27,938 research outputs found
Sparse cross-products of metadata in scientific simulation management
Managing scientific data is by no means a trivial task even in a single site environment
with a small number of researchers involved. We discuss some issues concerned with posing
well-specified experiments in terms of parameters or instrument settings and the metadata
framework that arises from doing so. We are particularly interested in parallel computer
simulation experiments, where very large quantities of warehouse-able data are involved. We
consider SQL databases and other framework technologies for manipulating experimental data.
Our framework manages the the outputs from parallel runs that arise from large cross-products
of parameter combinations. Considerable useful experiment planning and analysis can be done
with the sparse metadata without fully expanding the parameter cross-products. Extra value
can be obtained from simulation output that can subsequently be data-mined. We have
particular interests in running large scale Monte-Carlo physics model simulations. Finding
ourselves overwhelmed by the problems of managing data and compute ¿resources, we have
built a prototype tool using Java and MySQL that addresses these issues. We use this example
to discuss type-space management and other fundamental ideas for implementing a laboratory
information management system
Assessment of CO2 emissions reduction in a distribution warehouse
Building energy use accounts for almost 50% of the total CO2 emissions in the UK. Most of
the research has focused on reducing the operational impact of buildings, however in recent years
many studies have indicated the significance of embodied energy in different building types. This paper
primarily focuses on illustrating the relative importance of operational and embodied energy in a
flexible use light distribution warehouse. The building is chosen for the study as it is relatively easy to
model and represents many distribution centres and industrial warehouses in Europe.
A carbon footprinting study was carried out by conducting an inventory of the major installed
materials with potentially significant carbon impact and material substitutions covering the building
structure. Ecotect computer simulation program was used to determine the energy consumption for
the 25 years design life of the building. This paper evaluates alternative design strategies for the
envelope of the building and their effects on the whole life emissions by investigating both embodied
and operational implications of changing the envelope characteristics. The results provide an insight to
quantify the total amount of CO2 emissions saved through design optimisation by modelling embodied
and operational energy
PhyNetLab: An IoT-Based Warehouse Testbed
Future warehouses will be made of modular embedded entities with
communication ability and energy aware operation attached to the traditional
materials handling and warehousing objects. This advancement is mainly to
fulfill the flexibility and scalability needs of the emerging warehouses.
However, it leads to a new layer of complexity during development and
evaluation of such systems due to the multidisciplinarity in logistics,
embedded systems, and wireless communications. Although each discipline
provides theoretical approaches and simulations for these tasks, many issues
are often discovered in a real deployment of the full system. In this paper we
introduce PhyNetLab as a real scale warehouse testbed made of cyber physical
objects (PhyNodes) developed for this type of application. The presented
platform provides a possibility to check the industrial requirement of an
IoT-based warehouse in addition to the typical wireless sensor networks tests.
We describe the hardware and software components of the nodes in addition to
the overall structure of the testbed. Finally, we will demonstrate the
advantages of the testbed by evaluating the performance of the ETSI compliant
radio channel access procedure for an IoT warehouse
Managing a Fleet of Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMR) using Cloud Robotics Platform
In this paper, we provide details of implementing a system for managing a
fleet of autonomous mobile robots (AMR) operating in a factory or a warehouse
premise. While the robots are themselves autonomous in its motion and obstacle
avoidance capability, the target destination for each robot is provided by a
global planner. The global planner and the ground vehicles (robots) constitute
a multi agent system (MAS) which communicate with each other over a wireless
network. Three different approaches are explored for implementation. The first
two approaches make use of the distributed computing based Networked Robotics
architecture and communication framework of Robot Operating System (ROS) itself
while the third approach uses Rapyuta Cloud Robotics framework for this
implementation. The comparative performance of these approaches are analyzed
through simulation as well as real world experiment with actual robots. These
analyses provide an in-depth understanding of the inner working of the Cloud
Robotics Platform in contrast to the usual ROS framework. The insight gained
through this exercise will be valuable for students as well as practicing
engineers interested in implementing similar systems else where. In the
process, we also identify few critical limitations of the current Rapyuta
platform and provide suggestions to overcome them.Comment: 14 pages, 15 figures, journal pape
Collaborative information systems and business process design using simulation
The Information Systems (IS) community promotes the idea that IS analyst should have a clear understanding of the way the organization operates before attempting to propose an IS solution. It is argued that to take a complete advantage of the underlying Information Technology (IT), organizations should first identify any process flaw and then propose a suitable IT solution. Similarly, many process design approaches claim that Business Process (BP) design should be done considering the advantages provided and the limitations imposed by the underlying (IT). Despite this fact research in these domains provides little indication of which mechanisms or tools can help BP and IS analyst to understand the complex relationships amongst these two areas. This paper describes the insights gained during a UK funded research project, namely ASSESS-IT, that aimed to depict the dynamic relationships between IT and BP using simulation. One of the major limitations of the ASSESS-IT project is that it looked at relationship between BP and IT as a three layered structure, namely BP, IS and Computer Networks (CN), and did not explore in detail the relationships between BP and IS alone. This paper uses the outcomes derived from this project and suggests that, is some cases, the relationship between BP and IT could be analyzed by looking at the relationship between BP and IS alone. It then proposes an alternative simulation framework, namely BPISS, that provides the guideline to develop simulation models that portray BP and IS behavior performance measurements, offering in this way an alternative mechanism that can help BP and IS analyst to understand in more detail the dynamic interactions between BP and IS domains
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Modelling the integration of BP and IT using business process simulation
Information Technology (IT) and Business Process (BP) communities argues that the use of IT to support business processes can bring a number of benefits to the organisation. Most of these benefits, however, can only be seen after the implementation of such technology. Moreover, there are many cases where the benefits brought by the implementation of IT do not fulfil the organisation’s expectations. One reason of this may happen is because research in BP and IS domains show little indication of which modelling methods, techniques or tools can help organisations to foresee the benefits of the integration of IT with BP. This paper describes the insights gained during a UK funded research project, namely ASSESS-IT, which used simulation techniques to address this problem. Considering IT as a two layered system, namely Information Systems (IS) and Computer Networks (CN), ASSESS-IT aimed to depict the benefits that new IT may bring to the BP. This paper uses the outcomes derived from ASSESS-IT to suggest that, in some cases; the relationship between BP and IT could be better understood by looking at the relationship between BP and IS alone. It then proposes an alternative simulation framework, namely ISBPS, that provides the means to develop simulation models that portray quantifiable metrics of the integration of BP and IS, offering in this way an alternative mechanism that can help BP and IS analyst to foresee the benefits that the insertion of a given IS design may bring to the organisational processes
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