Hybrid fuzzy Monte Carlo technique for reliability assessment in transmission power systems

This paper proposes a new methodology to reduce the probability of occurring states that cause load curtailment, while minimizing the involved costs to achieve that reduction. The methodology is supported by a hybrid method based on Fuzzy Set and Monte Carlo Simulation to catch both randomness and fuzziness of component outage parameters of transmission power system. The novelty of this research work consists in proposing two fundamentals approaches: 1) a global steady approach which deals with building the model of a faulted transmission power system aiming at minimizing the unavailability corresponding to each faulted component in transmission power system. This, results in the minimal global cost investment for the faulted components in a system states sample of the transmission network; 2) a dynamic iterative approach that checks individually the investment’s effect on the transmission network. A case study using the Reliability Test System (RTS) 1996 IEEE 24 Buses is presented to illustrate in detail the application of the proposed methodology.

The darmstadt challenge (the turing test revisited)

Significant work has been done in the areas of Pervcomp/Ubicomp Smart Environments with advances on making proactive systems, but those advances have not made these type of systems accurately proactive. On the other hand a great deal is needed to make systems more sensible/sensitive and trustable (both in terms of reliability and privacy). We put forward the thesis that a more integral and social-aware sort of intelligence is needed to effectively interact, decide and act on behalf of people’s interest and that a way to test how effective systems are achieving these desirable behaviour is needed as a consequence. We support our thesis by providing examples on how to measure effectiveness in variety of different environments.

Reliability and availability in reconfigurable computing: a basis for a common solution

Dynamically reconfigurable SRAM-based field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) enable the implementation of reconfigurable computing systems where several applications may be run simultaneously, sharing the available resources according to their own immediate functional requirements. To exclude malfunctioning due to faulty elements, the reliability of all FPGA resources must be guaranteed. Since resource allocation takes place asynchronously, an online structural test scheme is the only way of ensuring reliable system operation. On the other hand, this test scheme should not disturb the operation of the circuit, otherwise availability would be compromised. System performance is also influenced by the efficiency of the management strategies that must be able to dynamically allocate enough resources when requested by each application. As those resources are allocated and later released, many small free resource blocks are created, which are left unused due to performance and routing restrictions. To avoid wasting logic resources, the FPGA logic space must be defragmented regularly. This paper presents a non-intrusive active replication procedure that supports the proposed test methodology and the implementation of defragmentation strategies, assuring both the availability of resources and their perfect working condition, without disturbing system operation.