Civil and Environmental Engineering Challenges for Data Sensing and Analysis

The objective of this study was to identify challenges in civil and environmental engineering that can potentially be solved using data sensing and analysis research. The challenges were recognized through extensive literature review in all disciplines of civil and environmental engineering. The literature review included journal articles, reports, expert interviews, and magazine articles. The challenges were ranked by comparing their impact on cost, time, quality, environment and safety. The result of this literature review includes challenges such as improving construction safety and productivity, improving roof safety, reducing building energy consumption, solving traffic congestion, managing groundwater, mapping and monitoring the underground, estimating sea conditions, and solving soil erosion problems. These challenges suggest areas where researchers can apply data sensing and analysis research.

H∞ sampled-data synthesis and related numerical issues

In this paper we present a new, compact derivation of state-space formulae for the so-called discretisation-based solution of the H∞ sampled-data control problem. Our approach is based on the established technique of continuous time-lifting, which is used to isometrically map the continuous-time, linear, periodically time-varying, sampled-data problem to a discretetime, linear, time-invariant problem. State-space formulae are derived for the equivalent, discrete-time problem by solving a set of two-point, boundary-value problems. The formulae accommodate a direct feed-through term from the disturbance inputs to the controlled outputs of the original plant and are simple, requiring the computation of only a single matrix exponential. It is also shown that the resultant formulae can be easily re-structured to give a numerically robust algorithm for computing the state-space matrices. © 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Data structures and software tools for the computer aided design of control systems: a survey.

CAD software can be structured as a set of modular 'software tools' only if there is some agreement on the data structures which are to be passed between tools. Beyond this basic requirement, it is desirable to give the agreed structures the status of 'data types' in the language used for interactive design. The ultimate refinement is to have a data management capability which 'understands' how to manipulate such data types. In this paper the requirements of CACSD are formulated from the point of view of Database Management Systems. Progress towards meeting these requirements in both the DBMS and the CACSD community is reviewed. The conclusion reached is that there has been considerable movement towards the realisation of software tools for CACSD, but that this owes more to modern ideas about programming languages, than to DBMS developments. The DBMS field has identified some useful concepts, but further significant progress is expected to come from the exploitation of concepts such as object-oriented programming, logic programming, or functional programming.