Optimizing the Structure and Scale of Urban Water Infrastructure: Integrating Distributed Systems

Large-scale, centralized water infrastructure has provided clean drinking water, wastewater treatment, stormwater management and flood protection for U.S. cities and towns for many decades, protecting public health, safety and environmental quality. To accommodate increasing demands driven by population growth and industrial needs, municipalities and utilities have typically expanded centralized water systems with longer distribution and collection networks. This approach achieves financial and institutional economies of scale and allows for centralized management. It comes with tradeoffs, however, including higher energy demands for longdistance transport; extensive maintenance needs; and disruption of the hydrologic cycle, including the large-scale transfer of freshwater resources to estuarine and saline environments.While smaller-scale distributed water infrastructure has been available for quite some time, it has yet to be widely adopted in urban areas of the United States. However, interest in rethinking how to best meet our water and sanitation needs has been building. Recent technological developments and concerns about sustainability and community resilience have prompted experts to view distributed systems as complementary to centralized infrastructure, and in some situations the preferred alternative.In March 2014, the Johnson Foundation at Wingspread partnered with the Water Environment Federation and the Patel College of Global Sustainability at the University of South Florida to convene a diverse group of experts to examine the potential for distributed water infrastructure systems to be integrated with or substituted for more traditional water infrastructure, with a focus on right-sizing the structure and scale of systems and services to optimize water, energy and sanitation management while achieving long-term sustainability and resilience

Critical Infrastructures: Enhancing Preparedness & Resilience for the Security of Citizens and Services Supply Continuity: Proceedings of the 52nd ESReDA Seminar Hosted by the Lithuanian Energy Institute & Vytautas Magnus University

Critical Infrastructures Preparedness and Resilience is a major societal security issue in modern society. Critical Infrastructures (CIs) provide vital services to modern societies. Some CIs’ disruptions may endanger the security of the citizen, the safety of the strategic assets and even the governance continuity. The European Safety, Reliability and Data Association (ESReDA) as one of the most active EU networks in the field has initiated a project group on the “Critical Infrastructure/Modelling, Simulation and Analysis – Data”. The main focus of the project group is to report on the state of progress in MS&A of the CIs preparedness & resilience with a specific focus on the corresponding data availability and relevance. In order to report on the most recent developments in the field of the CIs preparedness & resilience MS&A and the availability of the relevant data, ESReDA held its 52nd Seminar on the following thematic: “Critical Infrastructures: Enhancing Preparedness & Resilience for the security of citizens and services supply continuity”. The 52nd ESReDA Seminar was a very successful event, which attracted about 50 participants from industry, authorities, operators, research centres, academia and consultancy companies.JRC.G.10-Knowledge for Nuclear Security and Safet

Optimization of maintenance performance for offshore production facilities

Master's thesis in Offshore technologyNew technologies are becoming advanced and complex for offshore production facilities. However this advancement and complexity in technology creates a more complicated and time consuming forensic processes for finding causes of failure, or diagnostic processes to identify events that reduce performance. As a result, micro-sensors, efficient signaling and communication technologies for collecting data efficiently, advanced software tools (such as fuzzy logic, neural networks, and simulation based optimization) have been developed, in parallel, to manage such complex assets. Given the nature and scale of ongoing changes on complexities, there are emerging concerns that increasing complexities, ill-defined interfaces, unforeseen events can easily lead to serious performance failures and major risks. To avoid such undesirable circumstances, „just-in-time‟ measures of performance to ensure fully functional is absolutely necessary. The increasing trend in complexity creates a motivation to develop an integrated maintenance management framework to get real-time information to solve problems quickly and hence to increase functional performance (help the asset to perform its required function effectively and efficiently while safeguarding life and the environment). Establishing “just-in-time” maintenance and repairs based on true machine condition maximizes critical asset useful life and eliminates premature replacement of functional components. This thesis focuses on developing an integrated maintenance management framework to establish „just-in-time‟ maintenance and to ensure continuous improvements based on maintenance domain experts as well as operational and historic data. To do this, true degradation of components must be identified. True level of degradation often cannot be inferred by the mere trending of condition indicator‟s level (CBM), because condition indicator levels are modulated under the influence of the diverse operating context. Besides, the maintenance domain expert does not have a precise knowledge about the correlation of the diverse operating context and level of degradation for a given level of condition indicator on specific equipment. Efforts have been made in here to identify the true degradation pattern of a component by analyzing these vagueness and imprecise knowledge. Key words: effective and efficient maintenance strategy, ‘just-in-time’ maintenance, condition based maintenance, P-F interval

Total Quality Management in an Automobile Supply Chain in Indian Market – A Case Study on Maruti Suzuki

In Indian market, customers see the quality ofthe product and simultaneously the price of that product. So, to be a winner inIndian market, quality of the product plays a major role with a peep into thedifferent segmented customers. So, total quality management (TQM) has beenwidely accepted as the ways and means for maintaining supply chain quality.From design to manufacturing, from factory to retailers or dealers or to endcustomers business are accepting TQM approach for achieving quality excellencethroughout the supply chain management. Hence, it is an attempt to describe howTQM is implemented for achieving supply chain quality management to influenceIndian market. Maruti Suzuki has taken as the best example for this context

Challenges, issues and opportunities for the development of smart grid

The development smart grids have made the power systems planning and operation more efficient by the application of renewable energy resources, electric vehicles, two-way communication, self-healing, consumer engagement, distribution intelligence, etc. The objective of this paper is to present a detailed comprehensive review of challenges, issues and opportunities for the development of smart grid. Smart grids are transforming the traditional way of meeting the electricity demand and providing the way towards an environmentally friendly, reliable and resilient power grid. This paper presents various challenges of smart grid development including interoperability, network communications, demand response, energy storage and distribution grid management. This paper also reviews various issues associated with the development of smart grid. Local, regional, national and global opportunities for the development of smart grid are also reported in this paper

INTEGRATED COMPUTER-AIDED DESIGN, EXPERIMENTATION, AND OPTIMIZATION APPROACH FOR PEROVSKITES AND PETROLEUM PACKAGING PROCESSES

According to the World Economic Forum report, the U.S. currently has an energy efficiency of just 30%, thus illustrating the potential scope and need for efficiency enhancement and waste minimization. In the U.S. energy sector, petroleum and solar energy are the two key pillars that have the potential to create research opportunities for transition to a cleaner, greener, and sustainable future. In this research endeavor, the focus is on two pivotal areas: (i) Computer-aided perovskite solar cell synthesis; and (ii) Optimization of flow processes through multiproduct petroleum pipelines. In the area of perovskite synthesis, the emphasis is on the enhancement of structural stability, lower costs, and sustainability. Utilizing modeling and optimization methods for computer-aided molecular design (CAMD), efficient, sustainable, less toxic, and economically viable alternatives to conventional lead-based perovskites are obtained. In the second area of optimization of flow processes through multiproduct petroleum pipelines, an actual industrial-scale operation for packaging multiple lube-oil blends is studied. Through an integrated approach of experimental characterization, process design, procedural improvements, testing protocols, control mechanisms, mathematical modeling, and optimization, the limitations of traditional packaging operations are identified, and innovative operational paradigms and strategies are developed by incorporating methods from process systems engineering and data-driven approaches

Peer Review Report 2006

This document is reporting findings from the research peer reviews held February 7-9, 2006 for PHMSA’s Pipeline Safety Research and Development Program. The findings and recommendations in this report derive from the scoring and comments collected from the peer review panelists. Department of Transportation (DOT) Operating Agencies (OA) are required to begin a systematic process for peer review planning for all influential and highly influential information that the OA plans to disseminate in the “foreseeable” future. Through the Information Quality Act, Congress directed Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to “provide policy and procedural guidance to Federal agencies for ensuring and maximizing the quality, objectivity, utility, and integrity of information, (including statistical information) disseminated by Federal agencies.” A resulting OMB Bulletin entitled, “Final Information Quality Bulletin for Peer Review” was issued prescribing required procedures for Federal programs. The Office of the Secretary of Transportation (OST) produced procedures governing modal implementation of this OMB Bulletin. These procedures as well as the OMB Bulletin serve as the basis and justification for the PHMSA Pipeline Safety R&D Program peer reviews. Peer reviews are intended to uncover any technical problems or unsolved issues in a scientific work product through the use of technically competent and independent (objective) experts. Peer review of a major scientific work product that will have the imprimatur of the Federal Government needs to be incorporated into the upfront planning of any action based in the work product. This includes obtaining the proper resources commitments (reviewers and funds) then establishing realistic schedules

Peer Review Report 2006

This document is reporting findings from the research peer reviews held February 7-9, 2006 for PHMSA’s Pipeline Safety Research and Development Program. The findings and recommendations in this report derive from the scoring and comments collected from the peer review panelists. Department of Transportation (DOT) Operating Agencies (OA) are required to begin a systematic process for peer review planning for all influential and highly influential information that the OA plans to disseminate in the “foreseeable” future. Through the Information Quality Act, Congress directed Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to “provide policy and procedural guidance to Federal agencies for ensuring and maximizing the quality, objectivity, utility, and integrity of information, (including statistical information) disseminated by Federal agencies.” A resulting OMB Bulletin entitled, “Final Information Quality Bulletin for Peer Review” was issued prescribing required procedures for Federal programs. The Office of the Secretary of Transportation (OST) produced procedures governing modal implementation of this OMB Bulletin. These procedures as well as the OMB Bulletin serve as the basis and justification for the PHMSA Pipeline Safety R&D Program peer reviews. Peer reviews are intended to uncover any technical problems or unsolved issues in a scientific work product through the use of technically competent and independent (objective) experts. Peer review of a major scientific work product that will have the imprimatur of the Federal Government needs to be incorporated into the upfront planning of any action based in the work product. This includes obtaining the proper resources commitments (reviewers and funds) then establishing realistic schedules

Doctor of Philosophy

dissertationNuclear research reactors are found throughout the world and have been crucial in the advancement of scientific and engineering discoveries but the majority are approaching operational ages that require a renewed focus on safely maintaining and optimizing their use. A novel multilevel safety-factors-centered framework for the optimization and utilization of aging research reactors has been developed that can be implemented at any research reactor facility. The framework consists of an optimization tool for neutron activation analysis (NAA) and irradiation experiments, an optimization system, DACOS, for optimizing reactor operation parameters, and the overall Engineering Safety Culture ideology. The selection of NAA experimental parameters for irradiation in research reactors is essential in lowering the radiation dose to personnel while also minimizing the generation of excessive radioactive products. This comes in competition with assuring that enough activity of an examined sample is produced in order to be able to measure targeted trace nuclei. This is accomplished by coupling a NAA precalculator tool, PyNIC, with the optimization tool, DAKOTA, creating the PyNIC-DAKOTA tool system. This PyNIC-DAKOTA tool system is used to determine the optimal parameters for NAA. The PyNIC-DAKOTA tool system is benchmarked with several examples using the University of Utah TRIGA Reactor (UUTR). The PyNIC-DAKOTA tool system shows expected agreement with the actual NAA experiments. DACOS is a newly developed computational optimization system that merges well-known neutron transport code AGENT and well-known optimization tool DAKOTA. The DACOS can be applied to any reactor configuration for the purpose of optimizing its operation parameters such as but not limited to determining the optimal fuel composition and spatial distribution, amount and position of reflectors and neutron absorbing materials to achieve a specified neutron flux at a given location in the reactor or reactor power level. DACOS demonstrations of application are given for modeling of the UUTR. All of the research reactor optimizations and improvements are housed under the umbrella of a newly formed concept of Engineering Safety Culture and the workflow process that it encompasses. This new ideology is presented with illustrative examples of its implementation and resulting benefits