Uncertainty Management of Intelligent Feature Selection in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSN) are envisioned to revolutionize the paradigm of monitoring complex real-world systems at a very high resolution. However, the deployment of a large number of unattended sensor nodes in hostile environments, frequent changes of environment dynamics, and severe resource constraints pose uncertainties and limit the potential use of WSN in complex real-world applications. Although uncertainty management in Artificial Intelligence (AI) is well developed and well investigated, its implications in wireless sensor environments are inadequately addressed. This dissertation addresses uncertainty management issues of spatio-temporal patterns generated from sensor data. It provides a framework for characterizing spatio-temporal pattern in WSN. Using rough set theory and temporal reasoning a novel formalism has been developed to characterize and quantify the uncertainties in predicting spatio-temporal patterns from sensor data. This research also uncovers the trade-off among the uncertainty measures, which can be used to develop a multi-objective optimization model for real-time decision making in sensor data aggregation and samplin

Soft computing techniques: Theory and application for pattern classification

Master'sMASTER OF ENGINEERIN

Survey of Rough and Fuzzy Hybridization

In this research existing barriers and the influence of product’s functional lifecycle on the adoption of circular revenue models in the civil and non-residential building sector was investigated. A revenue model, i.e. how revenues are generated in a business model, becomes circular if it is used to extend producer responsibility to create financial incentives for producers to benefit from making their product more circular. For example, leasing or a buy-back scheme in theory creates an incentive for producers to, amongst others, make the product last longer, to be maintained more easily and to be returned. In the Dutch national policy documents there is a call for the development of circular revenue models to extend producer responsibility in the construction sector, as the construction sector is highlighted as a key sector in terms of environmental impact. Adopting circular revenue models in the construction has so far not been research, however expectations about barriers towards adopting circular revenue models can be derived from related literature. The civil and non-residential building sub-sector of the construction sector is of special interest as this subsector has specific characteristics that were expected to create barriers towards adopting circular revenue models: ownership rights and the long functional lifecycle of products (e.g. buildings). This led to the main research question: “What are the barriers to the adoption of circular revenue models in the civil- and non-residential building sector?” The long functional lifecycle of buildings is of special interest as literature suggests that buildings are made from products with different functional lifecycles. This led to led to an additional sub question: “What is the influence of product’s functional lifecycle on the adoption of circular revenue models in the civil and non-residential building sector?” To answer both research questions, the research was split up into three phases. First, semi-structured interviews were held with practitioners, e.g. companies that have adopted, or are working on adopting, circular revenue models. Based upon the results, a second round of interviews was held with experts to better understand the barriers and gather more in-depth insights. The topics chosen for this round were based on the results from the practitioners. The third research phase was a focus group session held primarily with respondents from the expert and practitioner interviews. During the focus group preliminary results were presented and several topics were discussed. During this research 25 barriers, such as a maximum duration for contracts, short-term thinking and the adoption of measurement methods, towards adopting circular revenue models in the civil and non-residential building sector were found, which fit under five main categories in order of importance: financial, sector-specific, regulatory, organisational and technical barriers. Furthermore, seven additional barriers were found when adopting circular revenue models in which producers retain ownership. This shows that there are many barriers that hinder the adoption of circular revenue models in the civil and non-residential building sector, especially when adopting circular revenue models where producers retain ownership. Furthermore, during this research it was found that the shorter the functional lifecycle of building layers, the more easy the adoption of circular revenue models becomes, because, amongst others, financing for longer that 15 years is difficult and two parties to not like to be mutually dependents upon each other over long time periods. In increasing order of difficulty circular revenue models can be adopted to the building layers with longer functional lifecycles: space plan, services, skin and structure. During the research a consensus amongst respondents was identified that circular revenue models should not be adopted to the structure, as the functional lifecycle was too long. In addition to the functional lifecycle, four additional variables were identified that emphasise why the adoption of circular revenue models to building layers with shorter functional lifecycles is more interesting: ratio CAPEX/OPEX, flexibility of products, focus on investor or user and complexity of products