The ECOS Project. An interactive simulation to promote an ECO-friendly universe.

Custom designed for display on the Cube Installation situated in the new Science and Engineering Centre (SEC) at QUT, the ECOS project is a playful interface that uses real-time weather data to simulate how a five-star energy building operates in climates all over the world. In collaboration with the SEC building managers, the ECOS Project incorporates energy consumption and generation data of the building into an interactive simulation, which is both engaging to users and highly informative, and which invites play and reflection on the roles of green buildings. ECOS focuses on the principle that humans can have both a positive and negative impact on ecosystems with both local and global consequence. The ECOS project draws on the practice of Eco-Visualisation, a term used to encapsulate the important merging of environmental data visualization with the philosophy of sustainability. Holmes (2007) uses the term Eco-Visualisation (EV) to refer to data visualisations that ‘display the real time consumption statistics of key environmental resources for the goal of promoting ecological literacy’. EVs are commonly artifacts of interaction design, information design, interface design and industrial design, but are informed by various intellectual disciplines that have shared interests in sustainability. As a result of surveying a number of projects, Pierce, Odom and Blevis (2008) outline strategies for designing and evaluating effective EVs, including ‘connecting behavior to material impacts of consumption, encouraging playful engagement and exploration with energy, raising public awareness and facilitating discussion, and stimulating critical reflection.’ Consequently, Froehlich (2010) and his colleagues also use the term ‘Eco-feedback technology’ to describe the same field. ‘Green IT’ is another variation which Tomlinson (2010) describes as a ‘field at the juncture of two trends… the growing concern over environmental issues’ and ‘the use of digital tools and techniques for manipulating information.’ The ECOS Project team is guided by these principles, but more importantly, propose an example for how these principles may be achieved. The ECOS Project presents a simplified interface to the very complex domain of thermodynamic and climate modeling. From a mathematical perspective, the simulation can be divided into two models, which interact and compete for balance – the comfort of ECOS’ virtual denizens and the ecological and environmental health of the virtual world. The comfort model is based on the study of psychometrics, and specifically those relating to human comfort. This provides baseline micro-climatic values for what constitutes a comfortable working environment within the QUT SEC buildings. The difference between the ambient outside temperature (as determined by polling the Google Weather API for live weather data) and the internal thermostat of the building (as set by the user) allows us to estimate the energy required to either heat or cool the building. Once the energy requirements can be ascertained, this is then balanced with the ability of the building to produce enough power from green energy sources (solar, wind and gas) to cover its energy requirements. Calculating the relative amount of energy produced by wind and solar can be done by, in the case of solar for example, considering the size of panel and the amount of solar radiation it is receiving at any given time, which in turn can be estimated based on the temperature and conditions returned by the live weather API. Some of these variables can be altered by the user, allowing them to attempt to optimize the health of the building. The variables that can be changed are the budget allocated to green energy sources such as the Solar Panels, Wind Generator and the Air conditioning to control the internal building temperature. These variables influence the energy input and output variables, modeled on the real energy usage statistics drawn from the SEC data provided by the building managers.

Design a simulated multimedia enriched immersive learning environment (SMILE) for nursing care of dementia patient

This thesis is to establish a framework to guide the development of a simulated, multimedia-enriched, immersive, learning environment (SMILE) framework. This framework models essential media components used to describe a scenario applied in healthcare (in a dementia context), demonstrates interactions between the components, and enables scalability of simulation implementation. The thesis outcomes also include a simulation system developed in accordance with the guidance framework and a preliminary evaluation through a user study involving ten nursing students and practicioners. The results show that the proposed framework is feasible and effective for designing a simulation system in dementia healthcare training.

离散裂缝诱导各向异性粘弹性地震波模拟与特征分析

The real media always attenuate and distort seismic waves as they propagate in the earth. This behavior can be modeled with a viscoelastic and anisotropic wave equation. The real media can be described as fractured media. In this thesis, we present a high-order staggered grid finite-difference scheme for 2-D viscoelastic wave propagation in a medium containing a large number of small finite length fractures. We use the effective medium approach to compute the anisotropic parameters in each grid cell. By comparing our synthetic seismogram by staggered-grid finite-difference with that by complex-ray parameter ray tracing method, we conclude that the high-order staggered-grid finite-difference technique can effectively used to simulate seismic propagation in viscoelastic-anisotropic media. Synthetic seismograms demonstrate that strong attenuation and significant frequency dispersion due to viscosity are important factors of reducing amplitude and delaying arrival time varying with incidence angle or offset. On the other hand, the amount of scattered energy not only provides an indicator of orientation of fracture sets, but can also provide information about the fracture spacing. Analysis of synthetic seismograms from dry- and fluid-filled fractures indicates that dry-filled fractures show more significant scattering on seismic wavefields than fluid-filled ones, and offset-variations in P-wave amplitude are observable. We also analyze seismic response of an anticlinal trap model that includes a gas-filled fractured reservoir with high attenuation, which attenuates and distorts the so-called bright spot.

Rendering optimisations for stylised sketching

We present work that specifically pertains to the rendering stage of stylised, non-photorealistic sketching. While a substantial body of work has been published on geometric optimisations, surface topologies, space-algorithms and natural media simulation, rendering-specific issues are rarely discussed in-depth even though they are often acknowledged. We investigate the most common stylised sketching approaches and identify possible rendering optimisations. In particular, we define uncertainty-functions, which are used to describe a human-error component, discuss how these pertain to geometric perturbation and textured silhouette sketching and explain how they can be cached to improve performance. Temporal coherence, which poses a problem for textured silhouette sketching, is addressed by means of an easily computed visibility-function. Lastly, we produce an effective yet surprisingly simple solution to seamless hatching, which commonly presents a large computational overhead, by using 3-D textures in a novel fashion. All our optimisations are cost-effective, easy to implement and work in conjunction with most existing algorithms.

Should we teach an old game new tricks?

The Middle East Politics Simulation (MEPS) is a simulation of diplomacy and political tension in the Middle East. This online role-play exercise is aimed at providing students with an improved level of understanding of the political dimensions of the region. Having been run since 1993, the MEPS has not had any major updates to its platform in all those years. However, as such a mature online entity there is the question of whether the MEPS will continue to engage students as their expectations of what constitutes an online role-playing environment became steadily raised by their familiarity with more graphically immersive platforms. The reliance on social media tools for students and political figures to use as conduits for communication is also unrepresented in the MEPS and the subject of some student dissatisfaction in previous years. This research assesses student attitudes towards the MEPS with an eye to balancing the demands of technology, functionality, equity of experience, security and, most importantly, learning outcomes.

Numerical simulation for the 3D seepage flow with fractional derivatives in porous media

In this paper, the numerical simulation of the 3D seepage flow with fractional derivatives in porous media is considered under two special cases: non-continued seepage flow in uniform media (NCSFUM) and continued seepage flow in non-uniform media (CSF-NUM). A fractional alternating direction implicit scheme (FADIS) for the NCSF-UM and a modified Douglas scheme (MDS) for the CSF-NUM are proposed. The stability, consistency and convergence of both FADIS and MDS in a bounded domain are discussed. A method for improving the speed of convergence by Richardson extrapolation for the MDS is also presented. Finally, numerical results are presented to support our theoretical analysis.

Stochastic simulation of chemical reactions in spatially complex media

Discrete stochastic simulations, via techniques such as the Stochastic Simulation Algorithm (SSA) are a powerful tool for understanding the dynamics of chemical kinetics when there are low numbers of certain molecular species. However, an important constraint is the assumption of well-mixedness and homogeneity. In this paper, we show how to use Monte Carlo simulations to estimate an anomalous diffusion parameter that encapsulates the crowdedness of the spatial environment. We then use this parameter to replace the rate constants of bimolecular reactions by a time-dependent power law to produce an SSA valid in cases where anomalous diffusion occurs or the system is not well-mixed (ASSA). Simulations then show that ASSA can successfully predict the temporal dynamics of chemical kinetics in a spatially constrained environment.

Numerical simulation of a new two-dimensional variable-order fractional percolation equation in non-homogeneous porous media

Percolation flow problems are discussed in many research fields, such as seepage hydraulics, groundwater hydraulics, groundwater dynamics and fluid dynamics in porous media. Many physical processes appear to exhibit fractional-order behavior that may vary with time, or space, or space and time. The theory of pseudodifferential operators and equations has been used to deal with this situation. In this paper we use a fractional Darcys law with variable order Riemann-Liouville fractional derivatives, this leads to a new variable-order fractional percolation equation. In this paper, a new two-dimensional variable-order fractional percolation equation is considered. A new implicit numerical method and an alternating direct method for the two-dimensional variable-order fractional model is proposed. Consistency, stability and convergence of the implicit finite difference method are established. Finally, some numerical examples are given. The numerical results demonstrate the effectiveness of the methods. This technique can be used to simulate a three-dimensional variable-order fractional percolation equation.

Numerical simulation of anomalous infiltration in porous media

Nonlinear time-fractional diffusion equations have been used to describe the liquid infiltration for both subdiffusion and superdiffusion in porous media. In this paper, some problems of anomalous infiltration with a variable-order timefractional derivative in porous media are considered. The time-fractional Boussinesq equation is also considered. Two computationally efficient implicit numerical schemes for the diffusion and wave-diffusion equations are proposed. Numerical examples are provided to show that the numerical methods are computationally efficient.