Innovative business plan: Digital learning solution services for mid-sized German-based freight forwarding companies operating in Europe

The logistics sector is experiencing one of its biggest disruptions of all times. The fourth industrial revolution, also known as Industry 4.0, fosters a paradigm shift that poses major challenges for logistics companies, especially small to medium-sized ones. To face these challenges, these businesses have to go through a radical change process. This is only possible, by providing know-how, developing a company-wide new mindset, and enabling staff to facilitate change. This business is therefore offering high-quality digital learning solution services, to help these companies to stay in the market or even develop a new competitive advantage. The literature review, the market analysis, and the analysis of the qualitative interviews show that there is currently a mismatch of provided learning solutions and the needs & capabilities of mid-sized, German-based logistics companies. This gap in the market will be filled with the developed service solutions of this business plan. The financial calculations determine a valuable business opportunity, which holds high potential to develop a new business field as a first mover.O sector da logística está a experienciar uma das maiores disrupções de todos os tempos. A quarta revolução industrial, também conhecida como Indústria 4.0, acolhe uma mudança de paradigma que representa desafios significativos para as empresas logísticas, especialmente para pequenos e médios negócios. Para enfrentar esses desafios, estas empresas têm de passar por um processo radical de mudança. Isto só é possível providenciando know-how, desenvolvendo um novo mindset nas empresas, e potenciando os colaboradores para facilitar a mudança. Assim, este sector de actividade está a promover soluções de aprendizagem digital de alta qualidade para ajudar estas empresas a permanecer no mercado ou até para desenvolver uma nova vantagem competitiva. A revisão da literatura, a análise de mercado e a análise das entrevistas qualitativas demonstram que existe uma actual inadequação entre as soluções de aprendizagem providenciadas e as necessidades e capacidades das médias empresas de logística baseadas na Alemanha. Esta lacuna no mercado será colmatada com as soluções de serviços desenvolvidas neste plano de negócio. A expectativa financeira identifica uma oportunidade valiosa de negócio, que tem potencial para desenvolver uma nova área de negócios como força motora

Field study of the dynamics and modelling of subgrid-scale turbulence in a stable atmospheric surface layer over a glacier

A field experiment - the Snow Horizontal Array Turbulence Study (SnoHATS) - has been performed over an extensive glacier in Switzerland in order to study small-scale turbulence in the stable atmospheric surface layer, and to investigate the role, dynamics and modelling of the subgrid scales (SGSs) in the context of large-eddy simulations. The a priori data analysis aims at comparing the role and behaviour of the SGSs under stable conditions with previous studies under neutral or unstable conditions. It is found that the SGSs in a stable surface layer remain an important sink of temperature variance and turbulent kinetic energy from the resolved scales and carry a significant portion of the fluxes when the filter scale is larger than the distance to the wall. The fraction of SGS fluxes (out of the total fluxes) is found to be independent of stability. In addition, the stress-strain alignment is similar to the alignment under neutral and unstable conditions. The model coefficients vary considerably with stability but in a manner consistent with previous findings, which also showed that scale-dependent dynamic models can capture this variation. Furthermore, the variation of the coefficients for both momentum and heat SGS fluxes can be shown to be better explained by stability parameters based on vertical gradients, rather than vertical fluxes. These findings suggest that small-scale turbulence dynamics and SGS modelling under stable conditions share many important properties with neutral and convective conditions, and that a unified approach is thus possible. This paper concludes with a discussion of some other challenges for stable boundary-layer simulations that are not encountered in the neutral or unstable case

Stream temperature prediction in ungauged basins: review of recent approaches and description of a new physics-derived statistical model

The development of stream temperature regression models at regional scales has regained some popularity over the past years. These models are used to predict stream temperature in ungauged catchments to assess the impact of human activities or climate change on riverine fauna over large spatial areas. A comprehensive literature review presented in this study shows that the temperature metrics predicted by the majority of models correspond to yearly aggregates, such as the popular annual maximum weekly mean temperature (MWMT). As a consequence, current models are often unable to predict the annual cycle of stream temperature, nor can the majority of them forecast the inter-annual variation of stream temperature. This study presents a new statistical model to estimate the monthly mean stream temperature of ungauged rivers over multiple years in an Alpine country (Switzerland). Contrary to similar models developed to date, which are mostly based on standard regression approaches, this one attempts to incorporate physical aspects into its structure. It is based on the analytical solution to a simplified version of the energy-balance equation over an entire stream network. Some terms of this solution cannot be readily evaluated at the regional scale due to the lack of appropriate data, and are therefore approximated using classical statistical techniques. This physics-inspired approach presents some advantages: (1) the main model structure is directly obtained from first principles, (2) the spatial extent over which the predictor variables are averaged naturally arises during model development, and (3) most of the regression coefficients can be interpreted from a physical point of view – their values can therefore be constrained to remain within plausible bounds. The evaluation of the model over a new freely available data set shows that the monthly mean stream temperature curve can be reproduced with a root-mean-square error (RMSE) of ±1.3 °C, which is similar in precision to the predictions obtained with a multi-linear regression model. We illustrate through a simple example how the physical aspects contained in the model structure can be used to gain more insight into the stream temperature dynamics at regional scales

Subgrid-Scale Dynamics of Water Vapour, Heat, and Momentum over a Lake

We examine the dynamics of turbulence subgrid (or sub-filter) scales over a lake surface and the implications for large-eddy simulations (LES) of the atmospheric boundary layer. The analysis is based on measurements obtained during the Lake-Atmosphere Turbulent EXchange (LATEX) field campaign (August-October, 2006) over Lake Geneva, Switzerland. Wind velocity, temperature and humidity profiles were measured at 20Hz using a vertical array of four sonic anemometers and open-path gas analyzers. The results indicate that the observed subgrid-scale statistics are very similar to those observed over land surfaces, suggesting that the effect of the lake waves on surface-layer turbulence during LATEX is small. The measurements allowed, for the first time, the study of subgrid-scale turbulent transport of water vapour, which is found to be well correlated with the transport of heat, suggesting that the subgrid-scale modelling of the two scalars may be coupled to save computational resources during LE

Fliessgewässertemperatur - zwei Modellansätze für zukünftige Prognosen

Seit Längerem steigt die globale Durchschnittstemperatur der Atmosphäre und führt damit auch in der Schweiz zu einem Anstieg der Gewässertemperaturen. Verlässliche längerfristige Prognosen hierfür sind in der Schweiz auf Bundesebene zum jetzigen Zeitpunkt nicht erstellbar. Nun wurden an der Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) zwei Modellvarianten entwickelt, um längerfristig Antworten auf Fragestellungen bezüglich Temperaturentwicklung von Fliessgewässern in der Schweiz zu ermöglichen. Parallel dazu wurde ein modulares deterministisches Modell auf der Basis des räumlich verteilten Schneedeckenmodells Alpine3D der WSL/SLF erstellt