Photovoltaic remote instrument applications: Assessment of the near-term market

A preliminary assessment of the near term market for photovoltaic remote instrument applications is presented. Among the potential users, two market sectors are considered: government and private. However, the majority of the remote systems studied are operated by or for the federal, state, or local governments. Environmental monitoring and surveillance remote instrument systems are discussed. Based on information obtained in this preliminary market survey, a domestic, civilian market of at least 1.3 MW sub pk is forecast for remote instrument systems. This estimate is exclusive of several potentially large scale markets for remote instruments which are identified but for which no hard data is available

Social security coverage in Latin America

For almost a decade, the debate on social security in the region has revolved around the diversification of risks, macroeconomic effects of the systems, and private sector participation in their management. Now, however, many analysts are starting to focus on the issue of coverage. The debate on social security coverage has been complicated by a lack of consistent quantitative information that would allow for rigorous comparisons of different countries and different periods. Although many recently published articles and opinions include statistics, their sources and methodology are not always clear. For that reason, the publication of coverage information in a significant number of the region's countries, calculated simultaneously and based on similar data, makes an important contribution to clarifying the debate and developing specific policy proposals. This document is a first step in that direction. It presents coverage indicators and their determinants for seventeen countries of Latin America, based on Household Surveys. The information is not perfect, given problems of comparability among instruments and systems, as well as difficulties for precisely capturing the characteristics sought in the survey data. Consequently, the authors consider this document to be a first step in a collective information evaluation process, understanding that the results may be adjusted in future reviews.

Finnish consumers' expectations on developments and changes in payment habits. Survey in connection with the research project 'Finnish payment habits 2010'

The Bank of Finland’s Finnish Payment Habits 2010 project predicts that Finnish payment habits will face substantial changes. The causes for these changes include: the standardisation and integration of European payment systems, development of payment services-related legislation and regulation at EU level, changes in payment services-related cost factors and pricing, and new opportunities offered by technological advances. The last few years have seen a surge in new payment instruments and services. Increasing reliance on information and communication technology is characteristic to the development of these payment instruments, the vast majority of which have however failed to entice consumers. To increase our understanding of changes in payment patterns, this report analyses consumer needs, tastes and payment habits as new payment systems are adopted. Research data was collected in September 2005 using a mail-survey covering the central payment methods and addressed to 2,000 randomly-sampled Finnish consumers. According to our findings, security and trustworthiness are the most important characteristics of any new payment instrument. Other essential characteristics are the ability to produce good transaction-related information, compatibility with shopping and payment habits, accessibility, ease of use, time and cost savings, as well as time and place independence. New payment instruments – electronic billing and paying for shopping by mobile phone – are not likely to supersede conventional payment methods by 2010 when judged by the aforementioned characteristics: Trust and cost factors do not separate consumers well-disposed towards electronic bills and mobile payments from those set against these payment methods. A relatively restricted group of differentiating factors was found. Ease of use is a common differentiating factor for both electronic bills and mobile payments adoption. Additionally, accessibility is a differentiating characteristic in mobile payments adoption.payment habits; payment services to consumers; consumer behaviour; diffusion of innovations; theory of planned behaviour (TPB)

Smart Manufacturing

This book is a collection of 11 articles that are published in the corresponding Machines Special Issue “Smart Manufacturing”. It represents the quality, breadth and depth of the most updated study in smart manufacturing (SM); in particular, digital technologies are deployed to enhance system smartness by (1) empowering physical resources in production, (2) utilizing virtual and dynamic assets over the Internet to expand system capabilities, (3) supporting data-driven decision-making activities at various domains and levels of businesses, or (4) reconfiguring systems to adapt to changes and uncertainties. System smartness can be evaluated by one or a combination of performance metrics such as degree of automation, cost-effectiveness, leanness, robustness, flexibility, adaptability, sustainability, and resilience. This book features, firstly, the concepts digital triad (DT-II) and Internet of digital triad things (IoDTT), proposed to deal with the complexity, dynamics, and scalability of complex systems simultaneously. This book also features a comprehensive survey of the applications of digital technologies in space instruments; a systematic literature search method is used to investigate the impact of product design and innovation on the development of space instruments. In addition, the survey provides important information and critical considerations for using cutting edge digital technologies in designing and manufacturing space instruments

CHARIS Science: Performance Simulations for the Subaru Telescope's Third-Generation of Exoplanet Imaging Instrumentation

We describe the expected scientific capabilities of CHARIS, a high-contrast integral-field spectrograph (IFS) currently under construction for the Subaru telescope. CHARIS is part of a new generation of instruments, enabled by extreme adaptive optics (AO) systems (including SCExAO at Subaru), that promise greatly improved contrasts at small angular separation thanks to their ability to use spectral information to distinguish planets from quasistatic speckles in the stellar point-spread function (PSF). CHARIS is similar in concept to GPI and SPHERE, on Gemini South and the Very Large Telescope, respectively, but will be unique in its ability to simultaneously cover the entire near-infrared $J$, $H$, and $K$ bands with a low-resolution mode. This extraordinarily broad wavelength coverage will enable spectral differential imaging down to angular separations of a few $\lambda/D$, corresponding to $\sim$0.\!\!''1. SCExAO will also offer contrast approaching $10^{-5}$ at similar separations, $\sim$0.\!\!''1--0.\!\!''2. The discovery yield of a CHARIS survey will depend on the exoplanet distribution function at around 10 AU. If the distribution of planets discovered by radial velocity surveys extends unchanged to $\sim$20 AU, observations of $\sim$200 mostly young, nearby stars targeted by existing high-contrast instruments might find $\sim$1--3 planets. Carefully optimizing the target sample could improve this yield by a factor of a few, while an upturn in frequency at a few AU could also increase the number of detections. CHARIS, with a higher spectral resolution mode of $R \sim 75$, will also be among the best instruments to characterize planets and brown dwarfs like HR 8799 cde and $\kappa$ And b.Comment: 13 pages, 7 figures, proceedings from SPIE Montrea

Robustness, Security and Privacy in Location-Based Services for Future IoT : A Survey

Internet of Things (IoT) connects sensing devices to the Internet for the purpose of exchanging information. Location information is one of the most crucial pieces of information required to achieve intelligent and context-aware IoT systems. Recently, positioning and localization functions have been realized in a large amount of IoT systems. However, security and privacy threats related to positioning in IoT have not been sufficiently addressed so far. In this paper, we survey solutions for improving the robustness, security, and privacy of location-based services in IoT systems. First, we provide an in-depth evaluation of the threats and solutions related to both global navigation satellite system (GNSS) and non-GNSS-based solutions. Second, we describe certain cryptographic solutions for security and privacy of positioning and location-based services in IoT. Finally, we discuss the state-of-the-art of policy regulations regarding security of positioning solutions and legal instruments to location data privacy in detail. This survey paper addresses a broad range of security and privacy aspects in IoT-based positioning and localization from both technical and legal points of view and aims to give insight and recommendations for future IoT systems providing more robust, secure, and privacy-preserving location-based services.Peer reviewe

Incentives for nature conservation in urban landscapes

The aim of this article is to contribute to the development of ecological-economic incentives in conservation policy. Our approach uses strategies for establishing habitat networks as an example to develop spatially-oriented incentives in urban landscapes. The incentives should ideally consider aspects both of ecological effectiveness and economic efficiency. Our understanding of ecological-economic incentives reaches beyond this stage: not only must economic incentives in environmental policy be based on ecological knowledge, but also, they have to consider social aspects of implementation and acceptance. The ecological analysis of strategies for species protection in urban landscapes leads to management recommendations as a basis for the specification of environmental policy goals. Based on ecological knowledge, which shows where to invest scarce resources, the economic perspective aims at analysing and evaluating environmental policy instruments for their suitability and efficiency. The ecological and economic research is to be combined with a sociological approach, which investigates the choice and application of environmental policy measures as a system of social action. The analysis of problems of implementation and acceptance will be used to support the introduction of new instruments or to improve existing incentive systems related to nature conservation in urban landscapes. For this purpose, a survey was carried out on the use of environmental policy instruments (regulation, planning, economic incentives, communication, information) in German cities in 1997. Furthermore, two existing economic instruments in German nature protection policy are analysed in detail: the compensation charge as part of the impact regulation and incentive programmes on the level of the German federal states that offer financial incentive measures for nature protection. --

Wiki surveys: Open and quantifiable social data collection

In the social sciences, there is a longstanding tension between data collection methods that facilitate quantification and those that are open to unanticipated information. Advances in technology now enable new, hybrid methods that combine some of the benefits of both approaches. Drawing inspiration from online information aggregation systems like Wikipedia and from traditional survey research, we propose a new class of research instruments called wiki surveys. Just as Wikipedia evolves over time based on contributions from participants, we envision an evolving survey driven by contributions from respondents. We develop three general principles that underlie wiki surveys: they should be greedy, collaborative, and adaptive. Building on these principles, we develop methods for data collection and data analysis for one type of wiki survey, a pairwise wiki survey. Using two proof-of-concept case studies involving our free and open-source website www.allourideas.org, we show that pairwise wiki surveys can yield insights that would be difficult to obtain with other methods.Comment: 24 pages, 8 figures, 1 tabl

Patient accounting systems: Are they fit with the users� requirements?

Objectives: A patient accounting system is a subsystem of a hospital information system. This system like other information systems should be carefully designed to be able to meet users� requirements. The main aim of this research was to investigate users� requirements and to determine whether current patient accounting systems meet users� needs or not. Methods: This was a survey study, and the participants were the users of six patient accounting systems used in 24 teaching hospitals. A stratified sampling method was used to select the participants (n = 216). The research instruments were a questionnaire and a checklist. The mean value of �3 showed the importance of each data element and the capability of the system. Results: Generally, the findings showed that the current patient accounting systems had some weaknesses and were able to meet between 70 and 80 of users� requirements. Conclusions: The current patient accounting systems need to be improved to be able to meet users� requirements. This approach can also help to provide hospitals with more usable and reliable financial information. © 2016 The Korean Society of Medical Informatics

An evaluation DEM accuracy acquired using a small unmanned aerial vehicle across a riverine environment

Fluvial systems offer a challenging and varied environment for topographic survey, displaying a rapidly varying morphology, diversevegetation assemblage and varying degree of submergence. Traditionally theodolite or GPS based systems have been used to capture cross-section and break of slope based data which has subsequently been interpolated to generate a topographic surface. Advances in survey technology has resulted in an improved ability to capture larger volumes of data with infrared terrestrial and aerial LiDAR systems capturing high-density (<0.02m) data across terrestrial surfaces but instruments are expensive and cumbersome and fail to survey through water. The rise of Structure from Motion (SfM) photogrammetry, coupled with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), has potential to rapidly record information needed to derive elevation data at reach scale with sub decimetre density. The approach has the additional advantage over LiDAR of seeing through clear water to capture bed detail, whilst also generating orthorectified photographic mosaics of the survey reach. However, the accuracy of the data has received comparatively little attention. Here we present a survey protocol for UAV deployment and provide a reach scale comparison between a Terrestrial LiDAR Survey (TLS) and SfM UAV survey on the River Sprint near Kendal in England.. Comparative analysis of elevation data between TLS and SfM suggest comparable accuracy and precision across terrestrial surfaces with error lowest over solid surfaces, increasing with vegetation complexity. Submerged SfM data captured bed levels generally to within ±0.2 with only a weak relationship recorded between error and flow depth