallel. Visualisations were performed by means of PARAVIEW. Different turbulence models including all six flow situations could be successfully analysed and validated against analytical considerations and from comparison to other data-bases. It showed that an RSM represents an appropriate choice with respect to modeling high-Reynolds number flow cases. Especially, the Rij-SSG (Speziale, Sarkar, Gatzki) variant turned out to be a good approach. Visualisation of complex flow features could be obtained and the flow situation inside the pump could be characterized.

Keywords: blood flow, centrifugal blood pump, high performance computing, scalability, turbulence

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Authors: Mukhtar Sarkin-Kebbi

Abstract:

Insurgency, religious extremism and other related religious crises become hydra-headed in Nigeria, which caused destruction of human lives and properties worth of billions naira. As result, millions people were displaced and million children were out of school most of whom from Muslims community. The wrong teaching and misinterpretation of Islam by some Muslim community fuel the spread of extremist ideology hatred among Muslim sects, non-Muslims and emergency of extremist groups, like Boko Haram. A multi-religious country like Nigeria to realise its development in all human aspects, there must be unity and religious tolerance. Many agreed that changing the ideologies of insurgents and religious extremism will require intellectual role with vigorous campaign. Muslim scholars can play a vital role in promoting social reform and peaceful coexistence. This paper discusses the importance of unity among Muslim community and religious tolerance in light of the Qur’an and the Hadith. The paper also reviews the relationship between Muslims and non Muslims during the life time the Prophet (S.A.W.) in order to serve as exemplary model. Contemporary issues such as religious extremism, sectarians, intolerance and their consequences were examined. To minify religious intolerance and extremism,the paper identifies the roles to be played by Muslim scholars with references from Qur’an and Sunnah. The paper concludes that to realise overall human development and eternal salvation, Muslim should shun away from any religious crises and embrace unity and religious tolerance. Finally the paper recommends among others that only pious and learned scholars should be allowed to preach in any religious gathering, Muslim should exercise patience, tolerance in dealing with Muslims and non Muslims. Muslims should leave by example from the teaching of Qur’an and Sunnah of the Prophet (S.A.W.).

Keywords: Muslim scholars, peace building, religious extremism, religious tolerance

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Authors: Daniel Rosero, Johan S. Arana, Sebastian Arango, Alejandro Cruz, Isabel Gomez-Gutierrez, Peter Thomson

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Santiago de Cali is located in the southwestern Colombia in a high seismic hazard zone. About 50% of the city is on the banks of the Cauca River, which is the second most important hydric affluent in the country and whose alluvial deposits contain potentially liquefiable sands. Among the methods used to study a site's liquefaction potential is the finite elements method which use constitutive models to simulate the soil response for different load types. Among the different constitutive models, the Modified UBCSand stands out to study the seismic behavior of sands, and especially the liquefaction phenomenon. In this paper, the dynamic behavior of a potentially liquefiable sand of Santiago de Cali is studied by cyclic triaxial and CPTu tests. Subsequently, the behavior of the sand is simulated using the Modified UBCSand constitutive model, whose parameters are calibrated using the results of cyclic triaxial and CPTu tests. The above with the aim of analyze the constitutive model applicability for studying the geotechnical problems associated to liquefaction in the city.

Keywords: constitutive model, cyclic triaxial test, dynamic behavior, liquefiable sand, modified ubcsand

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Authors: Joseph Mouallem, Seyed Reza Amini Niaki, Norman Chavez-Cussy, Christian Costa Milioli, Fernando Eduardo Milioli

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Sub-grid closures for filtered two-fluid models (fTFM) useful in large scale simulations (LSS) of riser flows can be derived from highly resolved simulations (HRS) with microscopic two-fluid modeling (mTFM). Accurate sub-grid closures require accurate mTFM formulations as well as accurate correlation of relevant filtered parameters to suitable independent variables. This article deals with both of those issues. The accuracy of mTFM is touched by assessing the impact of gas sub-grid turbulence over HRS filtered predictions. A gas turbulence alike effect is artificially inserted by means of a stochastic forcing procedure implemented in the physical space over the momentum conservation equation of the gas phase. The correlation issue is touched by introducing a three-filtered variable correlation analysis (three-marker analysis) performed under a variety of different macro-scale conditions typical or risers. While the more elaborated correlation procedure clearly improved accuracy, accounting for gas sub-grid turbulence had no significant impact over predictions.

Keywords: fluidization, gas-particle flow, two-fluid model, sub-grid models, filtered closures

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Authors: Taras Agryzkov, Jose L. Oliver, Leandro Tortosa, Jose Vicent

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This paper aims to demonstrate how network models can be used to understand and to deal with some aspects of urban complexity. As it is well known, the Theory of Architecture and Urbanism has been using for decades’ intellectual tools based on the ‘sciences of complexity’ as a strategy to propose theoretical approaches about cities and about architecture. In this sense, it is possible to find a vast literature in which for instance network theory is used as an instrument to understand very diverse questions about cities: from their commercial activity to their heritage condition. The contribution of this research consists in adding one step of complexity to this process: instead of working with one single primal graph as it is usually done, we will show how new network models arise from the consideration of two different primal graphs interacting in two layers. When we model an urban network through a mathematical structure like a graph, the city is usually represented by a set of nodes and edges that reproduce its topology, with the data generated or extracted from the city embedded in it. All this information is normally displayed in a single layer. Here, we propose to separate the information in two layers so that we can evaluate the interaction between them. Besides, both layers may be composed of structures that do not have to coincide: from this bi-layer system, groups of interactions emerge, suggesting reflections and in consequence, possible actions.

Keywords: graphs, mathematics, networks, urban studies

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Authors: A. F. Suleimanov, A. B. Saduakassova, V. S. Pokrovsky, D. V. Vinnikov

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Relevance: Epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) is the most lethal gynecological malignancy, with relapse occurring in about 70% of advanced cases with poor prognoses. The aim of the study was to evaluate functional visceral fat activity (VAT) evaluated by ¹⁸F-fluorodeoxyglucose (¹⁸F-FDG) positron emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT) as a predictor of metastases in epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC). Materials and methods: We assessed 53 patients with histologically confirmed EOC who underwent ¹⁸F-FDG PET/CT after a surgical treatment and courses of chemotherapy. Age, histology, stage, and tumor grade were recorded. Functional VAT activity was measured by maximum standardized uptake value (SUVₘₐₓ) using ¹⁸F-FDG PET/CT and tested as a predictor of later metastases in eight abdominal locations (RE – Epigastric Region, RLH – Left Hypochondriac Region, RRL – Right Lumbar Region, RU – Umbilical Region, RLL – Left Lumbar Region, RRI – Right Inguinal Region, RP – Hypogastric (Pubic) Region, RLI – Left Inguinal Region) and pelvic cavity (P) in the adjusted regression models. We also identified the best areas under the curve (AUC) for SUVₘₐₓ with the corresponding sensitivity (Se) and specificity (Sp). Results: In both adjusted-for regression models and ROC analysis, ¹⁸F-FDG accumulation in RE (cut-off SUVₘₐₓ 1.18; Se 64%; Sp 64%; AUC 0.669; p = 0.035) could predict later metastases in EOC patients, as opposed to age, sex, primary tumor location, tumor grade, and histology. Conclusions: VAT SUVₘₐₓ is significantly associated with later metastases in EOC patients and can be used as their predictor.

Keywords: ¹⁸F-FDG, PET/CT, EOC, predictive value

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Authors: Niels Grataloup, Micael S. Couceiro, Manousos Valyrakis, Javier Escudero, Patricia A. Vargas

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This paper benchmarks the possible underwater communication technologies that can be integrated into a swarm of underwater robots by proposing an underwater robot simulator named CORSICA (Cross platfORm wireleSs communICation simulator). Underwater exploration relies increasingly on the use of mobile robots, called Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs). These robots are able to reach goals in harsh underwater environments without resorting to human divers. The introduction of swarm robotics in these scenarios would facilitate the accomplishment of complex tasks with lower costs. However, swarm robotics requires implementation of communication systems to be operational and have a non-deterministic behaviour. Inter-robot communication is one of the key challenges in swarm robotics, especially in underwater scenarios, as communication must cope with severe restrictions and perturbations. This paper starts by presenting a list of the underwater propagation models of acoustic and electromagnetic waves, it also reviews existing transmitters embedded in current robots and simulators. It then proposes CORSICA, which allows validating the choices in terms of protocol and communication strategies, whether they are robot-robot or human-robot interactions. This paper finishes with a presentation of possible integration according to the literature review, and the potential to get CORSICA at an industrial level.

Keywords: underwater simulator, robot-robot underwater communication, swarm robotics, transceiver and communication models

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