New Perspectives on Electric Vehicles

Modern transportation systems have adverse effects on the climate, emitting greenhouse gases and polluting the air. As such, new modes of non-polluting transportation, including electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids, are a major focus of current research and development. This book explores the future of transportation. It is divided into four sections: “Electric Vehicles Infrastructures,” “Architectures of the Electric Vehicles,” “Technologies of the Electric Vehicles,” and “Propulsion Systems.” The chapter authors share their research experience regarding the main barriers in electric vehicle implementation, their thoughts on electric vehicle modelling and control, and network communication challenges

Multi-Agent Systems

This Special Issue ""Multi-Agent Systems"" gathers original research articles reporting results on the steadily growing area of agent-oriented computing and multi-agent systems technologies. After more than 20 years of academic research on multi-agent systems (MASs), in fact, agent-oriented models and technologies have been promoted as the most suitable candidates for the design and development of distributed and intelligent applications in complex and dynamic environments. With respect to both their quality and range, the papers in this Special Issue already represent a meaningful sample of the most recent advancements in the field of agent-oriented models and technologies. In particular, the 17 contributions cover agent-based modeling and simulation, situated multi-agent systems, socio-technical multi-agent systems, and semantic technologies applied to multi-agent systems. In fact, it is surprising to witness how such a limited portion of MAS research already highlights the most relevant usage of agent-based models and technologies, as well as their most appreciated characteristics. We are thus confident that the readers of Applied Sciences will be able to appreciate the growing role that MASs will play in the design and development of the next generation of complex intelligent systems. This Special Issue has been converted into a yearly series, for which a new call for papers is already available at the Applied Sciences journal’s website: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/applsci/special_issues/Multi-Agent_Systems_2019

Accelerating the delivery of climate targets: Technology and behaviour in the road to net zero

Governments have known for more than half a century that emitting greenhouse gases increases temperatures and puts lives at risk. Yet global mitigation is minimal, for all the feted net zero commitments: emissions from fossil fuels have risen in every decade since records began. Some countries have made progress, including the United Kingdom where emissions have halved since 1990. But progress has so far relied on low-hanging fruit---the closure of coal mines; offshoring of industry; the recent growth of wind power. Future decarbonisation will be more challenging. Interdisciplinary collaboration, between scientists, engineers and economists among others, is necessary to overcome our carbon addiction. This thesis asks how best to achieve urgent mitigation. It focuses on public policy as a lever for decarbonisation; governments' cross-sectoral influence authority to enforce give them unique power to accelerate change. Research is undertaken in three parts. The first part considers the political economy of slow mitigation. It considers how political institutions and public beliefs affect the urgency of decarbonisation. Climate action faces opposition from incumbents and vested interests. This has led to a culture of myopic climate policy, defined as a high long- to short-term mitigation ratio. Every year mitigation is delayed makes it harder to achieve in future, transferring the burden from today's citizens to the future's. Moreover, public views over the issue salience of climate policy are lower than scientists', implying biased voter beliefs that impede adoption of the urgent policies needed to create near-term mitigation. This thesis postulates that policy myopia and biased beliefs can be ameliorated by setting a binding target on cumulative emissions, known as a carbon stock budget. For politicians, a carbon stock budget is an effective commitment mechanism. For the public, carbon stock framing alludes to threshold risks and appeals to the concept of household budgeting, both of which increase support for urgent policy. An economic model is presented that compares outcomes under a carbon stock budget and incremental climate policy. Results show that a budget increases nominal output by 40% in 2100. Implementing a carbon stock budget would help overcome barriers to meaningful decarbonisation. Mitigation can be achieved with new technologies, new behaviours or a combination of both. The second part of this thesis asks what history can teach us about technological and social transitions. Researchers have previously analysed past energy transitions, but no studies have yet reviewed social transitions for clues about future decarbonisation. Here, five large-scale energy and seven social transitions are assessed in detail. Historical reviews are combined with metrics on transition progress. Results show that all transitions go through common stages and face similar challenges and opportunities. These are summarised in two transition frameworks, which enable measurement of the duration and scale of each transition. Technological transitions tend to be slower than their social counterparts, and delays between conception and growth are four decades longer for new technologies. Uptake also tends to be slower: technologies averaged an annual growth rate of 1.6%, versus 4% for social transitions. History suggests that social change could play an important role in achieving net zero by 2050. The final part of this thesis asks what current climate strategies imply for the UK's timeline to net zero. It considers decarbonisation through the lens of disruption. A novel metric is proposed, which quantifies technological and behavioural disruption by measuring the implied change in a market or activity. A review of twelve proposed decarbonisation strategies yields 98 mitigation options and 538 distinct proposals. Applying the novel metric to these proposals reveals a bias towards technological mitigation. Two thirds of mitigation options rely solely on new technologies, one fifth rely on behavioural change, the remainder on a mix of both. Given the evidence that technological change can be slower than social change, these results suggest that the prevailing technological bias may impede near-term mitigation in the UK. This research contributes to a growing discussion of alternative approaches to net zero. It supports a new climate narrative: one in which policymakers can overcome political barriers to ambitious, near-term action, by reframing climate targets and matching technological deployment with effective behaviour change. The fundamental contributions of this thesis are threefold. It postulates a political argument for a carbon stock budget by linking theories of myopic policy and biased voting. It develops a new method to compare the pace of social and technological transitions, and illustrates the relative promise of social change. Finally, it proposes a novel metric to capture disruption in decarbonisation strategies and shows that proposals for the UK are technologically biased. Governments across the globe have pledged to reach net zero emissions by 2050. To live up to these promises, they must create change in the present by matching investment in prospective technologies with policies that utilise existing technologies and behavioural change. Accelerating the delivery of climate targets will require a balanced transition that places urgency at the heart of climate policymaking

Digitalisation For Sustainable Infrastructure: The Road Ahead

In today’s tumultuous and fast-changing times, digitalisation and technology are game changers in a wide range of sectors and have a tremendous impact on infrastructure. Roads, railways, electricity grids, aviation, and maritime transport are deeply affected by the digital and technological transition, with gains in terms of competitiveness, cost-reduction, and safety. Digitalisation is also a key tool for fostering global commitment towards sustainability, but the race for digital infrastructure is also a geopolitical one. As the world’s largest economies are starting to adopt competitive strategies, a level playing field appears far from being agreed upon. Why are digitalisation and technology the core domains of global geopolitical competition? How are they changing the way infrastructure is built, operated, and maintained? To what extent will road, rail, air, and maritime transport change by virtue of digitalisation, artificial intelligence, and the Internet of Things? How to enhance cyber protection for critical infrastructure? What are the EU’s, US’ and China’s digital strategies?Publishe

Transitioning to Affordable and Clean Energy

Transitioning to Affordable and Clean Energy is a collective volume which combines original contributions and review papers that address the question how the transition to clean and affordable energy can be governed. It will cover both general analyses of the governance of transition, including policy instruments, comparative studies of countries or policies, and papers setting out scientifically sound visions of a clean and just energy system. In particular, the following aspects are foregrounded: • Governing the supply and demand side transformation • Geographical and cultural differences and their consequences for the governance of energy transitions • Sustainability and justice related to energy transitions (e.g., approaches for addressing energy poverty) Transitioning to Affordable and Clean Energy is part of MDPI's new Open Access book series Transitioning to Sustainability. With this series, MDPI pursues environmentally and socially relevant research which contributes to efforts toward a sustainable world. Transitioning to Sustainability aims to add to the conversation about regional and global sustainable development according to the 17 SDGs. The book series is intended to reach beyond disciplinary, even academic boundaries

Telecommunications Networks

This book guides readers through the basics of rapidly emerging networks to more advanced concepts and future expectations of Telecommunications Networks. It identifies and examines the most pressing research issues in Telecommunications and it contains chapters written by leading researchers, academics and industry professionals. Telecommunications Networks - Current Status and Future Trends covers surveys of recent publications that investigate key areas of interest such as: IMS, eTOM, 3G/4G, optimization problems, modeling, simulation, quality of service, etc. This book, that is suitable for both PhD and master students, is organized into six sections: New Generation Networks, Quality of Services, Sensor Networks, Telecommunications, Traffic Engineering and Routing

BRICS Cities: Facts & Analysis 2016

BRICS Cities: Facts & Analysis is a compendium of research produced through a partnership between the South African Cities Network (SACN) and the South African Research Chair in Spatial Analysis and City Planning (SA&CP) in the School of Architecture and Planning at the University of the Witwatersrand. It presents key general and thematic descriptive and comparative information about urban growth and development in the five BRICS states: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. The comparative analysis includes a section relating to cities in Africa, while the detailed Factsheets cover thirty-one of the largest BRICS cities. BRICS Cities provides a first-of-its-kind research base to inform ongoing sub-national BRICS research and policy consideration. Recent reports on urbanization point out that over the next 20-30 years, almost all of the expected growth in the world population will be concentrated in the urban areas of the less developed countries of which a significant 42% will occur in cities in BRICS countries. Despite the fact that the distribution of the urbanization figures will be highly unequal between the different countries, considering the currently high levels of urbanization in Russia and Brazil and the extremely low levels (just over 35%) in India, the realities of large scale urbanization can and no doubt will have substantial impacts on the material conditions of urban life, governance, service provision, social relations and the environment. There has also been, and will continue to be, the expansion of networks of all kinds far beyond designated urban boundaries. In some cases, these challenges and the expanding boundaries have been met with additional layers of government, innovations in policy-making, and the reconfiguring of relationships between urban actors. However little is known in a comparative sense around some of the most important sites and cities in the BRICS countries , and insufficient research has been undertaken to learn from the differences that have been identified. The SACN and SA&CP, in line with our mutual interest around the nature and shape of urbanization and urban processes in South Africa and in BRICS countries, have developed a compendium of comparable information around key cities in the BRICS countries. BRICS Cities will serve as a useful reference of important base line information but also offers comment on the state of key areas of shared concern: innovation-driven economies, transport and mobility, and green energy. Furthermore, the publication provides a careful analysis of these factors in a comparative and relational framing.AA2017https://www.wits.ac.za/archplan/research-entities/spatial-analysis-and-city-planning/featured-projects/brics-fact-sheet-book

Towards a Climate-Neutral Europe

This book explains the EU’s climate policies in an accessible way, to demonstrate the step-by-step approach that has been used to develop these policies, and the ways in which they have been tested and further improved in the light of experience. The latest changes to the legislation are fully explained throughout. The chapters throughout this volume show that no single policy instrument can bring down greenhouse gas emissions. The challenge facing the EU, as for many countries that have made pledges under the Paris Agreement, is to put together a toolbox of policy instruments that is coherent, delivers emissions reductions, and is cost-effective. The book stands out by the fact it covers the EU’s emissions trading system, the energy sector and other economic sectors, including their development in the context of international climate policy. This accessible book will be of great relevance to students, scholars and policy makers alike