The application of modified adaptive landscapes to heuristic modelling of engine concept designs using sparse data

The automotive internal combustion engine industry operates in a sector that relies on high production volumes for economies of scale, and dedicated production equipment for efficiency of operations and control of quality, yet is subject to the vagaries of a dynamic marketplace, with the need for constant change. These circumstances place pressure on engine designs to be optimised at launch to be competitive and meet market needs, yet be adaptable to uncertain requirements for change over their production life. Engine designers therefore need concept configuration evaluation tools that can assess architectures for resilience to geometric change over the production life of the product. The problem of being resource efficient whilst having the capacity to adapt tochanging environments is one that has been addressed in nature. Natural systems have evolved strategies of satisficing conflicting requirements whilst being resource efficient. The theory of adaptive landscapes helps us to visualise the adaptive capacity of potential morphological forms. A concept attribute analysis methodology based on satisficing and adaptive landscapes has been developed and tested for application to engine concept design. The Plateau, Flooded Adaptive Landscape technique (PFAL),has been evaluated against exemplar engine life histories and shows merit in aiding the decision-making process for concept designers working with sparse data. The process lets the designer visualise the attribute map, enabling them to make better trade-off decisions and share these with non-expert stakeholders to gain their input in final concept choices

Urban Agriculture

This book provides useful information about Urban Agriculture, which includes the production of crops in small to large lots, vertical production on walls, windows (window farms), rooftops (green roofs), urban gardens, farmer's markets, economic models of urban gardening, peri-urban agricultural systems, and spatial planning and evolution of the land uses. Additionally, this book elucidates further agricultural technologies, such as the aquaculture systems

Spatio-temporal analysis of vegetation dynamics of selected successional stages of dry acidic grasslands : experimental studies and model simulations

Austenfeld M. Spatio-temporal analysis of vegetation dynamics of selected successional stages of dry acidic grasslands : experimental studies and model simulations. Bielefeld (Germany): Bielefeld University; 2009.Eine allgemeine Entwicklungsumgebung wurde für die Analyse und Simulation von räumlich-zeitlichen Phänomenen in ökologischen Systemen entwickelt. Die gesamte Plattform basiert auf einer "Rich-Client-Platform" (RCP), die neue Konzepte der Modularisierung und allgemeinen Programmarchitektur mitbringt. Damit bietet sie die Grundlage für eine nachhaltige Weiterentwicklung und ist somit eine solide Basis für eine integrierte Entwicklungsumgebung für ökologische Modelle. Die Integration verschiedener statistischer Werkzeuge, Methoden der Bildverarbeitung und spezielle Visualisierungen qualifizieren diese Umgebung besonders für die Analyse der oben genannten räumlich-zeitlichen Prozesse. Aufgrund ihrer vergleichsweise geringen Komplexität wurden Sandlebensräume wiederholt für Studien von Vegetationsmustern und ihrer zugrunde liegenden biotischen Interaktionen genutzt. Für einen integrativen Überblick und weitere integrative Ansätze mit Hilfe von Simulationsmodellen wurde die oben genannte Plattform genutzt, um eine individuenbasierte Modellstruktur für die Analyse von Langzeiteffekten aufgrund von Umweltveränderungen auf die Stabilität von Sandlebensräumen zu entwickeln, die typischerweise von zwei Pionierarten, Corynephorus canescens und Polytrichum piliferum, dominiert werden. Das Modell wurde mit experimentellen Daten verifiziert, und die vom Modell erzeugten räumlich-zeitlichen Muster zeigten eine hohe Übereinstimmung mit natürlich gemessenen Mustern. Das Modell wurde dann genutzt, um Langzeiteffekte von Veränderungen der Temperatur, Nährstoffversorgung und Störungsraten in diesem System zu untersuchen. Die Ergebnisse zeigten eine generell hohe Stabilität des Systems unter veränderten Temperatur- und Nährstoffbedingungen, wobei temporal wiederkehrende, kleinräumige Störungen als Grundlage notwendig waren. Schließlich wurde noch eine Untersuchung über die Auswirkungen von Herbivorie und Konkurrenz auf Corynephorus canescens durchgeführt. In einem kontrollierten Freilandexperiment wurden die Auswirkungen von entfernter Biomasse von Blättern sowie die An- oder Abwesenheit eines intraspezifischen und interspezifischen Konkurrenten (Hieracium pilosella) auf die überirdische und unterirdische Allokation von Biomasse in der folgenden Regenerationsphase analysiert. Die Ergebnisse zeigten, dass Corynephorus canescens die Fähigkeit besitzt, leichte bis mittlere Blattverluste (die typische natürliche Herbivorie von Kaninchen und Paarhufern simulieren sollten) zu kompensieren, ohne dabei an Konkurrenzstärke zu verlieren. Unterirdisch konnten keine Auswirkungen der simulierten Herbivorie bzw. Konkurrenz festgestellt werden. Aufgrund dieser zu vernachlässigenden Effekte wurde Herbivorie nicht in dem Modell berücksichtigt.A generic modeling environment for the analysis and simulation of spatio-temporal phenomena in ecosystems was developed. This framework was built upon a Rich Client Platform (RCP) which uses new concepts of extensibility and software architecture for sustainable development and provides a solid basis for an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for ecological models. The integration of various statistical tools, imaging routines and several specialized drawing panels makes this environment particularly suitable for the analysis of the above mentioned spatio-temporal ecological processes. Because of their comparatively low complexity, dry acidic grassland ecosystems have been repeatedly used for studying vegetation pattern formation and the underlying biotic interactions. In order to obtain an integrative view of the existing knowledge as well as to provide a possibility for further integrative analysis with the help of model simulations, the above described platform was used to develop an individual based Model structure for the investigation of long term effects of environmental changes on the stability of early successional stages of such dry acidic grasslands which are typically dominated by the two pioneer species Corynephorus canescens and Polytrichum piliferum. The model was validated with experimental data and the spatio-temporal patterns created by the model were in good accordance with the measured natural patterns. The model was then used to analyze the effect of changes in temperature, nutrient supply and disturbance rate on the long term behavior of this ecosystem. The results showed an overall high stability of this system under different temperature and nutrient scenarios as long as an intermediate disturbance frequency is assured. Finally, an experimental study on the effect of herbivory and competition on the Corynephorus canescens was conducted. In a controlled field experiment, the effects of the removal of various amounts of aboveground biomass on the above and belowground biomass allocation during the following regeneration phase was analyzed in the presence or absence of an intraspecific and interspecific competitor (Hieracium pilosella). The results show a rather high ability of C. canescens to compensate low to medium amounts of foliage loss (reflecting the typical natural herbivory induced by grasshoppers and rabbits) without significant changes in its competitive ability. Belowground, no biomass effects of foliage removal and/or competition could be detected. Because of these negligible effects, herbivory was not implemented in the above described model

A Language-centered Approach to support environmental modeling with Cellular Automata

Die Anwendung von Methodiken und Technologien aus dem Bereich der Softwaretechnik auf den Bereich der Umweltmodellierung ist eine gemeinhin akzeptierte Vorgehensweise. Im Rahmen der "modellgetriebenen Entwicklung"(MDE, model-driven engineering) werden Technologien entwickelt, die darauf abzielen, Softwaresysteme vorwiegend auf Basis von im Vergleich zu Programmquelltexten relativ abstrakten Modellen zu entwickeln. Ein wesentlicher Bestandteil von MDE sind Techniken zur effizienten Entwicklung von "domänenspezifischen Sprachen"( DSL, domain-specific language), die auf Sprachmetamodellen beruhen. Die vorliegende Arbeit zeigt, wie modellgetriebene Entwicklung, und insbesondere die metamodellbasierte Beschreibung von DSLs, darüber hinaus Aspekte der Pragmatik unterstützen kann, deren Relevanz im erkenntnistheoretischen und kognitiven Hintergrund wissenschaftlichen Forschens begründet wird. Hierzu wird vor dem Hintergrund der Erkenntnisse des "modellbasierten Forschens"(model-based science und model-based reasoning) gezeigt, wie insbesondere durch Metamodelle beschriebene DSLs Möglichkeiten bieten, entsprechende pragmatische Aspekte besonders zu berücksichtigen, indem sie als Werkzeug zur Erkenntnisgewinnung aufgefasst werden. Dies ist v.a. im Kontext großer Unsicherheiten, wie sie für weite Teile der Umweltmodellierung charakterisierend sind, von grundsätzlicher Bedeutung. Die Formulierung eines sprachzentrierten Ansatzes (LCA, language-centered approach) für die Werkzeugunterstützung konkretisiert die genannten Aspekte und bildet die Basis für eine beispielhafte Implementierung eines Werkzeuges mit einer DSL für die Beschreibung von Zellulären Automaten (ZA) für die Umweltmodellierung. Anwendungsfälle belegen die Verwendbarkeit von ECAL und der entsprechenden metamodellbasierten Werkzeugimplementierung.The application of methods and technologies of software engineering to environmental modeling and simulation (EMS) is common, since both areas share basic issues of software development and digital simulation. Recent developments within the context of "Model-driven Engineering" (MDE) aim at supporting the development of software systems at the base of relatively abstract models as opposed to programming language code. A basic ingredient of MDE is the development of methods that allow the efficient development of "domain-specific languages" (DSL), in particular at the base of language metamodels. This thesis shows how MDE and language metamodeling in particular, may support pragmatic aspects that reflect epistemic and cognitive aspects of scientific investigations. For this, DSLs and language metamodeling in particular are set into the context of "model-based science" and "model-based reasoning". It is shown that the specific properties of metamodel-based DSLs may be used to support those properties, in particular transparency, which are of particular relevance against the background of uncertainty, that is a characterizing property of EMS. The findings are the base for the formulation of an corresponding specific metamodel- based approach for the provision of modeling tools for EMS (Language-centered Approach, LCA), which has been implemented (modeling tool ECA-EMS), including a new DSL for CA modeling for EMS (ECAL). At the base of this implementation, the applicability of this approach is shown

2014 GREAT Day Program

SUNY Geneseo’s Eighth Annual GREAT Day.https://knightscholar.geneseo.edu/program-2007/1008/thumbnail.jp

Dynamically reconfigurable bio-inspired hardware

During the last several years, reconfigurable computing devices have experienced an impressive development in their resource availability, speed, and configurability. Currently, commercial FPGAs offer the possibility of self-reconfiguring by partially modifying their configuration bitstream, providing high architectural flexibility, while guaranteeing high performance. These configurability features have received special interest from computer architects: one can find several reconfigurable coprocessor architectures for cryptographic algorithms, image processing, automotive applications, and different general purpose functions. On the other hand we have bio-inspired hardware, a large research field taking inspiration from living beings in order to design hardware systems, which includes diverse topics: evolvable hardware, neural hardware, cellular automata, and fuzzy hardware, among others. Living beings are well known for their high adaptability to environmental changes, featuring very flexible adaptations at several levels. Bio-inspired hardware systems require such flexibility to be provided by the hardware platform on which the system is implemented. In general, bio-inspired hardware has been implemented on both custom and commercial hardware platforms. These custom platforms are specifically designed for supporting bio-inspired hardware systems, typically featuring special cellular architectures and enhanced reconfigurability capabilities; an example is their partial and dynamic reconfigurability. These aspects are very well appreciated for providing the performance and the high architectural flexibility required by bio-inspired systems. However, the availability and the very high costs of such custom devices make them only accessible to a very few research groups. Even though some commercial FPGAs provide enhanced reconfigurability features such as partial and dynamic reconfiguration, their utilization is still in its early stages and they are not well supported by FPGA vendors, thus making their use difficult to include in existing bio-inspired systems. In this thesis, I present a set of architectures, techniques, and methodologies for benefiting from the configurability advantages of current commercial FPGAs in the design of bio-inspired hardware systems. Among the presented architectures there are neural networks, spiking neuron models, fuzzy systems, cellular automata and random boolean networks. For these architectures, I propose several adaptation techniques for parametric and topological adaptation, such as hebbian learning, evolutionary and co-evolutionary algorithms, and particle swarm optimization. Finally, as case study I consider the implementation of bio-inspired hardware systems in two platforms: YaMoR (Yet another Modular Robot) and ROPES (Reconfigurable Object for Pervasive Systems); the development of both platforms having been co-supervised in the framework of this thesis

Mathematical Modelling in Engineering & Human Behaviour 2018

This book includes papers in cross-disciplinary applications of mathematical modelling: from medicine to linguistics, social problems, and more. Based on cutting-edge research, each chapter is focused on a different problem of modelling human behaviour or engineering problems at different levels. The reader would find this book to be a useful reference in identifying problems of interest in social, medicine and engineering sciences, and in developing mathematical models that could be used to successfully predict behaviours and obtain practical information for specialised practitioners. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in the new developments of applied mathematics in connection with epidemics, medical modelling, social issues, random differential equations and numerical methods