Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) in the Framework of the Next Generation Estonian Building Standard Building Certification as a Strategy for Enhancing Sustainability

AbstractOptimizing environmental impacts of buildings, such as energy consumption, CO2 emissions, water and material use is a must nowadays. Building certification and standards serve as an opportunity to regulate such subjects. This paper investigates how the implementation of a new building quality standard in Estonia can improve the sustainability of buildings by looking into the quantifiable environmental impacts of a construction. The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology is used to evaluate building certification schemes used within the new standard. The goal is to demonstrate if and how the Standard for Quality and Sustainable Real Estate Lifecycle stands for its name and addresses the life cycle impacts of a construction. This paper could serve as an illustrative example for the future users of the new building quality standard to better understand the aspects of its functioning and differences between certification schemes used within the standard. Furthermore, the results and the suggestions can help to look over requirements of the standard to refine them for a greater sustainability enhancement of the future buildings in Estonia.This paper is based on the results of master thesis at HafenCity University Hamburg, supervised by Dr. Wolfram Trinius and Prof. Irene Peters, defended on 26th of November 2015

Learning from Data with Heterogeneous Noise using SGD

We consider learning from data of variable quality that may be obtained from different heterogeneous sources. Addressing learning from heterogeneous data in its full generality is a challenging problem. In this paper, we adopt instead a model in which data is observed through heterogeneous noise, where the noise level reflects the quality of the data source. We study how to use stochastic gradient algorithms to learn in this model. Our study is motivated by two concrete examples where this problem arises naturally: learning with local differential privacy based on data from multiple sources with different privacy requirements, and learning from data with labels of variable quality. The main contribution of this paper is to identify how heterogeneous noise impacts performance. We show that given two datasets with heterogeneous noise, the order in which to use them in standard SGD depends on the learning rate. We propose a method for changing the learning rate as a function of the heterogeneity, and prove new regret bounds for our method in two cases of interest. Experiments on real data show that our method performs better than using a single learning rate and using only the less noisy of the two datasets when the noise level is low to moderate

The Evolution of the ISO/IEC 29110 set of standards and guides

While the quality of products is a competitive advantage for very small software development organizations, the usage of Software and Systems Engineering standards amongst such very small organizations is extremely low. A key factor in the literature explaining this lack of quality standards adoption is the perception by small and very small organizations that such standards have been developed for large multi-national companies and not with small and very small organizations in mind. The ISO/IEC 29110 standard is unique amongst software and systems engineering standards, in that the working group (ISO/IEC JTC1/SC7 WG 24) mandated to develop a new standard approached industry to conduct a needs assessment and gather actual requirements for a new standard as part of the standards development process. This paper presents a historical perspective behind the development of the ISO/IEC 29110 systems and software engineering standard and its constituent components, including the rationale behind its development and the innovative design of implementation guides to assist very small companies in adopting the standards. Further this paper will present an overview of the various parts of the ISO/IEC 29110 family and briefly present the plans for the future evolution of this series of standards

Visual grading of large cross section structural timber of Pinus sylvestris L. according to UNE 56544:2007 standard

Large cross section structural timber have been used in many structures over long periods of time and still make up an important part of the market due to its mechanical properties. Furthermore, it is frequent its employment in new construction site. It involves the need for a visual grading standard for timber used in construction according to the quality assessment. The material has to satisfy the requirements according to the currently regulations. UNE 56544 is the Spanish visual grading standard for coniferous structural timber. The 2007 version defined a new visual grade in the standard for large section termed Structural Large Timber (MEG). This research checks the new visual grading and consists of 116 structural size specimens of sawn coniferous timber of Scotch pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) from Segovia, Spain. The pieces had a cross section of 150 by 200 mm. They were visually graded according to UNE 56544:2007. Also, mechanical properties have been obtained according to standard EN 408. The results show very low output with an excessive percentage of rejected pieces (33%). The main reasons for the rejection of pieces are fissures and twis

PRE REQUISITE STUDY ON APPLICATION OF HAZARD ANALYSIS CRITICAL CONTROL POINT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM FOR ON BOARD TUNA LONGLINER

Along with the era of globalization and free market an approach for managing quality through testing the final product is considered not able to meet consumer demands. It drives to a new approach based on prevention and control efforts during the process. Hazard analysis critical control point quality management system is considered appropriate because it can prevent the distortion and instead of waiting until the problems arise. The process of handling the fish on the boat as a part of the production chain affects the quality of tuna products, so the application of the hazard analysis critical control point quality management system on board tuna longline is considered important. Effectiveness of hazard analysis critical control point implementation as a quality system control is affected by sanitation standard operating procedure and good handling processing as the basic requirements (pre requisite), where the assessment can be a measure of readiness hazard analysis critical control point implementation. The purpose of this study is to determine the feasibility of the basic requirements of hazard analysis critical control point implementation in the tuna longline vessels. The research has been carried out by taking 10 samples of tuna longline vessels in the Nusantara Fishing Port of Pelabuhan Ratu and Samudera Fishing Port of Nizam Zachman, Jakarta. The basic requirements of eligibility conditions on longline vessels fishing in the port are pretty good. Results showed general assessment Y values are in the range of 2d”Y<4. This can be concluded that the applications of a pre requisite in sanitation standard operating procedure and good handling processing on tuna longline vessels in the both fishing ports were quite close to the standard, but improvements are still neede