Spartan Daily, February 14, 1983

Volume 80, Issue 11https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/6993/thumbnail.jp

Digital Democracy: Episode IV—A New Hope*: How a Corporation for Public Software Could Transform Digital Engagement for Government and Civil Society

Although successive generations of digital technology have become increasingly powerful in the past 20 years, digital democracy has yet to realize its potential for deliberative transformation. The undemocratic exploitation of massive social media systems continued this trend, but it only worsened an existing problem of modern democracies, which were already struggling to develop deliberative infrastructure independent of digital technologies. There have been many creative conceptions of civic tech, but implementation has lagged behind innovation. This article argues for implementing one such vision of digital democracy through the establishment of a public corporation. Modeled on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in the United States, this entity would foster the creation of new digital technology by providing a stable source of funding to nonprofit technologists, interest groups, civic organizations, government, researchers, private companies, and the public. Funded entities would produce and maintain software infrastructure for public benefit. The concluding sections identify what circumstances might create and sustain such an entity

Development of Economic Water Usage Sensor and Cyber-Physical Systems Co-Simulation Platform for Home Energy Saving

In this thesis, two Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) approaches were considered to reduce residential building energy consumption. First, a flow sensor was developed for residential gas and electric storage water heaters. The sensor utilizes unique temperature changes of tank inlet and outlet pipes upon water draw to provide occupant hot water usage. Post processing of measured pipe temperature data was able to detect water draw events. Conservation of energy was applied to heater pipes to determine relative internal water flow rate based on transient temperature measurements. Correlations between calculated flow and actual flow were significant at a 95% confidence level. Using this methodology, a CPS water heater controller can activate existing residential storage water heaters according to occupant hot water demand. The second CPS approach integrated an open-source building simulation tool, EnergyPlus, into a CPS simulation platform developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The NIST platform utilizes the High Level Architecture (HLA) co-simulation protocol for logical timing control and data communication. By modifying existing EnergyPlus co-simulation capabilities, NIST’s open-source platform was able to execute an uninterrupted simulation between a residential house in EnergyPlus and an externally connected thermostat controller. The developed EnergyPlus wrapper for HLA co-simulation can allow active replacement of traditional real-time data collection for building CPS development. As such, occupant sensors and simple home CPS product can allow greater residential participation in energy saving practices, saving up to 33% on home energy consumption nationally

Business Sphere, Vol. 17, no.3

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The Development of a smart metering scheme

Paper no. O-036Collaboration is a term to characterize contemporary relationship between a supplier and a consumer. In the old days, an energy meter is the interface service-counter that prompts the double-coincidence of wants between the parties. Nowadays a meter can have smartness beyond registration of consumption units by the supplier. It can carry intelligence to serve demand side management. When the electrical-load-signature technology has been efficiently developed, then a user has to accept that the barrier to load monitoring and surveillance by other parties is no longer a technical issue, but primarily an ethical issue only. On the other hand, it is anticipated that experience curves shall drag down the cost of intelligent home management system to an extent that most of the homes can equip one system to enhance installation operation efficiency and human comfort. It is perceived that when a platform can be developed to permit the intelligence of two sides to share information, then each of them may support the other as a neighboring aide. This paper discusses on philosophies and models that shall develop the concepts.postprintThe International Conference on Electrical Engineering (ICEE) 2008, Okinawa, Japan, 6-10 July 2008