1,853 research outputs found

    Federated Robust Embedded Systems: Concepts and Challenges

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    The development within the area of embedded systems (ESs) is moving rapidly, not least due to falling costs of computation and communication equipment. It is believed that increased communication opportunities will lead to the future ESs no longer being parts of isolated products, but rather parts of larger communities or federations of ESs, within which information is exchanged for the benefit of all participants. This vision is asserted by a number of interrelated research topics, such as the internet of things, cyber-physical systems, systems of systems, and multi-agent systems. In this work, the focus is primarily on ESs, with their specific real-time and safety requirements. While the vision of interconnected ESs is quite promising, it also brings great challenges to the development of future systems in an efficient, safe, and reliable way. In this work, a pre-study has been carried out in order to gain a better understanding about common concepts and challenges that naturally arise in federations of ESs. The work was organized around a series of workshops, with contributions from both academic participants and industrial partners with a strong experience in ES development. During the workshops, a portfolio of possible ES federation scenarios was collected, and a number of application examples were discussed more thoroughly on different abstraction levels, starting from screening the nature of interactions on the federation level and proceeding down to the implementation details within each ES. These discussions led to a better understanding of what can be expected in the future federated ESs. In this report, the discussed applications are summarized, together with their characteristics, challenges, and necessary solution elements, providing a ground for the future research within the area of communicating ESs

    Aggregator Business Pilot

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    Methodology for an optimal deployment of the recharging infrastructure for electric vehicles

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    184 p.CO2 emissions must be reduced to meet the international commitments to tackle climate change. One of the most promising alternatives for such reduction is the electrification of transport, especially in urban environments, due to its advantages in terms of lack of local emissions and noise reduction. Yet, the lack of publicly accessible charging infrastructure is preventing the mass-adoption of electro-mobility. EV customers want to see a dense enough publicly accessible charging infrastructure network, but they will seldom use it if they can use private home charging. Hence, the economic feasibility of deploying such charging infrastructure must be carefully assessed. Although there have been several attempts to assess the economic performance of operating publicly accessible charging infrastructure, none of them if able to handle the complexity of electro-mobility (by e.g. merging all different charging alternatives into the same analysis). This thesis aims at filling the identified gap, by defining a new methodology which looks at the whole value chain, is business-oriented, performs a quantitative analysis, compares EV against ICE vehicles and takes into account the relationships between the different charging alternatives into a single assessment. The three main contributions of the thesis are: 1) The new methodology extends the scope for analysing complex business cases to consider the different dimensions of the business case at the same time, 2) This new methodology highlights the crucial need to involve appropriate representatives of the relevant stakeholders (decision-makers) in the analysis from the very beginning of the process, and 3) The new methodology has an oriented, tailored approach from the early stages of the analysis to obtain significant results which increase the reliability of the outcomes and guide the decision-making process

    Impacts of Western lifestyles in a telecoupled world:Mapping and specifying current and future demand for ecosystem services

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    Human use of natural resources is exceeding the planet's ecological ceilings. To reverse this trend, sustainable production and consumption was placed on the global governance agenda at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. Since then, a large number of empirical studies have been carried out to characterise the environmental impact of consumption. It has become clear that humanity's pressure on ecosystems is mainly related to the use of natural resources for food, shelter and mobility, and that the wealthiest people contribute disproportionately to the overall pressure because of the consumption culture associated with affluence. It has also been shown that most environmental impacts are not visible to final consumers because the goods and services they use are often produced miles away. This understanding has largely been supported by conceptual and methodological developments around the concepts of lifestyle, ecosystem services and telecoupling. However, these concepts have only been marginally combined so far, leaving open questions about the role of lifestyle in explaining the use of ecosystem services and ecological impacts. This dissertation brings together ideas and methods from research around these concepts to propose indicators and tools to characterise the role of lifestyle as a determinant of the extent and geography of ecosystem services demand and impacts. Different aspects of lifestyle - diet, holiday, mobility - are empirically addressed, with a focus on Western countries where living standards are relatively high and affluent consumption is the norm. Chapter 2 questions the potential ecological outcomes of a large-scale shift from the current standard diet in the United States of America (USA) to more plant-based alternatives. Chapter 3 examines tourist preferences for different holiday styles as a determinant of carbon emissions from leisure travel within the European Union (EU). Chapter 4 draws a quantitative link between current mobility patterns in the European Union and the expansion of rubber plantations in the tropics, which is leading to deforestation. In addition, Chapter 5 critically looks at the trade model used in chapters 2 and 4 to trace the origin of commodities available for use in the USA and the EU and proposes a way forward. Finally, Chapter 6 synthesises the methodological and empirical findings of Chapters 2 to 5 and operationalises these findings into recommendations for businesses and governments on how to support the transition to sustainable consumption in Western societies. Overall, this thesis shows that our understanding of lifestyle as a determinant of ecological impacts can be improved by reusing available large-scale survey results, contextualising individual agency and substantiating indicators of demand for ecosystem services with qualitative information. Taken together, the chapters demonstrate that prevailing preferences in Western societies explain the extent and spatial patterns of demand for ecosystem services and associated impacts. They also highlight the dependence of Western lifestyles on far-flung ecosystems and globalisation processes such as international trade and leisure travel. This body of research therefore re-emphasises the role of demand-side measures in reducing the overall impact of Western societies and the importance of addressing potential impacts beyond borders. Ultimately, this perspective on the role of lifestyle as a driver of sustainability issues in a telecoupled world argues for cooperation between different actors - individual consumers, businesses and governments - to carry out the transition to sustainable consumption patterns

    What happens during a blackout: Consequences of a prolonged and wide-ranging power outage

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    Power outages in Europe and North America in recent years have given a lasting impression of the vulnerability of modern and high-tech societies. Although the power supply was interrupted for a week at most and only locally, massive functional and supply disruptions, threats to public order and damage amounting to billions of euros have already become apparent. This book shows what consequences a prolonged and widespread power blackout could have on society and its critical infrastructures and how Germany is prepared for such a large-scale disaster. By means of comprehensive consequence analyses, the authors drastically demonstrate that after only a few days, the supply of the population with (vital) goods and services can no longer be guaranteed in the affected area. It is also made clear that considerable efforts are required to increase the sustainability of critical infrastructures and to further optimise the capacities of the national disaster management system. The book is based on TAB Report Nr. 141 "GefĂ€hrdung und Verletzbarkeit moderner Gesellschaften - am Beispiel eines großrĂ€umigen und langandauernden Ausfalls der Stromversorgung"

    Revealing the Landscape of Privacy-Enhancing Technologies in the Context of Data Markets for the IoT: A Systematic Literature Review

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    IoT data markets in public and private institutions have become increasingly relevant in recent years because of their potential to improve data availability and unlock new business models. However, exchanging data in markets bears considerable challenges related to disclosing sensitive information. Despite considerable research focused on different aspects of privacy-enhancing data markets for the IoT, none of the solutions proposed so far seems to find a practical adoption. Thus, this study aims to organize the state-of-the-art solutions, analyze and scope the technologies that have been suggested in this context, and structure the remaining challenges to determine areas where future research is required. To accomplish this goal, we conducted a systematic literature review on privacy enhancement in data markets for the IoT, covering 50 publications dated up to July 2020, and provided updates with 24 publications dated up to May 2022. Our results indicate that most research in this area has emerged only recently, and no IoT data market architecture has established itself as canonical. Existing solutions frequently lack the required combination of anonymization and secure computation technologies. Furthermore, there is no consensus on the appropriate use of blockchain technology for IoT data markets and a low degree of leveraging existing libraries or reusing generic data market architectures. We also identified significant challenges remaining, such as the copy problem and the recursive enforcement problem that-while solutions have been suggested to some extent-are often not sufficiently addressed in proposed designs. We conclude that privacy-enhancing technologies need further improvements to positively impact data markets so that, ultimately, the value of data is preserved through data scarcity and users' privacy and businesses-critical information are protected.Comment: 49 pages, 17 figures, 11 table

    Socially useful jobs: the last Keynesian labour market policy in Italy. Policy process evaluation

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    The industrial restructuring of the 1970s, the sluggish economic growth of the 1980s and the difficult macroeconomic scenario of the early 1990s which preceded the Italy’s joining of the EMU, gradually reduced the space for Keynesian economic policies in the country. In certain geographical areas, unemployment remained high over a long period of time and the Italian state had to confront this situation which was becoming socially and politically unsustainable. The solution found involved the long-term unemployed in a wide range of activities provided by public bodies, called socially and publicly useful jobs. At the end of the 1990s, under pressure from neoliberalism, many public bodies outsourced their public services, labour market deregulation was pursued, while supply-side labour polices gained ground. This thesis examines the policy process during the paradigm shift, evaluates its impact on unemployment reduction, discusses the ways in which the policy’s outcomes were achieved, and highlights the role played by institutions during this long-term process. The approach chosen to evaluate the policy of socially and useful jobs distinguishes between three intrinsically linked stages of the policy process: policy-making, implementation and take-up. Recognising the central role of institutions in providing the context in which the policy process develops, the approach chosen for this analysis is historical-institutionalism. It is applied within the broader framework of the political economy which impacted on the transformation of the Italian welfare state and the rise of workfare practices. The policy process evaluation led to some interesting findings. Firstly, many unemployed were re-inserted into the labour market due to their participation in socially and publicly useful jobs. Secondly, the activities they delivered allowed the communities to avoid disruption to important services and helped the state to save funds through the use of an inexpensive and productive workforce. Thirdly, the public administrations considered the outsourcing of services successful when they received high quality services from workers who were already known to them and were easily managed. Fourthly, the participation of the private companies in the last stage of the policy did not guarantee efficiency gains and, in several cases, the public administrations preferred to employ the socially and publicly useful workers directly
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