1,956 research outputs found

    Natural and Technological Hazards in Urban Areas

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    Natural hazard events and technological accidents are separate causes of environmental impacts. Natural hazards are physical phenomena active in geological times, whereas technological hazards result from actions or facilities created by humans. In our time, combined natural and man-made hazards have been induced. Overpopulation and urban development in areas prone to natural hazards increase the impact of natural disasters worldwide. Additionally, urban areas are frequently characterized by intense industrial activity and rapid, poorly planned growth that threatens the environment and degrades the quality of life. Therefore, proper urban planning is crucial to minimize fatalities and reduce the environmental and economic impacts that accompany both natural and technological hazardous events

    Using hydrological models and digital soil mapping for the assessment and management of catchments: A case study of the Nyangores and Ruiru catchments in Kenya (East Africa)

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    Human activities on land have a direct and cumulative impact on water and other natural resources within a catchment. This land-use change can have hydrological consequences on the local and regional scales. Sound catchment assessment is not only critical to understanding processes and functions but also important in identifying priority management areas. The overarching goal of this doctoral thesis was to design a methodological framework for catchment assessment (dependent upon data availability) and propose practical catchment management strategies for sustainable water resources management. The Nyangores and Ruiru reservoir catchments located in Kenya, East Africa were used as case studies. A properly calibrated Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) hydrologic model coupled with a generic land-use optimization tool (Constrained Multi-Objective Optimization of Land-use Allocation-CoMOLA) was applied to identify and quantify functional trade-offs between environmental sustainability and food production in the ‘data-available’ Nyangores catchment. This was determined using a four-dimension objective function defined as (i) minimizing sediment load, (ii) maximizing stream low flow and (iii and iv) maximizing the crop yields of maize and soybeans, respectively. Additionally, three different optimization scenarios, represented as i.) agroforestry (Scenario 1), ii.) agroforestry + conservation agriculture (Scenario 2) and iii.) conservation agriculture (Scenario 3), were compared. For the data-scarce Ruiru reservoir catchment, alternative methods using digital soil mapping of soil erosion proxies (aggregate stability using Mean Weight Diameter) and spatial-temporal soil loss analysis using empirical models (the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation-RUSLE) were used. The lack of adequate data necessitated a data-collection phase which implemented the conditional Latin Hypercube Sampling. This sampling technique reduced the need for intensive soil sampling while still capturing spatial variability. The results revealed that for the Nyangores catchment, adoption of both agroforestry and conservation agriculture (Scenario 2) led to the smallest trade-off amongst the different objectives i.e. a 3.6% change in forests combined with 35% change in conservation agriculture resulted in the largest reduction in sediment loads (78%), increased low flow (+14%) and only slightly decreased crop yields (3.8% for both maize and soybeans). Therefore, the advanced use of hydrologic models with optimization tools allows for the simultaneous assessment of different outputs/objectives and is ideal for areas with adequate data to properly calibrate the model. For the Ruiru reservoir catchment, digital soil mapping (DSM) of aggregate stability revealed that susceptibility to erosion exists for cropland (food crops), tea and roadsides, which are mainly located in the eastern part of the catchment, as well as deforested areas on the western side. This validated that with limited soil samples and the use of computing power, machine learning and freely available covariates, DSM can effectively be applied in data-scarce areas. Moreover, uncertainty in the predictions can be incorporated using prediction intervals. The spatial-temporal analysis exhibited that bare land (which has the lowest areal proportion) was the largest contributor to erosion. Two peak soil loss periods corresponding to the two rainy periods of March–May and October–December were identified. Thus, yearly soil erosion risk maps misrepresent the true dimensions of soil loss with averages disguising areas of low and high potential. Also, a small portion of the catchment can be responsible for a large proportion of the total erosion. For both catchments, agroforestry (combining both the use of trees and conservation farming) is the most feasible catchment management strategy (CMS) for solving the major water quantity and quality problems. Finally, the key to thriving catchments aiming at both sustainability and resilience requires urgent collaborative action by all stakeholders. The necessary stakeholders in both Nyangores and Ruiru reservoir catchments must be involved in catchment assessment in order to identify the catchment problems, mitigation strategies/roles and responsibilities while keeping in mind that some risks need to be shared and negotiated, but so will the benefits.:TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION OF CONFORMITY........................................................................ i DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENT WORK AND CONSENT ............................. ii LIST OF PAPERS ................................................................................................. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ..................................................................................... iv THESIS AT A GLANCE ......................................................................................... v SUMMARY ............................................................................................................ vi List of Figures......................................................................................................... x List of Tables........................................................................................................... x ABBREVIATION..................................................................................................... xi PART A: SYNTHESIS 1. INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................... 1 1.1 Catchment management ...................................................................................1 1.2 Tools to support catchment assessment and management ..............................4 1.3 Catchment management strategies (CMSs)......................................................9 1.4 Concept and research objectives.......................................................................11 2. MATERIAL AND METHODS................................................................................15 2.1. STUDY AREA ..................................................................................................15 2.1.1. Nyangores catchment ...................................................................................15 2.1.2. Ruiru reservoir catchment .............................................................................17 2.2. Using SWAT conceptual model and land-use optimization ..............................19 2.3. Using soil erosion proxies and empirical models ..............................................21 3. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION..............................................................................24 3.1. Assessing multi-metric calibration performance using the SWAT model...........25 3.2. Land-use optimization using SWAT-CoMOLA for the Nyangores catchment. ..26 3.3. Digital soil mapping of soil aggregate stability ..................................................28 3.4. Spatio-temporal analysis using the revised universal soil loss equation (RUSLE) 29 4. CRITICAL ASSESSMENT OF THE METHODS USED ......................................31 4.1. Assessing suitability of data for modelling and overcoming data challenges...31 4.2. Selecting catchment management strategies based on catchment assessment . 35 5. CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS ....................................................36 6. REFERENCES ............................ .....................................................................38 PART B: PAPERS PAPER I .................................................................................................................47 PAPER II ................................................................................................................59 PAPER III ...............................................................................................................74 PAPER IV ...............................................................................................................8

    Advances and Applications of DSmT for Information Fusion. Collected Works, Volume 5

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    This fifth volume on Advances and Applications of DSmT for Information Fusion collects theoretical and applied contributions of researchers working in different fields of applications and in mathematics, and is available in open-access. The collected contributions of this volume have either been published or presented after disseminating the fourth volume in 2015 in international conferences, seminars, workshops and journals, or they are new. The contributions of each part of this volume are chronologically ordered. First Part of this book presents some theoretical advances on DSmT, dealing mainly with modified Proportional Conflict Redistribution Rules (PCR) of combination with degree of intersection, coarsening techniques, interval calculus for PCR thanks to set inversion via interval analysis (SIVIA), rough set classifiers, canonical decomposition of dichotomous belief functions, fast PCR fusion, fast inter-criteria analysis with PCR, and improved PCR5 and PCR6 rules preserving the (quasi-)neutrality of (quasi-)vacuous belief assignment in the fusion of sources of evidence with their Matlab codes. Because more applications of DSmT have emerged in the past years since the apparition of the fourth book of DSmT in 2015, the second part of this volume is about selected applications of DSmT mainly in building change detection, object recognition, quality of data association in tracking, perception in robotics, risk assessment for torrent protection and multi-criteria decision-making, multi-modal image fusion, coarsening techniques, recommender system, levee characterization and assessment, human heading perception, trust assessment, robotics, biometrics, failure detection, GPS systems, inter-criteria analysis, group decision, human activity recognition, storm prediction, data association for autonomous vehicles, identification of maritime vessels, fusion of support vector machines (SVM), Silx-Furtif RUST code library for information fusion including PCR rules, and network for ship classification. Finally, the third part presents interesting contributions related to belief functions in general published or presented along the years since 2015. These contributions are related with decision-making under uncertainty, belief approximations, probability transformations, new distances between belief functions, non-classical multi-criteria decision-making problems with belief functions, generalization of Bayes theorem, image processing, data association, entropy and cross-entropy measures, fuzzy evidence numbers, negator of belief mass, human activity recognition, information fusion for breast cancer therapy, imbalanced data classification, and hybrid techniques mixing deep learning with belief functions as well

    Modelling mixed autonomy traffic networks with pricing and routing control

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    Connected and automated vehicles (CAVs) are expected to change the way people travel in cities. Before human-driven vehicles (HVs) are completely phased out, the urban traffic flow will be heterogeneous of HVs, CAVs, and public transport vehicles commonly known as mixed autonomy. Mixed autonomy networks are likely to be made up of different route choice behaviours compared with conventional networks with HVs only. While HVs are expected to continue taking individually and selfishly selected shortest paths following user equilibrium (UE), a set of centrally controlled AVs could potentially follow the system optimal (SO) routing behaviour to reduce the selfish and inefficient behaviour of UE-seeking HVs. In this dissertation, a mixed equilibrium simulation-based dynamic traffic assignment (SBDTA) model is developed in which two classes of vehicles with different routing behaviours (UE-seeking HVs and SO-seeking AVs) are present in the network. The dissertation proposes a joint routing and incentive-based congestion pricing scheme in which SO-seeking CAVs are exempt from the toll while UE-seeking HVs have their usual shortest-path routing decisions are subject to a spatially differentiated congestion charge. This control strategy could potentially boost market penetration rate of CAVs while encouraging them to adopt SO routing behaviour and discouraging UE-seeking users from entering congested areas. The dissertation also proposes a distance-based time-dependent optimal ratio control scheme (TORCS) in which an optimal ratio of CAVs is identified and selected to seek SO routing. The objective of the control scheme is to achieve a reasonable compromise between the system efficiency (i.e., total travel time savings) and the control cost that is proportional to the total distance travelled by SO-seeking AVs. The proposed modelling frameworks are then extended to bi-modal networks considering three competing modes (bus, SO-seeking CAVs, and UE-seeking HVs). A nested logit-based mode choice model is applied to capture travellers’ preferences toward three available modes and elasticity in travel demand. A dynamic transit assignment model is also deployed and integrated into the mixed equilibrium SBDTA model to generate equilibrium traffic flow under different scenarios. The applicability and performance of the proposed models are demonstrated on a real large-scale network of Melbourne, Australia. The research outcomes are expected to improve the performance of mixed autonomy traffic networks with optimal pricing and routing control

    Applications of Genetic Algorithm and Its Variants in Rail Vehicle Systems: A Bibliometric Analysis and Comprehensive Review

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    Railway systems are time-varying and complex systems with nonlinear behaviors that require effective optimization techniques to achieve optimal performance. Evolutionary algorithms methods have emerged as a popular optimization technique in recent years due to their ability to handle complex, multi-objective issues of such systems. In this context, genetic algorithm (GA) as one of the powerful optimization techniques has been extensively used in the railway sector, and applied to various problems such as scheduling, routing, forecasting, design, maintenance, and allocation. This paper presents a review of the applications of GAs and their variants in the railway domain together with bibliometric analysis. The paper covers highly cited and recent studies that have employed GAs in the railway sector and discuss the challenges and opportunities of using GAs in railway optimization problems. Meanwhile, the most popular hybrid GAs as the combination of GA and other evolutionary algorithms methods such as particle swarm optimization (PSO), ant colony optimization (ACO), neural network (NN), fuzzy-logic control, etc with their dedicated application in the railway domain are discussed too. More than 250 publications are listed and classified to provide a comprehensive analysis and road map for experts and researchers in the field helping them to identify research gaps and opportunities

    The method of multi-objective parametric design of magnetic field active canceling robust system for residential multy-story buildings closed to double-circuit overhead power lines

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    Aim. Development the method of multi-objective parametric design for robust system of active canceling of magnetic field based on binary preference relations of local objective for multi-objective minimax optimization problem. Methodology. Spatial location coordinates of the compensating winding and the current in the shielding winding were determined during the preference-based multi-objective parametric design of systems of active canceling based on solution of the vector minimax optimization, in whith the vector objective function calculated based on Biot-Savart's law. The solution of this vector minimax optimization problem calculated based on nonlinear Archimedes algorithm. Components of Jacobi matrix and Hesse matrix calculated based on multi-swarm multi-agent optimization. Results. Theoretically and experimentally confirmed the effectiveness of reducing the level of the magnetic field in residential multy-storey old building of a double-circuit overhead power transmission lines with a barrel-type arrangement of wires by means of active shielding with two compensation winding. Originality. The method of multi-objective parametric design for robust system of active canceling of magnetic field based on binary preference relations of local objective for multi-objective minimax optimization problem is developed. Practical value. It is shown the possibility to reduce the level of magnetic field in residential multy-storey old building closed to double-circuit overhead power transmission lines with a barrel-type arrangement of wires by means of system of active canceling with two canceling winding to a level safe for the population with an induction of 0.5 μT.Мета. Розробка методу багатокритеріального параметричного проектування системи активного екранування на основі бінарних відносин переваги локальних критеріїв векторної мінімаксної оптимізації. Методологія. Просторові координати розташування компенсаційних обмоток та струми в цих обмотках визначали під час багатокритеріального параметричного проектування системи активного екранування на основі бінарних відносин переваги векторної мінімаксної оптимізації, в якій векторна цільова функція розрахована на основі закона Біо-Савара. Рішення цієї задачи векторної мінімаксної оптимізації розраховано на основі нелінійного алгоритму Архімеда. Елементи матриць Якобі та Гессе розраховано на основі багаторойної багатоагентної оптимізації. Результати. Теоретично та експериментально підтверджена ефективність зниження рівня магнітного поля в житлових багатоповерхових приміщеннях старої забудови дволанцюгових повітряних ліній електропередачі з бочкоподібним розташуванням проводів за допомогою активного екранування з двома компенсаційними обмотками. Оригінальність. Розроблено метод багатокритеріального параметричного проектування системи активного екранування на основі бінарних відносин переваги локальних критеріїв векторної мінімаксної оптимізації. Практична цінність. Показана можливість зниження рівня магнітного поля в житлових багатоповерхових приміщеннях старої забудови дволанцюгових повітряних ліній електропередачі з бочкоподібним розташуванням проводів за допомогою активного екранування з двома компенсаційними обмотками до до безпечного для населення рівня з індуцією 0,5 μT

    Structural optimization in steel structures, algorithms and applications

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    The method of multi-objective parametric design of magnetic field active canceling robust system for residential multy-story buildings closed to double-circuit overhead power lines

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    Aim. Development the method of multi-objective parametric design for robust system of active canceling of magnetic field based on binary preference relations of local objective for multi-objective minimax optimization problem. Methodology. Spatial location coordinates of the compensating winding and the current in the shielding winding were determined during the preference-based multi-objective parametric design of systems of active canceling based on solution of the vector minimax optimization, in whith the vector objective function calculated based on Biot-Savart's law. The solution of this vector minimax optimization problem calculated based on nonlinear Archimedes algorithm. Components of Jacobi matrix and Hesse matrix calculated based on multi-swarm multi-agent optimization. Results. Theoretically and experimentally confirmed the effectiveness of reducing the level of the magnetic field in residential multy-storey old building of a double-circuit overhead power transmission lines with a barrel-type arrangement of wires by means of active shielding with two compensation winding. Originality. The method of multi-objective parametric design for robust system of active canceling of magnetic field based on binary preference relations of local objective for multi-objective minimax optimization problem is developed. Practical value. It is shown the possibility to reduce the level of magnetic field in residential multy-storey old building closed to double-circuit overhead power transmission lines with a barrel-type arrangement of wires by means of system of active canceling with two canceling winding to a level safe for the population with an induction of 0.5 μT.Мета. Розробка методу багатокритеріального параметричного проектування системи активного екранування на основі бінарних відносин переваги локальних критеріїв векторної мінімаксної оптимізації. Методологія. Просторові координати розташування компенсаційних обмоток та струми в цих обмотках визначали під час багатокритеріального параметричного проектування системи активного екранування на основі бінарних відносин переваги векторної мінімаксної оптимізації, в якій векторна цільова функція розрахована на основі закона Біо-Савара. Рішення цієї задачи векторної мінімаксної оптимізації розраховано на основі нелінійного алгоритму Архімеда. Елементи матриць Якобі та Гессе розраховано на основі багаторойної багатоагентної оптимізації. Результати. Теоретично та експериментально підтверджена ефективність зниження рівня магнітного поля в житлових багатоповерхових приміщеннях старої забудови дволанцюгових повітряних ліній електропередачі з бочкоподібним розташуванням проводів за допомогою активного екранування з двома компенсаційними обмотками. Оригінальність. Розроблено метод багатокритеріального параметричного проектування системи активного екранування на основі бінарних відносин переваги локальних критеріїв векторної мінімаксної оптимізації. Практична цінність. Показана можливість зниження рівня магнітного поля в житлових багатоповерхових приміщеннях старої забудови дволанцюгових повітряних ліній електропередачі з бочкоподібним розташуванням проводів за допомогою активного екранування з двома компенсаційними обмотками до до безпечного для населення рівня з індуцією 0,5 μT
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