Desarrollo de automatización de control de daños y contraincendios que permite la futura reducción de la tripulación.

The Holland-class Patrol Vessels of the Royal Netherlands Navy has been designed to conduct world-wide operations with a low level of violence. Minimization of the exploitation costs has been translated in a frigate size vessel design to be manned by a crew of 50. In particular, the support of Battle Damage Repair required serious development as today’s solutions are based upon having a much larger crew. Adoption of modern fire-fighting techniques such as ship-wide deployment of automated water-mist systems and extensive use of center-fed hose reels appeared to be essential steps to cope with lower manning levels. However, that is not enough as there are other internal battle aspects that (today) require significant manpower such as information gathering to obtain the desired situational awareness of the current state of the damage, and complex engineering tasks to mitigate the damages and the management of the necessary resources. For this reason, this paper discusses the approach and development of four (4) platform management system Damage Surveillance and Control (DSAC) applications as an example how future internal battles can be supported to achieve a higher quality (less human errors) of battle damage control, by means of a better situational awareness and a significant reduction of the workload during Battle Damage Repair.Los buques patrulleros holandeses de la marina de los Países Bajos han sido diseñados para conducir operaciones a nivel mundial con un bajo nivel de violencia. Minimización de la explotación de los costos ha sido llevada al tamaño de las fragatas, las cuales son diseñadas para llevar una tripulación de 50 personas. En particular, el apoyo a la reparación de daños en batalla requiere un importante desarrollo dado que las soluciones actuales son con base en mantener un mayor número de tripulación. La adopción de técnicas contraincendios modernas tales como la implementación en la toda la embarcación de sistemas de agua nebulizada de manera automática y el uso extensivo de carretes de mangueras centro-alimentadas, parecen ser pasos esenciales para enfrentar bajos niveles de dotación. Sin embargo, esto no es suficiente mientras que se encuentren otros aspectos internos de batalla un significante esfuerzo de recurso humano, entre los que se destaca la consolidación de la información para obtener la situación actual de los daños ocurridos, así como las complejas tareas de ingeniería para mitigar los daños y la gestión de los recursos. Por esta razón, éste estudio discute el alcance, desarrollo y aplicaciones de cuatro (04) sistemas de gestión de la plataforma para vigilancia y control de daños (DSAC), tomando como ejemplo como futuras batallas pueden ser apoyadas para alcanzar una mayor calidad (disminución de errores humanos) de control de daños, por medio de un mejor conocimiento de la situación y una reducción significativa de la carga laboral durante la reparación de daños en batalla

Centralized versus market-based approaches to mobile task allocation problem: State-of-the-art

Centralized approach has been adopted for finding solutions to resource allocation problems (RAPs) in many real-life applications. On the other hand, market-based approach has been proposed as an alternative to solve the problem due to recent advancement in ICT technologies. In spite of the existence of some efforts to review the pros and cons of each approach in RAPs, the studies cannot be directly applied to specific problem domains like mobile task allocation problem which is characterised with high level of uncertainty on the availability of resources (workers). This paper aims to review existing studies on task allocation problems(TAPs) focusing on those two approaches and their comparison and identify major issues that need to be resolved for comparing the two approaches in mobile task allocation problems. Mobile Task Allocation Problem (MTAP) is defined and its problematic structures are explained in relation with task allocation to mobile workers. Solutions produced by each approach to some applications and variations of MTAP are also discussed and compared. Finally, some future research directions are identified in order to compare both approaches in function of uncertainty emerging from the mobile nature of the MTAP

Robotic Wireless Sensor Networks

In this chapter, we present a literature survey of an emerging, cutting-edge, and multi-disciplinary field of research at the intersection of Robotics and Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) which we refer to as Robotic Wireless Sensor Networks (RWSN). We define a RWSN as an autonomous networked multi-robot system that aims to achieve certain sensing goals while meeting and maintaining certain communication performance requirements, through cooperative control, learning and adaptation. While both of the component areas, i.e., Robotics and WSN, are very well-known and well-explored, there exist a whole set of new opportunities and research directions at the intersection of these two fields which are relatively or even completely unexplored. One such example would be the use of a set of robotic routers to set up a temporary communication path between a sender and a receiver that uses the controlled mobility to the advantage of packet routing. We find that there exist only a limited number of articles to be directly categorized as RWSN related works whereas there exist a range of articles in the robotics and the WSN literature that are also relevant to this new field of research. To connect the dots, we first identify the core problems and research trends related to RWSN such as connectivity, localization, routing, and robust flow of information. Next, we classify the existing research on RWSN as well as the relevant state-of-the-arts from robotics and WSN community according to the problems and trends identified in the first step. Lastly, we analyze what is missing in the existing literature, and identify topics that require more research attention in the future

Development and implementation of preventive-maintenance practices in Nigerian industries.

A methodology for the development of PM using the modern approaches of FMEA, root-cause analysis, and fault-tree analysis is presented. Applying PM leads to a cost reduction in maintenance and less overall energy expenditure. Implementation of PM is preferable to the present reactive maintenance procedures (still prevalent in Nigeria

Inducing Private Wildfire Risk Mitigation: Experimental Investigation of Measures on Adjacent Public Lands

Increasing private wildfire risk mitigation is an important part of the larger forest restoration policy challenge. Data from an economic experiment are used to evaluate the effectiveness of providing fuel treatments on public land adjacent to private land to induce private wildfire risk mitigation. Results show evidence of “crowding out” where public spending can decrease the level of private risk mitigation. However, a policy prescription that ameliorates this crowding out is identified. Participants undertake more mitigation when fuel treatments on publicly owned lands are conditional on a threshold level of private mitigation effort and information describing each participant’s spending is provided. Key Words:

OPTIMIZING VLS FIRING POLICY: AN ENUMERATION OF HETEROGENEOUS SEQUENCES TO INFORM EXPENDITURE

The U.S. Navy (USN) utilizes the Vertical Launch System (VLS) to store and launch both their offensive and defensive missiles. Since the number of VLS silos on a given ship is fixed, to maximize offensive capability the USN needs to minimize the number of interceptors required to combat incoming anti-surface missiles. Current firing policies may be overly conservative and expend too many interceptors per incoming threat, which results in a substantial fraction of VLS silos dedicated to defensive missiles. Decision makers need an analysis tool to explore the trade-off between missile consumption and probability of raid annihilation (PRA) for various firing policies and would also benefit from a prescriptive algorithm to help inform missile expenditure. This thesis provides a model to optimize VLS firing policy using a set of multiple interceptor types while accounting for range limitations, travel time, multi-interceptor salvos, battle damage assessment, and range dependent probability of kill. Additionally, the thesis derives analytical results for the optimal, lowest-cost allocation of interceptors in the single interceptor case, which, in turn, generates insight into how to structure sequential salvos.N81, Washington DCEnsign, United States NavyApproved for public release. Distribution is unlimited