Low Energy, Low Emissions: SO2, NOx and CO2 in Western Europe

A link is made in this paper between proposed low energy scenarios for different Western European countries and the amount of pollutants that may result from these scenarios. Air pollutant emissions are calculated for the ten countries for which low energy scenarios are available. These scenarios emphasize stringent energy efficiency, maximizing the use of renewable (other than nuclear) energy, and minimizing the use of fossil fuels. Under these low energy scenarios, the average per capita energy use (year 2030) in the ten countries is estimated as 97 GJ/person, which is a decrease of 38% relative to 1980. Using the energy consumption figures from the low energy scenarios, together with sector and fuel-specific emission factors from Europe, the resulting emissions of SO2, NOx. and CO2 were computed. These estimates do not take into account any add-on pollution controls over and above what was in place in 1980, or changes in combustion technology; these would result in still lower emissions. Under the low energy scenarios, power plants will continue to be the most important SO2-producing sector, and transportation the most important NOx-producing sector. For CO2, however, no single sector is most important in producing emissions. The low energy scenarios (year 2030) result in a reduction of 54% for SO2 emissions, 37% for NOx emissions, and 41% for CO2 emissions compared to their 1980 levels. It was concluded that energy efficiency improvements and renewable energy use, if economically and institutionally feasible, will be an effective long term option for simultaneously reducing the gaseous emissions that are major contributors to regional acidification and photochemical air pollution, and potential global warming

Designing with constraints - Towards mass customization in the housing industry

Mass customization, while common in other industries, has yet to find widespread adoption in the housing industry. Current methods of mass customization are either labour-intensive or allow only a limited degree of freedom. In this paper, we look at a method of mass customization that allows buyers to make modifications to the design of their house, after which the new design is automatically checked against building regulations and the architect’s requirements

Object recognition in images by human vision and computer vision

Object recognition plays a major role in human behaviour research in the built environment. Computer based object recognition techniques using images as input are challenging, but not an adequate representation of human vision. This paper reports on the differences in object shape recognition between human vision and computer vision. To this end, we explore an image-based recognition algorithm and a model-based recognition algorithm. Experiments were conducted using these two algorithms given images generated by Radiance lighting simulation software. The results reveal significant differences between human vision and computer vision given various conditions in the testing images and in the testing room

Check-mate: Automatic constraint checking of IFC models

Building Information Models (BIMs) allow for computationally checking whether a building design satisfies all the building codes, requirements, etc. if constraints are included in the model. One application for this is mass customization in the housing sector, when clients modify the design without help from the architect. This paper describes the technical aspects of checking constraints on a building model. Specifically, we look at the feasibility of checking constraints on an IFC model by creating a prototype in which constraints can be entered and checked on an imported IFC model. Conclusions are drawn on the suitability of the IFC model and how IFC can be extended or adjusted to support constraint checking

Validating an office simulation model using RFID technology

This paper presents the validation of an office utilisation model for the research project called "User Simulation of Space Utilisation (USSU)". The result of this research is a system that can be used for analysing and evaluating the space utilisation of a building for any given organisation. A system for building usage simulation that produces data about activities of members of an organisation can substantially improve the relevance and performance of building simulation tools. This is relevant for engineering domains as well as for architects to evaluate the performance of a building design. For a thorough evaluation of the system an experiment was executed for assessing its predictive quality in the context of a real building, organisation and actual human behaviour; this experiment was executed using RFID technology. The result of the experiment was observed data about the space utilisation of the selected organisation. These data were compared with the space utilisation predicted by the USSU system to evaluate the simulation model. The validation of USSU showed that there were no significant differences between the predicated and observed activity behaviour. As a consequence, the output of USSU is considered to be valid

The evolved circumbinary disk of AC Her: a radiative transfer, interferometric and mineralogical study

We aim to constrain the structure of the circumstellar material around the post-AGB binary and RV Tauri pulsator AC Her. We want to constrain the spatial distribution of the amorphous as well as of the crystalline dust. We present very high-quality mid-IR interferometric data that were obtained with MIDI/VLTI. We analyse the MIDI data and the full SED, using the MCMax radiative transfer code, to find a good structure model of AC Her's circumbinary disk. We include a grain size distribution and midplane settling of dust self-consistently. The spatial distribution of crystalline forsterite in the disk is investigated with the mid-IR features, the 69~$\mu$m band and the 11.3~$\mu$m signatures in the interferometric data. All the data are well fitted. The inclination and position angle of the disk are well determined at i=50+-8 and PA=305+-10. We firmly establish that the inner disk radius is about an order of magnitude larger than the dust sublimation radius. Significant grain growth has occurred, with mm-sized grains being settled to the midplane of the disk. A large dust mass is needed to fit the sub-mm fluxes. By assuming {\alpha}=0.01, a good fit is obtained with a small grain size power law index of 3.25, combined with a small gas/dust ratio <10. The resulting gas mass is compatible with recent estimates employing direct gas diagnostics. The spatial distribution of the forsterite is different from the amorphous dust, as more warm forsterite is needed in the surface layers of the inner disk. The disk in AC Her is very evolved, with its small gas/dust ratio and large inner hole. Mid-IR interferometry offers unique constraints, complementary to mid-IR features, for studying the mineralogy in disks. A better uv coverage is needed to constrain in detail the distribution of the crystalline forsterite in AC Her, but we find strong similarities with the protoplanetary disk HD100546.Comment: update with final version published in A&

Quantum integrability of quadratic Killing tensors

Quantum integrability of classical integrable systems given by quadratic Killing tensors on curved configuration spaces is investigated. It is proven that, using a "minimal" quantization scheme, quantum integrability is insured for a large class of classic examples.Comment: LaTeX 2e, no figure, 35 p., references added, minor modifications. To appear in the J. Math. Phy

An Ontology Web Language Notation of the Industry Foundation Classes

In this paper we describe and discuss an OWL notation of IFCs, its advantages over generic XML schema representation, its various fields of possible application, and our implementation of it in a multi-agent framework