Modelling the Complex Socio-Technical Systems of Household Energy and Carbon Emissions: A System Dynamics Approach

As a result of the challenge of the climate change, Governments at different levels around the world are urgently seeking solutions to the problem of carbon emissions. This paper reports the modelling effort of the socio-technical systems (STS) of household energy consumption and carbon emissions (HECCE) from the system dynamics (SD) perspective. This is with a view to providing the policy makers with a policy advice tool regarding the HECCE in the UK. The study uses the pragmatist research strategy involving the collection of both qualitative and quantitative data to develop the model. The model captures the complex intrinsic interrelationship among the occupants, dwellings, and environment and subject same to both the qualitative and quantitative data. The paper discusses insights from the model regarding the future profiles of HECCE. The study concludes that the model in this paper can serve as a decision support tool for policy makers in testing different scenarios regarding the HECCE before implementation

Management, Technology and Learning for Individuals, Organisations and Society in Turbulent Environments

This book presents the collection of fifty two papers which were presented on the First International Conference on BUSINESS SUSTAINABILITY ’08 - Management, Technology and Learning for Individuals, Organisations and Society in Turbulent Environments, held in Ofir, Portugal, from 25th to 27th of June, 2008. The main motive of the meeting was the growing awareness of the importance of the sustainability issue. This importance had emerged from the growing uncertainty of the market behaviour that leads to the characterization of the market, i.e. environment, as turbulent. Actually, the characterization of the environment as uncertain and turbulent reflects the fact that the traditional technocratic and/or socio-technical approaches cannot effectively and efficiently lead with the present situation. In other words, the rise of the sustainability issue means the quest for new instruments to deal with uncertainty and/or turbulence. The sustainability issue has a complex nature and solutions are sought in a wide range of domains and instruments to achieve and manage it. The domains range from environmental sustainability (referring to natural environment) through organisational and business sustainability towards social sustainability. Concerning the instruments for sustainability, they range from traditional engineering and management methodologies towards “soft” instruments such as knowledge, learning, creativity. The papers in this book address virtually whole sustainability problems space in a greater or lesser extent. However, although the uncertainty and/or turbulence, or in other words the dynamic properties, come from coupling of management, technology, learning, individuals, organisations and society, meaning that everything is at the same time effect and cause, we wanted to put the emphasis on business with the intention to address primarily the companies and their businesses. From this reason, the main title of the book is “Business Sustainability” but with the approach of coupling Management, Technology and Learning for individuals, organisations and society in Turbulent Environments. Concerning the First International Conference on BUSINESS SUSTAINABILITY, its particularity was that it had served primarily as a learning environment in which the papers published in this book were the ground for further individual and collective growth in understanding and perception of sustainability and capacity for building new instruments for business sustainability. In that respect, the methodology of the conference work was basically dialogical, meaning promoting dialog on the papers, but also including formal paper presentations. In this way, the conference presented a rich space for satisfying different authors’ and participants’ needs. Additionally, promoting the widest and global learning environment and participativeness, the Conference Organisation provided the broadcasting over Internet of the Conference sessions, dialogical and formal presentations, for all authors’ and participants’ institutions, as an innovative Conference feature. In these terms, this book could also be understood as a complementary instrument to the Conference authors’ and participants’, but also to the wider readerships’ interested in the sustainability issues. The book brought together 97 authors from 10 countries, namely from Australia, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Portugal, Russia, Serbia, Sweden and United Kingdom. The authors “ranged” from senior and renowned scientists to young researchers providing a rich and learning environment. At the end, the editors hope and would like that this book will be useful, meeting the expectation of the authors and wider readership and serving for enhancing the individual and collective learning, and to incentive further scientific development and creation of new papers. Also, the editors would use this opportunity to announce the intention to continue with new editions of the conference and subsequent editions of accompanying books on the subject of BUSINESS SUSTAINABILITY, the second of which is planned for year 2011.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

12th EASN International Conference on "Innovation in Aviation & Space for opening New Horizons"

Epoxy resins show a combination of thermal stability, good mechanical performance, and durability, which make these materials suitable for many applications in the Aerospace industry. Different types of curing agents can be utilized for curing epoxy systems. The use of aliphatic amines as curing agent is preferable over the toxic aromatic ones, though their incorporation increases the flammability of the resin. Recently, we have developed different hybrid strategies, where the sol-gel technique has been exploited in combination with two DOPO-based flame retardants and other synergists or the use of humic acid and ammonium polyphosphate to achieve non-dripping V-0 classification in UL 94 vertical flame spread tests, with low phosphorous loadings (e.g., 1-2 wt%). These strategies improved the flame retardancy of the epoxy matrix, without any detrimental impact on the mechanical and thermal properties of the composites. Finally, the formation of a hybrid silica-epoxy network accounted for the establishment of tailored interphases, due to a better dispersion of more polar additives in the hydrophobic resin

Operational Research: Methods and Applications

Throughout its history, Operational Research has evolved to include a variety of methods, models and algorithms that have been applied to a diverse and wide range of contexts. This encyclopedic article consists of two main sections: methods and applications. The first aims to summarise the up-to-date knowledge and provide an overview of the state-of-the-art methods and key developments in the various subdomains of the field. The second offers a wide-ranging list of areas where Operational Research has been applied. The article is meant to be read in a nonlinear fashion. It should be used as a point of reference or first-port-of-call for a diverse pool of readers: academics, researchers, students, and practitioners. The entries within the methods and applications sections are presented in alphabetical order. The authors dedicate this paper to the 2023 Turkey/Syria earthquake victims. We sincerely hope that advances in OR will play a role towards minimising the pain and suffering caused by this and future catastrophes

Expanding the Horizons of Manufacturing: Towards Wide Integration, Smart Systems and Tools

This research topic aims at enterprise-wide modeling and optimization (EWMO) through the development and application of integrated modeling, simulation and optimization methodologies, and computer-aided tools for reliable and sustainable improvement opportunities within the entire manufacturing network (raw materials, production plants, distribution, retailers, and customers) and its components. This integrated approach incorporates information from the local primary control and supervisory modules into the scheduling/planning formulation. That makes it possible to dynamically react to incidents that occur in the network components at the appropriate decision-making level, requiring fewer resources, emitting less waste, and allowing for better responsiveness in changing market requirements and operational variations, reducing cost, waste, energy consumption and environmental impact, and increasing the benefits. More recently, the exploitation of new technology integration, such as through semantic models in formal knowledge models, allows for the capture and utilization of domain knowledge, human knowledge, and expert knowledge toward comprehensive intelligent management. Otherwise, the development of advanced technologies and tools, such as cyber-physical systems, the Internet of Things, the Industrial Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, Cloud Computing, Blockchain, etc., have captured the attention of manufacturing enterprises toward intelligent manufacturing systems

New Trends in the Use of Artificial Intelligence for the Industry 4.0

Industry 4.0 is based on the cyber-physical transformation of processes, systems and methods applied in the manufacturing sector, and on its autonomous and decentralized operation. Industry 4.0 reflects that the industrial world is at the beginning of the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution, characterized by a massive interconnection of assets and the integration of human operators with the manufacturing environment. In this regard, data analytics and, specifically, the artificial intelligence is the vehicular technology towards the next generation of smart factories.Chapters in this book cover a diversity of current and new developments in the use of artificial intelligence on the industrial sector seen from the fourth industrial revolution point of view, namely, cyber-physical applications, artificial intelligence technologies and tools, Industrial Internet of Things and data analytics. This book contains high-quality chapters containing original research results and literature review of exceptional merit. Thus, it is in the aim of the book to contribute to the literature of the topic in this regard and let the readers know current and new trends in the use of artificial intelligence for the Industry 4.0