Validation of a building simulation tool for predictive control in energy management systems

Buildings are responsible for a significant portion of energy consumption worldwide. Intelligent buildings have been devised as a potential solution, where energy consumption and building use are harmonised. At the heart of the intelligent building is the building energy management system (BEMS), the central platform which manages and coordinates all the building monitoring and control subsystems, such as heating and lighting loads. There is often a disconnect between the BEMS and the building it is installed in, leading to inefficient operation, due to incongruous commissioning of sensors and control systems. In these cases, the BEMS has a lack of knowledge of the building form and function, requiring further complex optimisation, to facilitate efficient all year round operation. Flawed BEMS configurations can then lead to ‘sick buildings’. Recently, building energy performance simulation (BEPS) has been viewed as a conceptual solution to assist in efficient building control. Building energy simulation models offer a virtual environment to test many scenarios of BEMS operation strategies and the ability to quickly evaluate their effects on energy consumption and occupant comfort. Challenges include having an accurate building model, but recent advances in building information modelling (BIM) offer the chance to leverage existing building data, which can be translated into a form understood by the building simulator. This study will address these challenges, by developing and integrating a BEMS, with a BIM for BEPS assisted predictive control, and assessing the outcome and potential of the integration

Monetary policy application in the oil-exporting countries: the case of Kuwait

Kuwait has a small open economy, depends totally on exporting one primary single commodity (oil) to earn its Income and is dependent on the rest of the world to importits needs of consumer and capital goods. Thus, the vulnerability of the Kuwaiti economy to exogenous pressures is reflected in the local monetary sector, as well as in the other sectors. However, this external pressure on the monetary sector is isolated from the condition of the balance of payments = especially in the short-term - because the persistent surplus of the balance of payments reflects the oil revenue which is kept outside the country in the foreign reserve of the government. On the other hand, the government expenditure in the local economy is determined by some socio-economic and other political tendencies rather than the level of the oil revenue. Hence, the persistent deficit of the private non-oil balance of payments against the outside world is offset by the government monetary injection in the local economy through its annual budgetary spending to cover the cost of its development plans. Nevertheless, the external influence on the local monetary condition is due to structural and institutional constraints in the financial market and the economy on one hand, and to the policies of the monetary authorities on the other. The purpose of this study is to investigate the application of the monetary policy instruments by the Central Bank of Kuwait during the period 1970-1988 to achieve its economic and monetary objectives postulated in its Charter. Moreover, in addition to this originality, this study has also updated previous empirical works concerning the behaviour of the money stock, since the latest academic research in this field ended in 1982.The behaviour of the monetary sector is studied through the balance sheet of the Central Bank, the consolidated balance sheet of the commercial banks, specialized banks, investment companies, and other participants in the financial market. This study shows that the banking system has experienced a considerable growth in its activities inside and outside the country. But in spite of the structural shift in the investment portfolio of the commercial banks in favour of the local opportunities against foreign investment, the distribution of bank credit among the various productive sectors shows unfair trends against some sectors such as industry and agriculture, and in favour of speculative activities in the stock market and real-estate, which highlights some doubts on the credit rationing policy of the Central Bank, The econometric model of the demand for-and-supply-of money function shows that the equilibrium level of the money stock is determined by external and Internal factors, with the Central Bank playing the role to accommodate the external pressures on local liquidity, rather than controlling the quantity of money. The low interest rate policy adopted by the Central Bank shows that it has failed to secure a fair distribution of bank credit among the productive sectors in the local economy. On the other hand, it encouraged the speculative trends in the stock market and brought about inflationary impacts. Moreover, this policy along with the exchange rate policy has provided the right environment for capital outflow, and exposing the local liquidity to external influences. Nevertheless, the exchange rate regime (the basket peg) has succeeded in maintaining the stability of the Kuwaiti Dinar against the major foreign currencies, and avoiding some undesirable impacts on the Kuwaiti economy resulting from the appreciation or depreciation of the Kuwaiti dinar. The implementation by the Central Bank of monetary policy instruments shows that these instruments were introduced either to help the commercial banks to overcome their liquidity problems in local currency, or to regulate this liquidity among them: therefore, no attention whatsoever was paid to controlling the credit policies of the commercial banks. Such conclusion is evidenced throughout this study either by the exposition of the tendencies behind the introduction by the Central Bank of its instruments of control, or by its neglecting to make effective use of these instruments in accordance with their orthodox concepts. The main findings are discussed and a series of recommendations to enhance the use of the monetary policy instruments are suggested

LIPIcs, Volume 277, GIScience 2023, Complete Volume

LIPIcs, Volume 277, GIScience 2023, Complete Volum

Ecological anthropology of households in East Madura, Indonesia

This dissertation is the result of diachronic and comparative anthropological study of rural households in Northeast Madura, Indonesia, carried out on eight separate visits between August 1985 and March 2009. The aim is to bring time-structured data to bear on key questions regarding the evolution of this rural community. My initial research from 1985 to 1987 focused on animal husbandry, household budgets, and time allocation, subjects central to Madurese society that had not been studied since well before Independence. I was interested in understanding more about Madura’s high levels of poverty and notably how sedentary villagers could raise cows using a cut and carry mode of fodder collection in a savannah ecosystem prone to drought and without the benefit of communal grazing lands. The early focus on animal husbandry immediately expanded to cover all productive activities, which in turn raised questions about the value of children. A fertility study was undertaken to confirm what seemed to be unusually low fertility rates in comparison with other parts of Madura and Indonesia. The incoming data from the time allocation study provided a wealth of new questions on household consumption and expenditures, inter-household and inter-generational exchange, and social organization. Patron-client ties, high levels of violence, political, religious and secular networks and growing cash-cropping provided additional focus for intermediate trips to the field and a long-stay in 1995-1996. The study follows the comparative and diachronic research strategy advocated by many ecological anthropologists since Julian Steward. The ecological setting was a harsh one; the interrelationships people entertained with nature appeared to be complex and evolving. It appeared that Madurese agricultural ecology, household economy, fertility, religious practice, interpersonal violence, and other aspects of life would be better viewed as parts of a mutually-interacting system than as discreet elements detached from each other. The thesis adopts a problem-oriented perspective to build an explanatory framework for some of the critical questions regarding Madurese society. For example, I wanted to know what was keeping the Madurese poor, whether the well-known practice of racing bulls in pairs, and competing pairs of cows in beauty and agility contests had other functions in the society, and why Madura was considered a violent society. Historical research provided depth to the analysis to complement a set of one hundred case studies of violence collected in 1995-1996. Detailed analyses of the Madura cases, and the experience of violence in Kalimantan, presented elsewhere, are complemented by the findings from this study of household dynamics and the challenges its members face. For the roots of Madurese violence are found in the critical violent responses people on the edge of poverty can sometimes make when other avenues of redress are blocked. My overall objective is to tie together the specific ecology of the study village, the productive system, the economic challenges and the often dramatic social insecurity to the development, maintenance and transmission of household units over time. In trying to resolve each of the questions, the mechanism and the processes involved are equally, if not more important than solving the different conundrums that motivate the search in the first place. I found that the understanding and explanation of these Madurese cultural phenomena and processes were most parsimoniously advanced by systematic reference to material factors, processes and contingencies, and moreover that Madurese sentiments, values, ideologies and conceptual schemes were largely determined by these material constraints. The ecological approach (including such variants as cultural materialism and human ecology) having often been the subject of considerable controversy in Anthropology over the years, particularly in my home country of France, I devoted a great deal of the Introduction (Chapter One) to explicating the research strategy’s theoretical underpinnings, and notably to addressing the contentious issues of functionalism, teleology, system and holism. In Chapter Two, “Historical Ecology of Madura and Gedang-Gedang,” I discuss the ecological and historical context in which Madurese communities on the island and in the local area of the field site village developed, particularly in light of the demands placed on rural communities by colonial and elite governments through taxes and forced deliveries. One of the effects of this structural violence, colonial wars and security force recruitment was the creation of the image of the violent Madurese, one that they are still trying to shake off. This and the agro-ecological system of maize cultivation and animal husbandry in a savannah ecosystem contribute to the organization of village communities characterized by dispersed settlement of households and household clusters and the development of self-help social institutions. Chapter Three, “Organization and Exploitation of Domesticated Nature” explores the various ways that villagers in Gedang-Gedang and the subdistrict Batuputih perceive and exploit their natural environment. Modalities of access to land are first discussed before examining ways in which locals conceptualize the plant and animal resources at their disposal, and the various uses to which they are put (in appendices). Plant and animal taxonomies are found to be pragmatic and utilitarian, a departure from early ethnoscience theorizing but congruent with more recent formulations. The rest of the chapter deals with the basic income-generating occupations available to villagers, calculating for each the returns to labour with the help of time allocation data and extensive interviews. An effort is made to chart diachronic trends, and show how access to certain high-earning activities is unequal. “Social, Political and Religious Dynamics” (Chapter Four) presents the household concept used in this study and the composition of Gedang-Gedang’s conjugal units and the households they form based on a shared hearth. Religious and ritual structures and practices provide a glimpse of the institutions of social interaction that rhythm daily life in the village. Transitions occurring in the political arena are charted including changes since Reformasi. The chapter ends with an extended discussion of social control, first within the family, then within the wider community. Control is found to be exercised most strikingly, both in the village and in the town of Sumenep, in the practice of demanding and offering work through asymmetrical exchange, though most exchange is symmetrical between equals. Chapter Five on “Households and Process,” deals with households, the location where adaptation takes place in concrete and observable ways. The goal in this chapter is to make the most of the longitudinal and comparative perspectives provided by the research to see through the analysis of actual cases how households develop over time, how they reproduce themselves, and how resilience and vulnerability can come to characterize them at different stages in time. Simple dependency ratios and consumer-producer values for 44 households are plotted over the 24 years of the study to demonstrate the low overall rates found for most households in Gedang-Gedang, with occasional high rates a sign of poverty or crisis. Household consolidation or fission appears usually to be caused by economic and reproductive (child-raising) factors, though in not a few instances conflicts, exacerbated by economic and other inequalities, play a role. Households are plotted on time scales showing progression (or regression) of landholding and livestock over time, and divided into groups of wealthy, poor, or “have enoughs.” The analysis then shifts to examining individual household histories to obtain a more palpable idea of how they develop in specific directions over time. Among the generalities that can be drawn is the importance of labour, particularly the retaining of one’s child in the tanèan and the obtaining of a son- or daughter-in-law that will augment the household’s productive capacity. This ability to retain children and attract their spouses is one that is not equally shared; wealthy households are usually favoured in this regard. Food and other consumption and exchange data augmented with interview data pointed to important variations in nutrition over the yearly agricultural cycle. Exchange of food and other resources in Gedang-Gedang appears to serve principally to cement social relations among kin and neighbours, or to compensate for work done. The data from Gedang-Gedang points to highly symmetric exchange practices, except in the case of “work for food,” religious and ritual exchange. Lifecycle exchanges have the effect of smoothing over the otherwise significant perturbations in the day to day lives of families when members enter and leave the household, be it the result of marriage, birth or death. As it constitutes a form of exchange, the institution of raising prime cows and bulls for competitive purposes is treated in this chapter, highlighting the positive feedback from these sports to village animal husbandry. In concluding the analysis of individual household economic trajectories, Marten Scheffer’s model of the poverty trap (Scheffer 2009) was readily applicable. My presentation of Gedang-Gedang households concluded with Chapter Six on “Fertility.” The data showed very low average fertility for Gedang-Gedang in comparison with other villages studied with similar methods in Madura and Java. The conclusions and indicators from the fertility study in Gedang-Gedang strongly validate the findings of Benjamin White’s well-known study of high fertility in the village of Kali Loro, Central Java, though the contexts differ in key respects. I conclude that the particular ecological and economic context of Gedang-Gedang encourages women to self-regulate fertility rather stringently. The salient elements of this context are the relative paucity of income-producing employment for children, the small size of landholdings, and the particular constraints of cut and carry cow husbandry. In evaluating the hypotheses initially enunciated at the beginning of the study in light of the data collection and analysis it is found that: - Differential adaptation of village households can be accounted for in large part by theories and principles from general ecology. This provides validation for the use of ecological models in anthropology; - Different limiting factors in each part of the village are responsible for different economic adaptations, which evolve as opportunities change; - Time allocation and the use of time-structured data provide information about the behaviour of households and individuals that is not obtainable from classical ethnographic methods, and that has important implications for comparative studies of the value of children; - The poorest households are usually unable to obtain the credit necessary to engage in high risk but potentially high return occupations such as tobacco planting but some poor and almost all other villagers in appropriate agricultural zones do accept high risk under certain circumstances as the only way to obtain high income. Risk avoidance explains the refusal of villagers to plant high yielding varieties of maize; - The propensity of Madurese on the island of Madura to engage in violent interpersonal attacks is best understood in relation to struggles over material resources; - “The rich get richer, the poor get poorer” as a general trend is validated for the village, and the reasons are linked to initial conditions of wealth to a much greater extent than to other personal traits. Providing diachronic and comparative data from a rural Indonesian community, the study contributes to supporting general ecological theories. The study concludes that ecology and anthropology may well work better conjoined than either of them does alone.</p

Indonesia and the CGIAR Centers: A Study of Their Collaboration in Agricultural Research

An assessment of Indonesia's Agency for Agricultural Research and Development (AARD), the organization, coordination, and effectiveness of its research centers, and the impacts of its collaboration with CGIAR Centers - principally IRRI. Written by ILCA Board Chair Barry Nestel

Modelling cannibalism and inter-species predation for the Cape hake species Merluccius capensis and M. paradoxus

The hake fishery is South Africa's most valuable and harvests two morphologically similar species, the shallow- water Cape hake Merluccius capensis and the deep-water Cape hake M. paradoxus. Since 1948, annual catches have exceeded 50 000 tons and the current total allowable catch (TAC) is about 150 000 tons, a quantity informed by assessments of the hake resource. Current assessments on which management is based use single-stock models that ignore food-web effects. Usually including such interactions in assessments is problematic because of the complexity of food webs. In the case of Cape hake, however, cannibalism and inter-species predation form a very large component of hake mortality and food consumption, thus making a multi-species model not only more feasible but also likely more reliable. A comprehensive multi-species model incorporating these interactions was last investigated in 1995. Since then, substantially more data have become available, and hake single-species assessments have developed considerably, inter alia now including the ability to take careful account of species differentiation. Additionally, with increased computer processing power, more sophisticated modelling can now be attempted than was possible 20 years ago, rendering an update and refinement of the 1995 analyses timeous. The thesis uses mathematical methods to model hake-on-hake predation and cannibalism in hake populations explicitly by incorporating an additional mortality term to account for these interactions. Information from stomach samples obtained on hake research surveys on predator and prey lengths, as well as on the proportion of hake in the diet of hake predators, is then included when fitting the model to data. Chapter 1 contains a brief introduction to the work. Chapter 2 provides background information on the Cape hake fishery and its management, as well as pertinent information on the biology and diet of the hake (and related fish) from the literature that is relevant to the development of the model constructed in this thesis. Chapter 3 lays out the data available for assessing the Cape hake populations: abundance indices together with catch and catch-at-size data for the standard non-predation model, and hake stomach content data for the years 1999-2013 to inform the predation component of multi-species model developed. Chapter 4 provides the details for the standard hake assessment model used at present to inform management of the stocks. This model forms the basis for the multi-species model developed incorporating predation, which is presented in Chapter 5. The remaining Chapters of the thesis present the results and discussions (Chapter 6), possible future development of this model (Chapter 7) and a brief summary of the main findings of the thesis (Chapter 8)

The Human Factor in the Settlement of the Moon: An Interdisciplinary Approach

Approaching the settlement of our Moon from a practical perspective, this book is well suited for space program planners. It addresses a variety of human factor topics involved in colonizing Earth's Moon, including: history, philosophy, science, engineering, agriculture, medicine, politics & policy, sociology, and anthropology. Each chapter identifies the complex, interdisciplinary issues of the human factor that arise in the early phases of settlement on the Moon. Besides practical issues, there is some emphasis placed on preserving, protecting, and experiencing the lunar environment across a broad range of occupations, from scientists to soldiers and engineers to construction workers. The book identifies utilitarian and visionary factors that shape human lives on the Moon. It offers recommendations for program planners in the government and commercial sectors and serves as a helpful resource for academic researchers. Together, the coauthors ask and attempt to answer: “How will lunar society be different?

12th International Conference on Geographic Information Science: GIScience 2023, September 12–15, 2023, Leeds, UK

No abstract available

THE ROLE OF JAVANESE CULTURE IN CHARACTER BUILDING AT ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

Nowadays, character education becomes a major concern in Indonesia. Character development has been done by various strategy, but the results is yet to be seen. Character development should beginin elementary school in order that the children's charactercould formed early so that it could be developed until they are mature. One of the efforts of character building is integrating the local wisdom in learning. One of them is the Javanese culture. Javanese culture has a variety of rules called the "unggah-ungguh" that always give good models to the public community, especially to the Javanese. Along with the times, the Javanese culture that upholds ethics began to degraded and replaced by foreign cultures that came later. The parents’ roles in instilling the Javanese culture to their children also decreased gradually. This paper will examine the Javanese culture’s roles toward the character building in elementary schools’ students. Descriptive method supported by a depth review of the literature and the previous studies is used in this paper as a method. Based on the results of these reviews, we obtain some information about the types and mechanisms of Javanese culture in character building of students, especially elementary school students

Putting ecological theories to the test : individual-based simulations of synthetic microbial community dynamics

Microbial communities are critical for the proper functioning of each and every ecosystem on Earth. The ability to understand the structure and functioning of these complex communities is crucial to manage and protect natural communities, as well as to rationally design engineered microbial communities for important applications ranging from medical and pharmaceutical uses to various bioindustrial processes. In recent years, synthetic microbial communities have gained increasing interest from microbiologists due to their reduced complexity and increased controllability, which favours them over more complex natural systems for examining ecological theories. In this thesis, the in silico counterpart of this approach was used to test ecological theories relating to biodiversity and functionality through the use of mathematical models. Models are abstractions of reality which allow for the testing of hypotheses in a controlled way. In this thesis, individual-based models of synthetic microbial communities were developed and used in simulation studies to answer research questions relating to community diversity, stability, productivity and functionality. The models are spatially explicit and track through time the characteristics, interactions and activities of every individual in the community. The modelling framework is flexible and thus also extendable to other avenues of research