244 research outputs found
Smart Urban Water Networks
This book presents the paper form of the Special Issue (SI) on Smart Urban Water Networks. The number and topics of the papers in the SI confirm the growing interest of operators and researchers for the new paradigm of smart networks, as part of the more general smart city. The SI showed that digital information and communication technology (ICT), with the implementation of smart meters and other digital devices, can significantly improve the modelling and the management of urban water networks, contributing to a radical transformation of the traditional paradigm of water utilities. The paper collection in this SI includes different crucial topics such as the reliability, resilience, and performance of water networks, innovative demand management, and the novel challenge of real-time control and operation, along with their implications for cyber-security. The SI collected fourteen papers that provide a wide perspective of solutions, trends, and challenges in the contest of smart urban water networks. Some solutions have already been implemented in pilot sites (i.e., for water network partitioning, cyber-security, and water demand disaggregation and forecasting), while further investigations are required for other methods, e.g., the data-driven approaches for real time control. In all cases, a new deal between academia, industry, and governments must be embraced to start the new era of smart urban water systems
Task-based Adaptation of Graphical Content in Smart Visual Interfaces
To be effective visual representations must be adapted to their respective context of use, especially in so-called Smart Visual Interfaces striving to present specifically those information required for the task at hand. This thesis proposes a generic approach that facilitate the automatic generation of task-specific visual representations from suitable task descriptions. It is discussed how the approach is applied to four principal content types raster images, 2D vector and 3D graphics as well as data visualizations, and how existing display techniques can be integrated into the approach.Effektive visuelle Repräsentationen müssen an den jeweiligen Nutzungskontext angepasst sein, insbesondere in sog. Smart Visual Interfaces, welche anstreben, möglichst genau für die aktuelle Aufgabe benötigte Informationen anzubieten. Diese Arbeit entwirft einen generischen Ansatz zur automatischen Erzeugung aufgabenspezifischer Darstellungen anhand geeigneter Aufgabenbeschreibungen. Es wird gezeigt, wie dieser Ansatz auf vier grundlegende Inhaltstypen Rasterbilder, 2D-Vektor- und 3D-Grafik sowie Datenvisualisierungen anwendbar ist, und wie existierende Darstellungstechniken integrierbar sind
ASTRAL PROJECTION: THEORIES OF METAPHOR, PHILOSOPHIES OF SCIENCE, AND THE ART O F SCIENTIFIC VISUALIZATION
This thesis provides an intellectual context for my work in computational
scientific visualization for large-scale public outreach in venues such as digitaldome
planetarium shows and high-definition public television documentaries. In
my associated practicum, a DVD that provides video excerpts, 1 focus especially on
work I have created with my Advanced Visualization Laboratory team at the
National Center for Supercomputing Applications (Champaign, Illinois) from
2002-2007.
1 make three main contributions to knowledge within the field of computational
scientific visualization. Firstly, I share the unique process 1 have pioneered for
collaboratively producing and exhibiting this data-driven art when aimed at popular
science education. The message of the art complements its means of production:
Renaissance Team collaborations enact a cooperative paradigm of evolutionary
sympathetic adaptation and co-creation.
Secondly, 1 open up a positive, new space within computational scientific
visualization's practice for artistic expression—especially in providing a theory of
digi-epistemology that accounts for how this is possible given the limitations
imposed by the demands of mapping numerical data and the computational models
derived from them onto visual forms. I am concerned not only with liberating
artists to enrich audience's aesthetic experiences of scientific visualization, to
contribute their own vision, but also with conceiving of audiences as co-creators of
the aesthetic significance of the work, to re-envision and re-circulate what they
encounter there. Even more commonly than in the age of traditional media, on-line
social computing and digital tools have empowered the public to capture and
repurpose visual metaphors, circulating them within new contexts and telling new
stories with them.
Thirdly, I demonstrate the creative power of visaphors (see footnote, p. 1) to
provide novel embodied experiences through my practicum as well as my thesis
discussion. Specifically, I describe how the visaphors my Renaissance Teams and I
create enrich the Environmentalist Story of Science, essentially promoting a
counter-narrative to the Enlightenment Story of Science through articulating how
humanity participates in an evolving universal consciousness through our embodied
interaction and cooperative interdependence within nested, self-producing
(autopoetic) systems, from the micro- to the macroscopic. This contemporary
account of the natural world, its inter-related systems, and their dynamics may be
understood as expressing a creative and generative energy—a kind of
consciousness-that transcends the human yet also encompasses it
Field-based measurement of hydrodynamics associated with engineered in-channel structures: the example of fish pass assessment
The construction of fish passes has been a longstanding measure to improve
river ecosystem status by ensuring the passability of weirs, dams and other in-
channel structures for migratory fish. Many fish passes have a low biological
effectiveness because of unsuitable hydrodynamic conditions hindering fish to
rapidly detect the pass entrance. There has been a need for techniques to
quantify the hydrodynamics surrounding fish pass entrances in order to identify
those passes that require enhancement and to improve the design of new
passes. This PhD thesis presents the development of a methodology for the
rapid, spatially continuous quantification of near-pass hydrodynamics in the
field. The methodology involves moving-vessel Acoustic Doppler Current
Profiler (ADCP) measurements in order to quantify the 3-dimensional water
velocity distribution around fish pass entrances. The approach presented in this
thesis is novel because it integrates a set of techniques to make ADCP data
robust against errors associated with the environmental conditions near
engineered in-channel structures. These techniques provide solutions to
(i) ADCP compass errors from magnetic interference, (ii) bias in water velocity
data caused by spatial flow heterogeneity, (iii) the accurate ADCP positioning in
locales with constrained line of sight to navigation satellites, and (iv) the
accurate and cost-effective sensor deployment following pre-defined sampling
strategies. The effectiveness and transferability of the methodology were
evaluated at three fish pass sites covering conditions of low, medium and high
discharge. The methodology outputs enabled a detailed quantitative
characterisation of the fish pass attraction flow and its interaction with other
hydrodynamic features. The outputs are suitable to formulate novel indicators of
hydrodynamic fish pass attractiveness and they revealed the need to refine
traditional fish pass design guidelines
Cognitive Buildings
Cognitive building is a pioneering topic envisioning the future of our built environment. The concept of "cognitive" provides a paradigm shift that steps from the static concept of the building as a container of human activities towards the modernist vision of "machine à habiter" of Le Corbusier, where the technological content adds the capability of learning from users' behavior and environmental variables to adapt itself to achieve major goals such as user comfort, energy-saving, flexible functionality, high durability, and good maintainability. The concept is based on digital frameworks and IoT networks towards the concept of a smart city
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