Green Strategy in Automation and Control Devices and Systems

The extension of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is possible in automation and control devices and systems. This paper review introduction to life cycle data acquisition (LCDA) scheme, an idea that can be technology transferred to automation and control field. The scheme is implemented at the device as well as system level. Exemplar platforms that are chosen for experimentation again are sensors, actuators, a process control system and autonomous machine system such as guided vehicle and the life or operational data were recorded. This paper is the extension of the previous presentations. The life-cycle data variables called data objects and related terms are used in order to maintain consistency. However, the way they are interfaced with the devices and systems are considered optimal. That is, in this research the data objects are firmwared in order to deal with real-time constraints. This attempt in implementation through new tools and design strategy is a new methodology and the results obtained through such procedure are new. It is convincing that the LCDA scheme can improve sustainability, availability, reliability as well as safety of the automation and control systems. Moreover, the LCDA scheme can support LCA attributes such as Design for Environment (DfE) facilitating the emerging green technology and systems. It is also expected that recording of life cycle data can assist in the design of new generation of the devices used in the automation and control applications

Cyclic blackout mitigation and prevention

Severe and long-lasting power shortages plague many countries, resulting in cyclic blackouts affecting the life of millions of people. This research focuses on the design, development and evolution of a computer-controlled system for chronic cyclic blackouts mitigation based on the use of an agent-based distributed power management system integrating Supply Demand Matching (SDM) with the dynamic management of Heat, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) appliances. The principle is supported through interlocking different types of HVAC appliances within an adaptive cluster, the composition of which is dynamically updated according to the level of power secured from aggregating the surplus power from underutilised standby generation which is assumed to be changing throughout the day. The surplus power aggregation provides a dynamically changing flow, used to power a basic set of appliances and one HVAC per household. The proposed solution has two modes, cyclic blackout mitigation and prevention modes, selecting either one depends on the size of the power shortage. If the power shortage is severe, the system works in its cyclic blackout mitigation mode during the power OFF periods of a cyclic blackout. The system changes the composition of the HVAC cluster so that its demand added to the demand of basic household appliances matches the amount of secured supply. The system provides the best possible air conditioning/cooling service and distributes the usage right and duration of each type of HVAC appliance either equally among all houses or according to house temperature. However if the power shortage is limited and centred around the peak, the system works in its prevention mode, in such case, the system trades a minimum number of operational air conditioners (ACs) with air cooling counterparts in so doing reducing the overall demand. The solution assumes the use of a new breed of smart meters, suggested in this research, capable of dynamically rationing power provided to each household through a centrally specified power allocation for each family. This smart meter dynamically monitors each customer’s demand and ensures their allocation is never exceeded. The system implementation is evaluated utilising input power usage patterns collected through a field survey conducted in a residential quarter in Basra City, Iraq. The results of the mapping formed the foundation for a residential demand generator integrated in a custom platform (DDSM-IDEA) built as the development environment dedicated for implementing and evaluating the power management strategies. Simulation results show that the proposed solution provides an equitably distributed, comfortable quality of life level during cyclic blackout periods.Severe and long-lasting power shortages plague many countries, resulting in cyclic blackouts affecting the life of millions of people. This research focuses on the design, development and evolution of a computer-controlled system for chronic cyclic blackouts mitigation based on the use of an agent-based distributed power management system integrating Supply Demand Matching (SDM) with the dynamic management of Heat, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) appliances. The principle is supported through interlocking different types of HVAC appliances within an adaptive cluster, the composition of which is dynamically updated according to the level of power secured from aggregating the surplus power from underutilised standby generation which is assumed to be changing throughout the day. The surplus power aggregation provides a dynamically changing flow, used to power a basic set of appliances and one HVAC per household. The proposed solution has two modes, cyclic blackout mitigation and prevention modes, selecting either one depends on the size of the power shortage. If the power shortage is severe, the system works in its cyclic blackout mitigation mode during the power OFF periods of a cyclic blackout. The system changes the composition of the HVAC cluster so that its demand added to the demand of basic household appliances matches the amount of secured supply. The system provides the best possible air conditioning/cooling service and distributes the usage right and duration of each type of HVAC appliance either equally among all houses or according to house temperature. However if the power shortage is limited and centred around the peak, the system works in its prevention mode, in such case, the system trades a minimum number of operational air conditioners (ACs) with air cooling counterparts in so doing reducing the overall demand. The solution assumes the use of a new breed of smart meters, suggested in this research, capable of dynamically rationing power provided to each household through a centrally specified power allocation for each family. This smart meter dynamically monitors each customer’s demand and ensures their allocation is never exceeded. The system implementation is evaluated utilising input power usage patterns collected through a field survey conducted in a residential quarter in Basra City, Iraq. The results of the mapping formed the foundation for a residential demand generator integrated in a custom platform (DDSM-IDEA) built as the development environment dedicated for implementing and evaluating the power management strategies. Simulation results show that the proposed solution provides an equitably distributed, comfortable quality of life level during cyclic blackout periods

Developing a distributed electronic health-record store for India

The DIGHT project is addressing the problem of building a scalable and highly available information store for the Electronic Health Records (EHRs) of the over one billion citizens of India

Visions of domestic electricity use in a changing sociotechnical system

The domestic sector accounts for approximately one third of the UK’s energy demand. As such there is scope for significant change in domestic electricity demand to facilitate the transition towards a more sustainable electricity system. This thesis uses qualitative focus groups and interviews with public and expert participants to investigate how and why electricity is used in the home, and to unpick the assumptions within visions of possible future change to the electricity system. Public and expert interviewee suggestions for changes to increase the flexibility of domestic demand (a key aspect of enabling increased penetration of renewable generation technologies) were rooted in ecological modernisation, where technological solutions such as home automation were advocated as the most appropriate mechanisms for achieving change. Additionally, experts posited that information provision about the need for change to the wider electricity system, and thus ways in which people use electricity in the home, would ‘educate’ the public and result in acceptance and change. Solutions adopting assumptions of economic-rationality were also identified in public and expert discourse, where financial mechanisms were suggested to have the ability to influence behaviour. However, contradictory evidence suggested that financial mechanisms will not provide sufficient incentives for change, as people instead are influenced more directly by the desire to fulfil immediate needs

Visions of domestic electricity use in a changing sociotechnical system

The domestic sector accounts for approximately one third of the UK’s energy demand. As such there is scope for significant change in domestic electricity demand to facilitate the transition towards a more sustainable electricity system. This thesis uses qualitative focus groups and interviews with public and expert participants to investigate how and why electricity is used in the home, and to unpick the assumptions within visions of possible future change to the electricity system. Public and expert interviewee suggestions for changes to increase the flexibility of domestic demand (a key aspect of enabling increased penetration of renewable generation technologies) were rooted in ecological modernisation, where technological solutions such as home automation were advocated as the most appropriate mechanisms for achieving change. Additionally, experts posited that information provision about the need for change to the wider electricity system, and thus ways in which people use electricity in the home, would ‘educate’ the public and result in acceptance and change. Solutions adopting assumptions of economic-rationality were also identified in public and expert discourse, where financial mechanisms were suggested to have the ability to influence behaviour. However, contradictory evidence suggested that financial mechanisms will not provide sufficient incentives for change, as people instead are influenced more directly by the desire to fulfil immediate needs

Turning off the gas tap: Sustainable Energy Policies, Practices and Prospects in the Netherlands

This chapter describes efforts to transition to more sustainable ways of living in the Netherlands. Backhaus captures the status quo of Dutch sustainable energy policies and projects in clarity and brevity, suggesting that prospects to live up to the commitment made in the Paris Agreement are dim. The Perspective project, a major, yet not well-known Dutch research programme in the 1990s discussed as best-practice example, suggests that substantial change is possible. Like most past and current sustainability efforts, the Perspective project focused on individual behaviour change. It qualifies as best-practice example by demonstrating that living well, healthy and sustainably can go hand-in-hand. Marking the Dutch cycling culture as an example, Backhaus proposes that, rather than targeting individuals, future sustainable energy policies and programmes should best address infrastructures, social norms and collectives

An activity-centered ubiquitous computing framework for supporting occasional human activities in public places

Tese de doutoramento em Tecnologias e Sistemas de Informação (ramo de conhecimento em Sistemas de Computação e Comunicações)A major challenge to ubiquitous computing system designers is the provision of walk-up-and-use solutions for supporting activities performed by occasional visitors to a particular place. When arriving for the first time to a particular place, occasional visitors have little or no idea about what the local environment is providing to support their activity. Furthermore, this support has to be self-explainable and quickly learnable, as occasional visitors are not prepared to interact with an unknown system and do not have time to spend understanding and learning how to use new tools. Ubiquitous computing environments promise to transparently support people in their daily activities by leveraging computing resources existent in the physical environment. Ubiquitous computing can greatly enhance the experience of occasional visitors to public spaces, by offering effective and transparent means for achieving their activities. Moreover, ubiquitous computing interaction artefacts are becoming increasingly cheap, thus allowing for widespread availability throughout public spaces. However, there is still much to do to achieve the vision of a computing system that requires little or no attention at all, so that humans can use the computer unconsciously. Ideally, people should perform an activity requiring computing tools as they perform any other activity, by focusing on the activity itself, and using the computing tool as naturally as other tools. There is thus the need to center the design and development of ubiquitous systems in the human activity, in order to bring computing closer to people and to transparently support activities that take place in the physical world. This work thus follows an activity-centered approach to ubiquitous computing and contributes with ActivitySpot, an activity-centered conceptual and software framework targeted at providing ubiquitous computing support for occasional visitors to public spaces. The conceptual framework aims at modelling human activity and user interaction with the ubiquitous computing system. Undertaking an activity-centered approach to ubiquitous computing system design requires an understanding of how humans think about and carry out their activities. Therefore, this research is grounded on previous work on human activity analysis, namely Activity Theory, a conceptual framework for analyzing human activity developed during the twentieth century. The software framework includes a ubiquitous computing infrastructure for providing the actual support to occasional visitors, tools for deploying ubiquitous computing solutions by non-computer-expert public space administrators, and a software library for developing the support to new activities. Both the conceptual and software framework have been evaluated by a series of end-user studies which showed that ActivitySpot is effective for walk-up-and-use systems, making user interaction with a ubiquitous computing system almost as natural as interacting with other everyday tools. The majority of users clearly reported that ActivitySpot fostered learnability and usability. The choice of using elementary, everyday interaction means with a simple stimulus-response interaction model was also fundamental in the success with end-users. Moreover, the ActivitySpot software framework enables rapid development of the support for new activities and actions, by means of a software library for developers, as well as it eases the deployment and configuration of that support, by means of a graphical user interface authoring tool for public space managers.Um dos maiores desafios para quem desenha sistemas de computação ubíqua é o fornecimento de soluções que favoreçam a interacção espontânea, sem treino prévio, sobretudo as destinadas a suportar actividades realizadas por visitantes ocasionais de um determinado lugar. Quando chegam pela primeira vez a um determinado lugar, os visitantes sabem pouco ou nada sobre o que é disponibilizado para facilitar a sua visita. Além disso, o suporte fornecido tem de ter características que permitam uma aprendizagem rápida da sua utilização, visto que os visitantes ocasionais não estão preparados para interagir com um sistema desconhecido e não têm tempo para aprender a usar novas ferramentas. A computação ubíqua promete ajudar, de modo transparente, as pessoas nas suas actividades diárias, tirando partido dos recursos de computação existentes no ambiente físico. A computação ubíqua pode deveras melhorar a experiência dos visitantes ocasionais de espaços públicos, oferecendo-lhes meios transparentes e eficazes para levarem a cabo as suas actividades. Além disso, os artefactos de computação ubíqua estão a tornar-se cada vez mais acessíveis, havendo pois condições para uma disponibilidade alargada na generalidade dos espaços públicos. No entanto, há ainda muito a fazer para concretizar a visão de um sistema de computação que requeira pouca ou nenhuma atenção por parte dos utilizadores. Idealmente, as pessoas deveriam executar uma actividade que requeira ferramentas de computação com a mesma facilidade com que executam outras actividades, focando-se na própria actividade e utilizando as ferramentas de computação tão naturalmente como utilizam outras ferramentas. Há pois a necessidade de centrar o desenho e o desenvolvimento de sistemas ubíquos na actividade humana, de modo a aproximar a computação das pessoas e a suportar de maneira transparente as actividades que têm lugar no mundo físico. Este trabalho segue, portanto, uma abordagem centrada na actividade e contribui com o ActivitySpot, uma plataforma conceptual e de software, centrada na actividade, destinada a fornecer suporte de computação ubíqua para visitantes ocasionais de espaços públicos. A plataforma conceptual pretende modelar a actividade humana e a interacção com o sistema de computação ubíqua. A opção pela abordagem centrada na actividade requer o entendimento sobre como os humanos pensam e executam as suas actividades. É, pois, por isso que esta investigação é baseada em trabalho prévio na área de análise de actividades humanas, nomeadamente na Teoria da Actividade, um modelo conceptual de análise da actividade humana, desenvolvido durante o século XX. A plataforma de software inclui uma infra-estrutura de computação ubíqua destinada a suportar as actividades de visitantes ocasionais, ferramentas para a instalação de soluções de computação ubíqua por parte de administradores de espaços públicos que não dominem necessariamente ferramentas computacionais, e uma biblioteca de software para o desenvolvimento do suporte a novas actividades. Ambas as plataformas foram avaliadas por uma série de estudos com utilizadores. Estes estudos demonstraram que o ActivitySpot é eficaz em situações de utilização espontânea de sistemas que não tenham sido objecto de treino prévio, tornando a interacção com um sistema de computação ubíqua tão natural como a interacção com outras ferramentas do dia-a-dia. A maioria dos utilizadores relatou claramente que o ActivitySpot fomentou a fácil aprendizagem e utilização. A opção pela utilização de meios de interacção elementares e de uso diário e de um modelo de interacção simples, baseado no conceito de estímulo-resposta, foi igualmente fundamental no sucesso obtido com a utilização do sistema. Além disso, verificou-se que a plataforma ActivitySpot permite o rápido desenvolvimento de suporte a novas actividades e acções, através da biblioteca de software, assim como facilita a instalação e configuração do suporte às actividades, por meio de uma ferramenta gráfica de edição destinada a gestores de espaços públicos.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT

Finnish Energy Policy in Transition

This open access book examines the role of citizens in sustainable energy transitions across Europe. It explores energy problem framing, policy approaches and practical responses to the challenge of securing clean, affordable and sustainable energy for all citizens, focusing on households as the main unit of analysis. The book revolves around ten contributions that each summarise national trends, socio-material characteristics, and policy responses to contemporary energy issues affecting householders in different countries, and provides good practice examples for designing and implementing sustainable energy initiatives. Prominent concerns include reducing carbon emissions, energy poverty, sustainable consumption, governance, practices, innovations and sustainable lifestyles. The opening and closing contributions consider European level energy policy, dominant and alternative problem framings and similarities and differences between European countries in relation to reducing household energy use. Overall, the book is a valuable resource for researchers, policy-makers, practitioners and others interested in sustainable energy perspectives. In Finland, energy policy is in transition towards integrating energy projects in broader sustainability, liveability and innovation contexts. While energy saving has been pursued for decades, it is now part of a broader tendency in urban planning to promote sustainable lifestyles. Transition manifests in local actors’ redistribution of power, challenging conventional ways of infrastructure development, forging new networks, and seeking novel solutions. The experimental case presented in the chapter, Smart Kalasatama, shows that local governments are close to citizens and, therefore, can infuence the conditions for sustainable consumption and quality of life. Although they have an important role in energy policy, they still might lack the resources, expertise and the power to innovate, to evaluate projects, and in particular, to scale up innovative practices.Non peer reviewe

Context Aware Computing for The Internet of Things: A Survey

As we are moving towards the Internet of Things (IoT), the number of sensors deployed around the world is growing at a rapid pace. Market research has shown a significant growth of sensor deployments over the past decade and has predicted a significant increment of the growth rate in the future. These sensors continuously generate enormous amounts of data. However, in order to add value to raw sensor data we need to understand it. Collection, modelling, reasoning, and distribution of context in relation to sensor data plays critical role in this challenge. Context-aware computing has proven to be successful in understanding sensor data. In this paper, we survey context awareness from an IoT perspective. We present the necessary background by introducing the IoT paradigm and context-aware fundamentals at the beginning. Then we provide an in-depth analysis of context life cycle. We evaluate a subset of projects (50) which represent the majority of research and commercial solutions proposed in the field of context-aware computing conducted over the last decade (2001-2011) based on our own taxonomy. Finally, based on our evaluation, we highlight the lessons to be learnt from the past and some possible directions for future research. The survey addresses a broad range of techniques, methods, models, functionalities, systems, applications, and middleware solutions related to context awareness and IoT. Our goal is not only to analyse, compare and consolidate past research work but also to appreciate their findings and discuss their applicability towards the IoT.Comment: IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials Journal, 201

Energy Demand Challenges in Europe

This open access book examines the role of citizens in sustainable energy transitions across Europe. It explores energy problem framing, policy approaches and practical responses to the challenge of securing clean, affordable and sustainable energy for all citizens, focusing on households as the main unit of analysis. The book revolves around ten contributions that each summarise national trends, socio-material characteristics, and policy responses to contemporary energy issues affecting householders in different countries, and provides good practice examples for designing and implementing sustainable energy initiatives. Prominent concerns include reducing carbon emissions, energy poverty, sustainable consumption, governance, practices, innovations and sustainable lifestyles. The opening and closing contributions consider European level energy policy, dominant and alternative problem framings and similarities and differences between European countries in relation to reducing household energy use. Overall, the book is a valuable resource for researchers, policy-makers, practitioners and others interested in sustainable energy perspectives