Micro-hydro power system

This chapter talks about micro-hydro power (MHP) system and its application to rural communities. At the beginning of the chapter, the problems associated with rural communities’ inaccessibility are discussed, followed by fundamental concepts of MHP system. Although it is important to understand the fundamental concepts of MHP, this chapter only provides basic technical concepts and focuses more on its application in the rural communities. Given that MHP is a good alternative source of energy for off-grid rural communities, discussion on the social, environmental, and economic impacts is also included. Aside from the discussions on the application of MHP to rural communities, this chapter also includes a detailed case study of building a real MHP system in a rural community in the Philippines. Through the case study, the problems and challenges in the implementation of MHP systems are elaborated.© 2020, Springer Nature Switzerland AG

Leadership of interprofessional health and social care teams : a socio-historical analysis

AIM: The aim of this paper is to explore some of the key socio-historical issues related to the leadership of interprofessional teams. BACKGROUND: Over the past quarter of a century, there have been repeated calls for collaboration to help improve the delivery of care. Interprofessional teamwork is regarded as a key approach to delivering high-quality, safe care. EVALUATION: We draw upon historical documents to understand how modern health and social care professions emerged from 16th-century crafts guilds. We employ sociological theories to help analyse the nature of these professional developments for team leadership. KEY ISSUES: As the forerunners of professions, crafts guilds were established on the basis of protection and promotion of their members. Such traits have been emphasized during the evolution of professions, which have resulted in strains for teamwork and leadership. CONCLUSIONS: Understanding a problem through a socio-historical analysis can assist management to understand the barriers to collaboration and team leadership. IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING MANAGEMENT: Nursing management is in a unique role to observe and broker team conflict. It is rare to examine these phenomena through a humanities/social sciences lens. This paper provides a rare perspective to foster understanding - an essential precursor to effective change management

Big Energy Data Management for Smart Grids—Issues, Challenges and Recent Developments

Urban areas suffer from tremendous pressure to cope with increasing population in a city. A smart city is a technological solution that integrates engineering and information systems to assist in managing these scarce resources. A smart city comprises several intelligent services such as smart grids, smart education, smart transportation, smart buildings, smart waste management and so on. Among all these, smart grids are the nucleus of all the facilities because these provide sustainable electrical supply for other smart services to operate seamlessly. Smart grids integrate information and communication technologies (ICT) into traditional energy grids, thereby capturing massive amounts of data from several devices like smart meters, sensors, and other electrical infrastructuresSCADA. The data collected in smart grids are heterogeneous and require data analytic techniques to extract meaningful information to make informed decisions. We term this enormous amount of data as big energy data. This book chapter discusses progress in the field of big energy data by enlisting different studies that cover several data management aspects such as data collection, data preprocessing, data integration, data storage, data analytics, data visualisation and decision-making. We also discuss various challenges in data management and report recent progress in this field. Finally, we present open research areas in big data managementBig data management especially in relation to smart grids