Search results for: climate and architecture

Authors: M. Graus, K. Westhoff, X. Xu

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The climate change causes a change in all aspects of society. While the expansion of renewable energies proceeds, industry could not be convinced based on general studies about the potential of demand side management to reinforce smart grid considerations in their operational business. In this article, a procedure model for a case-specific data-driven decision support for industrial energy management based on a holistic data analytics approach is presented. The model is executed on the example of the strategic decision problem, to integrate the aspect of renewable energies into industrial energy management. This question is induced due to considerations of changing the electricity contract model from a standard rate to volatile energy prices corresponding to the energy spot market which is increasingly more affected by renewable energies. The procedure model corresponds to a data analytics process consisting on a data model, analysis, simulation and optimization step. This procedure will help to quantify the potentials of sustainable production concepts based on the data from a factory. The model is validated with data from a printer in analogy to a simple production machine. The overall goal is to establish smart grid principles for industry via the transformation from knowledge-driven to data-driven decisions within manufacturing companies.

Keywords: Data analytics, green production, industrial energy management, optimization, renewable energies, simulation.

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Authors: Amir Sattari

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For newly produced houses and energy renovations, an energy calculation needs to be conducted. This is done to verify whether the energy consumption criteria of the house -to reach the energy targets by 2020 and 2050- are in-line with the norms. The main purpose of this study is to confirm whether easy to use energy calculation software or hand calculations used by small companies or individuals give logical results compared to advanced energy simulation program used by researchers or bigger companies. There are different methods for calculating energy consumption. In this paper, two energy calculation programs are used and the relation of energy consumption with solar radiation is compared. A hand calculation is also done to validate whether the hand calculations are still reasonable. The two computer programs which have been used are TMF Energi (the easy energy calculation variant used by small companies or individuals) and IDA ICE - Indoor Climate and Energy (the advanced energy simulation program used by researchers or larger companies). The calculations are done for a standard house from the Swedish house supplier Fiskarhedenvillan. The method is based on having the same conditions and inputs in the different calculation forms so that the results can be compared and verified. The house has been faced differently to see how the orientation affects energy consumption in different methods. The results for the simulations are close to each other and the hand calculation differs from the computer programs by only 5%. Even if solar factors differ due to the orientation of the house, energy calculation results from different computer programs and even hand calculation methods are in line with each other.

Keywords: Energy calculation, energy consumption, energy simulation, IDA ICE, TMF Energi.

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Authors: Venerando E. Amaro, Francisco Gabriel F. de Lima, Marcelo S.T. Santos

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The morphological short-term evolution of Ponta do Tubarão Island (PTI) was investigated through high accurate surveys based on post-processed kinematic (PPK) relative positioning on Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS). PTI is part of a barrier island system on a high energy northeast Brazilian coastal environment and also an area of high environmental sensitivity. Surveys were carried out quarterly over a two years period from May 2010 to May 2012. This paper assesses statically the performance of digital elevation models (DEM) derived from different interpolation methods to represent morphologic features and to quantify volumetric changes and TIN models shown the best results to that purposes. The MDE allowed quantifying surfaces and volumes in detail as well as identifying the most vulnerable segments of the PTI to erosion and/or accumulation of sediments and relate the alterations to climate conditions. The coastal setting and geometry of PTI protects a significant mangrove ecosystem and some oil and gas facilities installed in the vicinities from damaging effects of strong oceanwaves and currents. Thus, the maintenance of PTI is extremely required but the prediction of its longevity is uncertain because results indicate an irregularity of sedimentary balance and a substantial decline in sediment supply to this coastal area.

Keywords: DEM, GNSS, short-term monitoring, Brazil.

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Authors: George N. Zaimes, Valasia Iakovoglou, Paschalis Koutalakis, Konstantinos Ioannou, Ioannis Kosmadakis, Panagiotis Tsardaklis, Theodoros Laopoulos

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The advancements in technology allow the development of a new system that can continuously measure surface soil erosion. Continuous soil erosion measurements are required in order to comprehend the erosional processes and propose effective and efficient conservation measures to mitigate surface erosion. Mitigating soil erosion, especially in Mediterranean countries such as Greece, is essential in order to maintain environmental and agricultural sustainability. In this paper, we present the Automated Soil Erosion Monitoring System (ASEMS) that measures surface soil erosion along with other factors that impact erosional process. Specifically, this system measures ground level changes (surface soil erosion), rainfall, air temperature, soil temperature, and soil moisture. Another important innovation is that the data will be collected by remote communication. In addition, stakeholder’s awareness is a key factor to help reduce any environmental problem. The different dissemination activities that were utilized are described. The overall outcomes were the development of a new innovative system that can measure erosion very accurately. These data from the system help study the process of erosion and find the best possible methods to reduce erosion. The dissemination activities enhance the stakeholders and public's awareness on surface soil erosion problems and will lead to the adoption of more effective soil erosion conservation practices in Greece.

Keywords: Soil management, climate change, new technologies, conservation practices.

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Authors: Ilaria Lucrezia Amerise

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The statistical modelling of precipitation data for a given portion of territory is fundamental for the monitoring of climatic conditions and for Hydrogeological Management Plans (HMP). This modelling is rendered particularly complex by the changes taking place in the frequency and intensity of precipitation, presumably to be attributed to the global climate change. This paper applies the Wakeby distribution (with 5 parameters) as a theoretical reference model. The number and the quality of the parameters indicate that this distribution may be the appropriate choice for the interpolations of the hydrological variables and, moreover, the Wakeby is particularly suitable for describing phenomena producing heavy tails. The proposed estimation methods for determining the value of the Wakeby parameters are the same as those used for density functions with heavy tails. The commonly used procedure is the classic method of moments weighed with probabilities (probability weighted moments, PWM) although this has often shown difficulty of convergence, or rather, convergence to a configuration of inappropriate parameters. In this paper, we analyze the problem of the likelihood estimation of a random variable expressed through its quantile function. The method of maximum likelihood, in this case, is more demanding than in the situations of more usual estimation. The reasons for this lie, in the sampling and asymptotic properties of the estimators of maximum likelihood which improve the estimates obtained with indications of their variability and, therefore, their accuracy and reliability. These features are highly appreciated in contexts where poor decisions, attributable to an inefficient or incomplete information base, can cause serious damages.

Keywords: Generalized extreme values (GEV), likelihood estimation, precipitation data, Wakeby distribution.

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Authors: G. Ramana Murthy, C. Senthilpari, P. Velrajkumar, Lim Tien Sze

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In this paper, a design methodology to implement low-power and high-speed 2nd order recursive digital Infinite Impulse Response (IIR) filter has been proposed. Since IIR filters suffer from a large number of constant multiplications, the proposed method replaces the constant multiplications by using addition/subtraction and shift operations. The proposed new 6T adder cell is used as the Carry-Save Adder (CSA) to implement addition/subtraction operations in the design of recursive section IIR filter to reduce the propagation delay. Furthermore, high-level algorithms designed for the optimization of the number of CSA blocks are used to reduce the complexity of the IIR filter. The DSCH3 tool is used to generate the schematic of the proposed 6T CSA based shift-adds architecture design and it is analyzed by using Microwind CAD tool to synthesize low-complexity and high-speed IIR filters. The proposed design outperforms in terms of power, propagation delay, area and throughput when compared with MUX-12T, MCIT-7T based CSA adder filter design. It is observed from the experimental results that the proposed 6T based design method can find better IIR filter designs in terms of power and delay than those obtained by using efficient general multipliers.

Keywords: CSA Full Adder, Delay unit, IIR filter, Low-Power, PDP, Parametric Analysis, Propagation Delay, Throughput, VLSI.

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Authors: M. Peña Aguilar Juan, Ríos Hernández Ezequiel, R. Valencia Luis

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For certification, certain goods of public interest, such as medicines and food, it is required the preparation and delivery of a dossier. For its elaboration, legal and administrative knowledge must be taken, as well as organization of the documents of the process, and an order that allows the file verification. Therefore, a virtual platform was developed to support the process of management and elaboration of the dossier, providing accessibility to the information and interfaces that allow the user to know the status of projects. The development of dossier system on the cloud allows the inclusion of the technical requirements for the software management, including the validation and the manufacturing in the field industry. The platform guides and facilitates the dossier elaboration (report, file or history), considering Mexican legislation and regulations, it also has auxiliary tools for its management. This technological alternative provides organization support for documents and accessibility to the information required to specify the successful development of a dossier. The platform divides into the following modules: System control, catalog, dossier and enterprise management. The modules are designed per the structure required in a dossier in those areas. However, the structure allows for flexibility, as its goal is to become a tool that facilitates and does not obstruct processes. The architecture and development of the software allows flexibility for future work expansion to other fields, this would imply feeding the system with new regulations.

Keywords: Electronic dossier, technologies for management, web software, dossier elaboration, pharmaceutical industry.

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Authors: Mansour Nikpour, Mohd Zin kandar, Mohammad Ghomeshi, Nima Moeinzadeh, Mohsen Ghasemi

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So much energy is used in high rise buildings to fulfill the basic needs of users such as lighting and thermal comfort. Malaysia has hot and humid climate, buildings especially high rise buildings receive unnecessary solar radiation that cause more solar heat gain. Energy use specially electricity consumption in high rise buildings has increased. There have been growing concerns about energy consumption and its effect on environment. Building, energy and the environment are important issues that the designers should consider to them. Self protected form is one of possible ways against the impact of solar radiation in high rise buildings. The Energy performance of building envelopes was investigated in term of the Overall Thermal Transfer Value (OTTV ).In this paper, the amount of OTTV reduction was calculated through OTTV Equations to clear the effectiveness of self shading strategy on minimizing energy consumption for cooling interior spaces in high rise buildings which has considerable envelope areas against solar radiation. Also increasing the optimum window area was investigated using self-shading strategy in designing high rise buildings. As result, the significant reduction in OTTV was shown based on WWR.In addition slight increase was demonstrated in WWR that can influence on visible comfort interior spaces.

Keywords: Self-shading strategy, high rise buildings, Overall thermal transfer value (OTTV ), Window to wall ratio (WWR).

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Authors: Jiaqi Yan, Sherry Sun, Huaiqing Wang, Zhongsheng Hua

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In the highly competitive and rapidly changing global marketplace, independent organizations and enterprises often come together and form a temporary alignment of virtual enterprise in a supply chain to better provide products or service. As firms adopt the systems approach implicit in supply chain management, they must manage the quality from both internal process control and external control of supplier quality and customer requirements. How to incorporate quality management of upstream and downstream supply chain partners into their own quality management system has recently received a great deal of attention from both academic and practice. This paper investigate the collaborative feature and the entities- relationship in a supply chain, and presents an ontology of collaborative supply chain from an approach of aligning service-oriented framework with service-dominant logic. This perspective facilitates the segregation of material flow management from manufacturing capability management, which provides a foundation for the coordination and integration of the business process to measure, analyze, and continually improve the quality of products, services, and process. Further, this approach characterizes the different interests of supply chain partners, providing an innovative approach to analyze the collaborative features of supply chain. Furthermore, this ontology is the foundation to develop quality management system which internalizes the quality management in upstream and downstream supply chain partners and manages the quality in supply chain systematically.

Keywords: Ontology, supply chain quality management, service-oriented architecture, service-dominant logic.

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Authors: Mozhgan Ziaie Bidhendi, Rajab Choukan, Farokh Darvish, Khodadad Mostafavi, Eslam Majidi

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The selection of parents and breeding strategies for the successful maize hybrid production will be facilitated by heterotic groupings of parental lines and determination of combining abilities of them. Fourteen maize inbred lines, used in maize breeding programs in Iran, were crossed in a diallel mating design. The 91 F1 hybrids and the 14 parental lines were studied during two years at four locations of Iran for investigation of combining ability of gentypes for grain yield and to determine heterotic patterns among germplasm sources, using both, the Griffing-s method and the biplot approach for diallel analysis. The graphical representation offered by biplot analysis allowed a rapid and effective overview of general combining ability (GCA) and specific combining ability (SCA) effects of the inbred lines, their performance in crosses, as well as grouping patterns of similar genotypes. GCA and SCA effects were significant for grain yield (GY). Based on significant positive GCA effects, the lines derived from LSC could be used as parent in crosses to increase GY. The maximum best- parent heterosis values and highest SCA effects resulted from crosses B73 × MO17 and A679 × MO17 for GY. The best heterotic patterns were LSC × RYD, which would be potentially useful in maize breeding programs to obtain high-yielding hybrids in the same climate of Iran.

Keywords: biplot, diallel, Griffing, Heterotic pattern

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Authors: Sara Ramezanzadeh, Nashid Nabian

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Historically, pandemics in different periods have caused compulsory changes in human life. In the case of COVID-19, according to the limitations and established care instructions, spatial alignment with the conditions is important. Following the outbreak of COVID-19, the question raised in this study is how to do spatial design in five scales, namely object, space, architecture, city, and infrastructure, in response to the consequences created in the realms under study. From the beginning of the pandemic until now, some changes in the spatial realm have been created spontaneously or by space users. These transformations have been mostly applied in modifiable parts such as furniture arrangement, especially in work-related spaces. To implement other comprehensive requirements, flexibility and adaptation of space design to the conditions resulting from the pandemics are needed during and after the outbreak. Studying the effects of pandemics from the past to the present, this research covers eight major realms, including three categories of ramifications, solutions, and paradigm shifts, and analytical conclusions about the solutions that have been created in response to them. Finally, by the consideration of epidemiology as a modern discipline influencing the design, spatial solutions in the five scales mentioned (in response to the effects of the eight realms for spatial adaptation in the face of pandemics and their following conditions) are presented as a series of guidelines. Due to the unpredictability of possible pandemics in the future, the possibility of changing and updating the provided guidelines is considered.

Keywords: Pandemics, COVID-19, spatial design, ramifications, paradigm shifts, guidelines.

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Authors: Kostas Siozios, Dimitrios Soudris, Antonios Thanailakis

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Modern applications realized onto FPGAs exhibit high connectivity demands. Throughout this paper we study the routing constraints of Virtex devices and we propose a systematic methodology for designing a novel general-purpose interconnection network targeting to reconfigurable architectures. This network consists of multiple segment wires and SB patterns, appropriately selected and assigned across the device. The goal of our proposed methodology is to maximize the hardware utilization of fabricated routing resources. The derived interconnection scheme is integrated on a Virtex style FPGA. This device is characterized both for its high-performance, as well as for its low-energy requirements. Due to this, the design criterion that guides our architecture selections was the minimal Energy×Delay Product (EDP). The methodology is fully-supported by three new software tools, which belong to MEANDER Design Framework. Using a typical set of MCNC benchmarks, extensive comparison study in terms of several critical parameters proves the effectiveness of the derived interconnection network. More specifically, we achieve average Energy×Delay Product reduction by 63%, performance increase by 26%, reduction in leakage power by 21%, reduction in total energy consumption by 11%, at the expense of increase of channel width by 20%.

Keywords: Design Methodology, FPGA, Interconnection, Low-Energy, High-Performance, CAD tool.

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Authors: Mohammad A. N. M. Shafiqul Karim

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As a developing country, Bangladesh has to face numerous challenges. Self Independence in electricity, contributing to climate change by reducing carbon emission and bringing the backward population of society to the mainstream is more challenging for them. Therefore, it is essential to ensure recycled use of local products to the maximum level in every sector. Some private organizations have already worked alongside government to bring the backward population to the mainstream by developing their financial capacities. As rice husk is the largest single category of the total energy supply in Bangladesh. As part of this strategy, rice husk can play a great as a promising renewable energy source, which is readily available, has considerable environmental benefits and can produce electricity and ensure multiple uses of byproducts in construction technology. For the first time in Bangladesh, an experimental multidimensional project depending on Rice Husk Electricity and Rice Husk Ash (RHA) concrete brick/block under Green Eco-Tech Limited has already been started. Project analysis, opportunity, sustainability, the high monitoring component, limitations and finally evaluated data reflecting the viability of establishing more projects using rice husk are discussed in this paper. The by-product of rice husk from the production of green electricity, RHA, can be used for making, in particular, RHA concrete brick/block in Bangladeshi aspects is also discussed here.

Keywords: Project analysis, rice husk, rice husk ash concrete brick/block, compressive strength of rice husk ash concrete brick/block.

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Authors: B. Mahmoud, M.H. Bedoui, R. Raychev, H. Essabbah

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We present in this paper an acquisition and treatment system designed for semi-analog Gamma-camera. It consists of a nuclear medical Image Acquisition, Treatment and Display chain(IATD) ensuring the acquisition, the treatment of the signals(resulting from the Gamma-camera detection head) and the scintigraphic image construction in real time. This chain is composed by an analog treatment board and a digital treatment board. We describe the designed systems and the digital treatment algorithms in which we have improved the performance and the flexibility. The digital treatment algorithms are implemented in a specific reprogrammable circuit FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array).interface for semi-analog cameras of Sopha Medical Vision(SMVi) by taking as example SOPHY DS7. The developed system consists of an Image Acquisition, Treatment and Display (IATD) ensuring the acquisition and the treatment of the signals resulting from the DH. The developed chain is formed by a treatment analog board and a digital treatment board designed around a DSP [2]. In this paper we have presented the architecture of a new version of our chain IATD in which the integration of the treatment algorithms is executed on an FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array)

Keywords: Nuclear medical image, scintigraphic image, digitaltreatment, linearity, spectrometry, FPGA.

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Authors: Faizal A. Samman, Thomas Hollstein, Manfred Glesner

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This paper presents design trade-off and performance impacts of the amount of pipeline phase of control path signals in a wormhole-switched network-on-chip (NoC). The numbers of the pipeline phase of the control path vary between two- and one-cycle pipeline phase. The control paths consist of the routing request paths for output selection and the arbitration paths for input selection. Data communications between on-chip routers are implemented synchronously and for quality of service, the inter-router data transports are controlled by using a link-level congestion control to avoid lose of data because of an overflow. The trade-off between the area (logic cell area) and the performance (bandwidth gain) of two proposed NoC router microarchitectures are presented in this paper. The performance evaluation is made by using a traffic scenario with different number of workloads under 2D mesh NoC topology using a static routing algorithm. By using a 130-nm CMOS standard-cell technology, our NoC routers can be clocked at 1 GHz, resulting in a high speed network link and high router bandwidth capacity of about 320 Gbit/s. Based on our experiments, the amount of control path pipeline stages gives more significant impact on the NoC performance than the impact on the logic area of the NoC router.

Keywords: Network-on-Chip, Synchronous Parallel Pipeline, Router Architecture, Wormhole Switching

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Authors: Hanaa T. El-Madany, Faten H. Fahmy, Ninet M. A. El-Rahman, Hassen T. Dorrah

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Renewable energy resources are inexhaustible, clean as compared with conventional resources. Also, it is used to supply regions with no grid, no telephone lines, and often with difficult accessibility by common transport. Satellite earth stations which located in remote areas are the most important application of renewable energy. Neural control is a branch of the general field of intelligent control, which is based on the concept of artificial intelligence. This paper presents the mathematical modeling of satellite earth station power system which is required for simulating the system.Aswan is selected to be the site under consideration because it is a rich region with solar energy. The complete power system is simulated using MATLAB–SIMULINK.An artificial neural network (ANN) based model has been developed for the optimum operation of earth station power system. An ANN is trained using a back propagation with Levenberg–Marquardt algorithm. The best validation performance is obtained for minimum mean square error. The regression between the network output and the corresponding target is equal to 96% which means a high accuracy. Neural network controller architecture gives satisfactory results with small number of neurons, hence better in terms of memory and time are required for NNC implementation. The results indicate that the proposed control unit using ANN can be successfully used for controlling the satellite earth station power system.

Keywords: Satellite, neural network, MATLAB, power system.

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Authors: Nahla H. Alaswadko, Rayya A. Hassan, Bayar N. Mohammed

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Empirical deterministic models have been developed to predict roughness progression of heavy duty spray sealed pavements for a dataset representing rural arterial roads. The dataset provides a good representation of the relevant network and covers a wide range of operating and environmental conditions. A sample with a large size of historical time series data for many pavement sections has been collected and prepared for use in multilevel regression analysis. The modelling parameters include road roughness as performance parameter and traffic loading, time, initial pavement strength, reactivity level of subgrade soil, climate condition, and condition of drainage system as predictor parameters. The purpose of this paper is to report the approaches adopted for models development and validation. The study presents multilevel models that can account for the correlation among time series data of the same section and to capture the effect of unobserved variables. Study results show that the models fit the data very well. The contribution and significance of relevant influencing factors in predicting roughness progression are presented and explained. The paper concludes that the analysis approach used for developing the models confirmed their accuracy and reliability by well-fitting to the validation data.

Keywords: Roughness progression, empirical model, pavement performance, heavy duty pavement.

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Authors: Seungwoo Kim, Hyojune Chae, Yongrae Jung, Jongwook Kim

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Recent medical studies have investigated the importance of enteral feeding and the use of feeding pumps for recovering patients unable to feed themselves or gain nourishment and nutrients by natural means. The most of enteral feeding system uses a peristaltic tube pump. A peristaltic pump is a form of positive displacement pump in which a flexible tube is progressively squeezed externally to allow the resulting enclosed pillow of fluid to progress along it. The squeezing of the tube requires a precise and robust controller of the geared motor to overcome parametric uncertainty of the pumping system which generates due to a wide variation of friction and slip between tube and roller. So, this paper proposes fuzzy adaptive controller for the robust control of the peristaltic tube pump. This new adaptive controller uses a fuzzy multi-layered architecture which has several independent fuzzy controllers in parallel, each with different robust stability area. Out of several independent fuzzy controllers, the most suited one is selected by a system identifier which observes variations in the controlled system parameter. This paper proposes a design procedure which can be carried out mathematically and systematically from the model of a controlled system. Finally, the good control performance, accurate dose rate and robust system stability, of the developed feeding pump is confirmed through experimental and clinic testing.

Keywords: Enteral Feeding Pump, Peristaltic Tube Pump, Fuzzy Adaptive Control, Fuzzy Multi-layered Controller, Look-up Table..

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Authors: Sagir M. Yusuf, Chris Baber

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In this paper, we describe how Bayesian inferential reasoning will contributes in obtaining a well-satisfied prediction for Distributed Constraint Optimization Problems (DCOPs) with uncertainties. We also demonstrate how DCOPs could be merged to multi-agent knowledge understand and prediction (i.e. Situation Awareness). The DCOPs functions were merged with Bayesian Belief Network (BBN) in the form of situation, awareness, and utility nodes. We describe how the uncertainties can be represented to the BBN and make an effective prediction using the expectation-maximization algorithm or conjugate gradient descent algorithm. The idea of variable prediction using Bayesian inference may reduce the number of variables in agents’ sampling domain and also allow missing variables estimations. Experiment results proved that the BBN perform compelling predictions with samples containing uncertainties than the perfect samples. That is, Bayesian inference can help in handling uncertainties and dynamism of DCOPs, which is the current issue in the DCOPs community. We show how Bayesian inference could be formalized with Distributed Situation Awareness (DSA) using uncertain and missing agents’ data. The whole framework was tested on multi-UAV mission for forest fire searching. Future work focuses on augmenting existing architecture to deal with dynamic DCOPs algorithms and multi-agent information merging.

Keywords: DCOP, multi-agent reasoning, Bayesian reasoning, swarm intelligence.

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Authors: Turki M. Habeebullah, Said Munir, Karl Ropkins, Essam A. Morsy, Atef M. F. Mohammed, Abdulaziz R. Seroji

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In this paper air quality conditions in Makkah and Leeds are compared. These two cities have totally different climatic conditions. Makkah climate is characterised as hot and dry (arid) whereas that of Leeds is characterised as cold and wet (temperate). This study uses air quality data from 2012 collected in Makkah, Saudi Arabia and Leeds, UK. The concentrations of all pollutants, except NO are higher in Makkah. Most notable, the concentrations of PM10 are much higher in Makkah than in Leeds. This is probably due to the arid nature of climatic conditions in Makkah and not solely due to anthropogenic emission sources, otherwise like PM10 some of the other pollutants, such as CO, NO, and SO2 would have shown much greater difference between Leeds and Makkah. Correlation analysis is performed between different pollutants at the same site and the same pollutants at different sites. In Leeds the correlation between PM10 and other pollutants is significantly stronger than in Makkah. Weaker correlation in Makkah is probably due to the fact that in Makkah most of the gaseous pollutants are emitted by combustion processes, whereas most of the PM10 is generated by other sources, such as windblown dust, re-suspension, and construction activities. This is in contrast to Leeds where all pollutants including PM10 are predominantly emitted by combustions, such as road traffic. Furthermore, in Leeds frequent rains wash out most of the atmospheric particulate matter and suppress re-suspension of dust. Temporal trends of various pollutants are compared and discussed. This study emphasises the role of climatic conditions in managing air quality, and hence the need for region-specific controlling strategies according to the local climatic and meteorological conditions.

Keywords: Air pollution, climatic conditions, particulate matter, Makkah, Leeds.

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Authors: Idil Kanter Otcu

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Nowadays, due to the growing problems of energy supply and the drastic reduction of natural non-renewable resources, the development of new applications in the energy sector and steps towards greater efficiency in energy consumption are required. Since buildings account for a large share of energy consumption, increasing the structural density of buildings causes an increase in energy consumption. This increase in energy consumption means that energy efficiency approaches to building design and the integration of new systems using emerging technologies become necessary in order to curb this consumption. As new systems for productive usage of generated energy are developed, buildings that require less energy to operate, with rational use of resources, need to be developed. One solution for reducing the energy requirements of buildings is through landscape planning, design and application. Requirements such as heating, cooling and lighting can be met with lower energy consumption through planting design, which can help to achieve more efficient and rational use of resources. Within this context, rather than a planting design which considers only the ecological and aesthetic features of plants, these considerations should also extend to spatial organization whereby the relationship between the site and open spaces in the context of climatic elements and planting designs are taken into account. In this way, the planting design can serve an additional purpose. In this study, a landscape design which takes into consideration location, local climate morphology and solar angle will be illustrated on a sample building project.

Keywords: Energy efficiency, landscape design, plant design, xeriscape landscape.

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Authors: Helena Dvořáčková, Jakub Elbl, Irina Mikajlo, Antonín Kintl, Jaroslav Hynšt, Olga Urbánková, Jaroslav Záhora

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Application of biochar to arable soils represents a new approach to restore soil health and quality. Many studies reported the positive effect of biochar application on soil fertility and development of soil microbial community. Moreover biochar may affect the soil water retention, but this effect has not been sufficiently described yet. Therefore this study deals with the influence of biochar application on: microbial activities in soil, availability of mineral nitrogen in soil for microorganisms, mineral nitrogen retention and plant production. To demonstrate the effect of biochar addition on the above parameters, the pot experiment was realized. As a model crop, Lactuca sativa L. was used and cultivated from December 10th 2014 till March 22th 2015 in climate chamber in thoroughly homogenized arable soil with and without addition of biochar. Five variants of experiment (V1 – V5) with different regime of irrigation were prepared. Variants V1 – V2 were fertilized by mineral nitrogen, V3 – V4 by biochar and V5 was a control. The significant differences were found only in plant production and mineral nitrogen retention. The highest content of mineral nitrogen in soil was detected in V1 and V2, about 250 % in comparison with the other variants. The positive effect of biochar application on soil fertility, mineral nitrogen availability was not found. On the other hand results of plant production indicate the possible positive effect of biochar application on soil water retention.

Keywords: Arable soil, biochar, drought, mineral Nitrogen.

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Authors: A. Khelifi, D. Ahmed, R. Salem, N. Ali

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Large patients’ queues at pharmacies and hospitals are a problem that faces the supposedly smooth and healthy environment in United Arab Emirates. As this sometimes leads to dissatisfaction from visiting patients, we tried to solve this problem with additional beneficial functions by developing the Hospital-Pharmacy Management System. The primary purpose of this research is to develop a system that joins the databases of a hospital and a pharmacy together for a better integrated system that provides a better coherent working environment. Three methods are used to design the system. These methods are detailed literature review, an extensive feasibility study and surveys for doctors, hospital IT managers and End-users. Interviews and surveys with related stakeholders were done to depict system’s requirements; design and prototype. The prototype illustrates system’s features and its client and server architecture. The system has a mobile application for visiting patients to, mainly, keep track of their prescriptions and access to their personal information. The server side allows doctors to submit the prescriptions online to pharmacists who will process them. This system is expected to reduce the long waiting queues of patients and increase their satisfaction while also reducing doctors and pharmacists’ stress and facilitating their work. It will be deployed to users of Android devices only. This limitation will be resolved, as one of main future enhancements, once the system finds acceptance from hospitals and pharmacies in United Arab Emirates.

Keywords: Hospital, Information System, Integration, Pharmacy.

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Authors: S. Rasti, M. A. Rajabzadeh

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Nickel-bearing laterites occur as two parallel belts along Sedimentary Zagros Orogenic (SZO) and Metamorphic Sanandaj-Sirjan (MSS) petrostructural zones, Fars Province, south Iran. An undisturbed vertical profile of these laterites includes protolith, saprolite, clay, and oxide horizons from base to top. Highly serpentinized harzburgite with relicts of olivine and orthopyroxene is regarded as the source rock. The laterites are unusual in lacking a significant saprolite zone with little development of Ni-silicates. Hematite, saponite, dolomite, smectite and clinochlore increase, while calcite, olivine, lizardite and chrysotile decrease from saprolite to oxide zones. Smectite and clinochlore with minor calcite are the major minerals in clay zone. Contacts of different horizons in laterite profiles are gradual and characterized by a decrease in Mg concentration ranging from 18.1 to 9.3 wt.% in oxide and saprolite, respectively. The maximum Ni concentration is 0.34 wt.% (NiO) in the base of the oxide zone, and goethite is the major Ni-bearing phase. From saprolite to oxide horizons, Al₂O₃, K₂O, TiO₂, and CaO decrease, while SiO₂, MnO, NiO, and Fe₂O₃ increase. Silica content reaches up to 45 wt.% in the upper part of the soil profile. There is a decrease in pH (8.44-8.17) and an increase in organic matter (0.28-0.59 wt.%) from base to top of the soils. The studied laterites are classified in the oxide clans which were derived from ophiolite ultramafic rocks under Mediterranean climate conditions.

Keywords: Iran, laterite, mineralogy, ophiolite.

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Authors: Kyung-Jung Lee, Young-Hun Ki, Hyun-Sik Ahn

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In this paper, we propose a hardware and software design method for automotive Electronic Control Units (ECU) considering the functional safety. The proposed ECU is considered for the application to Electro-Mechanical Actuator systems and the validity of the design method is shown by the application to the Electro-Mechanical Brake (EMB) control system which is used as a brake actuator in Brake-By-Wire (BBW) systems. The importance of a functional safety-based design approach to EMB ECU design has been emphasized because of its safety-critical functions, which are executed with the aid of many electric actuators, sensors, and application software. Based on hazard analysis and risk assessment according to ISO26262, the EMB system should be ASIL-D-compliant, the highest ASIL level. To this end, an external signature watchdog and an Infineon 32-bit microcontroller TriCore are used to reduce risks considering common-cause hardware failure. Moreover, a software design method is introduced for implementing functional safety-oriented monitoring functions based on an asymmetric dual core architecture considering redundancy and diversity. The validity of the proposed ECU design approach is verified by using the EMB Hardware-In-the-Loop (HILS) system, which consists of the EMB assembly, actuator ECU, a host PC, and a few debugging devices. Furthermore, it is shown that the existing sensor fault tolerant control system can be used more effectively for mitigating the effects of hardware and software faults by applying the proposed ECU design method.

Keywords: BBW (Brake-By-wire), EMB (Electro-Mechanical Brake), Functional Safety, ISO26262.

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Authors: Michael Gerges, Ograbe Ahiakwo, Martin Jaeger, Ahmad Asaad

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Recent advances of Building Information Modeling (BIM) especially in the Middle East have increased remarkably. Dubai has been taking a lead on this by making it mandatory for BIM to be adopted for all projects that involve complex architecture designs. This is because BIM is a dynamic process that assists all stakeholders in monitoring the project status throughout different project phases with great transparency. It focuses on utilizing information technology to improve collaboration among project participants during the entire life cycle of the project from the initial design, to the supply chain, resource allocation, construction and all productivity requirements. In view of this trend, the paper examines the extent of applying BIM in the State of Kuwait, by exploring practitioners’ perspectives on BIM, especially their perspectives on main barriers and main advantages. To this end structured interviews were carried out based on questionnaires and with a range of different construction professionals. The results revealed that practitioners perceive improved communication and mitigated project risks by encouraged collaboration between project participants. However, it was also observed that the full implementation of BIM in the State of Kuwait requires concerted efforts to make clients demanding BIM, counteract resistance to change among construction professionals and offer more training for design team members. This paper forms part of an on-going research effort on BIM and its application in the State of Kuwait and it is on this basis that further research on the topic is proposed.

Keywords: Building Information Modeling, BIM, construction industry, Kuwait.

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Authors: A. Bouzekri, H. Benmassaud

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Aurèsregion is one of the arid and semi-arid areas that have suffered climate crises and overexploitation of natural resources they have led to significant land degradation. The use of remote sensing data allowed us to analyze the land and its spatiotemporal changes in the Aurès between 1987 and 2013, for this work, we adopted a method of analysis based on the exploitation of the images satellite Landsat TM 1987 and Landsat OLI 2013, from the supervised classification likelihood coupled with field surveys of the mission of May and September of 2013. Using ENVI EX software by the superposition of the ground cover maps from 1987 and 2013, one can extract a spatial map change of different land cover units. The results show that between 1987 and 2013 vegetation has suffered negative changes are the significant degradation of forests and steppe rangelands, and sandy soils and bare land recorded a considerable increase. The spatial change map land cover units between 1987 and 2013 allows us to understand the extensive or regressive orientation of vegetation and soil, this map shows that dense forests give his place to clear forests and steppe vegetation develops from a degraded forest vegetation and bare, sandy soils earn big steppe surfaces that explain its remarkable extension. The analysis of remote sensing data highlights the profound changes in our environment over time and quantitative monitoring of the risk of desertification.

Keywords: Aurès, Land use, remote sensing, spatiotemporal.

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Authors: Aisha Hassan Abdalla Hashim, Fauzana Ridzuan, Nazreen Rusli

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Mobile IPv6 (MIPv6) describes how mobile node can change its point of attachment from one access router to another. As a demand for wireless mobile devices increases, many enhancements for macro-mobility (inter-domain) protocols have been proposed, designed and implemented in Mobile IPv6. Hierarchical Mobile IPv6 (HMIPv6) is one of them that is designed to reduce the amount of signaling required and to improve handover speed for mobile connections. This is achieved by introducing a new network entity called Mobility Anchor Point (MAP). This report presents a comparative study of the Hierarchical Mobility IPv6 and Mobile IPv6 protocols and we have narrowed down the scope to micro-mobility (intra-domain). The architecture and operation of each protocol is studied and they are evaluated based on the Quality of Service (QoS) parameter; handover latency. The simulation was carried out by using the Network Simulator-2. The outcome from this simulation has been discussed. From the results, it shows that, HMIPv6 performs best under intra-domain mobility compared to MIPv6. The MIPv6 suffers large handover latency. As enhancement we proposed to HMIPv6 to locate the MAP to be in the middle of the domain with respect to all Access Routers. That gives approximately same distance between MAP and Mobile Node (MN) regardless of the new location of MN, and possible shorter distance. This will reduce the delay since the distance is shorter. As a future work performance analysis is to be carried for the proposed HMIPv6 and compared to HMIPv6.

Keywords: Intra-domain mobility, HMIPv6, Handover Latency, proposed HMIPv6.

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Authors: M. Saravanan, M. Madheswaran

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Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) clustering architecture enables features like network scalability, communication overhead reduction, and fault tolerance. After clustering, aggregated data is transferred to data sink and reducing unnecessary, redundant data transfer. It reduces nodes transmitting, and so saves energy consumption. Also, it allows scalability for many nodes, reduces communication overhead, and allows efficient use of WSN resources. Clustering based routing methods manage network energy consumption efficiently. Building spanning trees for data collection rooted at a sink node is a fundamental data aggregation method in sensor networks. The problem of determining Cluster Head (CH) optimal number is an NP-Hard problem. In this paper, we combine cluster based routing features for cluster formation and CH selection and use Minimum Spanning Tree (MST) for intra-cluster communication. The proposed method is based on optimizing MST using Simulated Annealing (SA). In this work, normalized values of mobility, delay, and remaining energy are considered for finding optimal MST. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method in improving the packet delivery ratio and reducing the end to end delay.

Keywords: Wireless sensor network, clustering, minimum spanning tree, genetic algorithm, low energy adaptive clustering hierarchy, simulated annealing.

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Authors: D. Kaczorek

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Internal insulation of external walls is often problematic due to increased moisture content in the wall and interstitial or surface condensation risk. In this paper, the hygrothermal performance of prefabricated, concrete, large panel, external wall typical for WK70 system, commonly used in Poland in the 70’s, with inside, additional insulation was investigated. Thermal insulation board made out of hygroscopic, natural materials with moisture buffer capacity and extruded polystyrene (EPS) board was used as interior insulation. Experience with this natural insulation is rare in Poland. The analysis was performed using WUFI software. First of all, the impact of various standard boundary conditions on the behavior of the different wall assemblies was tested. The comparison of results showed that the moisture class according to the EN ISO 13788 leads to too high values of total moisture content in the wall since the boundary condition according to the EN 15026 should be usually applied. Then, hygrothermal 1D-simulations were conducted by WUFI Pro for analysis of internally added insulation, and the weak point like the joint of the wall with the concrete ceiling was verified using 2D simulations. Results showed that, in the Warsaw climate and the indoor conditions adopted in accordance with EN 15026, in the tested wall assemblies, regardless of the type of interior insulation, there would not be any problems with moisture - inside the structure and on the interior surface.

Keywords: Concrete large panel wall, hygrothermal simulation, internal insulation, moisture related issues.

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