9,092 research outputs found
Dynamic Shift from Cloud Computing to Industry 4.0: Eco-Friendly Choice or Climate Change Threat
Cloud computing utilizes thousands of Cloud Data Centres (CDC) and fulfils the demand of end-users dynamically using new technologies and paradigms such as Industry 4.0 and Internet of Things (IoT). With the emergence of Industry 4.0, the quality of cloud service has increased; however, CDC consumes a large amount of energy and produces a huge quantity of carbon footprint, which is one of the major drivers of climate change. This chapter discusses the impacts of cloud developments on climate and quantifies the carbon footprint of cloud computing in a warming world. Further, the dynamic transition from cloud computing to Industry 4.0 is discussed from an eco-friendly/climate change threat perspective. Finally, open research challenges and opportunities for prospective researchers are explored
Public Policy Platform on Flexible Work Arrangements
On May 13, 2009, Workplace Flexibility 2010 released a comprehensive set of policy solutions to expand Americansâ access to flexible work arrangements such as compressed workweeks, predictable schedules, and telecommuting.
Flexible Work Arrangements (FWAs) alter the time and/or place that work is conducted on a regular basis - in a manner that is as manageable and predictable as possible for both employees and employers. FWAs provide: Flexibility in the scheduling of hours worked, such as alternative work schedules (e.g., non-traditional start and end times, flex time, or compressed workweeks) and arrangements regarding overtime, predictable scheduling, and shift and break schedules; Flexibility in the amount of hours worked, such as part time work, job shares, phased retirement or part year work; and Flexibility in the place of work, such as working at home, at a satellite location or at different locations
The Role of Intelligent Transportation Systems and Artificial Intelligence in Energy Efficiency and Emission Reduction
Despite the technological advancements in the transportation sector, the
industry continues to grapple with increasing energy consumption and vehicular
emissions, which intensify environmental degradation and climate change. The
inefficient management of traffic flow, the underutilization of transport
network interconnectivity, and the limited implementation of artificial
intelligence (AI)-driven predictive models pose significant challenges to
achieving energy efficiency and emission reduction. Thus, there is a timely and
critical need for an integrated, sophisticated approach that leverages
intelligent transportation systems (ITSs) and AI for energy conservation and
emission reduction. In this paper, we explore the role of ITSs and AI in future
enhanced energy and emission reduction (EER). More specifically, we discuss the
impact of sensors at different levels of ITS on improving EER. We also
investigate the potential networking connections in ITSs and provide an
illustration of how they improve EER. Finally, we discuss potential AI services
for improved EER in the future. The findings discussed in this paper will
contribute to the ongoing discussion about the vital role of ITSs and AI
applications in addressing the challenges associated with achieving energy
savings and emission reductions in the transportation sector. Additionally, it
will provide insights for policymakers and industry professionals to enable
them to develop policies and implementation plans for the integration of ITSs
and AI technologies in the transportation sector.Comment: 25 pages, 4 figure
Distributed Stochastic Market Clearing with High-Penetration Wind Power
Integrating renewable energy into the modern power grid requires
risk-cognizant dispatch of resources to account for the stochastic availability
of renewables. Toward this goal, day-ahead stochastic market clearing with
high-penetration wind energy is pursued in this paper based on the DC optimal
power flow (OPF). The objective is to minimize the social cost which consists
of conventional generation costs, end-user disutility, as well as a risk
measure of the system re-dispatching cost. Capitalizing on the conditional
value-at-risk (CVaR), the novel model is able to mitigate the potentially high
risk of the recourse actions to compensate wind forecast errors. The resulting
convex optimization task is tackled via a distribution-free sample average
based approximation to bypass the prohibitively complex high-dimensional
integration. Furthermore, to cope with possibly large-scale dispatchable loads,
a fast distributed solver is developed with guaranteed convergence using the
alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM). Numerical results tested on
a modified benchmark system are reported to corroborate the merits of the novel
framework and proposed approaches.Comment: To appear in IEEE Transactions on Power Systems; 12 pages and 9
figure
3rd EGEE User Forum
We have organized this book in a sequence of chapters, each chapter associated with an application or technical theme introduced by an overview of the contents, and a summary of the main conclusions coming from the Forum for the chapter topic. The first chapter gathers all the plenary session keynote addresses, and following this there is a sequence of chapters covering the application flavoured sessions. These are followed by chapters with the flavour of Computer Science and Grid Technology. The final chapter covers the important number of practical demonstrations and posters exhibited at the Forum. Much of the work presented has a direct link to specific areas of Science, and so we have created a Science Index, presented below. In addition, at the end of this book, we provide a complete list of the institutes and countries involved in the User Forum
Sustainable Development Policies in Europe
The objective of this paper is to investigate the actual situation in the shift towards the implementation of Sustainable Development Policies in Europe. The aim is to highlight the key role of the European Union in bringing about sustainable development within Europe and also on the wider global stage. It will show how the European Commission performs its commitment in reaching a sustainable regulation by issuing some documents and declarations. The paper frames the EU action into an international framework of strategies, agreements and policies on SD and, at the same time, provides an overview on experiences of SD strategy implementations at the national level, according to the commission pressing on MS to produce their own SD strategy and implement it. Indicators systems, issues of interest and fields of actions are compared: the analysis of these elements aims to highlight common scenarios of SD strategies that reveal the trends towards a more sustainable growth in the European Union.Sustainable Development, Globalization, Environment Policy, Strategy for Sustainable Development, Good Governance, Participation
Development of a GIS-based routing model
Route optimization models deal with multi-criteria or multi-objective optimization problems. The basic objectives of routing problems include transport cost and risk affects. An improved model presented in this thesis addresses a new optimization model, Range Optimization Model . Although the core of the route optimization tools adopted is still the conventional Shortest Path Algorithm , the definition of route optimization functions and the means to employ Shortest Path Algorithm are different from conventional procedures; Geographic Information Systems (GIS), have been widely used as a spatial database management system and a geographical analysis tool in a variety of fields related to study of environment, transportation engineering, planning and geographical analysis. This thesis develops a prototype GIS-based routing system which includes static routing functions, dynamic routing functions, and emergency response analysis functions. The system implements the route optimization function based on Network Analysis tools and Dynamic Segmentation capabilities of ARC/INFO. By employing multiple input-source menu systems, user-friendly interfaces are designed for users to easily define problems, select the features, perform route selections, edit routes, and query route information in both graphic form and tabular form. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)
Sustaining Sustainability in Marine Terminals: A Strategic Framework
Sustainability initiatives in maritime industry, despite their global need and relevance, are often riddled with strategic and implementation issues. Here we examine âgreenâ initiatives of top-five global marine terminal operators. We classify their initiatives as technology-centric, process-centric and relationship-centric, and develop a core-competency-driven framework for these initiatives. Our findings indicate that technological initiatives are easy to adopt and yield quicker impact in reducing emissions and increasing ROI. On the other hand, process-centric and relationship-centric initiatives are more difficult to deploy, take longer to yield benefits, but are difficult to imitate. We argue that terminal operators should recognize the value of long-term initiatives that are difficult to replicate, to build competency
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