Search results for: Distribution Systems

Authors: Pradeep Singh, Sukhwinder Singh, Gurjinder Kaur

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In recent years, rapid advances in software and hardware in the field of information technology along with a digital imaging revolution in the medical domain facilitate the generation and storage of large collections of images by hospitals and clinics. To search these large image collections effectively and efficiently poses significant technical challenges, and it raises the necessity of constructing intelligent retrieval systems. Content-based Image Retrieval (CBIR) consists of retrieving the most visually similar images to a given query image from a database of images[5]. Medical CBIR (content-based image retrieval) applications pose unique challenges but at the same time offer many new opportunities. On one hand, while one can easily understand news or sports videos, a medical image is often completely incomprehensible to untrained eyes.

Keywords: Classification, clustering, content-based image retrieval (CBIR), relevance feedback (RF), statistical similarity matching, support vector machine (SVM).

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Authors: R. Bourziza, A. Hammani, M. Kuper, A. Bouaziz

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In oases, the surface water resources are becoming increasingly scarce and groundwater resources, which generally have a poor quality due to the high levels of salinity, are often overexploited. Water saving have therefore become imperative for better oases sustainability. If drip irrigation is currently recommended in Morocco for saving water and valuing, its use in the sub-desert areas does not keep water safe from high evaporation rates. An alternative to this system would be the use of subsurface drip irrigation. This technique is defined as an application of water under the soil surface through drippers, which deliver water at rates generally similar to surface drip irrigation. As subsurface drip irrigation is a recently introduced in Morocco, a better understanding of the infiltration process around a buried source, in local conditions, and its impact on plant growth is necessarily required. This study aims to contribute to improving the water use efficiency by testing the performance of subsurface irrigation system, especially in areas where water is a limited source. The objectives of this research are performance evaluation in arid conditions of the subsurface drip irrigation system for young date palms compared to the surface drip. In this context, an experimental test is installed at a farmer’s field in the area of Erfoud (Errachidia Province, southeastern Morocco), using the subsurface drip irrigation system in comparison with the classic drip system for young date palms. Flow measurement to calculate the uniformity of the application of water was done through two methods: a flow measurement of drippers above the surface and another one underground. The latter method has also helped us to estimate losses through evaporation for both irrigation techniques. In order to compare the effect of two irrigation modes, plants were identified for each type of irrigation to monitor certain agronomic parameters (cumulative numbers of palms and roots development). Experimentation referred to a distribution uniformity of about 88%; considered acceptable for subsurface drip irrigation while it is around 80% for the surface drip irrigation. The results also show an increase in root development and in the number of palm, as well as a substantial water savings due to lower evaporation losses compared to the classic drip irrigation. The results of this study showed that subsurface drip irrigation is an efficient technique, which allows sustainable irrigation in arid areas.

Keywords: Subsurface drip irrigation, Water conservation, Arid areas, Young date palms.

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Authors: Hossein Mirzaee, Farhad Besharati

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A combination of image fusion and quad tree decomposition method is used for detecting the sunspot trajectories in each month and computation of the latitudes of these trajectories in each solar hemisphere. Daily solar images taken with SOHO satellite are fused for each month and the result of fused image is decomposed with Quad Tree decomposition method in order to classifying the sunspot trajectories and then to achieve the precise information about latitudes of sunspot trajectories. Also with fusion we deduce some physical remarkable conclusions about sun magnetic fields behavior. Using quad tree decomposition we give information about the region on sun surface and the space angle that tremendous flares and hot plasma gases permeate interplanetary space and attack to satellites and human technical systems. Here sunspot images in June, July and August 2001 are used for studying and give a method to compute the latitude of sunspot trajectories in each month with sunspot images.

Keywords: Quad Tree Decomposition, Sunspot.

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Authors: Hala Abdel hameed, Hazem M. El-Bakry, Torky Sultan

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There are many issues that affect modeling and designing real-time databases. One of those issues is maintaining consistency between the actual state of the real-time object of the external environment and its images as reflected by all its replicas distributed over multiple nodes. The need to improve the scalability is another important issue. In this paper, we present a general framework to design a replicated real-time database for small to medium scale systems and maintain all timing constrains. In order to extend the idea for modeling a large scale database, we present a general outline that consider improving the scalability by using an existing static segmentation algorithm applied on the whole database, with the intent to lower the degree of replication, enables segments to have individual degrees of replication with the purpose of avoiding excessive resource usage, which all together contribute in solving the scalability problem for DRTDBS.

Keywords: Database modeling, Distributed database, Real time databases, Replication

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Authors: Noriyoshi Hosoya, Kayoko Yamamoto

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This study, focusing on the importance of encouraging outdoor activities for children, aims to propose and implement a Web-GIS based outdoor education program for junior high schools, which will then be evaluated by users. Specifically, for the purpose of improved outdoor activities in the junior high school education, the outdoor education program, with chiefly using the Web-GIS that provides a good information provision and sharing tool, is proposed and implemented before being evaluated by users. The conclusion of this study can be summarized in the following two points. (1) A five -step outdoor education program based on Web-GIS was proposed for a “second school" at junior high schools that was then implemented before being evaluated by teachers as users. (2) Based on the results of evaluation by teachers, it was clear that the general operation of Web-GIS based outdoor education program with them only is difficult due to their lack of knowledge regarding Web-GIS and that support staff who can effectively utilize Web-GIS are essential.

Keywords: Outdoor Education, Web-Based GIS (Geographical Information Systems), Junior High Schools, School Education

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Authors: Monika Jain, Shikhar Puri, Shivali Unishree

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This paper presents the ‘Eye Ball Motion Controlled Wheelchair using IR Sensors’ for the elderly and differently abled people. In this eye tracking based technology, three Proximity Infrared (IR) sensor modules are mounted on an eye frame to trace the movement of the iris. Since, IR sensors detect only white objects; a unique sequence of digital bits is generated corresponding to each eye movement. These signals are then processed via a micro controller IC (PIC18F452) to control the motors of the wheelchair. The potential and efficiency of previously developed rehabilitation systems that use head motion, chin control, sip-n-puff control, voice recognition, and EEG signals variedly have also been explored in detail. They were found to be inconvenient as they served either limited usability or non-affordability. After multiple regression analyses, the proposed design was developed as a cost-effective, flexible and stream-lined alternative for people who have trouble adopting conventional assistive technologies.

Keywords: Eye tracking technology, Intelligent wheelchair, IR module, rehabilitation technology.

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Authors: Siyuan Jing, Kun She

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Neighborhood Rough Sets (NRS) has been proven to be an efficient tool for heterogeneous attribute reduction. However, most of researches are focused on dealing with complete and noiseless data. Factually, most of the information systems are noisy, namely, filled with incomplete data and inconsistent data. In this paper, we introduce a generalized neighborhood rough sets model, called VPTNRS, to deal with the problem of heterogeneous attribute reduction in noisy system. We generalize classical NRS model with tolerance neighborhood relation and the probabilistic theory. Furthermore, we use the neighborhood dependency to evaluate the significance of a subset of heterogeneous attributes and construct a forward greedy algorithm for attribute reduction based on it. Experimental results show that the model is efficient to deal with noisy data.

Keywords: attribute reduction, incomplete data, inconsistent data, tolerance neighborhood relation, rough sets

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Authors: Hossein Esbati, Jalil Shirazi

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In this paper, in order to categorize ORL database face pictures, principle Component Analysis (PCA) and Kernel Principal Component Analysis (KPCA) methods by using Elman neural network and Support Vector Machine (SVM) categorization methods are used. Elman network as a recurrent neural network is proposed for modeling storage systems and also it is used for reviewing the effect of using PCA numbers on system categorization precision rate and database pictures categorization time. Categorization stages are conducted with various components numbers and the obtained results of both Elman neural network categorization and support vector machine are compared. In optimum manner 97.41% recognition accuracy is obtained.

Keywords: Face recognition, Principal Component Analysis, Kernel Principal Component Analysis, Neural network, Support Vector Machine.

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Authors: Pawan Kumar, Pitamber Singh Negi

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Many of the regeneration failures in conifers are often being attributed to heavy insect attack and pathogens during the period of seed formation and under storage conditions. Conifer berries and seed insects occur throughout the known range of the hosts and also limit the production of seed for nursery stock. On occasion, even entire seed crops are lost due to insect attacks. The berry and seeds of both the species have been found to be infected with insects. Recently, heavy damage to the berry and seeds of Juniper and Chilgoza Pine was observed in the field as well as in stored conditions, leading to reduction in the viability of seeds to germinate. Both the species are under great threat and regeneration of the species is very low. Due to lack of adequate literature, the study on the damage potential of seed insects was urgently required to know the exact status of the insect-pests attacking seeds/berries of both the pine species so as to develop pest management practices against the insect pests attack. As both the species are also under threat and are fighting for survival, so the study is important to develop management practices for the insect-pests of seeds/berries of Juniper and Chilgoza pine so as to evaluate in the nursery, as these species form major vegetation of their distribution zones. A six-year study on the management of insect pests of seeds of Chilgoza revealed that seeds of this species are prone to insect pests mainly borers. During present investigations, it was recorded that cones of are heavily attacked only by Dioryctria abietella (Lepidoptera: Pyralidae) in natural conditions, but seeds which are economically important are heavily infected, (sometimes up to 100% damage was also recorded) by insect borer, Plodia interpunctella (Lepidoptera: Pyralidae) and is recorded for the first time ‘to author’s best knowledge’ infesting the stored Chilgoza seeds. Similarly, Juniper berries and seeds were heavily attacked only by a single borer, Homaloxestis cholopis (Lepidoptera: Lecithoceridae) recorded as a new report in natural habitat as well as in stored conditions. During the present investigation details of insect pest attack on Juniper and Chilgoza pine seeds and berries was observed and suitable management practices were also developed to contain the insect-pests attack.

Keywords: Borer, conifer, cones, chilgoza pine, lepidoptera, juniper, management, seed.

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Authors: I. Derek Kaka’an, P. Smolianov, S. Dion, C. Schoen, J. Norberg, C. G. Iortimah

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This study examines the current state of football in Nigeria to identify the country's practices, which could be useful internationally, and to determine areas for improvement. Over 200 sources of literature on sport delivery systems in successful sports nations were analyzed to construct a globally applicable model of elite football integrated with mass participation, comprising of the following three levels: macro (socio-economic, cultural, legislative, and organizational), meso (infrastructures, personnel, and services enabling sports programs) and micro level (operations, processes, and methodologies for the development of individual athletes). The model has received scholarly validation and has shown to be a framework for program analysis that is not culturally bound. It has recently been utilized for further understanding such sports systems as US rugby, tennis, soccer, swimming, and volleyball, as well as Dutch and Russian swimming. A questionnaire was developed using the above-mentioned model. Survey questions were validated by 12 experts including academicians, executives from sports governing bodies, football coaches, and administrators. To identify best practices and determine areas for improvement of football in Nigeria, 116 coaches completed the questionnaire. Useful exemplars and possible improvements were further identified through semi-structured discussions with 10 Nigerian football administrators and experts. Finally, a content analysis of the Nigeria Football Federation's website and organizational documentation was conducted. This paper focuses on the micro level of Nigerian football delivery, particularly talent search and development as well as advanced athlete preparation and support. Results suggested that Nigeria could share such progressive practices as the provision of football programs in all schools and full-time coaches paid by governments based on the level of coach education. Nigerian football administrators and coaches could provide better football services affordable for all, where success in mass and elite sports is guided by science focused on athletes' needs. Better implemented could be international best practices such as lifelong guidelines for health and excellence of everyone and integration of fitness tests into player development and ranking as done in best Dutch, English, French, Russian, Spanish, and other European clubs; integration of educational and competitive events for elite and developing athletes as well as fans as done at the 2018 World Cup Russia; and academies with multi-stage athlete nurturing as done by Ajax in Africa as well as Barcelona FC and other top clubs expanding across the world. The methodical integration of these practices into the balanced development of mass and elite football will help contribute to international sports success as well as national health, education, crime control, and social harmony in Nigeria.

Keywords: Football, high performance, mass participation, Nigeria, sport development.

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Authors: Bassam Istanbouli

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Organizations are living in a very competitive and dynamic environment which is constantly changing. In order to achieve a high level of service, the products and processes of these organizations need to be flexible and evolvable. If the supply chains are not modular and well designed, changes can bring combinatorial effects to most areas of a company from its management, financial, documentation, logistics and its information structure. Applying the normalized system’s concept to segments of the supply chain may help in reducing those ripple effects, but it may also increase lead times. Lead times are important and can become a decisive element in gaining customers. Industries are always under the pressure in providing good quality products, at competitive prices, when and how the customer wants them. Most of the time, the customers want their orders now, if not yesterday. The above concept will be proven by examining lead times in a manufacturing example before and after applying normalized systems concept to that segment of the chain. We will then show that although we can minimize the combinatorial effects when changes occur, the lead times will be increased.

Keywords: Supply chain, lead time, normalization, modular.

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Authors: Q. Han, W. Schaefer, N. Barry

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To coop with urbanization issues and the economic need for expansion, the city of Jakarta is planning to reclaim more land in the Jakarta Bay. However, the reclamation activities of some islands have barely started and already the developers are facing difficulties in finding sufficient quantities of sand as fill material. When addressing the problem of sand scarcity in the case of Jakarta where, an excess of waste production, an inadequate solid waste management system and a lack of dumping ground pose a major problem, it is hard not to think of the use of waste as alternative fill material. This paper analyses the possibilities of using waste in the land reclamation projects, considering the governmental, social, environmental and economic context of the city. The results identify types of waste that could be used, ways of using those types of waste and implementation conditions for the city of Jakarta.

Keywords: Waste Management systems, Land reclamation, Multi Criteria Analysis, Scenario planning.

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Authors: Cuitao Zhang, Xiongwen He

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According to the new requirements of the future spacecraft, such as networking, modularization and non-cable, this paper studies the CCSDS wireless communications standards, and focuses on the low data-rate wireless communications for spacecraft monitoring and control. The application fields and advantages of wireless communications are analyzed. Wireless communications technology has significant advantages in reducing the weight of the spacecraft, saving time in spacecraft integration, etc. Based on this technology, a scheme for spacecraft data system is put forward. The corresponding block diagram and key wireless interface design of the spacecraft data system are given. The design proposal of the wireless node and information flow of the spacecraft are also analyzed. The results show that the wireless communications scheme is reasonable and feasible. The wireless communications technology can meet the future spacecraft demands in networking, modularization and non-cable.

Keywords: CCSDS standards, information flow, non-cable, spacecraft, wireless communications.

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Authors: Amin Eslami, Jafar Bolouri Bazaz

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Excavation and retaining walls are of challenging issues in civil engineering. In this study, the behavior of one important type of supporting systems called Contiguous Bored Pile (CBP) retaining wall is investigated using a physical model. Besides, a comparison is made between two modes of free end piles (soft bed) and fixed end piles (stiff bed). Also a back calculation of effective length (the real free length of pile) is done by measuring lateral deflection of piles in different stages of excavation in both aforementioned cases. Based on observed results, for the fixed end mode, the effective length to free length ratio (Leff/L0) is equal to unity in initial stages of excavation and less than 1 in its final stages in a decreasing manner. While this ratio for free end mode, remains constant during all stages of excavation and is always less than unity.

Keywords: Contiguous Bored Pile Wall, Effective Length, Fixed End, Free End, Free Length.

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Authors: Sagir M. Yusuf, Chris Baber

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In this paper, we describe how to achieve knowledge understanding and prediction (Situation Awareness (SA)) for multiple-agents conducting searching activity using Bayesian inferential reasoning and learning. Bayesian Belief Network was used to monitor agents' knowledge about their environment, and cases are recorded for the network training using expectation-maximisation or gradient descent algorithm. The well trained network will be used for decision making and environmental situation prediction. Forest fire searching by multiple UAVs was the use case. UAVs are tasked to explore a forest and find a fire for urgent actions by the fire wardens. The paper focused on two problems: (i) effective agents’ path planning strategy and (ii) knowledge understanding and prediction (SA). The path planning problem by inspiring animal mode of foraging using Lévy distribution augmented with Bayesian reasoning was fully described in this paper. Results proof that the Lévy flight strategy performs better than the previous fixed-pattern (e.g., parallel sweeps) approaches in terms of energy and time utilisation. We also introduced a waypoint assessment strategy called k-previous waypoints assessment. It improves the performance of the ordinary levy flight by saving agent’s resources and mission time through redundant search avoidance. The agents (UAVs) are to report their mission knowledge at the central server for interpretation and prediction purposes. Bayesian reasoning and learning were used for the SA and results proof effectiveness in different environments scenario in terms of prediction and effective knowledge representation. The prediction accuracy was measured using learning error rate, logarithm loss, and Brier score and the result proves that little agents mission that can be used for prediction within the same or different environment. Finally, we described a situation-based knowledge visualization and prediction technique for heterogeneous multi-UAV mission. While this paper proves linkage of Bayesian reasoning and learning with SA and effective searching strategy, future works is focusing on simplifying the architecture.

Keywords: Lèvy flight, situation awareness, multi-agent system, multi-robot coordination, autonomous system, swarm intelligence.

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Authors: Roselyn A. Maaño

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Eyes are an essential and conspicuous organ of the human body. Human eyes are outward and inward portals of the body that allows to see the outside world and provides glimpses into ones inner thoughts and feelings. Inevitable blindness and visual impairments may results from eye-related disease, trauma, or congenital or degenerative conditions that cannot be corrected by conventional means. The study emphasizes innovative tools that will serve as an aid to the blind and visually impaired (VI) individuals. The researchers fabricated a prototype that utilizes the Microsoft Kinect for Windows and Arduino microcontroller board. The prototype facilitates advanced gesture recognition, voice recognition, obstacle detection and indoor environment navigation. Open Computer Vision (OpenCV) performs image analysis, and gesture tracking to transform Kinect data to the desired output. A computer vision technology device provides greater accessibility for those with vision impairments.

Keywords: Algorithms, Blind, Computer Vision, Embedded Systems, Image Analysis.

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Authors: Sannikumar Patel, Brian Nolan, Markus Hofmann, Philip Owende, Kunjan Patel

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Sentiment analysis and opinion mining have become emerging topics of research in recent years but most of the work is focused on data in the English language. A comprehensive research and analysis are essential which considers multiple languages, machine translation techniques, and different classifiers. This paper presents, a comparative analysis of different approaches for multilingual sentiment analysis. These approaches are divided into two parts: one using classification of text without language translation and second using the translation of testing data to a target language, such as English, before classification. The presented research and results are useful for understanding whether machine translation should be used for multilingual sentiment analysis or building language specific sentiment classification systems is a better approach. The effects of language translation techniques, features, and accuracy of various classifiers for multilingual sentiment analysis is also discussed in this study.

Keywords: Cross-language analysis, machine learning, machine translation, sentiment analysis.

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Authors: M. Raciti Castelli, M. Cescon, E. Benini

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Nuclear energy sources have been widely used in the past decades in order to power spacecraft subsystems. Nevertheless, their use has attracted controversy because of the risk of harmful material released into the atmosphere if an accident were to occur during the launch phase of the mission, leading to the general adoption of photovoltaic systems. As compared to solar cells, wind turbines have a great advantage on Mars, as they can continuously produce power both during dust storms and at night-time: this paper focuses on the potential of a wind energy conversion system (WECS) considering the atmospheric conditions on Mars. Wind potential on Martian surface has been estimated, as well as the average energy requirements of a Martian probe or surface rover. Finally, the expected daily energy output of the WECS has been computed on the basis of both the swept area of the rotor and the equivalent wind speed at the landing site.

Keywords: Wind turbine, wind potential, Mars, probe, surface rover.

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Authors: Won Kyung Ham, Kang Hoon Cho, Yongho Chung, Sang C. Park

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Presented in this paper is a framework of a software ‘WEMax’. The WEMax is invented for analysis and simulation for manned assembly lines to sustain and improve performance of manufacturing systems. In a manufacturing system, performance, such as productivity, is a key of competitiveness for output products. However, the manned assembly lines are difficult to forecast performance, because human labors are not expectable factors by computer simulation models or mathematical models. Existing approaches to performance forecasting of the manned assembly lines are limited to matters of the human itself, such as ergonomic and workload design, and non-human-factor-relevant simulation. Consequently, an approach for the forecasting and improvement of manned assembly line performance is needed to research. As a solution of the current problem, this study proposes a framework that is for generation and simulation of virtual manned assembly lines, and the framework has been implemented as a software.

Keywords: Performance Forecasting, Simulation, Virtual Manned Assembly Line.

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Authors: Nantapanuwat Nattapol, Ractham Peter, Kaewkittipong Laddawan

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The efficient knowledge management system (KMS) is one of the important strategies to help firms to achieve sustainable competitive advantages, but little research has been conducted to understand what contributes to the KMS success. This study thus set to investigate the determinants of KMS success in the context of Thai banking industry. A questionnaire survey was conducted in four major Thai Banks to test the proposed KMS Success model. The result of this study shows that KMS use and user satisfaction relate significantly to the success of KMS, and knowledge quality, service quality and trust lead to system use, and knowledge quality, system quality and trust lead to user satisfaction. However, this research focuses only on system and user-related factors. Future research thus can extend to study factors such as management support and organization readiness.

Keywords: Knowledge, Knowledge Management, Knowledge Management system, Knowledge Management System Success, Banking Industry, Thailand

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Authors: M. Barański

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This article presents a new vibration diagnostic method designed to (PM) machines with permanent magnets. Those devices are commonly used in small wind and water systems or vehicles drives. The author’s method is very innovative and unique. Specific structural properties of PM machines are used in this method - electromotive force (EMF) generated due to vibrations. There was analysed number of publications which describe vibration diagnostic methods and tests of electrical PM machines and there was no method found to determine the technical condition of such machine basing on their own signals. In this article will be discussed: the method genesis, the similarity of machines with permanent magnet to vibration sensor and simulation and laboratory tests results. The method of determination the technical condition of electrical machine with permanent magnets basing on its own signals is the subject of patent application and it is the main thesis of author’s doctoral dissertation.

Keywords: Electrical vehicle, generator, permanent magnet, traction drive, vibrations.

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Authors: M. Fathi, M. J. Alvarez, V. Rodríguez

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Assembly line balancing is a very important issue in mass production systems due to production cost. Although many studies have been done on this topic, but because assembly line balancing problems are so complex they are categorized as NP-hard problems and researchers strongly recommend using heuristic methods. This paper presents a new heuristic approach called the critical task method (CTM) for solving U-shape assembly line balancing problems. The performance of the proposed heuristic method is tested by solving a number of test problems and comparing them with 12 other heuristics available in the literature to confirm the superior performance of the proposed heuristic. Furthermore, to prove the efficiency of the proposed CTM, the objectives are increased to minimize the number of workstation (or equivalently maximize line efficiency), and minimizing the smoothness index. Finally, it is proven that the proposed heuristic is more efficient than the others to solve the U-shape assembly line balancing problem.

Keywords: Critical task method, Heuristic, Line balancingproblem, U-shape

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Authors: R. Sahraian, A. Karampour Haghighi, E. Ghasemi

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Process planning and production scheduling play important roles in manufacturing systems. In this paper a multiobjective mixed integer linear programming model is presented for the integrated planning and scheduling of multi-product. The aim is to find a set of high-quality trade-off solutions. This is a combinatorial optimization problem with substantially large solution space, suggesting that it is highly difficult to find the best solutions with the exact search method. To account for it, a PSO-based algorithm is proposed by fully utilizing the capability of the exploration search and fast convergence. To fit the continuous PSO in the discrete modeled problem, a solution representation is used in the algorithm. The numerical experiments have been performed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.

Keywords: Integrated process planning and scheduling, multi objective, MILP, Particle swarm optimization

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Authors: Tausif A. Ishtiaque, Zarrin T. Tasin, Kazi S. Akter

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Current trend of urban expansion, especially in the developing countries has caused significant changes in land cover, which is generating great concern due to its widespread environmental degradation. Energy consumption of the cities is also increasing with the aggravated heat island effect. Distribution of land surface temperature (LST) is one of the most significant climatic parameters affected by urban land cover change. Recent increasing trend of LST is causing elevated temperature profile of the built up area with less vegetative cover. Gradual change in land cover, especially decrease in vegetative cover is enhancing the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect in the developing cities around the world. Increase in the amount of urban vegetation cover can be a useful solution for the reduction of UHI intensity. LST and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) have widely been accepted as reliable indicators of UHI and vegetation abundance respectively. Chittagong, the second largest city of Bangladesh, has been a growth center due to rapid urbanization over the last several decades. This study assesses the intensity of UHI in Chittagong city by analyzing the relationship between LST and NDVI based on the type of land use/land cover (LULC) in the study area applying an integrated approach of Geographic Information System (GIS), remote sensing (RS), and regression analysis. Land cover map is prepared through an interactive supervised classification using remotely sensed data from Landsat ETM+ image along with NDVI differencing using ArcGIS. LST and NDVI values are extracted from the same image. The regression analysis between LST and NDVI indicates that within the study area, UHI is directly correlated with LST while negatively correlated with NDVI. It interprets that surface temperature reduces with increase in vegetation cover along with reduction in UHI intensity. Moreover, there are noticeable differences in the relationship between LST and NDVI based on the type of LULC. In other words, depending on the type of land usage, increase in vegetation cover has a varying impact on the UHI intensity. This analysis will contribute to the formulation of sustainable urban land use planning decisions as well as suggesting suitable actions for mitigation of UHI intensity within the study area.

Keywords: Land cover change, land surface temperature, normalized difference vegetation index, urban heat island.

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Authors: Ilias Spais, George Bafas

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Natural Language Understanding Systems (NLU) will not be widely deployed unless they are technically mature and cost effective to develop. Cost effective development hinges on the availability of tools and techniques enabling the rapid production of NLU applications through minimal human resources. Further, these tools and techniques should allow quick development of applications in a user friendly way and should be easy to upgrade in order to continuously follow the evolving technologies and standards. This paper presents a visual tool for the structuring and editing of dialog forms, the key element of driving conversation in NLU applications based on IBM technology. The main focus is given on the basic component used to describe Human – Machine interactions of that kind, the Dialogue Manager. In essence, the description of a tool that enables the visual representation of the Dialogue Manager mainly during the implementation phase is illustrated.

Keywords: Conversational Applications, Forms Dialogue Manager (FDM), Natural Language Processing, Natural Language Understanding.

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Authors: C. Guven, M. Tufekci, E. Bayik, O. Gedik, M. Tas

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A sliding door system is used in commercial vehicles and passenger cars to allow a larger unobstructed access to the interior for loading and unloading. The movement of a sliding door on vehicle body is ensured by mechanisms and tracks having special cross-section which is manufactured by roll forming and stretch bending process. There are three tracks and three mechanisms which are called upper, central and lower on a sliding door system. There are static requirements as strength on different directions, rigidity for mechanisms, door drop off, door sag; dynamic requirements as high energy slam opening-closing and durability requirement to validate these products. In addition, there is a kinematic requirement to find out force values from door handle during manual operating. In this study, finite element analysis and physical test results which are realized for sliding door systems will be shared comparatively.

Keywords: Finite element analysis, sliding door, experimental, verification, vehicle tests.

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Authors: JanuszKwaśniewski, IreneuszDominik, KrzysztofLalik

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The knowledge about rock layers thickness,especially above drilled mining pavements is crucial for workers safety. The measuring systems used nowadays are generally imperfect and there is a strong demand for improvement. The application of a new type of a measurement system called Self-excited Acoustical System is presentedin the paper. The system was applied until now to monitor stress changes in metal and concrete constructions. The change in measurement methodology resulted in possibility of measuring the thickness of the rocks above the tunnels as well as thickness of a singular rocklayer. The idea is to find two resonance frequencies of the self-exited system,which consists of a vibration exciter and vibration receiver placed at a distance, which are coupled with a proper power amplifier, and which operate in a closed loop with a positive feedback. The resonance with the higher amplitude determines thickness of the whole rock, whereas the lower amplitude resonance indicates thickness of a singular layer. The results of the laboratory tests conducted on a group of different rock materials are also presented.

Keywords: Autooscillator, non-destructive testing, rock thickness measurement.

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Authors: Khalid Ghoulam, Belaid Bouikhalene, Zakaria Harmouch, Hicham Mouncif

Abstract:

One of the essential topics in the information systems is the registration management. The objective of this project is to create a web portal designed to help new students on the first access to the Sultan Moulay Slimane University SMSU (Practical Information, Pre-Registration, Placement Test, Terms of use ... etc.) while creating a secure space protecting both data from the institutions of the University and student information. This portal is accessible from any computer connected to the Internet inside and outside the campus. In this work, we present a platform on the first access to the SMSU which is essential for authentication in the digital work space of the university. This platform allows university to make better decisions for students clustering, to avoid traditional manual method, and to reduce the cost in human and material resources.

Keywords: Registration, SMSU, Security, FAUSMS, digital work space, Placement test.

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Authors: Ilario Gabriele Gerloni, Vincenza Carchiolo, Alessandro Longheu, Ugo Becciani, Eva Sciacca, Fabio Vitello

Abstract:

ICT tools and platforms endorse more and more educational process. Many models and techniques for people to be educated and trained about specific topics and skills do exist, as classroom lectures with textbooks, computers, handheld devices and others. The choice to what extent ICT is applied within learning contexts is related to personal access to technologies as well as to the infrastructure surrounding environment. Among recent techniques, the adoption of Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) provides significant impulse in fully engaging users senses. In this paper, an application of AR/VR within Geographic Information Systems (GIS) context is presented. It aims to provide immersive environment experiences for educational and training purposes (e.g. for civil protection personnel), useful especially for situations where real scenarios are not easily accessible by humans. First acknowledgments are promising for building an effective tool that helps civil protection personnel training with risk reduction.

Keywords: Education, virtual reality, augmented reality, civil protection.

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Authors: Carsten Röcker

Abstract:

This paper provides an introduction into the evolution of information and communication technology and illustrates its usage in the work domain. The paper is sub-divided into two parts. The first part gives an overview over the different phases of information processing in the work domain. It starts by charting the past and present usage of computers in work environments and shows current technological trends, which are likely to influence future business applications. The second part starts by briefly describing, how the usage of computers changed business processes in the past, and presents first Ambient Intelligence applications based on identification and localization information, which are already used in the production and retail sector. Based on current systems and prototype applications, the paper gives an outlook of how Ambient Intelligence technologies could change business processes in the future.

Keywords: Ambient Intelligence, Ubiquitous Computing, Business Applications, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID).

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