3,221 research outputs found
Powerhouses: A Comparative Analysis of Blockchain-Enabled Smart Microgrids
For over a century, electricity in the United States has been generated and sold mainly by centralized powerplants. Although this model of power collection and distribution has many advantages, resiliency is a growing problem. Brittle infrastructure and growing complexity have made the nation’s power grid less reliable over the past twenty years. Some technologists believe the solution is to go small. In the past five years, small communities in the United States and overseas have built “micro-grids”—networks of roof-top solar panels that store electricity in communal banks of batteries, combined with software that allows homeowners and businesses to buy and sell this electricity from one another. The designers of these systems believe that the private sale of electricity among neighbors will carry substantial benefits for the public, including the potential to make electricity more reliable, resilient, and renewable.
A challenge stands in the way, however: how to effectively and securely govern electricity as a shared resource among neighbors. This symposium Article examines how well blockchain—the technology that brought the world Bitcoin—might help solve this problem by tracking electricity production and sales in a neighborhood. This Article examines this question through three case studies of blockchain-enabled microgrids in the United States, Europe, and Australia. We conclude that some types of blockchain technologies could help make the dream of a peer-to-peer energy commons a reality. Widespread adoption of this technology will require the support and cooperation of local, state, and federal regulators and lawmakers, however
Community Resilience Research: UK Case Studies, Lessons and Recommendations report to the Cabinet Office and Defence Science and Technology Laboratory.
This report presents four case studies carried out for the Community Resilience project funded by DSTL and supported by the Civil Contingency Secretariat (CCS), Cabinet Office. The work for this project was carried out between September and December 2011.
The aim of the Community Resilience project was to develop a better understanding of the role of community resilience in emergency response and recovery situations in order to inform Cabinet Office / Civil Contingencies Secretariat policy on community resilience and to inform the development of future work
Workshop Report on Space Weather Risks and Society
As technological innovations produce new capabilities, complexities, and interdependencies, our susceptibility to the societal impacts of space weather increase. There is real concern in the scientific community that our infrastructure would be at significant risk if a major geomagnetic storm should occur. To discuss the societal impacts of space weather, we brought together an interdisciplinary group of subject matter experts and societal stakeholders to participate in a workshop entitled Space Weather Risks and Society. The workshop was held at Ames Research Center (ARC) on 15-16 October 2011. The workshop was co-sponsored by NASA Ames Research Center (ARC), the Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Center (LMATC), the Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC, part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration NOAA), and the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL, part of the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council STFC). The workshop is part of a series of informal weekend workshops hosted by Center Director Pete Worden
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Process Evaluation Insights on Program Implementation
This white paper has the explicit intention to draw lessons learned from the past 30 years of energy efficiency program evaluation in order to facilitate improved program design and implementation going forward. The discussion in this white paper is developed based on interviews with 43 individuals who are either practitioners or users of process and market evaluation. In addition, we obtained references to published materials from our contacts and reviewed conference proceedings dating from 1992 to 2008, which resulted in a review of nearly 100 articles or reports documenting the results of, or commenting on, process and market evaluations
ECHO Information sharing models
As part of the ECHO project, the Early Warning System (EWS) is one of four technologies under development. The E-EWS will provide the capability to share information to provide up to date information to all constituents involved in the E-EWS. The development of the E-EWS will be rooted in a comprehensive review of information sharing and trust models from within the cyber domain as well as models from other domains
Automated driving and autonomous functions on road vehicles
In recent years, road vehicle automation has become an important and popular topic for research
and development in both academic and industrial spheres. New developments received
extensive coverage in the popular press, and it may be said that the topic has captured the
public imagination. Indeed, the topic has generated interest across a wide range of academic,
industry and governmental communities, well beyond vehicle engineering; these include computer
science, transportation, urban planning, legal, social science and psychology. While this
follows a similar surge of interest – and subsequent hiatus – of Automated Highway Systems
in the 1990’s, the current level of interest is substantially greater, and current expectations
are high. It is common to frame the new technologies under the banner of “self-driving cars”
– robotic systems potentially taking over the entire role of the human driver, a capability that
does not fully exist at present. However, this single vision leads one to ignore the existing
range of automated systems that are both feasible and useful. Recent developments are underpinned
by substantial and long-term trends in “computerisation” of the automobile, with
developments in sensors, actuators and control technologies to spur the new developments in
both industry and academia. In this paper we review the evolution of the intelligent vehicle
and the supporting technologies with a focus on the progress and key challenges for vehicle
system dynamics. A number of relevant themes around driving automation are explored in
this article, with special focus on those most relevant to the underlying vehicle system dynamics.
One conclusion is that increased precision is needed in sensing and controlling vehicle
motions, a trend that can mimic that of the aerospace industry, and similarly benefit from
increased use of redundant by-wire actuators
Understanding space weather to shield society: A global road map for 2015-2025 commissioned by COSPAR and ILWS
There is a growing appreciation that the environmental conditions that we
call space weather impact the technological infrastructure that powers the
coupled economies around the world. With that comes the need to better shield
society against space weather by improving forecasts, environmental
specifications, and infrastructure design. [...] advanced understanding of
space weather requires a coordinated international approach to effectively
provide awareness of the processes within the Sun-Earth system through
observation-driven models. This roadmap prioritizes the scientific focus areas
and research infrastructure that are needed to significantly advance our
understanding of space weather of all intensities and of its implications for
society. Advancement of the existing system observatory through the addition of
small to moderate state-of-the-art capabilities designed to fill observational
gaps will enable significant advances. Such a strategy requires urgent action:
key instrumentation needs to be sustained, and action needs to be taken before
core capabilities are lost in the aging ensemble. We recommend advances through
priority focus (1) on observation-based modeling throughout the Sun-Earth
system, (2) on forecasts more than 12 hrs ahead of the magnetic structure of
incoming coronal mass ejections, (3) on understanding the geospace response to
variable solar-wind stresses that lead to intense geomagnetically-induced
currents and ionospheric and radiation storms, and (4) on developing a
comprehensive specification of space climate, including the characterization of
extreme space storms to guide resilient and robust engineering of technological
infrastructures. The roadmap clusters its implementation recommendations by
formulating three action pathways, and outlines needed instrumentation and
research programs and infrastructure for each of these. [...]Comment: In press for Advances of Space Research: an international roadmap on
the science of space weather, commissioned by COSPAR and ILWS (63 pages and 4
figures
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