Modelling and simulation framework for reactive transport of organic contaminants in bed-sediments using a pure java object - oriented paradigm

Numerical modelling and simulation of organic contaminant reactive transport in the environment is being increasingly relied upon for a wide range of tasks associated with risk-based decision-making, such as prediction of contaminant profiles, optimisation of remediation methods, and monitoring of changes resulting from an implemented remediation scheme. The lack of integration of multiple mechanistic models to a single modelling framework, however, has prevented the field of reactive transport modelling in bed-sediments from developing a cohesive understanding of contaminant fate and behaviour in the aquatic sediment environment. This paper will investigate the problems involved in the model integration process, discuss modelling and software development approaches, and present preliminary results from use of CORETRANS, a predictive modelling framework that simulates 1-dimensional organic contaminant reaction and transport in bed-sediments

An Assessment of PIER Electric Grid Research 2003-2014 White Paper

This white paper describes the circumstances in California around the turn of the 21st century that led the California Energy Commission (CEC) to direct additional Public Interest Energy Research funds to address critical electric grid issues, especially those arising from integrating high penetrations of variable renewable generation with the electric grid. It contains an assessment of the beneficial science and technology advances of the resultant portfolio of electric grid research projects administered under the direction of the CEC by a competitively selected contractor, the University of California’s California Institute for Energy and the Environment, from 2003-2014

Prediction And Allocation Of Live To Virtual Communication Bridging Resources

This document summarizes a research effort focused on improving live-to-virtual (L-V) communication systems. The purpose of this work is to address a significant challenge facing the tactical communications training community through the development of the Live-to-Virtual Relay Radio Prediction Algorithm and implementation of the algorithm into an Integrated Live-to-Virtual Communications Server prototype device. The motivation for the work and the challenges of integrating live and virtual communications are presented. Details surrounding the formulation of the prediction algorithm and a description of the prototype system, hardware, and software architectures are shared. Experimental results from discrete event simulation analysis and prototype functionality testing accompany recommendations for future investigation. If the methods and technologies summarized are implemented, an estimated equipment savings of 25%-53% and an estimated cost savings of $150,000.00 -$630,000.00 per site are anticipated. Thus, a solution to a critical tactical communications training problem is presented through the research discussed

Design rules and guidelines for generic condition-based maintenance software's Graphic User Interface

The task of selecting and developing a method of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) for a Condition Based Maintenance (CBM) system, is investigated in this thesis. Efficiently and accurately communicating machinery health information extracted from Condition Monitoring (CM) equipment, to aid and assist plant and machinery maintenance decisions, is the crux of the problem being researched. Challenges facing this research include: the multitude of different CM techniques, developed for measuring different component and machinery condition parameters; the multitude of different methods of HCI; and the multitude of different ways of communicating machinery health conditions to CBM practitioners. Each challenge will be considered whilst pursuing the objective of identifying a generic set of design and development principles, applicable to the design and development of a CBM system's Human Machine Interface (HMI). [Continues.

Working Notes from the 1992 AAAI Workshop on Automating Software Design. Theme: Domain Specific Software Design

The goal of this workshop is to identify different architectural approaches to building domain-specific software design systems and to explore issues unique to domain-specific (vs. general-purpose) software design. Some general issues that cut across the particular software design domain include: (1) knowledge representation, acquisition, and maintenance; (2) specialized software design techniques; and (3) user interaction and user interface

Application of multi-agents to power distribution systems

The electric power system has become a very complicated network at present because of re-structuring and the penetration of distributed energy resources. In addition, due to increasing demand for power, issues such as transmission congestion have made the power system stressed. A single fault can lead to massive cascading effects, affecting the power supply and power quality. An overall solution for these issues can be obtained by a new artificial intelligent mechanism called the multi-agent system. A multi-agent system is a collection of agents, which senses the environmental changes and acts diligently on the environment in order to achieve its objectives. Due to the increasing speed and decreasing cost in communication and computation of complex matrices, multi-agent system promise to be a viable solution for today\u27s intrinsic network problems.;A multi-agent system model for fault detection and reconfiguration is presented in this thesis. These models are developed based on graph theory and mathematical programming. A mathematical model is developed to specify the objective function and the constraints.;The multi-agent models are simulated in Java Agent Development Framework and MatlabRTM and are applied to the power system model designed in the commercial software, Distributed Engineering Workstation(c) . The circuit that is used to model the power distribution system is the Circuit of the Future, developed by Southern California Edison.;The multi-agent system model can precisely detect the fault location and according to the type of fault, it reconfigures the system to supply as much load as possible by satisfying the power balance and line capacity constraints. The model is also capable of handling the assignment of load priorities.;All possible fault cases were tested and a few critical test scenarios are presented in this thesis. The results obtained were promising and were as expected

Overcoming Language Dichotomies: Toward Effective Program Comprehension for Mobile App Development

Mobile devices and platforms have become an established target for modern software developers due to performant hardware and a large and growing user base numbering in the billions. Despite their popularity, the software development process for mobile apps comes with a set of unique, domain-specific challenges rooted in program comprehension. Many of these challenges stem from developer difficulties in reasoning about different representations of a program, a phenomenon we define as a "language dichotomy". In this paper, we reflect upon the various language dichotomies that contribute to open problems in program comprehension and development for mobile apps. Furthermore, to help guide the research community towards effective solutions for these problems, we provide a roadmap of directions for future work.Comment: Invited Keynote Paper for the 26th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Program Comprehension (ICPC'18

Quality assessment technique for ubiquitous software and middleware

The new paradigm of computing or information systems is ubiquitous computing systems. The technology-oriented issues of ubiquitous computing systems have made researchers pay much attention to the feasibility study of the technologies rather than building quality assurance indices or guidelines. In this context, measuring quality is the key to developing high-quality ubiquitous computing products. For this reason, various quality models have been defined, adopted and enhanced over the years, for example, the need for one recognised standard quality model (ISO/IEC 9126) is the result of a consensus for a software quality model on three levels: characteristics, sub-characteristics, and metrics. However, it is very much unlikely that this scheme will be directly applicable to ubiquitous computing environments which are considerably different to conventional software, trailing a big concern which is being given to reformulate existing methods, and especially to elaborate new assessment techniques for ubiquitous computing environments. This paper selects appropriate quality characteristics for the ubiquitous computing environment, which can be used as the quality target for both ubiquitous computing product evaluation processes ad development processes. Further, each of the quality characteristics has been expanded with evaluation questions and metrics, in some cases with measures. In addition, this quality model has been applied to the industrial setting of the ubiquitous computing environment. These have revealed that while the approach was sound, there are some parts to be more developed in the future