Automatic exploitation of non-determinate independent and-parallelism in the basic andorra model

Andorra-I is the first implementation of a language based on the Andorra Principie, which states that determinate goals can (and shonld) be run before other goals, and even in a parallel fashion. This principie has materialized in a framework called the Basic Andorra model, which allows or-parallelism as well as (dependent) and-parallelism for determinate goals. In this report we show that it is possible to further extend this model in order to allow general independent and-parallelism for nondeterminate goals, withont greatly modifying the underlying implementation machinery. A simple an easy way to realize such an extensión is to make each (nondeterminate) independent goal determinate, by using a special "bagof" constract. We also show that this can be achieved antomatically by compile-time translation from original Prolog programs. A transformation that fulfüls this objective and which can be easily antomated is presented in this report.

Spatially-Explicit Testing of a General Aboveground Carbon Density Estimation Model in aWestern Amazonian Forest Using Airborne LiDAR

Mapping aboveground carbon density in tropical forests can support CO2 emissionmonitoring and provide benefits for national resource management. Although LiDAR technology has been shown to be useful for assessing carbon density patterns, the accuracy and generality of calibrations of LiDAR-based aboveground carbon density (ACD) predictions with those obtained from field inventory techniques should be intensified in order to advance tropical forest carbon mapping. Here we present results from the application of a general ACD estimation model applied with small-footprint LiDAR data and field-based estimates of a 50-ha forest plot in Ecuador?s Yasuní National Park. Subplots used for calibration and validation of the general LiDAR equation were selected based on analysis of topographic position and spatial distribution of aboveground carbon stocks. The results showed that stratification of plot locations based on topography can improve the calibration and application of ACD estimation using airborne LiDAR (R2 = 0.94, RMSE = 5.81 Mg?C? ha?1, BIAS = 0.59). These results strongly suggest that a general LiDAR-based approach can be used for mapping aboveground carbon stocks in western lowland Amazonian forests.

Generalized optoelectronic model of series-connected multijunction solar cells

The emission of light from each junction in a series-connected multijunction solar cell both complicates and elucidates the understanding of its performance under arbitrary conditions. Bringing together many recent advances in this understanding, we present a general 1-D model to describe luminescent coupling that arises from both voltage-driven electroluminescence and voltage-independent photoluminescence in nonideal junctions that include effects such as Sah-Noyce-Shockley (SNS) recombination with n ≠ 2, Auger recombination, shunt resistance, reverse-bias breakdown, series resistance, and significant dark area losses. The individual junction voltages and currents are experimentally determined from measured optical and electrical inputs and outputs of the device within the context of the model to fit parameters that describe the devices performance under arbitrary input conditions. Techniques to experimentally fit the model are demonstrated for a four-junction inverted metamorphic solar cell, and the predictions of the model are compared with concentrator flash measurements.

An intelligent sales assistant for configurable products

Some of the recent proposals of web-based applications are oriented to provide advanced search services through virtual shops. Within this context, this paper proposes an advanced type of software application that simulates how a sales assistant dialogues with a consumer to dynamically configure a product according to particular needs. The paper presents the general knowl- edge model that uses artificial intelligence and knowledge-based techniques to simulate the configuration process. Finally, the paper illustrates the description with an example of an application in the field of photography equipment.

Propagation Mechanism modeling in the Near-Region of Arbitrary Cross-Sectional Tunnels.

Along with the increase of the use of working frequencies in advanced radio communication systems, the near-region inside tunnels lengthens considerably and even occupies the whole propagation cell or the entire length of some short tunnels. This paper analytically models the propagation mechanisms and their dividing point in the near-region of arbitrary cross-sectional tunnels for the first time. To begin with, the propagation losses owing to the free space mechanism and the multimode waveguide mechanism are modeled, respectively. Then, by conjunctively employing the propagation theory and the three-dimensional solid geometry, the paper presents a general model for the dividing point between two propagation mechanisms. It is worthy to mention that this model can be applied in arbitrary cross-sectional tunnels. Furthermore, the general dividing point model is specified in rectangular, circular, and arched tunnels, respectively. Five groups of measurements are used to justify the model in different tunnels at different frequencies. Finally, in order to facilitate the use of the model, simplified analytical solutions for the dividing point in five specific application situations are derived. The results in this paper could help deepen the insight into the propagation mechanisms in tunnels.

I feel you: the design and evaluation of a domotic affect-sensitive spoken conversational agent

We describe the work on infusion of emotion into a limited-task autonomous spoken conversational agent situated in the domestic environment, using a need-inspired task-independent emotion model (NEMO). In order to demonstrate the generation of affect through the use of the model, we describe the work of integrating it with a natural-language mixed-initiative HiFi-control spoken conversational agent (SCA). NEMO and the host system communicate externally, removing the need for the Dialog Manager to be modified, as is done in most existing dialog systems, in order to be adaptive. The first part of the paper concerns the integration between NEMO and the host agent. The second part summarizes the work on automatic affect prediction, namely, frustration and contentment, from dialog features, a non-conventional source, in the attempt of moving towards a more user-centric approach. The final part reports the evaluation results obtained from a user study, in which both versions of the agent (non-adaptive and emotionally-adaptive) were compared. The results provide substantial evidences with respect to the benefits of adding emotion in a spoken conversational agent, especially in mitigating users' frustrations and, ultimately, improving their satisfaction.

Gobierno abierto y estado de madurez en el sector público español

La crisis y la disminución de confianza en las Administraciones Públicas están produciendo que los gobiernos apuesten por nuevos sistemas de gobernanza y organización. Si bien esto es un hecho claro, no lo es tanto el nivel de implantación e implicación en estos temas por parte de las Administraciones. El objetivo principal de este proyecto es el de determinar el Estado de Madurez del Gobierno Abierto en el Sector Público Español. Para ello, se realiza un estudio teórico en el que se enmarca este concepto y se dan a conocer las definiciones previas y puntos clave necesarios para su implantación. Posteriormente, mediante distintos análisis, entre los que se incluyen indicadores, encuestas y estudios de las diferentes webs, se pretende llegar al estado actual y a un modelo general y eficiente de Gobierno Abierto. ABSTRACT. Crisis and the fall in public authorities confident are making Governments go to new systems of Government and organization. Although this is a fact, not so much the level of implantation and involvement in these issues by the administrations. The main aim of this project is determine the State of Maturity of the Open Government in the Spanish Public Sector. To achieve this, a theoretical study is made which include this concept and the previous definitions and key points required are given for its implementation. Subsequently, by several analysis, including indicators, surveys and studies of the different sites, we intend to reach the current state and a general and efficient model of Open Government.

Geografía del carbono en alta resolución en bosque tropical amazónico del Ecuador mediante sensores aerotransportados

La estimación de la biomasa de la vegetación terrestre en bosque tropical no sólo es un área de investigación en rápida expansión, sino también es un tema de gran interés para reducir las emisiones de carbono asociadas a la deforestación y la degradación forestal (REDD+). Las estimaciones de densidad de carbono sobre el suelo (ACD) en base a inventarios de campo y datos provenientes de sensores aerotransportados, en especial con sensores LiDAR, han conducido a un progreso sustancial en el cartografiado a gran escala de las reservas de carbono forestal. Sin embargo, estos mapas de carbono tienen incertidumbres considerables, asociadas generalmente al proceso de calibración del modelo de regresión utilizado para producir los mapas. En esta tesis se establece una metodología para la calibración y validación de un modelo general de estimación de ACD usando LiDAR en un sector del Parque Nacional Yasuní en Ecuador. En el proceso de calibración del modelo se considera el tamaño y la ubicación de las parcelas, la influencia de la topografía y la distribución espacial de la biomasa. Para el análisis de los datos se utilizan técnicas geoestadísticas en combinación con variables geomorfométricas derivadas de datos LiDAR, y se propone un esquema de muestreo estratificado por posiciones topográficas (valle, ladera y cima). La validación del modelo general para toda la zona de estudio presentó valores de RMSE = 5.81 Mg C ha-1, R2 = 0.94 y sesgo = 0.59, mientras que, al considerar las posiciones topográficas, el modelo presentó valores de RMSE = 1.67 Mg C ha-1, R2 = 0.98 y sesgo = 0.23 para el valle; RMSE = 3.13 Mg C ha-1, R2 = 0.98 y sesgo = - 0.34 para la ladera; y RMSE = 2.33 Mg C ha-1, R2 = 0.97 y sesgo = 0.74 para la cima. Los resultados obtenidos demuestran que la metodología de muestreo estratificado por posiciones topográficas propuesto, permite calibrar de manera efectiva el modelo general con las estimaciones de ACD en campo, logrando reducir el RMSE y el sesgo. Los resultados muestran el potencial de los datos LiDAR para caracterizar la estructura vertical de la vegetación en un bosque altamente diverso, permitiendo realizar estimaciones precisas de ACD, y conocer patrones espaciales continuos de la distribución de la biomasa aérea y del contenido de carbono en la zona de estudio. ABSTRACT Estimating biomass of terrestrial vegetation in tropical forest is not only a rapidly expanding research area, but also a subject of tremendous interest for reducing carbon emissions associated with deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+). The aboveground carbon density estimates (ACD) based on field inventories and airborne sensors, especially LiDAR sensors have led to a substantial progress in large-scale mapping of forest carbon stocks. However, these carbon maps have considerable uncertainties generally associated with the calibration of the regression model used to produce these maps. This thesis establishes a methodology for calibrating and validating a general ACD estimation model using LiDAR in Ecuador´s Yasuní National Park. The size and location of the plots are considered in the model calibration phase as well as the influence of topography and spatial distribution of biomass. Geostatistical analysis techniques are used in combination with geomorphometrics variables derived from LiDAR data, and then a stratified sampling scheme considering topographic positions (valley, slope and ridge) is proposed. The validation of the general model for the study area showed values of RMSE = 5.81 Mg C ha-1, R2 = 0.94 and bias = 0.59, while considering the topographical positions, the model showed values of RMSE = 1.67 Mg C ha-1, R2 = 0.98 and bias = 0.23 for the valley; RMSE = 3.13 Mg C ha-1, R2 = 0.98 and bias = - 0.34 for the slope; and RMSE = 2.33 Mg C ha-1, R2 = 0.97 and bias = 0.74 for the ridge. The results show that the stratified sampling methodology taking into account topographic positions, effectively calibrates the general model with field estimates of ACD, reducing RMSE and bias. The results show the potential of LiDAR data to characterize the vertical structure of vegetation in a highly diverse forest, allowing accurate estimates of ACD, and knowing continuous spatial patterns of biomass distribution and carbon stocks in the study area.

OntoTag - A Linguistic and Ontological Annotation Model Suitable for the Semantic Web

OntoTag - A Linguistic and Ontological Annotation Model Suitable for the Semantic Web 1. INTRODUCTION. LINGUISTIC TOOLS AND ANNOTATIONS: THEIR LIGHTS AND SHADOWS Computational Linguistics is already a consolidated research area. It builds upon the results of other two major ones, namely Linguistics and Computer Science and Engineering, and it aims at developing computational models of human language (or natural language, as it is termed in this area). Possibly, its most well-known applications are the different tools developed so far for processing human language, such as machine translation systems and speech recognizers or dictation programs. These tools for processing human language are commonly referred to as linguistic tools. Apart from the examples mentioned above, there are also other types of linguistic tools that perhaps are not so well-known, but on which most of the other applications of Computational Linguistics are built. These other types of linguistic tools comprise POS taggers, natural language parsers and semantic taggers, amongst others. All of them can be termed linguistic annotation tools. Linguistic annotation tools are important assets. In fact, POS and semantic taggers (and, to a lesser extent, also natural language parsers) have become critical resources for the computer applications that process natural language. Hence, any computer application that has to analyse a text automatically and ‘intelligently’ will include at least a module for POS tagging. The more an application needs to ‘understand’ the meaning of the text it processes, the more linguistic tools and/or modules it will incorporate and integrate. However, linguistic annotation tools have still some limitations, which can be summarised as follows: 1. Normally, they perform annotations only at a certain linguistic level (that is, Morphology, Syntax, Semantics, etc.). 2. They usually introduce a certain rate of errors and ambiguities when tagging. This error rate ranges from 10 percent up to 50 percent of the units annotated for unrestricted, general texts. 3. Their annotations are most frequently formulated in terms of an annotation schema designed and implemented ad hoc. A priori, it seems that the interoperation and the integration of several linguistic tools into an appropriate software architecture could most likely solve the limitations stated in (1). Besides, integrating several linguistic annotation tools and making them interoperate could also minimise the limitation stated in (2). Nevertheless, in the latter case, all these tools should produce annotations for a common level, which would have to be combined in order to correct their corresponding errors and inaccuracies. Yet, the limitation stated in (3) prevents both types of integration and interoperation from being easily achieved. In addition, most high-level annotation tools rely on other lower-level annotation tools and their outputs to generate their own ones. For example, sense-tagging tools (operating at the semantic level) often use POS taggers (operating at a lower level, i.e., the morphosyntactic) to identify the grammatical category of the word or lexical unit they are annotating. Accordingly, if a faulty or inaccurate low-level annotation tool is to be used by other higher-level one in its process, the errors and inaccuracies of the former should be minimised in advance. Otherwise, these errors and inaccuracies would be transferred to (and even magnified in) the annotations of the high-level annotation tool. Therefore, it would be quite useful to find a way to (i) correct or, at least, reduce the errors and the inaccuracies of lower-level linguistic tools; (ii) unify the annotation schemas of different linguistic annotation tools or, more generally speaking, make these tools (as well as their annotations) interoperate. Clearly, solving (i) and (ii) should ease the automatic annotation of web pages by means of linguistic tools, and their transformation into Semantic Web pages (Berners-Lee, Hendler and Lassila, 2001). Yet, as stated above, (ii) is a type of interoperability problem. There again, ontologies (Gruber, 1993; Borst, 1997) have been successfully applied thus far to solve several interoperability problems. Hence, ontologies should help solve also the problems and limitations of linguistic annotation tools aforementioned. Thus, to summarise, the main aim of the present work was to combine somehow these separated approaches, mechanisms and tools for annotation from Linguistics and Ontological Engineering (and the Semantic Web) in a sort of hybrid (linguistic and ontological) annotation model, suitable for both areas. This hybrid (semantic) annotation model should (a) benefit from the advances, models, techniques, mechanisms and tools of these two areas; (b) minimise (and even solve, when possible) some of the problems found in each of them; and (c) be suitable for the Semantic Web. The concrete goals that helped attain this aim are presented in the following section. 2. GOALS OF THE PRESENT WORK As mentioned above, the main goal of this work was to specify a hybrid (that is, linguistically-motivated and ontology-based) model of annotation suitable for the Semantic Web (i.e. it had to produce a semantic annotation of web page contents). This entailed that the tags included in the annotations of the model had to (1) represent linguistic concepts (or linguistic categories, as they are termed in ISO/DCR (2008)), in order for this model to be linguistically-motivated; (2) be ontological terms (i.e., use an ontological vocabulary), in order for the model to be ontology-based; and (3) be structured (linked) as a collection of ontology-based triples, as in the usual Semantic Web languages (namely RDF(S) and OWL), in order for the model to be considered suitable for the Semantic Web. Besides, to be useful for the Semantic Web, this model should provide a way to automate the annotation of web pages. As for the present work, this requirement involved reusing the linguistic annotation tools purchased by the OEG research group (http://www.oeg-upm.net), but solving beforehand (or, at least, minimising) some of their limitations. Therefore, this model had to minimise these limitations by means of the integration of several linguistic annotation tools into a common architecture. Since this integration required the interoperation of tools and their annotations, ontologies were proposed as the main technological component to make them effectively interoperate. From the very beginning, it seemed that the formalisation of the elements and the knowledge underlying linguistic annotations within an appropriate set of ontologies would be a great step forward towards the formulation of such a model (henceforth referred to as OntoTag). Obviously, first, to combine the results of the linguistic annotation tools that operated at the same level, their annotation schemas had to be unified (or, preferably, standardised) in advance. This entailed the unification (id. standardisation) of their tags (both their representation and their meaning), and their format or syntax. Second, to merge the results of the linguistic annotation tools operating at different levels, their respective annotation schemas had to be (a) made interoperable and (b) integrated. And third, in order for the resulting annotations to suit the Semantic Web, they had to be specified by means of an ontology-based vocabulary, and structured by means of ontology-based triples, as hinted above. Therefore, a new annotation scheme had to be devised, based both on ontologies and on this type of triples, which allowed for the combination and the integration of the annotations of any set of linguistic annotation tools. This annotation scheme was considered a fundamental part of the model proposed here, and its development was, accordingly, another major objective of the present work. All these goals, aims and objectives could be re-stated more clearly as follows: Goal 1: Development of a set of ontologies for the formalisation of the linguistic knowledge relating linguistic annotation. Sub-goal 1.1: Ontological formalisation of the EAGLES (1996a; 1996b) de facto standards for morphosyntactic and syntactic annotation, in a way that helps respect the Value> triple structure recommended for annotations in these works (which is isomorphic to the triple structures used in the context of the Semantic Web). Sub-goal 1.2: Incorporation into this preliminary ontological formalisation of other existing standards and standard proposals relating the levels mentioned above, such as those currently under development within ISO/TC 37 (the ISO Technical Committee dealing with Terminology, which deals also with linguistic resources and annotations). Sub-goal 1.3: Generalisation and extension of the recommendations in EAGLES (1996a; 1996b) and ISO/TC 37 to the semantic level, for which no ISO/TC 37 standards have been developed yet. Sub-goal 1.4: Ontological formalisation of the generalisations and/or extensions obtained in the previous sub-goal as generalisations and/or extensions of the corresponding ontology (or ontologies). Sub-goal 1.5: Ontological formalisation of the knowledge required to link, combine and unite the knowledge represented in the previously developed ontology (or ontologies). Goal 2: Development of OntoTag’s annotation scheme, a standard-based abstract scheme for the hybrid (linguistically-motivated and ontological-based) annotation of texts. Sub-goal 2.1: Development of the standard-based morphosyntactic annotation level of OntoTag’s scheme. This level should include, and possibly extend, the recommendations of EAGLES (1996a) and also the recommendations included in the ISO/MAF (2008) standard draft. Sub-goal 2.2: Development of the standard-based syntactic annotation level of the hybrid abstract scheme. This level should include, and possibly extend, the recommendations of EAGLES (1996b) and the ISO/SynAF (2010) standard draft. Sub-goal 2.3: Development of the standard-based semantic annotation level of OntoTag’s (abstract) scheme. Sub-goal 2.4: Development of the mechanisms for a convenient integration of the three annotation levels already mentioned. These mechanisms should take into account the recommendations included in the ISO/LAF (2009) standard draft. Goal 3: Design of OntoTag’s (abstract) annotation architecture, an abstract architecture for the hybrid (semantic) annotation of texts (i) that facilitates the integration and interoperation of different linguistic annotation tools, and (ii) whose results comply with OntoTag’s annotation scheme. Sub-goal 3.1: Specification of the decanting processes that allow for the classification and separation, according to their corresponding levels, of the results of the linguistic tools annotating at several different levels. Sub-goal 3.2: Specification of the standardisation processes that allow (a) complying with the standardisation requirements of OntoTag’s annotation scheme, as well as (b) combining the results of those linguistic tools that share some level of annotation. Sub-goal 3.3: Specification of the merging processes that allow for the combination of the output annotations and the interoperation of those linguistic tools that share some level of annotation. Sub-goal 3.4: Specification of the merge processes that allow for the integration of the results and the interoperation of those tools performing their annotations at different levels. Goal 4: Generation of OntoTagger’s schema, a concrete instance of OntoTag’s abstract scheme for a concrete set of linguistic annotations. These linguistic annotations result from the tools and the resources available in the research group, namely • Bitext’s DataLexica (http://www.bitext.com/EN/datalexica.asp), • LACELL’s (POS) tagger (http://www.um.es/grupos/grupo-lacell/quees.php), • Connexor’s FDG (http://www.connexor.eu/technology/machinese/glossary/fdg/), and • EuroWordNet (Vossen et al., 1998). This schema should help evaluate OntoTag’s underlying hypotheses, stated below. Consequently, it should implement, at least, those levels of the abstract scheme dealing with the annotations of the set of tools considered in this implementation. This includes the morphosyntactic, the syntactic and the semantic levels. Goal 5: Implementation of OntoTagger’s configuration, a concrete instance of OntoTag’s abstract architecture for this set of linguistic tools and annotations. This configuration (1) had to use the schema generated in the previous goal; and (2) should help support or refute the hypotheses of this work as well (see the next section). Sub-goal 5.1: Implementation of the decanting processes that facilitate the classification and separation of the results of those linguistic resources that provide annotations at several different levels (on the one hand, LACELL’s tagger operates at the morphosyntactic level and, minimally, also at the semantic level; on the other hand, FDG operates at the morphosyntactic and the syntactic levels and, minimally, at the semantic level as well). Sub-goal 5.2: Implementation of the standardisation processes that allow (i) specifying the results of those linguistic tools that share some level of annotation according to the requirements of OntoTagger’s schema, as well as (ii) combining these shared level results. In particular, all the tools selected perform morphosyntactic annotations and they had to be conveniently combined by means of these processes. Sub-goal 5.3: Implementation of the merging processes that allow for the combination (and possibly the improvement) of the annotations and the interoperation of the tools that share some level of annotation (in particular, those relating the morphosyntactic level, as in the previous sub-goal). Sub-goal 5.4: Implementation of the merging processes that allow for the integration of the different standardised and combined annotations aforementioned, relating all the levels considered. Sub-goal 5.5: Improvement of the semantic level of this configuration by adding a named entity recognition, (sub-)classification and annotation subsystem, which also uses the named entities annotated to populate a domain ontology, in order to provide a concrete application of the present work in the two areas involved (the Semantic Web and Corpus Linguistics). 3. MAIN RESULTS: ASSESSMENT OF ONTOTAG’S UNDERLYING HYPOTHESES The model developed in the present thesis tries to shed some light on (i) whether linguistic annotation tools can effectively interoperate; (ii) whether their results can be combined and integrated; and, if they can, (iii) how they can, respectively, interoperate and be combined and integrated. Accordingly, several hypotheses had to be supported (or rejected) by the development of the OntoTag model and OntoTagger (its implementation). The hypotheses underlying OntoTag are surveyed below. Only one of the hypotheses (H.6) was rejected; the other five could be confirmed. H.1 The annotations of different levels (or layers) can be integrated into a sort of overall, comprehensive, multilayer and multilevel annotation, so that their elements can complement and refer to each other. • CONFIRMED by the development of: o OntoTag’s annotation scheme, o OntoTag’s annotation architecture, o OntoTagger’s (XML, RDF, OWL) annotation schemas, o OntoTagger’s configuration. H.2 Tool-dependent annotations can be mapped onto a sort of tool-independent annotations and, thus, can be standardised. • CONFIRMED by means of the standardisation phase incorporated into OntoTag and OntoTagger for the annotations yielded by the tools. H.3 Standardisation should ease: H.3.1: The interoperation of linguistic tools. H.3.2: The comparison, combination (at the same level and layer) and integration (at different levels or layers) of annotations. • H.3 was CONFIRMED by means of the development of OntoTagger’s ontology-based configuration: o Interoperation, comparison, combination and integration of the annotations of three different linguistic tools (Connexor’s FDG, Bitext’s DataLexica and LACELL’s tagger); o Integration of EuroWordNet-based, domain-ontology-based and named entity annotations at the semantic level. o Integration of morphosyntactic, syntactic and semantic annotations. H.4 Ontologies and Semantic Web technologies (can) play a crucial role in the standardisation of linguistic annotations, by providing consensual vocabularies and standardised formats for annotation (e.g., RDF triples). • CONFIRMED by means of the development of OntoTagger’s RDF-triple-based annotation schemas. H.5 The rate of errors introduced by a linguistic tool at a given level, when annotating, can be reduced automatically by contrasting and combining its results with the ones coming from other tools, operating at the same level. However, these other tools might be built following a different technological (stochastic vs. rule-based, for example) or theoretical (dependency vs. HPS-grammar-based, for instance) approach. • CONFIRMED by the results yielded by the evaluation of OntoTagger. H.6 Each linguistic level can be managed and annotated independently. • REJECTED: OntoTagger’s experiments and the dependencies observed among the morphosyntactic annotations, and between them and the syntactic annotations. In fact, Hypothesis H.6 was already rejected when OntoTag’s ontologies were developed. We observed then that several linguistic units stand on an interface between levels, belonging thereby to both of them (such as morphosyntactic units, which belong to both the morphological level and the syntactic level). Therefore, the annotations of these levels overlap and cannot be handled independently when merged into a unique multileveled annotation. 4. OTHER MAIN RESULTS AND CONTRIBUTIONS First, interoperability is a hot topic for both the linguistic annotation community and the whole Computer Science field. The specification (and implementation) of OntoTag’s architecture for the combination and integration of linguistic (annotation) tools and annotations by means of ontologies shows a way to make these different linguistic annotation tools and annotations interoperate in practice. Second, as mentioned above, the elements involved in linguistic annotation were formalised in a set (or network) of ontologies (OntoTag’s linguistic ontologies). • On the one hand, OntoTag’s network of ontologies consists of − The Linguistic Unit Ontology (LUO), which includes a mostly hierarchical formalisation of the different types of linguistic elements (i.e., units) identifiable in a written text; − The Linguistic Attribute Ontology (LAO), which includes also a mostly hierarchical formalisation of the different types of features that characterise the linguistic units included in the LUO; − The Linguistic Value Ontology (LVO), which includes the corresponding formalisation of the different values that the attributes in the LAO can take; − The OIO (OntoTag’s Integration Ontology), which  Includes the knowledge required to link, combine and unite the knowledge represented in the LUO, the LAO and the LVO;  Can be viewed as a knowledge representation ontology that describes the most elementary vocabulary used in the area of annotation. • On the other hand, OntoTag’s ontologies incorporate the knowledge included in the different standards and recommendations for linguistic annotation released so far, such as those developed within the EAGLES and the SIMPLE European projects or by the ISO/TC 37 committee: − As far as morphosyntactic annotations are concerned, OntoTag’s ontologies formalise the terms in the EAGLES (1996a) recommendations and their corresponding terms within the ISO Morphosyntactic Annotation Framework (ISO/MAF, 2008) standard; − As for syntactic annotations, OntoTag’s ontologies incorporate the terms in the EAGLES (1996b) recommendations and their corresponding terms within the ISO Syntactic Annotation Framework (ISO/SynAF, 2010) standard draft; − Regarding semantic annotations, OntoTag’s ontologies generalise and extend the recommendations in EAGLES (1996a; 1996b) and, since no stable standards or standard drafts have been released for semantic annotation by ISO/TC 37 yet, they incorporate the terms in SIMPLE (2000) instead; − The terms coming from all these recommendations and standards were supplemented by those within the ISO Data Category Registry (ISO/DCR, 2008) and also of the ISO Linguistic Annotation Framework (ISO/LAF, 2009) standard draft when developing OntoTag’s ontologies. Third, we showed that the combination of the results of tools annotating at the same level can yield better results (both in precision and in recall) than each tool separately. In particular, 1. OntoTagger clearly outperformed two of the tools integrated into its configuration, namely DataLexica and FDG in all the combination sub-phases in which they overlapped (i.e. POS tagging, lemma annotation and morphological feature annotation). As far as the remaining tool is concerned, i.e. LACELL’s tagger, it was also outperformed by OntoTagger in POS tagging and lemma annotation, and it did not behave better than OntoTagger in the morphological feature annotation layer. 2. As an immediate result, this implies that a) This type of combination architecture configurations can be applied in order to improve significantly the accuracy of linguistic annotations; and b) Concerning the morphosyntactic level, this could be regarded as a way of constructing more robust and more accurate POS tagging systems. Fourth, Semantic Web annotations are usually performed by humans or else by machine learning systems. Both of them leave much to be desired: the former, with respect to their annotation rate; the latter, with respect to their (average) precision and recall. In this work, we showed how linguistic tools can be wrapped in order to annotate automatically Semantic Web pages using ontologies. This entails their fast, robust and accurate semantic annotation. As a way of example, as mentioned in Sub-goal 5.5, we developed a particular OntoTagger module for the recognition, classification and labelling of named entities, according to the MUC and ACE tagsets (Chinchor, 1997; Doddington et al., 2004). These tagsets were further specified by means of a domain ontology, namely the Cinema Named Entities Ontology (CNEO). This module was applied to the automatic annotation of ten different web pages containing cinema reviews (that is, around 5000 words). In addition, the named entities annotated with this module were also labelled as instances (or individuals) of the classes included in the CNEO and, then, were used to populate this domain ontology. • The statistical results obtained from the evaluation of this particular module of OntoTagger can be summarised as follows. On the one hand, as far as recall (R) is concerned, (R.1) the lowest value was 76,40% (for file 7); (R.2) the highest value was 97, 50% (for file 3); and (R.3) the average value was 88,73%. On the other hand, as far as the precision rate (P) is concerned, (P.1) its minimum was 93,75% (for file 4); (R.2) its maximum was 100% (for files 1, 5, 7, 8, 9, and 10); and (R.3) its average value was 98,99%. • These results, which apply to the tasks of named entity annotation and ontology population, are extraordinary good for both of them. They can be explained on the basis of the high accuracy of the annotations provided by OntoTagger at the lower levels (mainly at the morphosyntactic level). However, they should be conveniently qualified, since they might be too domain- and/or language-dependent. It should be further experimented how our approach works in a different domain or a different language, such as French, English, or German. • In any case, the results of this application of Human Language Technologies to Ontology Population (and, accordingly, to Ontological Engineering) seem very promising and encouraging in order for these two areas to collaborate and complement each other in the area of semantic annotation. Fifth, as shown in the State of the Art of this work, there are different approaches and models for the semantic annotation of texts, but all of them focus on a particular view of the semantic level. Clearly, all these approaches and models should be integrated in order to bear a coherent and joint semantic annotation level. OntoTag shows how (i) these semantic annotation layers could be integrated together; and (ii) they could be integrated with the annotations associated to other annotation levels. Sixth, we identified some recommendations, best practices and lessons learned for annotation standardisation, interoperation and merge. They show how standardisation (via ontologies, in this case) enables the combination, integration and interoperation of different linguistic tools and their annotations into a multilayered (or multileveled) linguistic annotation, which is one of the hot topics in the area of Linguistic Annotation. And last but not least, OntoTag’s annotation scheme and OntoTagger’s annotation schemas show a way to formalise and annotate coherently and uniformly the different units and features associated to the different levels and layers of linguistic annotation. This is a great scientific step ahead towards the global standardisation of this area, which is the aim of ISO/TC 37 (in particular, Subcommittee 4, dealing with the standardisation of linguistic annotations and resources).

An Intercomparison of Modelling Approaches for Simulating the Atmospheric Dispersion of Ammonia Emitted by Agricultural Sources

RESUMEN La dispersión del amoniaco (NH3) emitido por fuentes agrícolas en medias distancias, y su posterior deposición en el suelo y la vegetación, pueden llevar a la degradación de ecosistemas vulnerables y a la acidificación de los suelos. La deposición de NH3 suele ser mayor junto a la fuente emisora, por lo que los impactos negativos de dichas emisiones son generalmente mayores en esas zonas. Bajo la legislación comunitaria, varios estados miembros emplean modelos de dispersión inversa para estimar los impactos de las emisiones en las proximidades de las zonas naturales de especial conservación. Una revisión reciente de métodos para evaluar impactos de NH3 en distancias medias recomendaba la comparación de diferentes modelos para identificar diferencias importantes entre los métodos empleados por los distintos países de la UE. En base a esta recomendación, esta tesis doctoral compara y evalúa las predicciones de las concentraciones atmosféricas de NH3 de varios modelos bajo condiciones, tanto reales como hipotéticas, que plantean un potencial impacto sobre ecosistemas (incluidos aquellos bajo condiciones de clima Mediterráneo). En este sentido, se procedió además a la comparación y evaluación de varias técnicas de modelización inversa para inferir emisiones de NH3. Finalmente, se ha desarrollado un modelo matemático simple para calcular las concentraciones de NH3 y la velocidad de deposición de NH3 en ecosistemas vulnerables cercanos a una fuente emisora. La comparativa de modelos supuso la evaluación de cuatro modelos de dispersión (ADMS 4.1; AERMOD v07026; OPS-st v3.0.3 y LADD v2010) en un amplio rango de casos hipotéticos (dispersión de NH3 procedente de distintos tipos de fuentes agrícolas de emisión). La menor diferencia entre las concentraciones medias estimadas por los distintos modelos se obtuvo para escenarios simples. La convergencia entre las predicciones de los modelos fue mínima para el escenario relativo a la dispersión de NH3 procedente de un establo ventilado mecánicamente. En este caso, el modelo ADMS predijo concentraciones significativamente menores que los otros modelos. Una explicación de estas diferencias podríamos encontrarla en la interacción de diferentes “penachos” y “capas límite” durante el proceso de parametrización. Los cuatro modelos de dispersión fueron empleados para dos casos reales de dispersión de NH3: una granja de cerdos en Falster (Dinamarca) y otra en Carolina del Norte (EEUU). Las concentraciones medias anuales estimadas por los modelos fueron similares para el caso americano (emisión de granjas ventiladas de forma natural y balsa de purines). La comparación de las predicciones de los modelos con concentraciones medias anuales medidas in situ, así como la aplicación de los criterios establecidos para la aceptación estadística de los modelos, permitió concluir que los cuatro modelos se comportaron aceptablemente para este escenario. No ocurrió lo mismo en el caso danés (nave ventilada mecánicamente), en donde el modelo LADD no dio buenos resultados debido a la ausencia de procesos de “sobreelevacion de penacho” (plume-rise). Los modelos de dispersión dan a menudo pobres resultados en condiciones de baja velocidad de viento debido a que la teoría de dispersión en la que se basan no es aplicable en estas condiciones. En situaciones de frecuente descenso en la velocidad del viento, la actual guía de modelización propone usar un modelo que sea eficaz bajo dichas condiciones, máxime cuando se realice una valoración que tenga como objeto establecer una política de regularización. Esto puede no ser siempre posible debido a datos meteorológicos insuficientes, en cuyo caso la única opción sería utilizar un modelo más común, como la versión avanzada de los modelos Gausianos ADMS o AERMOD. Con el objetivo de evaluar la idoneidad de estos modelos para condiciones de bajas velocidades de viento, ambos modelos fueron utilizados en un caso con condiciones Mediterráneas. Lo que supone sucesivos periodos de baja velocidad del viento. El estudio se centró en la dispersión de NH3 procedente de una granja de cerdos en Segovia (España central). Para ello la concentración de NH3 media mensual fue medida en 21 localizaciones en torno a la granja. Se realizaron también medidas de concentración de alta resolución en una única localización durante una campaña de una semana. En este caso, se evaluaron dos estrategias para mejorar la respuesta del modelo ante bajas velocidades del viento. La primera se basó en “no zero wind” (NZW), que sustituyó periodos de calma con el mínimo límite de velocidad del viento y “accumulated calm emissions” (ACE), que forzaban al modelo a calcular las emisiones totales en un periodo de calma y la siguiente hora de no-calma. Debido a las importantes incertidumbres en los datos de entrada del modelo (inputs) (tasa de emisión de NH3, velocidad de salida de la fuente, parámetros de la capa límite, etc.), se utilizó el mismo caso para evaluar la incertidumbre en la predicción del modelo y valorar como dicha incertidumbre puede ser considerada en evaluaciones del modelo. Un modelo dinámico de emisión, modificado para el caso de clima Mediterráneo, fue empleado para estimar la variabilidad temporal en las emisiones de NH3. Así mismo, se realizó una comparativa utilizando las emisiones dinámicas y la tasa constante de emisión. La incertidumbre predicha asociada a la incertidumbre de los inputs fue de 67-98% del valor medio para el modelo ADMS y entre 53-83% del valor medio para AERMOD. La mayoría de esta incertidumbre se debió a la incertidumbre del ratio de emisión en la fuente (50%), seguida por la de las condiciones meteorológicas (10-20%) y aquella asociada a las velocidades de salida (5-10%). El modelo AERMOD predijo mayores concentraciones que ADMS y existieron más simulaciones que alcanzaron los criterios de aceptabilidad cuando se compararon las predicciones con las concentraciones medias anuales medidas. Sin embargo, las predicciones del modelo ADMS se correlacionaron espacialmente mejor con las mediciones. El uso de valores dinámicos de emisión estimados mejoró el comportamiento de ADMS, haciendo empeorar el de AERMOD. La aplicación de estrategias destinadas a mejorar el comportamiento de este último tuvo efectos contradictorios similares. Con el objeto de comparar distintas técnicas de modelización inversa, varios modelos (ADMS, LADD y WindTrax) fueron empleados para un caso no agrícola, una colonia de pingüinos en la Antártida. Este caso fue empleado para el estudio debido a que suponía la oportunidad de obtener el primer factor de emisión experimental para una colonia de pingüinos antárticos. Además las condiciones eran propicias desde el punto de vista de la casi total ausencia de concentraciones ambiente (background). Tras el trabajo de modelización existió una concordancia suficiente entre las estimaciones obtenidas por los tres modelos. De este modo se pudo definir un factor de emisión de para la colonia de 1.23 g NH3 por pareja criadora por día (con un rango de incertidumbre de 0.8-2.54 g NH3 por pareja criadora por día). Posteriores aplicaciones de técnicas de modelización inversa para casos agrícolas mostraron también un buen compromiso estadístico entre las emisiones estimadas por los distintos modelos. Con todo ello, es posible concluir que la modelización inversa es una técnica robusta para estimar tasas de emisión de NH3. Modelos de selección (screening) permiten obtener una rápida y aproximada estimación de los impactos medioambientales, siendo una herramienta útil para evaluaciones de impactos en tanto que permite eliminar casos que presentan un riesgo potencial de daño bajo. De esta forma, lo recursos del modelo pueden Resumen (Castellano) destinarse a casos en donde la posibilidad de daño es mayor. El modelo de Cálculo Simple de los Límites de Impacto de Amoniaco (SCAIL) se desarrolló para obtener una estimación de la concentración media de NH3 y de la tasa de deposición seca asociadas a una fuente agrícola. Está técnica de selección, basada en el modelo LADD, fue evaluada y calibrada con diferentes bases de datos y, finalmente, validada utilizando medidas independientes de concentraciones realizadas cerca de las fuentes. En general SCAIL dio buenos resultados de acuerdo a los criterios estadísticos establecidos. Este trabajo ha permitido definir situaciones en las que las concentraciones predichas por modelos de dispersión son similares, frente a otras en las que las predicciones difieren notablemente entre modelos. Algunos modelos nos están diseñados para simular determinados escenarios en tanto que no incluyen procesos relevantes o están más allá de los límites de su aplicabilidad. Un ejemplo es el modelo LADD que no es aplicable en fuentes con velocidad de salida significativa debido a que no incluye una parametrización de sobreelevacion del penacho. La evaluación de un esquema simple combinando la sobreelevacion del penacho y una turbulencia aumentada en la fuente mejoró el comportamiento del modelo. Sin embargo más pruebas son necesarias para avanzar en este sentido. Incluso modelos que son aplicables y que incluyen los procesos relevantes no siempre dan similares predicciones. Siendo las razones de esto aún desconocidas. Por ejemplo, AERMOD predice mayores concentraciones que ADMS para dispersión de NH3 procedente de naves de ganado ventiladas mecánicamente. Existe evidencia que sugiere que el modelo ADMS infraestima concentraciones en estas situaciones debido a un elevado límite de velocidad de viento. Por el contrario, existen evidencias de que AERMOD sobreestima concentraciones debido a sobreestimaciones a bajas Resumen (Castellano) velocidades de viento. Sin embrago, una modificación simple del pre-procesador meteorológico parece mejorar notablemente el comportamiento del modelo. Es de gran importancia que estas diferencias entre las predicciones de los modelos sean consideradas en los procesos de evaluación regulada por los organismos competentes. Esto puede ser realizado mediante la aplicación del modelo más útil para cada caso o, mejor aún, mediante modelos múltiples o híbridos. ABSTRACT Short-range atmospheric dispersion of ammonia (NH3) emitted by agricultural sources and its subsequent deposition to soil and vegetation can lead to the degradation of sensitive ecosystems and acidification of the soil. Atmospheric concentrations and dry deposition rates of NH3 are generally highest near the emission source and so environmental impacts to sensitive ecosystems are often largest at these locations. Under European legislation, several member states use short-range atmospheric dispersion models to estimate the impact of ammonia emissions on nearby designated nature conservation sites. A recent review of assessment methods for short-range impacts of NH3 recommended an intercomparison of the different models to identify whether there are notable differences to the assessment approaches used in different European countries. Based on this recommendation, this thesis compares and evaluates the atmospheric concentration predictions of several models used in these impact assessments for various real and hypothetical scenarios, including Mediterranean meteorological conditions. In addition, various inverse dispersion modelling techniques for the estimation of NH3 emissions rates are also compared and evaluated and a simple screening model to calculate the NH3 concentration and dry deposition rate at a sensitive ecosystem located close to an NH3 source was developed. The model intercomparison evaluated four atmospheric dispersion models (ADMS 4.1; AERMOD v07026; OPS-st v3.0.3 and LADD v2010) for a range of hypothetical case studies representing the atmospheric dispersion from several agricultural NH3 source types. The best agreement between the mean annual concentration predictions of the models was found for simple scenarios with area and volume sources. The agreement between the predictions of the models was worst for the scenario representing the dispersion from a mechanically ventilated livestock house, for which ADMS predicted significantly smaller concentrations than the other models. The reason for these differences appears to be due to the interaction of different plume-rise and boundary layer parameterisations. All four dispersion models were applied to two real case studies of dispersion of NH3 from pig farms in Falster (Denmark) and North Carolina (USA). The mean annual concentration predictions of the models were similar for the USA case study (emissions from naturally ventilated pig houses and a slurry lagoon). The comparison of model predictions with mean annual measured concentrations and the application of established statistical model acceptability criteria concluded that all four models performed acceptably for this case study. This was not the case for the Danish case study (mechanically ventilated pig house) for which the LADD model did not perform acceptably due to the lack of plume-rise processes in the model. Regulatory dispersion models often perform poorly in low wind speed conditions due to the model dispersion theory being inapplicable at low wind speeds. For situations with frequent low wind speed periods, current modelling guidance for regulatory assessments is to use a model that can handle these conditions in an acceptable way. This may not always be possible due to insufficient meteorological data and so the only option may be to carry out the assessment using a more common regulatory model, such as the advanced Gaussian models ADMS or AERMOD. In order to assess the suitability of these models for low wind conditions, they were applied to a Mediterranean case study that included many periods of low wind speed. The case study was the dispersion of NH3 emitted by a pig farm in Segovia, Central Spain, for which mean monthly atmospheric NH3 concentration measurements were made at 21 locations surrounding the farm as well as high-temporal-resolution concentration measurements at one location during a one-week campaign. Two strategies to improve the model performance for low wind speed conditions were tested. These were ‘no zero wind’ (NZW), which replaced calm periods with the minimum threshold wind speed of the model and ‘accumulated calm emissions’ (ACE), which forced the model to emit the total emissions during a calm period during the first subsequent non-calm hour. Due to large uncertainties in the model input data (NH3 emission rates, source exit velocities, boundary layer parameters), the case study was also used to assess model prediction uncertainty and assess how this uncertainty can be taken into account in model evaluations. A dynamic emission model modified for the Mediterranean climate was used to estimate the temporal variability in NH3 emission rates and a comparison was made between the simulations using the dynamic emissions and a constant emission rate. Prediction uncertainty due to model input uncertainty was 67-98% of the mean value for ADMS and between 53-83% of the mean value for AERMOD. Most of this uncertainty was due to source emission rate uncertainty (~50%), followed by uncertainty in the meteorological conditions (~10-20%) and uncertainty in exit velocities (~5-10%). AERMOD predicted higher concentrations than ADMS and more of the simulations met the model acceptability criteria when compared with the annual mean measured concentrations. However, the ADMS predictions were better correlated spatially with the measurements. The use of dynamic emission estimates improved the performance of ADMS but worsened the performance of AERMOD and the application of strategies to improved model performance had similar contradictory effects. In order to compare different inverse modelling techniques, several models (ADMS, LADD and WindTrax) were applied to a non-agricultural case study of a penguin colony in Antarctica. This case study was used since it gave the opportunity to provide the first experimentally-derived emission factor for an Antarctic penguin colony and also had the advantage of negligible background concentrations. There was sufficient agreement between the emission estimates obtained from the three models to define an emission factor for the penguin colony (1.23 g NH3 per breeding pair per day with an uncertainty range of 0.8-2.54 g NH3 per breeding pair per day). This emission estimate compared favourably to the value obtained using a simple micrometeorological technique (aerodynamic gradient) of 0.98 g ammonia per breeding pair per day (95% confidence interval: 0.2-2.4 g ammonia per breeding pair per day). Further application of the inverse modelling techniques for a range of agricultural case studies also demonstrated good agreement between the emission estimates. It is concluded, therefore, that inverse dispersion modelling is a robust technique for estimating NH3 emission rates. Screening models that can provide a quick and approximate estimate of environmental impacts are a useful tool for impact assessments because they can be used to filter out cases that potentially have a minimal environmental impact allowing resources to be focussed on more potentially damaging cases. The Simple Calculation of Ammonia Impact Limits (SCAIL) model was developed as a screening model to provide an estimate of the mean NH3 concentration and dry deposition rate downwind of an agricultural source. This screening tool, based on the LADD model, was evaluated and calibrated with several experimental datasets and then validated using independent concentration measurements made near sources. Overall SCAIL performed acceptably according to established statistical criteria. This work has identified situations where the concentration predictions of dispersion models are similar and other situations where the predictions are significantly different. Some models are simply not designed to simulate certain scenarios since they do not include the relevant processes or are beyond the limits of their applicability. An example is the LADD model that is not applicable to sources with significant exit velocity since the model does not include a plume-rise parameterisation. The testing of a simple scheme combining a momentum-driven plume rise and increased turbulence at the source improved model performance, but more testing is required. Even models that are applicable and include the relevant process do not always give similar predictions and the reasons for this need to be investigated. AERMOD for example predicts higher concentrations than ADMS for dispersion from mechanically ventilated livestock housing. There is evidence to suggest that ADMS underestimates concentrations in these situations due to a high wind speed threshold. Conversely, there is also evidence that AERMOD overestimates concentrations in these situations due to overestimation at low wind speeds. However, a simple modification to the meteorological pre-processor appears to improve the performance of the model. It is important that these differences between the predictions of these models are taken into account in regulatory assessments. This can be done by applying the most suitable model for the assessment in question or, better still, using multiple or hybrid models.

Some past decision theory models for euro construction model codes and for road drainage in Spain, and modest hints with multi-criteria methods for agro and environmental assurance

The authors are from UPM and are relatively grouped, and all have intervened in different academic or real cases on the subject, at different times as being of different age. With precedent from E. Torroja and A. Páez in Madrid Spain Safety Probabilistic models for concrete about 1957, now in ICOSSAR conferences, author J.M. Antón involved since autumn 1967 for euro-steel construction in CECM produced a math model for independent load superposition reductions, and using it a load coefficient pattern for codes in Rome Feb. 1969, practically adopted for European constructions, giving in JCSS Lisbon Feb. 1974 suggestion of union for concrete-steel-al.. That model uses model for loads like Gumbel type I, for 50 years for one type of load, reduced to 1 year to be added to other independent loads, the sum set in Gumbel theories to 50 years return period, there are parallel models. A complete reliability system was produced, including non linear effects as from buckling, phenomena considered somehow in actual Construction Eurocodes produced from Model Codes. The system was considered by author in CEB in presence of Hydraulic effects from rivers, floods, sea, in reference with actual practice. When redacting a Road Drainage Norm in MOPU Spain an optimization model was realized by authors giving a way to determine the figure of Return Period, 10 to 50 years, for the cases of hydraulic flows to be considered in road drainage. Satisfactory examples were a stream in SE of Spain with Gumbel Type I model and a paper of Ven Te Chow with Mississippi in Keokuk using Gumbel type II, and the model can be modernized with more varied extreme laws. In fact in the MOPU drainage norm the redacting commission acted also as expert to set a table of return periods for elements of road drainage, in fact as a multi-criteria complex decision system. These precedent ideas were used e.g. in wide Codes, indicated in symposia or meetings, but not published in journals in English, and a condensate of contributions of authors is presented. The authors are somehow involved in optimization for hydraulic and agro planning, and give modest hints of intended applications in presence of agro and environment planning as a selection of the criteria and utility functions involved in bayesian, multi-criteria or mixed decision systems. Modest consideration is made of changing in climate, and on the production and commercial systems, and on others as social and financial.

Diseño de un modelo de riesgo integral de incendios forestales mediante técnicas multicriterio y su automatización en sistemas de información geográfica : una aplicación en la Comunidad Valenciana

Los incendios forestales son la principal causa de mortalidad de árboles en la Europa mediterránea y constituyen la amenaza más seria para los ecosistemas forestales españoles. En la Comunidad Valenciana, diariamente se despliega cerca de un centenar de vehículos de vigilancia, cuya distribución se apoya, fundamentalmente, en un índice de riesgo de incendios calculado en función de las condiciones meteorológicas. La tesis se centra en el diseño y validación de un nuevo índice de riesgo integrado de incendios, especialmente adaptado a la región mediterránea y que facilite el proceso de toma de decisiones en la distribución diaria de los medios de vigilancia contra incendios forestales. El índice adopta el enfoque de riesgo integrado introducido en la última década y que incluye dos componentes de riesgo: el peligro de ignición y la vulnerabilidad. El primero representa la probabilidad de que se inicie un fuego y el peligro potencial para que se propague, mientras que la vulnerabilidad tiene en cuenta las características del territorio y los efectos potenciales del fuego sobre el mismo. Para el cálculo del peligro potencial se han identificado indicadores relativos a los agentes naturales y humanos causantes de incendios, la ocurrencia histórica y el estado de los combustibles, extremo muy relacionado con la meteorología y las especies. En cuanto a la vulnerabilidad se han empleado indicadores representativos de los efectos potenciales del incendio (comportamiento del fuego, infraestructuras de defensa), como de las características del terreno (valor, capacidad de regeneración…). Todos estos indicadores constituyen una estructura jerárquica en la que, siguiendo las recomendaciones de la Comisión europea para índices de riesgo de incendios, se han incluido indicadores representativos del riesgo a corto plazo y a largo plazo. El cálculo del valor final del índice se ha llevado a cabo mediante la progresiva agregación de los componentes que forman cada uno de los niveles de la estructura jerárquica del índice y su integración final. Puesto que las técnicas de decisión multicriterio están especialmente orientadas a tratar con problemas basados en estructuras jerárquicas, se ha aplicado el método TOPSIS para obtener la integración final del modelo. Se ha introducido en el modelo la opinión de los expertos, mediante la ponderación de cada uno de los componentes del índice. Se ha utilizado el método AHP, para obtener las ponderaciones de cada experto y su integración en un único peso por cada indicador. Para la validación del índice se han empleado los modelos de Ecuaciones de Estimación Generalizadas, que tienen en cuenta posibles respuestas correlacionadas. Para llevarla a cabo se emplearon los datos de oficiales de incendios ocurridos durante el período 1994 al 2003, referenciados a una cuadrícula de 10x10 km empleando la ocurrencia de incendios y su superficie, como variables dependientes. Los resultados de la validación muestran un buen funcionamiento del subíndice de peligro de ocurrencia con un alto grado de correlación entre el subíndice y la ocurrencia, un buen ajuste del modelo logístico y un buen poder discriminante. Por su parte, el subíndice de vulnerabilidad no ha presentado una correlación significativa entre sus valores y la superficie de los incendios, lo que no descarta su validez, ya que algunos de sus componentes tienen un carácter subjetivo, independiente de la superficie incendiada. En general el índice presenta un buen funcionamiento para la distribución de los medios de vigilancia en función del peligro de inicio. No obstante, se identifican y discuten nuevas líneas de investigación que podrían conducir a una mejora del ajuste global del índice. En concreto se plantea la necesidad de estudiar más profundamente la aparente correlación que existe en la provincia de Valencia entre la superficie forestal que ocupa cada cuadrícula de 10 km del territorio y su riesgo de incendios y que parece que a menor superficie forestal, mayor riesgo de incendio. Otros aspectos a investigar son la sensibilidad de los pesos de cada componente o la introducción de factores relativos a los medios potenciales de extinción en el subíndice de vulnerabilidad. Summary Forest fires are the main cause of tree mortality in Mediterranean Europe and the most serious threat to the Spanisf forest. In the Spanish autonomous region of Valencia, forest administration deploys a mobile fleet of 100 surveillance vehicles in forest land whose allocation is based on meteorological index of wildlandfire risk. This thesis is focused on the design and validation of a new Integrated Wildland Fire Risk Index proposed to efficient allocation of vehicles and specially adapted to the Mediterranean conditions. Following the approaches of integrated risk developed last decade, the index includes two risk components: Wildland Fire Danger and Vulnerability. The former represents the probability a fire ignites and the potential hazard of fire propagation or spread danger, while vulnerability accounts for characteristics of the land and potential effects of fire. To calculate the Wildland Fire Danger, indicators of ignition and spread danger have been identified, including human and natural occurrence agents, fuel conditions, historical occurrence and spread rate. Regarding vulnerability se han empleado indicadores representativos de los efectos potenciales del incendio (comportamiento del fuego, infraestructurasd de defensa), como de las características del terreno (valor, capacidad de regeneración…). These indicators make up the hierarchical structure for the index, which, following the criteria of the European Commission both short and long-term indicators have been included. Integration consists of the progressive aggregation of the components that make up every level in risk the index and, after that, the integration of these levels to obtain a unique value for the index. As Munticriteria methods are oriented to deal with hierarchically structured problems and with situations in which conflicting goals prevail, TOPSIS method is used in the integration of components. Multicriteria methods were also used to incorporate expert opinion in weighting of indicators and to carry out the aggregation process into the final index. The Analytic Hierarchy Process method was used to aggregate experts' opinions on each component into a single value. Generalized Estimation Equations, which account for possible correlated responses, were used to validate the index. Historical records of daily occurrence for the period from 1994 to 2003, referred to a 10x10-km-grid cell, as well as the extent of the fires were the dependant variables. The results of validation showed good Wildland Fire Danger component performance, with high correlation degree between Danger and occurrence, a good fit of the logistic model used and a good discrimination power. The vulnerability component has not showed a significant correlation between their values and surface fires, which does not mean the index is not valid, because of the subjective character of some of its components, independent of the surface of the fires. Overall, the index could be used to optimize the preventing resources allocation. Nevertheless, new researching lines are identified and discussed to improve the overall performance of the index. More specifically the need of study the inverse relationship between the value of the wildfire Fire Danger component and the forested surface of each 10 - km cell is set out. Other points to be researched are the sensitivity of the index component´s weight and the possibility of taking into account indicators related to fire fighting resources to make up the vulnerability component.

Integration of socioeconomic and genetic aspects involved in the conservation of animal genetic resources = Integración de aspectos socioeconómicos y genéticos involucrados en la conservación de recursos genéticos animales

El sector ganadero está siendo gradualmente dominado por sistemas intensivos y especializados en los que los factores de producción están controlados y en los que los caracteres productivos son los criterios principales para la selección de especies y razas. Entretanto, muchos de los bienes y servicios que tradicionalmente suministraba el ganado, tales como los fertilizantes, la tracción animal o materias primas para la elaboración vestimenta y calzado están siendo reemplazados por productos industriales. Como consecuencia de ambos cambios, las razas seleccionadas intensivamente, las cuales están estrechamente ligadas a sistemas agrícolas de alta producción y altos insumos, han desplazado a muchas razas autóctonas, en las que la selección prácticamente ha cesado o es muy poco intensa. Actualmente existe una mayor conciencia social sobre la situación de las razas autóctonas y muchas funciones del ganado que previamente habían sido ignoradas están siendo reconocidas. Desde hace algunas décadas, se ha aceptado internacionalmente que las razas de ganado cumplen funciones económicas, socio-culturales, medioambientales y de seguridad alimentaria. Por ello, diferentes organismos internacionales han reconocido que la disminución de los recursos genéticos de animales domésticos (RGADs) es un problema grave y han recomendado su conservación. Aun así, la conservación de RGADs es un tema controvertido por la dificultad de valorar las funciones del ganado. Esta valoración es compleja debido que los RGADs tiene una doble naturaleza privada - pública. Como algunos economistas han subrayado, el ganado es un bien privado, sin embargo debido a algunas de sus funciones, también es un bien público. De esta forma, el aumento del conocimiento sobre valor de cada una de sus funciones facilitaría la toma de decisiones en relación a su conservación y desarrollo. Sin embargo, esta valoración es controvertida puesto que la importancia relativa de las funciones del ganado varía en función del momento, del lugar, de las especies y de las razas. El sector ganadero, debido a sus múltiples funciones, está influenciado por factores técnicos, medioambientales, sociales, culturales y políticos que están interrelacionados y que engloban a una enorme variedad de actores y procesos. Al igual que las funciones del ganado, los factores que afectan a su conservación y desarrollo están fuertemente condicionados por localización geográfica. Asimismo, estos factores pueden ser muy heterogéneos incluso dentro de una misma raza. Por otro lado, es razonable pensar que el ganadero es el actor principal de la conservación de razas locales. Actualmente, las razas locales están siendo Integration of socioeconomic and genetic aspects involved in the conservation of animal genetic resources 5 explotadas por ganaderos muy diversos bajo sistemas de producción también muy diferentes. Por todo ello, es de vital importancia comprender y evaluar el impacto que tienen las motivaciones, y el proceso de toma de decisiones de los ganaderos en la estructura genética de las razas. En esta tesis doctoral exploramos diferentes aspectos sociales, económicos y genéticos involucrados en la conservación de razas locales de ganado vacuno en Europa, como ejemplo de RGADs, esperando contribuir al entendimiento científico de este complejo tema. Nuestro objetivo es conseguir una visión global de los procesos subyacentes en la conservación y desarrollo de estas razas. Pretendemos ilustrar como se pueden utilizar métodos cuantitativos en el diseño y establecimiento de estrategias de conservación y desarrollo de RGADs objetivas y adecuadas. En primer lugar, exploramos el valor económico total (VET) del ganado analizando sus componentes públicos fuera de mercado usando como caso de estudio la raza vacuna Alistana-Sanabresa (AS). El VET de cualquier bien está formado por componentes de uso y de no-uso. Estos últimos incluyen el valor de opción, el valor de herencia y el valor de existencia. En el caso del ganado local, el valor de uso directo proviene de sus productos. Los valores de uso indirecto están relacionados con el papel que cumple las razas en el mantenimiento de los paisajes y cultura rural. El valor de opción se refiere a su futuro uso potencial y el valor de herencia al uso potencial de las generaciones venideras. Finalmente, el valor de existencia está relacionado con el bienestar que produce a la gente saber que existe un recurso específico. Nuestro objetivo fue determinar la importancia relativa que tienen los componentes fuera de mercado sobre el VET de la raza AS. Para ello evaluamos la voluntad de la gente a pagar por la conservación de la AS mediante experimentos de elección (EEs) a través de encuestas. Estos experimentos permiten valorar individualmente los distintos componentes del VET de cualquier bien. Los resultados los analizamos mediante de uso de modelos aleatorios logit. Encontramos que las funciones públicas de la raza AS tienen un valor significativo. Sus valores más importantes son el valor de uso indirecto como elemento cultural Zamorano y el valor de existencia (ambos representaron el 80% de VET). Además observamos que el valor que gente da a las funciones públicas de la razas de ganado dependen de sus características socioeconómicas. Los factores que condicionaron la voluntad a pagar para la conservación de la raza AS fueron el lugar de residencia (ciudad o pueblo), el haber visto animales de la raza o haber consumido sus productos y la actitud de los encuestados ante los conflictos entre el desarrollo económico y el medioambiente. Por otro lado, encontramos que no todo el mundo tiene una visión completa e integrada de todas las funciones públicas de la raza AS. Por este motivo, los programas o actividades de concienciación sobre su estado deberían hacer hincapié en este aspecto. La existencia de valores públicos de la raza AS implica que los ganaderos deberían recibir compensaciones económicas como pago por las funciones públicas que cumple su raza local. Las compensaciones asegurarían un tamaño de población que permitiría que la raza AS siga realizando estas funciones. Un mecanismo para ello podría ser el desarrollo del turismo rural relacionado con la raza. Esto aumentaría el valor de uso privado mientras que supondría un elemento añadido a las estrategias de conservación y desarrollo. No obstante, los ganaderos deben analizar cómo aprovechar los nichos de mercado existentes, así como mejorar la calidad de los productos de la raza prestando especial atención al etiquetado de los mismos. Una vez evaluada la importancia de las funciones públicas de las razas locales de ganado, analizamos la diversidad de factores técnicos, económicos y sociales de la producción de razas locales de ganado vacuno existente en Europa. Con este fin analizamos el caso de quince razas locales de ocho países en el contexto de un proyecto de colaboración internacional. Investigamos las diferencias entre los países para determinar los factores comunes clave que afectan a la viabilidad de las razas locales. Para ello entrevistamos mediante cuestionarios a un total de 355 ganaderos en las quince razas. Como indicador de viabilidad usamos los planes de los ganaderos de variación del tamaño de las ganaderías. Los cuestionarios incluían diferentes aspectos económicos, técnicos y sociales con potencial influencia en las dinámicas demográficas de las razas locales. Los datos recogidos los analizamos mediante distintas técnicas estadísticas multivariantes como el análisis discriminante y la regresión logística. Encontramos que los factores que afectan a la viabilidad de las razas locales en Europa son muy heterogéneos. Un resultado reseñable fue que los ganaderos de algunos países no consideran que la explotación de su raza tenga un alto valor social. Este hecho vuelve a poner de manifiesto la importancia de desarrollar programas Europeos de concienciación sobre la importancia de las funciones que cumplen las razas locales. Además los países analizados presentaron una alta variabilidad en cuanto a la importancia de los mercados locales en la distribución de los productos y en cuanto al porcentaje en propiedad del total de los pastos usados en las explotaciones. Este estudio reflejó la variabilidad de los sistemas y medios de producción (en el sentido socioeconómico, técnico y ecológico) que existe en Europa. Por ello hay que ser cautos en la implementación de las políticas comunes en los diferentes países. También encontramos que la variabilidad dentro de los países puede ser elevada debido a las diferencias entre razas, lo que implica que las políticas nacionales deber ser suficientemente flexibles para adaptarse a las peculiaridades de cada una de las razas. Por otro lado, encontramos una serie de factores comunes a la viabilidad de las razas en los distintos países; la edad de los ganaderos, la colaboración entre ellos y la apreciación social de las funciones culturales, medioambientales y sociales del ganado local. El envejecimiento de los ganaderos de razas locales no es solo un problema de falta de transferencia generacional, sino que también puede suponer una actitud más negativa hacia la inversión en las actividades ganaderas y en una menor capacidad de adaptación a los cambios del sector. La capacidad de adaptación de los ganaderos es un factor crucial en la viabilidad de las razas locales. Las estrategias y políticas de conservación comunes deben incluir las variables comunes a la viabilidad de las razas manteniendo flexibilidad suficiente para adaptarse a las especificidades nacionales. Estas estrategias y políticas deberían ir más allá de compensación económica a los ganaderos de razas locales por la menor productividad de sus razas. Las herramientas para la toma de decisiones ayudan a generar una visión amplia de la conservación y desarrollo de las razas locales. Estas herramientas abordan el diseño de estrategias de conservación y desarrollo de forma sistemática y estructurada. En la tercera parte de la tesis usamos una de estas herramientas, el análisis DAFO (Debilidades, Amenazas, Fortalezas y Oportunidades), con este propósito, reconociendo que la conservación de RGADs depende de los ganaderos. Desarrollamos un análisis DAFO cuantitativo y lo aplicamos a trece razas locales de ganado vacuno de seis países europeos en el contexto del proyecto de colaboración mencionado anteriormente. El método tiene cuatro pasos: 1) la definición del sistema; 2) la identificación y agrupación de los factores influyentes; 3) la cuantificación de la importancia de dichos factores y 4) la identificación y priorización de estrategias. Identificamos los factores utilizando multitud de agentes (multi-stakeholder appproach). Una vez determinados los factores se agruparon en una estructura de tres niveles. La importancia relativa de los cada uno de los factores para cada raza fue determinada por grupos de expertos en RGADs de los países integrados en el citado proyecto. Finalmente, desarrollamos un proceso de cuantificación para identificar y priorizar estrategias. La estructura de agrupación de factores permitió analizar el problema de la conservación desde el nivel general hasta el concreto. La unión de análisis específicos de cada una de las razas en un análisis DAFO común permitió evaluar la adecuación de las estrategias a cada caso concreto. Identificamos un total de 99 factores. El análisis reveló que mientras los factores menos importantes son muy consistentes entre razas, los factores y estrategias más relevantes son muy heterogéneos. La idoneidad de las estrategias fue mayor a medida que estas se hacían más generales. A pesar de dicha heterogeneidad, los factores influyentes y estrategias más importantes estaban ligados a aspectos positivos (fortalezas y oportunidades) lo que implica que el futuro de estas razas es prometedor. Los resultados de nuestro análisis también confirmaron la gran relevancia del valor cultural de estas razas. Las factores internos (fortalezas y debilidades) más importantes estaban relacionadas con los sistemas de producción y los ganaderos. Las oportunidades más relevantes estaban relacionadas con el desarrollo y marketing de nuevos productos mientras que las amenazas más importantes se encontraron a la hora de vender los productos actuales. Este resultado implica que sería fructífero trabajar en la motivación y colaboración entre ganaderos así como, en la mejora de sus capacidades. Concluimos que las políticas comunes europeas deberían centrarse en aspectos generales y ser los suficientemente flexibles para adaptarse a las singularidades de los países y las razas. Como ya se ha mencionado, los ganaderos juegan un papel esencial en la conservación y desarrollo de las razas autóctonas. Por ello es relevante entender que implicación puede tener la heterogeneidad de los mismos en la viabilidad de una raza. En la cuarta parte de la tesis hemos identificado tipos de ganaderos con el fin de entender cómo la relación entre la variabilidad de sus características socioeconómicas, los perfiles de las ganaderías y las dinámicas de las mismas. El análisis se ha realizado en un contexto sociológico, aplicando los conceptos de capital cultural y económico. Las tipologías se han determinado en función de factores socioeconómicos y culturales indicadores del capital cultural y capital económico de un individuo. Nuestro objetivo era estudiar si la tipología socioeconómica de los ganaderos afecta al perfil de su ganadería y a las decisiones que toman. Entrevistamos a 85 ganaderos de la raza Avileña-Negra Ibérica (ANI) y utilizamos los resultados de dichas entrevistas para ilustrar y testar el proceso. Definimos los tipos de ganaderos utilizando un análisis de clúster jerarquizado con un grupo de variables canónicas que se obtuvieron en función de cinco factores socioeconómicos: el nivel de educación del ganadero, el año en que empezó a ser ganadero de ANI, el porcentaje de los ingresos familiares que aporta la ganadería, el porcentaje de propiedad de la tierra de la explotación y la edad del ganadero. La tipología de los ganaderos de ANI resultó ser más compleja que en el pasado. Los resultados indicaron que los tipos de ganaderos variaban en muchos aspectos socioeconómicos y en los perfiles de sus Integration of socioeconomic and genetic aspects involved in the conservation of animal genetic resources 9 ganaderías. Los tipos de ganaderos determinados toman diferentes decisiones en relación a la modificación del tamaño de su ganadería y a sus objetivos de selección. Por otro lado, reaccionaron de forma diferente ante un hipotético escenario de reducción de las compensaciones económicas que les planteamos. En este estudio hemos visto que el capital cultural y el económico interactúan y hemos explicado como lo hacen en los distintos tipos de ganaderos. Por ejemplo, los ganaderos que poseían un mayor capital económico, capital cultural formal y capital cultural adquirido sobre la raza, eran los ganaderos cuyos animales tenían una mayor demanda por parte de otros ganaderos, lo cual podría responder a su mayor prestigio social dentro de la raza. Uno de los elementos claves para el futuro de la raza es si este prestigio responde a una superioridad genética de las animales. Esto ocurriría si los ganaderos utilizaran las herramientas que tienen a su disposición a la hora de seleccionar animales. Los tipos de ganaderos identificados mostraron también claras diferencias en sus formas de colaboración y en su reacción a una hipotética variación de las compensaciones económicas. Aunque algunos tipos de ganaderos mostraron un bajo nivel de dependencia a estas compensaciones, la mayoría se manifestaron altamente dependientes. Por ello cualquier cambio drástico en la política de ayudas puede comprometer el desarrollo de las razas autóctonas. La adaptación las políticas de compensaciones económicas a la heterogeneidad de los ganaderos podría aumentar la eficacia de las mismas por lo que sería interesante explorar posibilidades a este respecto. Concluimos destacando la necesidad de desarrollar políticas que tengan en cuenta la heterogeneidad de los ganaderos. Finalmente abordamos el estudio de la estructura genética de poblaciones ganaderas. Las decisiones de los ganaderos en relación a la selección de sementales y su número de descendientes configuran la estructura demográfica y genética de las razas. En la actualidad existe un interés renovado por estudiar las estructuras poblacionales debido a la influencia potencial de su estratificación sobre la predicción de valores genómicos y/o los análisis de asociación a genoma completo. Utilizamos dos métodos distintos, un algoritmo de clústeres basados en teoría de grafos (GCA) y un algoritmo de clustering bayesiano (STRUCTURE) para estudiar la estructura genética de la raza ANI. Prestamos especial atención al efecto de la presencia de parientes cercanos en la población y de la diferenciación genética entre subpoblaciones sobre el análisis de la estructura de la población. En primer lugar evaluamos el comportamiento de los dos algoritmos en poblaciones simuladas para posteriormente analizar los genotipos para 17 microsatélites de 13343 animales de 57 ganaderías distintas de raza ANI. La ANI es un ejemplo de raza con relaciones complejas. Por otro lado, utilizamos el archivo de pedigrí de la raza para estudiar el flujo de genes, calculando, entre otras cosas, la contribución de cada ganadería a la constitución genética de la raza. En el caso de las poblaciones simuladas, cuando el FST entre subpoblaciones fue suficientemente alto, ambos algoritmos, GCA y STRUCTURE, identificaron la misma estructura genética independientemente de que existieran o no relaciones familiares. Por el contrario, cuando el grado de diferenciación entre poblaciones fue bajo, el STRUCTURE identificó la estructura familiar mientras que GCA no permitió obtener ningún resultado concluyente. El GCA resultó ser un algoritmo más rápido y eficiente para de inferir la estructura genética en poblaciones con relaciones complejas. Este algoritmo también puede ser usado para reducir el número de clústeres a testar con el STRUTURE. En cuanto al análisis de la población de ANI, ambos algoritmos describieron la misma estructura, lo cual sugiere que los resultados son robustos. Se identificaron tres subpoblaciones diferenciadas que pudieran corresponderse con tres linajes distintos. Estos linajes estarían directamente relacionados con las ganaderías que han tenido una mayor contribución a la constitución genética de la raza. Por otro lado, hay un conjunto muy numeroso de individuos con una mezcla de orígenes. La información molecular describe una estructura estratificada de la población que se corresponde con la evolución demográfica de la raza. Es esencial analizar en mayor profundidad la composición de este último grupo de animales para determinar cómo afecta a la variabilidad genética de la población de ANI. SUMMARY Summary Livestock sector is gradually dominated by intensive and specialized systems where the production environment is controlled and the production traits are the main criteria for the selection of species and breeds. In the meantime, the traditional use of domestic animals for draught work, clothes and manure has been replaced by industrial products. As a consequence of both these changes, the intensively selected breeds closely linked with high-input highoutput production systems have displaced many native breeds where the selection has practically ceased or been very mild. People are now more aware of the state of endangerment among the native breeds and the previously ignored values of livestock are gaining recognition. For some decades now, the economic, socio-cultural, environmental and food security function of livestock breeds have been accepted worldwide and their loss has been recognized as a major problem. Therefore, the conservation of farm animal genetic resources (FAnGR) has been recommended. The conservation of FAnGR is controversial due to the complexity of the evaluation of its functions. This evaluation is difficult due to the nature of FAnGR both as private and public good. As some economists have highlighted, livestock animals are private goods, however, they are also public goods by their functions. Therefore, there is a need to increase the knowledge about the value of all livestock functions since to support the decision-making for the sustainable conservation and breeding of livestock. This is not straightforward since the relative importance of livestock functions depends on time, place, species and breed. Since livestock play a variety of roles, their production is driven by interrelated and everchanging economic, technical, environmental, social, cultural and political elements involving an enormous range of stakeholders. Not only FAnGR functions but also the importance of factors affecting the development and conservation of FAnGR can be very different across geographical areas. Furthermore, heterogeneity can be found even within breeds. Local breeds are nowadays raised by highly diverse farmers in equally diverse farms. It is quite reasonable to think that farmer is the major actor in the in situ conservation of livestock breeds. Thus, there is a need to understand the farmers’ motivations, decision making processes and the impact of their decisions on the genetic structure of breeds. In this PhD thesis we explore different social, economic and genetic aspects involved in the conservation of local cattle breeds, i.e. FAnGR, in Europe seeking to contribute to the scientific understanding of this complex issue. We aim to achieve a comprehensive view of the processes involved in the conservation and development of local cattle breeds and have made special efforts in discussing the implications of the research results in this respect. The final outcome of the thesis is to illustrate how quantitative methods can be exploited in designing and establishing sound strategies and programmes for the conservation and development of local livestock breeds. Firstly we explored the public non-market attributes of the total economic value (TEV) of livestock, using the Spanish Alistana-Sanabresa (AS) cattle breed as a case study. Total economic value of any good comprises both use and non-use components, where the latter include option, bequest and existence values. For livestock, the direct use values are mainly stemming from production outputs. Indirect use values relate to the role of livestock as a maintainer of rural culture and landscape. The option value is related to the potential use of livestock, the bequest values relate to the value associated with the inheritance of the resources to future generation and the existence values relate to the utility perceived by people from knowing that specific resources exist. We aimed to determine the relative importance of the non-market components of the TEV of the AS breed, the socio-economic variables that influence how people value the different components of TEV and to assess the implications of the Spanish national conservation strategy for the AS breed. To do so, we used a choice experiment (CE) approach and applied the technique to assess people’s willingness to pay (WTP) for the conservation of AS breed. The use of CE allows the valuation of the individual components of TEV for a given good. We analysed the choice data using a random parameter logit (RPL) model. AS breed was found to have a significant public good value. Its most important values were related to the indirect use value due to the maintenance of Zamorian culture and the existence value (both represent over 80% of its TEV). There were several socioeconomic variables influencing people’s valuation of the public service of the breed. In the case of AS breed, the place of living (city or rural area), having seen animals of the breed, having eaten breed products and the respondents’ attitude towards economic development – environment conflicts do influence people’s WTP for AS conservation. We also found that people do not have a complete picture of all the functions and roles that AS breed as AnGR. Therefore, the actions for increasing awareness of AS should go to that direction. The farmers will need incentives to exploit some of the public goods values and maintain the breed population size at socially desirable levels. One such mechanism could be related to the development of agritourism, which would enhance the private good value and provide an important addition to the conservation and utilisation strategy. However, the farmers need a serious evaluation on how to invest in niche product development or how to improve product quality and brand recognition. Using the understanding on the importance of the public function of local cattle we tried to depict the current diversity regarding technical, economic and social factors found in local cattle farming across Europe. To do so we focused in an international collaborative project on the case of fifteen local cattle breeds in eight European countries. We investigated the variation among the countries to detect the common key elements, which affect the viability of local breeds. We surveyed with interviews a total of 355 farms across the fifteen breeds. We used the planned herd size changes by the farmer as an indicator of breed viability. The questionnaire included several economic, technical and social aspects with potential influence on breeds’ demographic trends. We analysed the data using multivariate statistical techniques, such as discriminat analysis and logistic regression. The factors affecting a local breed’s viability were highly heterogeneous across Europe. In some countries, farmers did not recognise any high social value attached to keeping a local cattle breed. Hence there is a need to develop communication programmes across EU countries making people aware about the diversity and importance of values associated to raising local breeds. The countries were also very variable regarding the importance of local markets and the percentage of farm land owned by the farmers. Despite the country specificities, there were also common factors affecting the breed viability across Europe. The factors were from different grounds, from social, such as the age of the farmer and the social appreciation of their work, to technicalorganizational, such as the farmers’ attitude to collaborating with each other. The heterogeneity found reflects the variation in breeding systems and production environment (in the socioeconomic, technical and ecological sense) present in Europe. Therefore, caution should be taken in implementing common policies at the country level. Variability could also be rather high within countries due to breed specificities. Therefore, the national policies should be flexible to adapt to the specificities. The variables significantly associated with breed viability should be positively incorporated in the conservation strategies, and considered in developing common and/or national policies. The strategy preparation and policy planning should go beyond the provision of a general economic support to compensate farmers for the lower profitability of local breeds. Of particular interest is the observation that the opportunity for farmer collaboration and the appreciation by the society of the cultural, environmental and social role of local cattle farming were positively associated with the breed survival. In addition, farmer's high age is not only a problem of poor generation transfer but it is also a problem because it might lead to a lower attitude to investing in farming activities and to a lower ability to adapt to environment changes. The farmers’ adaptation capability may be a key point for the viability of local breeds. Decision making tools can help to get a comprehensive view on the conservation and development of local breeds. It allows us to use a systematic and structured approach for identifying and prioritizing conservation and development strategies. We used SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses Opportunities and Threats) analysis for this purpose and recognized that many conservation and development projects rely on farmers. We developed a quantified SWOT method and applied it in the aforementioned collaborative research to a set of thirteen cattle breeds in six European countries. The method has four steps: definition of the system, identification and grouping of the driving factors, quantification of the importance of driving factors and identification and prioritization of the strategies. The factors were determined following a multi-stakeholder approach and grouped with a three level structure. FAnGR expert groups ranked the factors and a quantification process was implemented to identify and prioritize strategies. The structure of the SWOT analysis allowed analyzing the conservation problem from general down to specific perspectives. Joining breed specific analyses into a common SWOT analysis permitted comparison of breed cases across countries. We identified 99 driving factors across breeds. The across breed analysis revealed that irrelevant factors were consistent. There was high heterogeneity among the most relevant factors and strategies. The strategies increased eligibility as they lost specificity. Although the situation was very heterogeneous, the most promising factors and strategies were linked to the positive aspects (Strengths and Opportunities). Therefore, the future of the studied local breed is promising. The results of our analysis also confirmed the high relevance of the cultural value of the breeds. The most important internal factors (strengths and weaknesses) were related farmers and production systems. The most important opportunities were found in developing and marketing new products, while the most relevant threats were found in selling the current conventional products. In this regard, it should be fruitful to work on farmers’ motivation, collaboration, and capacity building. We conclude that European policies should focus on general aspects and be flexible enough to be adapted to the country and breed specificities. As mentioned, farmers have a key role in the conservation and development of a local cattle breed. Therefore, it is very relevant to understand the implications of farmer heterogeneity within a breed for its viability. In the fourth part of the thesis, we developed a general farmer typology to help analyzing the relations between farmer features and farm profiles, herd dynamics and farmers’ decision making. In the analysis we applied and used the sociological framework of economic and cultural capital and studied how the determined farmer types were linked to farm profiles and breeding decisions, among others. The typology was based on measurable socioeconomic factors indicating the economic and cultural capital of farmers. A group of 85 farmers raising the Spanish Avileña-Negra Ibérica (ANI) local cattle breed was used to illustrate and test the procedure. The farmer types were defined by a hierarchical cluster analysis with a set of canonical variables derived from the following five the socioeconomic factors: the formal educational level of the farmer, the year the farmer started keeping the ANI breed, the percentage of the total family income covered by the farm, the percentage of the total farm land owned by the farmer and the farmer’s age. The present ANI farmer types were much more complex than what they were in the past. We found that the farmer types differed in many socioeconomic aspects and in the farms profile. Furthermore, the types also differentiate farmers with respect to decisions about changing the farm size, breeding aims and stated reactions towards hypothetical subsidy variation. We have verified that economic and cultural capitals are not independent and further showed how they are interacting in the different farmer types. The farmers related to the types with high economic, institutionalized and embodied cultural capitals had a higher demand of breeding animals from others farmers of the breed, which may be related to the higher social prestige within the breed. One of the key implications of this finding for the future of the breed is whether or not the prestige of farmers is related to genetic superiority of their animals, what is to say, that it is related with a sound use of tools that farmers have available to make selection decisions. The farmer types differed in the form of collaboration and in the reactions to the hypothetical variation in subsidies. There were farmers with low dependency on subsidies, while most of them are highly dependent on subsidies. Therefore, any drastic change in the subsidy programme might have influence on the development of local breeds. The adaptation of these programme to the farmers’ heterogeneity might increase its efficacy, thus it would be interesting to explore ways of doing it. We conclude highlighting the need to have a variety of policies, which take into account the heterogeneity among the farmers. To finish we dealt with the genetic structure of livestock populations. Farmers’ decisions on the breeding animals and their progeny numbers shape the demographic and genetic structure of the breeds. Nowadays there is a renovated interest in studying the population structure since it can bias the prediction of genomic breeding values and genome wide association studies. We determined the genetic structure of ANI breed using two different methods, a graphical clustering algorithm (GCA) and a Bayesian clustering algorithm (STRUCTURE) were used. We paid particular attention to the influence that the presence of closely related individuals and the genetic differentiation of subpopulations may have on the inferences about the population structure. We first evaluated the performance of the algorithms in simulated populations. Then we inferred the genetic structure of the Spanish cattle breed ANI analysing a data set of 13343 animals (genotyped for 17 microsatellites) from 57 herds. ANI breed is an example of a population with complex relationships. We used the herdbook to study the gene flow, estimation among other things, the contribution of different herds to the genetic composition of the ANI breed. For the simulated scenarios, when FST among subpopulations was sufficiently high, both algorithms consistently inferred the correct structure regardless of the presence of related individuals. However, when the genetic differentiation among subpopulations was low, STRUCTURE identified the family based structure while GCA did not provide any consistent picture. The GCA was a fast and efficient method to infer genetic structure to determine the hidden core structure of a population with complex history and relationships. GCA could also be used to narrow down the number of clusters to be tested by STRUCTURE. Both, STRUCTURE and GCA describe a similar structure for the ANI breed suggesting that the results are robust. ANI population was found to have three genetically differentiated clusters that could correspond to three genetic lineages. These are directly related to the herds with a major contribution to the breed. In addition, ANI breed has also a large pool made of individuals with an admixture of origins. The genetic structure of ANI, assessed by molecular information, shows a stratification that corresponds to the demographic evolution of the breed. It will be of great importance to learn more about the composition of the pool and study how it is related to the existing genetic variability of the breed.

Coupled model of initiation and propagation of corrosion in reinforced concrete

Corrosion of reinforcing steel in concrete due to chloride ingress is one of the main causes of the deterioration of reinforced concrete structures. Structures most affected by such a corrosion are marine zone buildings and structures exposed to de-icing salts like highways and bridges. Such process is accompanied by an increase in volume of the corrosión products on the rebarsconcrete interface. Depending on the level of oxidation, iron can expand as much as six times its original volume. This increase in volume exerts tensile stresses in the surrounding concrete which result in cracking and spalling of the concrete cover if the concrete tensile strength is exceeded. The mechanism by which steel embedded in concrete corrodes in presence of chloride is the local breakdown of the passive layer formed in the highly alkaline condition of the concrete. It is assumed that corrosion initiates when a critical chloride content reaches the rebar surface. The mathematical formulation idealized the corrosion sequence as a two-stage process: an initiation stage, during which chloride ions penetrate to the reinforcing steel surface and depassivate it, and a propagation stage, in which active corrosion takes place until cracking of the concrete cover has occurred. The aim of this research is to develop computer tools to evaluate the duration of the service life of reinforced concrete structures, considering both the initiation and propagation periods. Such tools must offer a friendly interface to facilitate its use by the researchers even though their background is not in numerical simulation. For the evaluation of the initiation period different tools have been developed: Program TavProbabilidade: provides means to carry out a probability analysis of a chloride ingress model. Such a tool is necessary due to the lack of data and general uncertainties associated with the phenomenon of the chloride diffusion. It differs from the deterministic approach because it computes not just a chloride profile at a certain age, but a range of chloride profiles for each probability or occurrence. Program TavProbabilidade_Fiabilidade: carries out reliability analyses of the initiation period. It takes into account the critical value of the chloride concentration on the steel that causes breakdown of the passive layer and the beginning of the propagation stage. It differs from the deterministic analysis in that it does not predict if the corrosion is going to begin or not, but to quantifies the probability of corrosion initiation. Program TavDif_1D: was created to do a one dimension deterministic analysis of the chloride diffusion process by the finite element method (FEM) which numerically solves Fick’second Law. Despite of the different FEM solver already developed in one dimension, the decision to create a new code (TavDif_1D) was taken because of the need to have a solver with friendly interface for pre- and post-process according to the need of IETCC. An innovative tool was also developed with a systematic method devised to compare the ability of the different 1D models to predict the actual evolution of chloride ingress based on experimental measurements, and also to quantify the degree of agreement of the models with each others. For the evaluation of the entire service life of the structure: a computer program has been developed using finite elements method to do the coupling of both service life periods: initiation and propagation. The program for 2D (TavDif_2D) allows the complementary use of two external programs in a unique friendly interface: • GMSH - an finite element mesh generator and post-processing viewer • OOFEM – a finite element solver. This program (TavDif_2D) is responsible to decide in each time step when and where to start applying the boundary conditions of fracture mechanics module in function of the amount of chloride concentration and corrosion parameters (Icorr, etc). This program is also responsible to verify the presence and the degree of fracture in each element to send the Information of diffusion coefficient variation with the crack width. • GMSH - an finite element mesh generator and post-processing viewer • OOFEM – a finite element solver. The advantages of the FEM with the interface provided by the tool are: • the flexibility to input the data such as material property and boundary conditions as time dependent function. • the flexibility to predict the chloride concentration profile for different geometries. • the possibility to couple chloride diffusion (initiation stage) with chemical and mechanical behavior (propagation stage). The OOFEM code had to be modified to accept temperature, humidity and the time dependent values for the material properties, which is necessary to adequately describe the environmental variations. A 3-D simulation has been performed to simulate the behavior of the beam on both, action of the external load and the internal load caused by the corrosion products, using elements of imbedded fracture in order to plot the curve of the deflection of the central region of the beam versus the external load to compare with the experimental data.

Model-based Self-awareness Patterns for Autonomy

Los sistemas técnicos son cada vez más complejos, incorporan funciones más avanzadas, están más integrados con otros sistemas y trabajan en entornos menos controlados. Todo esto supone unas condiciones más exigentes y con mayor incertidumbre para los sistemas de control, a los que además se demanda un comportamiento más autónomo y fiable. La adaptabilidad de manera autónoma es un reto para tecnologías de control actualmente. El proyecto de investigación ASys propone abordarlo trasladando la responsabilidad de la capacidad de adaptación del sistema de los ingenieros en tiempo de diseño al propio sistema en operación. Esta tesis pretende avanzar en la formulación y materialización técnica de los principios de ASys de cognición y auto-consciencia basadas en modelos y autogestión de los sistemas en tiempo de operación para una autonomía robusta. Para ello el trabajo se ha centrado en la capacidad de auto-conciencia, inspirada en los sistemas biológicos, y se ha explorado la posibilidad de integrarla en la arquitectura de los sistemas de control. Además de la auto-consciencia, se han explorado otros temas relevantes: modelado funcional, modelado de software, tecnología de los patrones, tecnología de componentes, tolerancia a fallos. Se ha analizado el estado de la técnica en los ámbitos pertinentes para las cuestiones de la auto-consciencia y la adaptabilidad en sistemas técnicos: arquitecturas cognitivas, control tolerante a fallos, y arquitecturas software dinámicas y computación autonómica. El marco teórico de ASys existente de sistemas autónomos cognitivos ha sido adaptado para servir de base para este análisis de autoconsciencia y adaptación y para dar sustento conceptual al posterior desarrollo de la solución. La tesis propone una solución general de diseño para la construcción de sistemas autónomos auto-conscientes. La idea central es la integración de un meta-controlador en la arquitectura de control del sistema autónomo, capaz de percibir la estado funcional del sistema de control y, si es necesario, reconfigurarlo en tiempo de operación. Esta solución de metacontrol se ha formalizado en cuatro patrones de diseño: i) el Patrón Metacontrol, que define la integración de un subsistema de metacontrol, responsable de controlar al propio sistema de control a través de la interfaz proporcionada por su plataforma de componentes, ii) el patrón Bucle de Control Epistémico, que define un bucle de control cognitivo basado en el modelos y que se puede aplicar al diseño del metacontrol, iii) el patrón de Reflexión basada en Modelo Profundo propone una solución para construir el modelo ejecutable utilizado por el meta-controlador mediante una transformación de modelo a modelo a partir del modelo de ingeniería del sistema, y, finalmente, iv) el Patrón Metacontrol Funcional, que estructura el meta-controlador en dos bucles, uno para el control de la configuración de los componentes del sistema de control, y otro sobre éste, controlando las funciones que realiza dicha configuración de componentes; de esta manera las consideraciones funcionales y estructurales se desacoplan. La Arquitectura OM y el metamodelo TOMASys son las piezas centrales del marco arquitectónico desarrollado para materializar la solución compuesta de los patrones anteriores. El metamodelo TOMASys ha sido desarrollado para la representación de la estructura y su relación con los requisitos funcionales de cualquier sistema autónomo. La Arquitectura OM es un patrón de referencia para la construcción de una metacontrolador integrando los patrones de diseño propuestos. Este meta-controlador se puede integrar en la arquitectura de cualquier sistema control basado en componentes. El elemento clave de su funcionamiento es un modelo TOMASys del sistema decontrol, que el meta-controlador usa para monitorizarlo y calcular las acciones de reconfiguración necesarias para adaptarlo a las circunstancias en cada momento. Un proceso de ingeniería, complementado con otros recursos, ha sido elaborado para guiar la aplicación del marco arquitectónico OM. Dicho Proceso de Ingeniería OM define la metodología a seguir para construir el subsistema de metacontrol para un sistema autónomo a partir del modelo funcional del mismo. La librería OMJava proporciona una implementación del meta-controlador OM que se puede integrar en el control de cualquier sistema autónomo, independientemente del dominio de la aplicación o de su tecnología de implementación. Para concluir, la solución completa ha sido validada con el desarrollo de un robot móvil autónomo que incorpora un meta-controlador con la Arquitectura OM. Las propiedades de auto-consciencia y adaptación proporcionadas por el meta-controlador han sido validadas en diferentes escenarios de operación del robot, en los que el sistema era capaz de sobreponerse a fallos en el sistema de control mediante reconfiguraciones orquestadas por el metacontrolador. ABSTRACT Technical systems are becoming more complex, they incorporate more advanced functionalities, they are more integrated with other systems and they are deployed in less controlled environments. All this supposes a more demanding and uncertain scenario for control systems, which are also required to be more autonomous and dependable. Autonomous adaptivity is a current challenge for extant control technologies. The ASys research project proposes to address it by moving the responsibility for adaptivity from the engineers at design time to the system at run-time. This thesis has intended to advance in the formulation and technical reification of ASys principles of model-based self-cognition and having systems self-handle at runtime for robust autonomy. For that it has focused on the biologically inspired capability of self-awareness, and explored the possibilities to embed it into the very architecture of control systems. Besides self-awareness, other themes related to the envisioned solution have been explored: functional modeling, software modeling, patterns technology, components technology, fault tolerance. The state of the art in fields relevant for the issues of self-awareness and adaptivity has been analysed: cognitive architectures, fault-tolerant control, and software architectural reflection and autonomic computing. The extant and evolving ASys Theoretical Framework for cognitive autonomous systems has been adapted to provide a basement for this selfhood-centred analysis and to conceptually support the subsequent development of our solution. The thesis proposes a general design solution for building self-aware autonomous systems. Its central idea is the integration of a metacontroller in the control architecture of the autonomous system, capable of perceiving the functional state of the control system and reconfiguring it if necessary at run-time. This metacontrol solution has been formalised into four design patterns: i) the Metacontrol Pattern, which defines the integration of a metacontrol subsystem, controlling the domain control system through an interface provided by its implementation component platform, ii) the Epistemic Control Loop pattern, which defines a modelbased cognitive control loop that can be applied to the design of such a metacontroller, iii) the Deep Model Reflection pattern proposes a solution to produce the online executable model used by the metacontroller by model-to-model transformation from the engineering model, and, finally, iv) the Functional Metacontrol pattern, which proposes to structure the metacontroller in two loops, one for controlling the configuration of components of the controller, and another one on top of the former, controlling the functions being realised by that configuration; this way the functional and structural concerns become decoupled. The OM Architecture and the TOMASys metamodel are the core pieces of the architectural framework developed to reify this patterned solution. The TOMASys metamodel has been developed for representing the structure and its relation to the functional requirements of any autonomous system. The OM architecture is a blueprint for building a metacontroller according to the patterns. This metacontroller can be integrated on top of any component-based control architecture. At the core of its operation lies a TOMASys model of the control system. An engineering process and accompanying assets have been constructed to complete and exploit the architectural framework. The OM Engineering Process defines the process to follow to develop the metacontrol subsystem from the functional model of the controller of the autonomous system. The OMJava library provides a domain and application-independent implementation of an OM Metacontroller than can be used in the implementation phase of OMEP. Finally, the complete solution has been validated in the development of an autonomous mobile robot that incorporates an OM metacontroller. The functional selfawareness and adaptivity properties achieved thanks to the metacontrol system have been validated in different scenarios. In these scenarios the robot was able to overcome failures in the control system thanks to reconfigurations performed by the metacontroller.