Simplifying the process to perform air temperature and UHI measurements at large scales: Design of a new APP and low-cost Arduino device

The main purpose of Urban Heat Island (UHI) studies and the monitoring of ambient temperatures at large scales is to gather temperature information in a certain area, so as to understand temperature heterogeneity and its drivers or detect locations that lack thermal comfort. However, these studies originate mostly from some research projects, with sufficient budget and manpower to carry out the measurements and the necessary calculations. Thus, there is a scarcity of air temperature information, making it difficult to implement appropriate mitigation actions worldwide. The present work aims to greatly simplify the process to monitor air temperatures and carry out UHI estimations through mobile transects. This is done by introducing the design of a low-cost device and a new APP, which performs automatically most necessary UHI calculations. A web tool based on the Inverse Distance Weighting interpolation method is also included to obtain heat maps. The methodology is illustrated using case studies in Seville (Spain) and New York city (USA). By introducing a straightforward and reproducible methodology, we aim to open the path for a more widespread availability of ambient temperature data anywhere in the world, without the need for costly equipment and many hours of dedication by the researcher

Thermal comfort assessment in a typological non-isolated maternity pig sheds with different types of farrowing systems

Received: February 1st, 2021 ; Accepted: May 8th, 2021 ; Published: May 19th, 2021 ; Correspondence: [email protected] facilities in tropical climates, especially the maternity, have worked with typological systems that have been little studied to determine the influence of the type of farrowing on microenvironmental conditions and its effect on both the sows and the piglets' physiological parameters. Therefore, the aim of the research was evaluate the thermal environment (Temperature Humidity Index - THI and Radiant Thermal Load - RTL) and its influence on some physiological parameters (respiratory frequency - RF and rectal temperature - TRectal) in the sows and piglets in two different types of farrowing systems (Traditional and Slatted), in a typological swine facility located in tropical climates in Colombia. The findings showed that in the two systems, both for sows and piglets, the type of farrowing system did not generate significant differences in the physiological responses RF and TRectal. Also, the RTL did not show significant differences in the two types of farrowing system at the piglets and the sows’ level, without exceeding the maximum allowed levels. Temperature-Humidity Index was above the threshold during all experimental time, being slightly higher at the piglets' level with Slatted systems. These results show that the type of floor has little impact on the conditions of animal thermal comfort at the sows and piglets’ level. However, variables like low-temperature, low radiant energy exchange, and high humidity, which were found mainly at the piglets’ level, could have the highest incidence for not achieving a suitable microenvironment. This means that almost all Colombian pig farming facilities require a redesign of their farrowing system to guarantee better thermal conditions for both piglets and sows

Assessment of the methane emission for different typologies of fattening swine facilities in the department of Antioquia – Colombia

The explosive growth of swine production at high stocking densities in confinement farming worldwide, has raised concerns the environmental impact, health and livestock productivity and the production of associated gases in this type of large-scale farms. The aim of this paper was to study the methane gas concentration and emissions of ten different typologies of swine production installations. The facilities were in the department of Antioquia - Colombia, they were located between 800–2,300 meters above sea level (m.a.s.l.) of heights, they mainly employed natural ventilation as refrigeration strategy and they were used for pigs in fattening stage. Methane measurements were taken at animal height. Sensors were located at intermediate points of the ventilation inlet and outlet areas. The behaviour of methane concentration and emission of the facilities were analysed along with the correlation and temporal evolution of climatic variables, comfort indices and construction typologies. The information was analysed using descriptive statistics, analysis of variance (ANOVA) and principal component analysis (PCA). Were found an average of CH4 Emission Rate (ER) per facility (kg year-1 ) of 607.9, Global Warming Potential (GWP) per facility (kg year-1 ) of 15,197.42 and significant correlations between ER and cleaning frequency (CF), animal unit (AU), air flow (Q), animal density(AD) and relative humidity (RH) were evidenced. This is the first research reported in Colombia, that will be important to create some governmental policies

Uso de tecnologias para melhor aproveitamento na produção animal

Animal production in Brazil has considerable economic and social importance and is currently showing significant growth, which stimulated some changes to optimize production systems, to reduce losses, to have more efficiency, more practicality, and for that, some strategies to improve productivity have been sought. Thus, this work aims to develop a literature review to reflect and discuss existing technologies and their use in production units, to promote a better use of animal production, as well as automation, emphasizing the types of automation that exist. Since in our current information age, there are a number of technologies that are available and accessible, to improve the technical and economic efficiency of animal production systems, and assist in decision making, in addition to ensuring more detailed and accurate management of the entire the production system, resulting in a reduction in localized losses, increased profitability, improved animal welfare and, consequently, an improvement in the final product, in addition to a lower impact on the planet. The demand for food of animal origin is constantly increasing, so it is important to always look for ways to optimize animal production and use appropriate technologies that can maximize the efficiency of all production processes as well as the products generated. Therefore, the use of technologies has many advantages, as they allow for more precision in actions related to animal production.A produção animal no Brasil tem uma importância econômica e social considerável e está atualmente apresentando um crescimento expressivo, o que estimula algumas mudanças para otimizar os sistemas de produção, a reduzir perdas, a ter mais eficiência, mais praticidade, e para para isso tem se procurado algumas estratégias para melhorar a produtividade animal. Sendo assim, esse trabalho visa desenvolver uma revisão bibliográfica para refletir e discorrer sobre as tecnologias existentes e sua utilização em unidades de produção, para promover um melhor aproveitamento da produção animal, bem como a automação, enfatizando os tipos de automação existentes. Visto que em nossa atual era da informação, há uma série de tecnologias que estão disponíveis e que são acessíveis, para melhorar a eficiência técnica e econômica dos sistemas de produção animal, e auxiliar na tomada de decisões, além de garantirem um gerenciamento mais detalhado e preciso de todo o sistema de produção, resultando em redução de perdas localizadas, aumento da lucratividade, melhoria no bem-estar animal e consequentemente melhoria do produto final, além de um menor impacto no planeta. A procura pelos alimentos de origem animal está em constante aumento, por isso é importante sempre buscar formas de otimizar a produção animal e utilizar tecnologias adequadas, que possam maximizar a eficiência de todos os processos produtivos bem como os produtos gerados. Diante disso, o uso de tecnologias apresenta muitas vantagens, pois permitem agregar mais precisão nas ações relacionadas a produção animal

Development Of a Multisensorial System For Emotions Recognition

Automated reading and analysis of human emotion has the potential to be a powerful tool to develop a wide variety of applications, such as human-computer interaction systems, but, at the same time, this is a very difficult issue because the human communication is very complex. Humans employ multiple sensory systems in emotion recognition. At the same way, an emotionally intelligent machine requires multiples sensors to be able to create an affective interaction with users. Thus, this Master thesis proposes the development of a multisensorial system for automatic emotion recognition. The multisensorial system is composed of three sensors, which allowed exploring different emotional aspects, as the eye tracking, using the IR-PCR technique, helped conducting studies about visual social attention; the Kinect, in conjunction with the FACS-AU system technique, allowed developing a tool for facial expression recognition; and the thermal camera, using the FT-RoI technique, was employed for detecting facial thermal variation. When performing the multisensorial integration of the system, it was possible to obtain a more complete and varied analysis of the emotional aspects, allowing evaluate focal attention, valence comprehension, valence expressions, facial expression, valence recognition and arousal recognition. Experiments were performed with sixteen healthy adult volunteers and 105 healthy children volunteers and the results were the developed system, which was able to detect eye gaze, recognize facial expression and estimate the valence and arousal for emotion recognition, This system also presents the potential to analyzed emotions of people by facial features using contactless sensors in semi-structured environments, such as clinics, laboratories, or classrooms. This system also presents the potential to become an embedded tool in robots to endow these machines with an emotional intelligence for a more natural interaction with humans. Keywords: emotion recognition, eye tracking, facial expression, facial thermal variation, integration multisensoria

Mechatronics applications and prototyping sensors for the precision livestock farming

The study is subdivided into 5 chapters and comprises a review of the main components of Plf, the development of a prototype for EC monitoring in ewe milk, a prototype for monitoring animals body temperature, the optimization of collection rounds of goat milk and the development of a prototype for somatic cell count (SCC) through the measurement of Sodium ions in ewe milk.‬‬‬ The first chapter is a review of the advancements of the main components of Plf, i.e. software, hardware and data transmission, focusing on issues related to hardware modularity and differences between licensed and unlicensed software. From the review it emerges that image processing is one of the most used techniques in Plf systems, in that it allows the detection of behavioral, biological and pathological parameters without interfering with the animals routine activities. In this regard the area occupied by a lamb carcass was calculated by using an image analysis open source software, CellProfiler (Jones et al., 2008). The second chapter deals with the realization of an innovative portable tool for somatic cells count in ewe milk by measuring its electrical conductivity. There are over 15,000 dairy sheep farms in Sardinia, which represent both historically and economically the most important agricultural and livestock sector in the island. Indeed, Sardinia holds more than 40% of the national sheep population thanks to more than 3 million sheep heads that provide about 60% of the total national milk production. One of the most common problems in sheep farms is mastitis, an intramammary infection which may cause a quantitative reduction up to 50% in milk production and a qualitative drop, in particular of lactose and casein. One of the indirect methods for the assessment of somatic cell count (SCC) in ruminants’ milk is through the measurement of its electrical conductivity (EC). In small ruminants, EC has a reasonable correlation R2 = 0.35 with somatic cells but to date there is still not a portable tool that can estimate SCC based on the milk’s EC reading. The prototype was calibrated on Sarda ewe milk. The aim of Chapter 3 was to develop a system using a open source sensors, actuators and micro-controller. The system is able to monitoring the rectal temperature of the animals, sending data via Bluetooth to a smart phone. The micro-controller used was an ATmega32U4, the temperature was read using the LM35 analogic sensor and a Class 1 Bluetooth serial module was connected to Arduino creating a wireless serial link between an Android phone and the Arduino board. The application for receiving data on an android smart phone was created using App Inventor that is an innovative Android application creation software developed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). This app is free available on Google Play Store under the name animal_temp. The costs of sheep milk collection rounds in Sardinia have been analysed in chapter fourth. The escalating costs incurred by the dairy processing industries for milk collection from individual farms have focused the attention on the rationalization of milk collection and transport systems. In this regard, the case of the Sardinian goat sector has characteristics that make it unique and not comparable to other logistics optimization realities. The problems of this sector are mainly represented by the particular conditions of the rural road network and the fragmented nature of livestock farms. The aim of the present study was to test a milk collection route optimization software, MilkTour, in the collection rounds of a sample cheese dairy. The software has been developed by the Land Engineering Section of the Agriculture Department of the University of Sassari. A total of 5 routes were analysed and optimized. The results have highlighted the importance of optimizing collection routes as they have a significant impact on business costs. A important contribution that has emerged is the strong correlation between collection density and the cost per litre of collected milk (€cent/l), which allows to detects the cost-effectiveness of a round of collection and its relative optimized around. The objective of chapter 5 was to study the relationship between the ione Na+ and the main components of sheep milk, in particular somatic cells. Moreover, a portable device for estimating SCC in sheep milk was designed. The study was conducted on over 2000 samples. The milk components examined were: fat, proteins, lactose, pH, sodium chloride, urea and the ions Na+. The correlation between Na + and SCC corresponded to R2 = 0.76 (P <0.01). The prototype developed incorporates two containers which receives milk samples taken from each half udder. Each container has integrated inside two sensors, one to detect the level of Na+ in the milk and the other one to compensate the milk temperature. The mathematical model, loaded into the microcontroller by a firmware written in C / C ++, analyze the data and gives back the estimate of SCC level, so it allows farmers to monitor the ewes health status by periodically comparing the somatic cell counts of each half udder. While dealing with different topics the 5 chapters can be enclose in a big new topic, called Precision Livestock Farming (Plf). Plf is the discipline that allows to monitor in real-time the numerous biological and environmental parameters concerning each individual animal of the herd. A Plf system is always made up by three components: a physical element, i.e. the hardware; an element for data processing and presentation, known as the software; and an element for the transmission of data, i.e. the network. The hardware comprises the sensors, the computers and/or microcontrollers, the data transmission and acquisition systems and the actuators. Mathematical models for data processing and the data presentation interface are included in the software loaded into the microcontroller

Human Resource Management in Emergency Situations

The dissertation examines the issues related to the human resource management in emergency situations and introduces the measures helping to solve these issues. The prime aim is to analyse complexly a human resource management, built environment resilience management life cycle and its stages for the purpose of creating an effective Human Resource Management in Emergency Situations Model and Intelligent System. This would help in accelerating resilience in every stage, managing personal stress and reducing disaster-related losses. The dissertation consists of an Introduction, three Chapters, the Conclusions, References, List of Author’s Publications and nine Appendices. The introduction discusses the research problem and the research relevance, outlines the research object, states the research aim and objectives, overviews the research methodology and the original contribution of the research, presents the practical value of the research results, and lists the defended propositions. The introduction concludes with an overview of the author’s publications and conference presentations on the topic of this dissertation. Chapter 1 introduces best practice in the field of disaster and resilience management in the built environment. It also analyses disaster and resilience management life cycle ant its stages, reviews different intelligent decision support systems, and investigates researches on application of physiological parameters and their dependence on stress. The chapter ends with conclusions and the explicit objectives of the dissertation. Chapter 2 of the dissertation introduces the conceptual model of human resource management in emergency situations. To implement multiple criteria analysis of the research object the methods of multiple criteria analysis and mahematics are proposed. They should be integrated with intelligent technologies. In Chapter 3 the model developed by the author and the methods of multiple criteria analysis are adopted by developing the Intelligent Decision Support System for a Human Resource Management in Emergency Situations consisting of four subsystems: Physiological Advisory Subsystem to Analyse a User’s Post-Disaster Stress Management; Text Analytics Subsystem; Recommender Thermometer for Measuring the Preparedness for Resilience and Subsystem of Integrated Virtual and Intelligent Technologies. The main statements of the thesis were published in eleven scientific articles: two in journals listed in the Thomson Reuters ISI Web of Science, one in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, four in peer-reviewed conference proceedings referenced in the Thomson Reuters ISI database, and three in peer-reviewed conference proceedings in Lithuania. Five presentations were given on the topic of the dissertation at conferences in Lithuania and other countries

Using a GIS technology to plan an agroforestry sustainable system in Sardinia

This study was conducted with the aim to quantify the spread of livestock agroforestry in a Mediterranean ecosystem (island of Sardinia, Italy) and evaluate its sustainability in terms of grazing impact. By using GIS software ArcMap 10.2.2, the map of Sardinia vegetal landscape, obtained by information of Sardinia nature map based on the classification of habitat according to CORINE-Biotopes system, have been overplayed with the map of livestock grazing impact map CAIA developed by INTREGA (spin-off ENEA), to obtain for Meriagos (local agro-silvo-pastoral systems; classified “Dehesa 84.6” according to CORINE-Biotopes system), bushlands and woodlands, the surfaces under grazing and evaluate the extension of overgrazing for each of them