From Sensor to Observation Web with Environmental Enablers in the Future Internet

This paper outlines the grand challenges in global sustainability research and the objectives of the FP7 Future Internet PPP program within the Digital Agenda for Europe. Large user communities are generating significant amounts of valuable environmental observations at local and regional scales using the devices and services of the Future Internet. These communities’ environmental observations represent a wealth of information which is currently hardly used or used only in isolation and therefore in need of integration with other information sources. Indeed, this very integration will lead to a paradigm shift from a mere Sensor Web to an Observation Web with semantically enriched content emanating from sensors, environmental simulations and citizens. The paper also describes the research challenges to realize the Observation Web and the associated environmental enablers for the Future Internet. Such an environmental enabler could for instance be an electronic sensing device, a web-service application, or even a social networking group affording or facilitating the capability of the Future Internet applications to consume, produce, and use environmental observations in cross-domain applications. The term ?envirofied? Future Internet is coined to describe this overall target that forms a cornerstone of work in the Environmental Usage Area within the Future Internet PPP program. Relevant trends described in the paper are the usage of ubiquitous sensors (anywhere), the provision and generation of information by citizens, and the convergence of real and virtual realities to convey understanding of environmental observations. The paper addresses the technical challenges in the Environmental Usage Area and the need for designing multi-style service oriented architecture. Key topics are the mapping of requirements to capabilities, providing scalability and robustness with implementing context aware information retrieval. Another essential research topic is handling data fusion and model based computation, and the related propagation of information uncertainty. Approaches to security, standardization and harmonization, all essential for sustainable solutions, are summarized from the perspective of the Environmental Usage Area. The paper concludes with an overview of emerging, high impact applications in the environmental areas concerning land ecosystems (biodiversity), air quality (atmospheric conditions) and water ecosystems (marine asset management)

NASA SBIR abstracts of 1990 phase 1 projects

The research objectives of the 280 projects placed under contract in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) 1990 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase 1 program are described. The basic document consists of edited, non-proprietary abstracts of the winning proposals submitted by small businesses in response to NASA's 1990 SBIR Phase 1 Program Solicitation. The abstracts are presented under the 15 technical topics within which Phase 1 proposals were solicited. Each project was assigned a sequential identifying number from 001 to 280, in order of its appearance in the body of the report. The document also includes Appendixes to provide additional information about the SBIR program and permit cross-reference in the 1990 Phase 1 projects by company name, location by state, principal investigator, NASA field center responsible for management of each project, and NASA contract number

Breaking Computational Barriers to Perform Time Series Pattern Mining at Scale and at the Edge

Uncovering repeated behavior in time series is an important problem in many domains such as medicine, geophysics, meteorology, and many more. With the continuing surge of smart/embedded devices generating time series data, there is an ever growing need to perform analysis on datasets of increasing size. Additionally, there is an increasing need for analysis at low power edge devices due to latency problems inherent to the speed of light and the sheer amount of data being recorded. The matrix profile has proven to be a tool highly suitable for pattern mining in time series; however, a naive approach to computing the matrix profile makes it impossible to use effectively in both the cloud and at the edge. This dissertation shows how, through the use of GPUs and machine learning, the matrix profile is computed more feasibly, both at cloud-scale and at sensor-scale. In addition, it illustrates why both of these types of computation are important and what new insights they can provide to practitioners working with time series data

Doctor of Philosophy

dissertationThe detonation of hundreds of explosive devices from either a transportation or storage accident is an extremely dangerous event. Motivation for this work came from a transportation accident where a truck carrying 16,000 kg of seismic boosters overturned, caught fire and detonated. The damage was catastrophic, creating a crater 24 m wide by 10 m deep in the middle of the highway. Our particular interest is understanding the fundamental physical mechanisms by which convective deflagration of cylindrical PBX-9501 devices can transition to a fully-developed detonation in transportation and storage accidents. Predictive computer simulations of large-scale deflagrations and detonations are dependent on the availability of robust reaction models embedded in a computational framework capable of running on massively parallel computer architectures. Our research group has been developing such models in the Uintah Computational Framework, which is capable of scaling up to 512 K cores. The current Deflagration to Detonation Transition (DDT) model merges a combustion model from Ward, Son, and Brewster that captures the effects of pressure and initial temperature on the burn rate, with a criteria model for burning in cracks of damaged explosives from Berghout et al., and a detonation model from Souers describing fully developed detonation. The prior extensive validation against experimental tests was extended to a wide range of temporal and spatial scales. We made changes to the reactant equation of state-enabling predictions of combustions, explosions, and detonations over a range of pressures spanning five orders of magnitude. A resolution dependence was eliminated from the reaction model facilitating large scale simulations to be run at a resolution of 2 mm without loss of fidelity. Adjustments were also made to slow down the flame propagation of conductive and convective deflagration. Large two- and three-dimensional simulations revealed two dominant mechanisms for the initiation of a DDT, inertial confinement and Impact to Detonation Transition. Understanding these mechanisms led to identifying ways to package and store explosive devices that reduced the probability of a detonation. We determined that the arrangement of the explosive cylinders and the number of devices packed in a box greatly affected the propensity to transition to a detonation

New Perspectives in the Definition/Evaluation of Seismic Hazard through Analysis of the Environmental Effects Induced by Earthquakes

The devastating effects caused by the recent catastrophic earthquakes that took place all over the world from Japan, New Zealand, to Chile, as well as those occurring in the Mediterranean basin, have once again shown that ground motion, although a serious source of direct damage, is not the only parameter to be considered, with most damage being the result of coseismic geological effects that are directly connected to the earthquake source or caused by ground shaking. The primary environmental effects induced by earthquakes as well as the secondary effects (sensu Environmental Seismic Intensity - ESI 2007 scale) must be considered for a more correct and complete evaluation of seismic hazards, at both regional and local scales. This Special Issue aims to collect all contributions that, using different methodologies, integrate new data produced with multi-disciplinary and innovative methods. These methodologies are essential for the identification and characterization of seismically active areas, and for the development of new hazard models, obtained using different survey techniques. The topic attracted a lot of interest, 19 peer-reviewed articles were collected; moreover, different areas of the world have been analyzed through these methodologies: Italy, USA, Spain, Australia, Ecuador, Guatemala, South Korea, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Russia, China, Japan, and Nepal

Volume 1

"Europe’s Lost Frontiers was the largest directed archaeological research project undertaken in Europe to investigate the inundated landscapes of the Early Holocene North Sea – the area frequently referred to as ‘Doggerland’. Funded through a European Research Council Advanced Grant (project number 670518), the project ran from 2015 to 2021, and involved more than 30 academics, representing institutions spread geographically from Ireland to China. A vast area of the seabed was mapped, and multiple ship expeditions were launched to retrieve sediment cores from the valleys of the lost prehistoric landscapes of the North Sea. This data has now been analysed to provide evidence of how the land was transformed in the face of climate change and rising sea levels. This volume is the first in a series of monographs dedicated to the analysis and interpretation of data generated by the project. As a precursor to the publication of the detailed results, it provides the context of the study and method statements. Later volumes will present the mapping, palaeoenvironment, geomorphology and modelling programmes of Europe’s Lost Frontiers. The results of the project confirm that these landscapes, long held to be inaccessible to archaeology, can be studied directly and provide an archaeological narrative. This data will become increasingly important at a time when contemporary climate change and geo-political crises are pushing development within the North Sea at an unprecedented rate, and when the opportunities to explore this unique, heritage landscape may be significantly limited in the future.