Temporal management using relative time in knowledge-based process control

In this paper, a knowledge-based approach is proposed for the management of temporal information in process control. A common-sense theory of temporal constraints over processes/events, allowing relative temporal knowledge, is employed here as the temporal basis for the system. This theory supports duration reasoning and consistency checking, and accepts relative temporal knowledge which is in a form normally used by human operators. An architecture for process control is proposed which centres on an historical database consisting of events and processes, together with the qualitative temporal relationships between their occurrences. The dynamics of the system is expressed by means of three types of rule: database updating rules, process control rules, and data deletion rules. An example is provided in the form of a life scheduler, to illustrate the database and the rule sets. The example demonstrates the transitions of the database over time, and identifies the procedure in terms of a state transition model for the application. The dividing instant problem for logical inference is discussed with reference to this process control example, and it is shown how the temporal theory employed can be used to deal with the problem.

Optimizing geometric accuracy of four dimensional CT scans acquired using the wall and couch mounted Varian Real-Time Position Management camera systems

Objective:

The aim of this study was to identify sources of anatomical misrepresentation due to the location of camera mounting, tumour motion velocity and image processing artefacts in order to optimise the 4DCT scan protocol and improve geometrical-temporal accuracy.

A phantom with an imaging insert was driven with a sinusoidal superior-inferior motion of varying amplitude and period for 4DCT scanning. The length of a high density cube within the insert was measured using treatment planning software to determine the accuracy of its spatial representation. Scan parameters were varied including the tube rotation period and the cine time between reconstructed images. A CT image quality phantom was used to measure various image quality signatures under the scan parameters tested.

No significant difference in spatial accuracy was found for 4DCT scans carried out using the wall mounted or couch mounted camera for sinusoidal target motion. Greater spatial accuracy was found for 4DCT scans carried out using a tube rotation speed of 0.5s rather than 1.0s. The reduction in image quality when using a faster rotation speed was not enough to require an increase in patient dose.

4DCT accuracy may be increased by optimising scan parameters, including choosing faster tube rotation speeds. Peak misidentification in the recorded breathing trace leads to spatial artefacts and this risk can be reduced by using a couch mounted infrared camera.

This study explicitly shows that 4DCT scan accuracy is improved by scanning with a faster CT tube rotation speed.

Replica management in real-time Ada 95 applications

In this paper, we present some of the fault tolerance management mechanisms being implemented in the Multi-μ architecture, namely its support for replica non-determinism. In this architecture, fault tolerance is achieved by node active replication, with software based replica management and fault tolerance transparent algorithms. A software layer implemented between the application and the real-time kernel, the Fault Tolerance Manager (FTManager), is the responsible for the transparent incorporation of the fault tolerance mechanisms The active replication model can be implemented either imposing replica determinism or keeping replica consistency at critical points, by means of interactive agreement mechanisms. One of the Multi-μ architecture goals is to identify such critical points, relieving the underlying system from performing the interactive agreement in every Ada dispatching point.

Space-time monitoring of prescribed burnt soils performance – an effective tool for forest management

Among the most important measures to prevent wild forest fires is the use of prescribed and controlled burning actions in order to reduce the availability of fuel mass. However, the impact of these activities on soil physical and chemical properties varies according to the type of both soil and vegetation and is not fully understood. Therefore, soil monitoring campaigns are often used to measure these impacts. In this paper we have successfully used three statistical data treatments - the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test followed by the ANOVA and the Kruskall-Wallis tests – to investigate the variability among the soil pH, soil moisture, soil organic matter and soil iron variables for different monitoring times and sampling procedures.

Contextual Intelligent Load Management Considering Real-Time Pricing in a Smart Grid Environment

The use of demand response programs enables the adequate use of resources of small and medium players, bringing high benefits to the smart grid, and increasing its efficiency. One of the difficulties to proceed with this paradigm is the lack of intelligence in the management of small and medium size players. In order to make demand response programs a feasible solution, it is essential that small and medium players have an efficient energy management and a fair optimization mechanism to decrease the consumption without heavy loss of comfort, making it acceptable for the users. This paper addresses the application of real-time pricing in a house that uses an intelligent optimization module involving artificial neural networks.

Real-Time Simulation of energy Management in a Domestic Consumer

Recent and future changes in power systems, mainly in the smart grid operation context, are related to a high complexity of power networks operation. This leads to more complex communications and to higher network elements monitoring and control levels, both from network’s and consumers’ standpoint. The present work focuses on a real scenario of the LASIE laboratory, located at the Polytechnic of Porto. Laboratory systems are managed by the SCADA House Intelligent Management (SHIM), already developed by the authors based on a SCADA system. The SHIM capacities have been recently improved by including real-time simulation from Opal RT. This makes possible the integration of Matlab®/Simulink® real-time simulation models. The main goal of the present paper is to compare the advantages of the resulting improved system, while managing the energy consumption of a domestic consumer.

Multi-site time-trend analysis of soil fertility management effects on crop production in sub-Saharan West Africa

Soil fertility constraints to crop production have been recognized widely as a major obstacle to food security and agro-ecosystem sustainability in sub-Saharan West Africa. As such, they have led to a multitude of research projects and policy debates on how best they should be overcome. Conclusions, based on long-term multi-site experiments, are lacking with respect to a regional assessment of phosphorus and nitrogen fertilizer effects, surface mulched crop residues, and legume rotations on total dry matter of cereals in this region. A mixed model time-trend analysis was used to investigate the effects of four nitrogen and phosphorus rates, annually applied crop residue dry matter at 500 and 2000 kg ha^-1, and cereal-legume rotation versus continuous cereal cropping on the total dry matter of cereals and legumes. The multi-factorial experiment was conducted over four years at eight locations, with annual rainfall ranging from 510 to 1300 mm, in Niger, Burkina Faso, and Togo. With the exception of phosphorus, treatment effects on legume growth were marginal. At most locations, except for typical Sudanian sites with very low base saturation and high rainfall, phosphorus effects on cereal total dry matter were much lower with rock phosphate than with soluble phosphorus, unless the rock phosphate was combined with an annual seed-placement of 4 kg ha^-1 phosphorus. Across all other treatments, nitrogen effects were negligible at 500 mm annual rainfall but at 900 mm, the highest nitrogen rate led to total dry matter increases of up to 77% and, at 1300 mm, to 183%. Mulch-induced increases in cereal total dry matter were larger with lower base saturation, reaching 45% on typical acid sandy Sahelian soils. Legume rotation effects tended to increase over time but were strongly species-dependent.

Scalable real-time crisis mapping and analytics of social media streams for disaster management and breaking news

Real-time geoparsing of social media streams (e.g. Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Flickr, FourSquare) is providing a new 'virtual sensor' capability to end users such as emergency response agencies (e.g. Tsunami early warning centres, Civil protection authorities) and news agencies (e.g. Deutsche Welle, BBC News). Challenges in this area include scaling up natural language processing (NLP) and information retrieval (IR) approaches to handle real-time traffic volumes, reducing false positives, creating real-time infographic displays useful for effective decision support and providing support for trust and credibility analysis using geosemantics. I will present in this seminar on-going work by the IT Innovation Centre over the last 4 years (TRIDEC and REVEAL FP7 projects) in building such systems, and highlights our research towards improving trustworthy and credible of crisis map displays and real-time analytics for trending topics and influential social networks during major news worthy events.

Price-based demand side management: Assessing the impacts of time-of-use tariffs on residential electricity demand and peak shifting in Northern Italy

One of the most common Demand Side Management programs consists of Time-of-Use (TOU) tariffs, where consumers are charged differently depending on the time of the day when they make use of energy services. This paper assesses the impacts of TOU tariffs on a dataset of residential users from the Province of Trento in Northern Italy in terms of changes in electricity demand, price savings, peak load shifting and peak electricity demand at substation level. Findings highlight that TOU tariffs bring about higher average electricity consumption and lower payments by consumers. A significant level of load shifting takes place for morning peaks. However, issues with evening peaks are not resolved. Finally, TOU tariffs lead to increases in electricity demand for substations at peak time.

Part-time employment within the Swedish retail business : – A study of part-time employment from a management perspective

Research question: How has the presence of PT employees affected the role of managers in the Swedish food retail business? Research purpose: The purpose of this paper was to describe the change that accompanies part-time employment from a management perspective, and particularly, describe how the presence of part-time employment has influenced the role of the manager within the Swedish food retail business. Conceptual framework: The main focused in this chapter is directed towards the role of managers. The basis of the conceptual framework consist of the model developed by Mintzberg including the ten managerial roles and Quinn's eight leadership roles and how the presence of PT employments might affect these roles. Methodology: In this paper, the authors adopted a qualitative design and used narrative inquiry as a research strategy in order to gain a deep understanding of the context. Semi- structured interviews have been collected through a self-selection sampling and the total number of participants was ten. Conclusions: Based on the findings of this paper the presence of PT employees have not influenced and changed the role of managers. The changes that have influenced and caused the change of the role of the managers constitutes of the increased workload, the delegations of tasks and responsibilities, changed positions, the change of the organisational structure of the individual store, and the increased workforce.

Web enabled just-in-time salvaged material management for demolition projects

The demolition activities of buildings produce numerous environmental pressures as a large proportion of demolition waste materials are sent to landfill directly in many projects. Web-based waste exchange systems could provide right solutions for releasing these pressures. Because the approaches adopted in current waste exchange systems are inefficient, these systems cannot generate waste exchange, not achieving their final goal, environmental protection. The Just-in-time (JIT) philosophy has been applied in the manufacture industry for decades and it is proven to be effective to eliminate or minimise inventory during production. This research aims to adopt the JIT philosophy into a demolition project management informapon system so that the system is more efficient in handling waste exchange. The system structure, key components and Just-in-time adoption are proposed and identified. Finally, a proto typed system is demonstrated.

RFID-based real-time smart waste management system

In an environmental context, the use of RFID (radio frequency identification) and load cell sensor technology can be employed for not only bringing down waste management costs, but also to facilitate automating and streamlining waste (e.g., garbage, recycling, and green) identification and weight measurement processes for designing smart waste management systems. In this paper, we outline a RFID and sensor model for designing a system in real-time waste management. An application of the architecture is described in the area of RFID and sensor based automatic waste identity, weight, and stolen bins identification system (WIWSBIS).