Indicators and Evaluation Tools for the Assessment of Urban Sustainability

This paper attempts to provide an explanation of why reductionistic approaches are not adequate to tackle the urban sustainability issue in a consistent way. Concepts such as urban environmental carrying capacity and ecological footprint are discussed. Multicriteria evaluation is proposed as a general multidimensional framework for the assessment of urban sustainability. This paper deals with the following main topics: · definition of the concept of urban sustainability, · discussion of relevant sustainability indicators, · multicriteria evaluation as a framework for the assessment of urban sustainability, · an illustrative example.Urban environmental carrying capacity, ecological footprint, multicriteria evaluation, NAIADE method

Social Multi-Criteria Evaluation (SMCE)

The main argument developed here is the proposal of the concept of “Social Multi-Criteria Evaluation” (SMCE) as a possible useful framework for the application of social choice to the difficult policy problems of our Millennium, where, as stated by Funtowicz and Ravetz, “facts are uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high and decisions urgent”. This paper starts from the following main questions: 1. Why “Social” Multi-criteria Evaluation? 2. How such an approach should be developed? The foundations of SMCE are set up by referring to concepts coming from complex system theory and philosophy, such as reflexive complexity, post-normal science and incommensurability. To give some operational guidelines on the application of SMCE basic questions to be answered are: 1. How is it possible to deal with technical incommensurability? 2. How can we deal with the issue of social incommensurability? To answer these questions, by using theoretical considerations and lessons learned from realworld case studies, is the main objective of the present article.Multi-Criteria Analysis, Economics, Complexity Theory, Environment, Social Choice, Post-Normal Science, Incommensurability, Ethics

Real-Time Panoramic Tracking for Event Cameras

Event cameras are a paradigm shift in camera technology. Instead of full frames, the sensor captures a sparse set of events caused by intensity changes. Since only the changes are transferred, those cameras are able to capture quick movements of objects in the scene or of the camera itself. In this work we propose a novel method to perform camera tracking of event cameras in a panoramic setting with three degrees of freedom. We propose a direct camera tracking formulation, similar to state-of-the-art in visual odometry. We show that the minimal information needed for simultaneous tracking and mapping is the spatial position of events, without using the appearance of the imaged scene point. We verify the robustness to fast camera movements and dynamic objects in the scene on a recently proposed dataset and self-recorded sequences.Comment: Accepted to International Conference on Computational Photography 201

Asynchronous real-time ethernet

The Industrial Ethernet has become a way to build distributed systems in industrial networks which must provide predictable performance and maintainability. Industrial applications require time-critical processing, which can be guaranteed within soft or hard real-time environments, Where applications' responses require deterministic processing time, the hard real-time environment is requested. The Fieldbus protocols are the standard way to connect instruments on the Ethernet-based communication. Fieldbuses require synchronisation and dedicated application-specific integrated circuits, what leaves space for alternate, more common solutions. This thesis presents design, implementation, and evaluation of the novel Real-Time Driver Model asynchronous communication stack called 61850CS API. 61850CS stack is implemented in an intelligent electronic device to enable real-time IEC 61850 GOOSE Ethernet communications in electrical substations. The presented 61850CS implementation enables simultaneous flow of real-time and non-real-time Ethernet traffic over the same physical network interface controller. The same technology supports running arbitrary real-time Ethernet traffic and non real-time Ethernet traffic simultaneously and its implementation is general enough to enable an API use on different architectures and to comply with different industrial Ethernet requirements. And more, since 61850CS doesn't affect CSMA/CD mechanism, it doesn't need any master nodes, which increases the system availability. The presented solution was implemented as an application programming interface for feeder protection and control (FPC 680) intelligent electronic device relay. Hardware platform for 61850CS was PPC440EPx microcontroller with implemented Linux Real-Time application interface RTOS. The FPC 680 is an IED commercial product by Iskra d.d. which is implemented worldwide in several substations

Study on the Problem of Estimation of Parameters of Generalized Exponential Distribution

Mudholkar and Srivastava, Freimer (1995) proposed three-parameter exponentiated Weibull distribution. Two-parameter exponentiated exponential or generalized exponential (GE) distribution is a particular member of the exponentiated Weibull distribution. we study the problem of estimation of unknown parameters of the GE distribution and describe the some estimation techniques which are very useful to estimate the unknown parameters of the GE distribution. We consider the methods of maximum likelihood estimator, moments estimator, percentiles estimator, least square estimator, weighted least square estimator

On the use of Cost-Benefit Analysis and Multi-Criteria Evaluation in ex-ante Impact Assessment

When a public administration wishes to implement policies, there is a need of comparing different options and valuating and evaluating them to assess their social attractiveness. Traditionally, welfare economics has used cost-benefit analysis based on the Kaldor-Hicks compensation principle, which was invented to achieve two clear objectives: 1) To compare individuals’ preferences according to the efficiency oriented utilitarian calculus, explicitly avoiding the principle one individual, one vote. 2) To implement an objective evaluation criterion, that could be accepted in the framework of the positivistic philosophical paradigm. A relevant question now is: are these objectives still relevant in the 21st Century? This article aims at presenting a structured comparison of the main distinguishing features of monetary and non-monetary methods useful in the assessment of public policy options. In particular, cost-benefit analysis (CBA) and multi-criteria evaluation (MCE) are discussed according to the following ten comparison criteria: efficiency, fairness, democratic basis, effectiveness, problem structuring, alternatives taken into account, policy consequences, comprehensiveness, transparency and mathematical aggregation rule. A conclusion is that regarding public policy problems, CBA and MCE can be considered as competitive methods only if all consequences of a policy decision can be correctly transformed into monetary values and efficiency is the only relevant policy objective. In all other cases, CBA can be used as a criterion in a MCE framework; thus in general terms, CBA and MCE are complementary in nature. MCE seems to be an appropriate public policy framework to integrate different scientific languages, when concerns about civil society and future generations have to be considered along with policy objectives and market conditions.JRC.I.1-Modelling, Indicators and Impact Evaluatio

Métodos y Procesos Multicriterio para la Evaluación Social de las Políticas Públicas

Cualquier problema de decisión social se caracteriza por conflictos entre valores e intereses que compiten y diferentes grupos y comunidades que los representan. Por ejemplo, en la gestión ambiental, las metas de biodiversidad, los objetivos del paisaje, los servicios directos de diferentes entornos como fuentes de recursos y como sumideros de desechos, los significados históricos y culturales que los lugares tienen para las comunidades, las opciones recreativas que proporcionan los entornos, son una fuente de conflicto. Las diferentes dimensiones de valor pueden estar en conflicto entre sí y dentro de sí mismas, y cualquier decisión otorgará diferentes opiniones buenas y malas para los diferentes agentes tanto en forma espacial como temporal. ¿Cómo se deben resolver esos conflictos? A lo largo de los últimos veinte años se han desarrollado y aplicado una variedad de métodos multicriteriales de ayuda a la decisión, con el fin de facilitar la organización de información tanto ecológica como económica, como base para los procesos de toma de decisiones en materia ambiental. Los métodos multicriteriales no asumen la conmensurabilidad de las diferentes dimensiones del problema, ya que no proveen un único criterio de elección, en este sentido, no existe la necesidad de reducir todos los valores en una sola escala (monetaria, energética,.) ayudando a encuadrar y presentar el problema, facilitando el proceso decisor y la obtención de acuerdos políticos. El diseño metodológico aquí presentado, ha permitido identificar, en varios casos prácticos, los diferentes actores involucrados, describiendo, al mismo tiempo, los problemas de gestión de una forma simultánea tanto en el riguroso lenguaje científico como en términos socio-políticos. Esto ha permitido delimitar los conflictos sociales y mostrar diferentes posibilidades para su solución a través de compromisos, cooperación y dialogo entre las partes, dando oportunidad a que emergieran soluciones

A social multi-criteria framework for ex-ante impact assessment: Operational Issues

European Commission‘s current practice of Impact Assessment (IA) considers three main objectives i.e. efficiency, effectiveness (including proportionality) and coherence and it is based on the assessment of various broad impacts such as economic, environmental and social (including distribution of costs and benefits among social actors) ones. There is no doubt that IA is multidimensional in nature and as a consequence, multi-criteria evaluation (MCE), and in particular social multi-criteria evaluation (SMCE), which has been explicitly designed for public policy, can be a very useful methodological and operational framework. SMCE tries to integrate different scientific approaches with social actors’ preferences, thus being a consistent and transparent framework for both inter-disciplinarity and public participation. This report aims at presenting: - A methodological framework where the hierarchical structure of the option comparison step of a typical ex-ante IA (including dimensions, objectives and evaluation criteria) is clarified as much as possible by means of well-established concepts in the decision theory literature. This might help in increasing the degree of homogeneity across IA studies. - A measurement framework where 1. the various criterion scores can assess impacts by using both quantitative (e.g. as result of simulation models) and qualitative (e.g. results of participatory techniques) information, and 2. the mathematical aggregation rule guarantees consistency and transparency of results. - An illustrative example dealing with a recent IA on modernising VAT for cross-border B2C e-Commerce.JRC.I.1-Modelling, Indicators and Impact Evaluatio

Dealing with Fairness in Public Policy Analysis: A Methodological Framework

Fairness in the policy process can be seen as an ethical obligation to take a plurality of social values, perspectives and interests into account. This means that fairness is very much linked to the concept of democracy. How can we then implement some reasonable democratic principles in the policy analysis process? Two main tools exist: cost-benefit analysis and multi-criteria evaluation. The use of cost-benefit analysis implies strong distributional consequences, while multi-criteria evaluation seems to be a better tool to tackle conflicting points of view in the ex-ante policy evaluation process. The implementation of fairness inside a public policy framework mainly implies that a) social values, interests and desires should be considered as much as possible, b) distributional issues have to be illuminated at the maximum possible degree and c) the whole evaluation process should be transparent. Social multi-criteria evaluation can comprise all these three characteristics.JRC.I.1-Modelling, Indicators and Impact Evaluatio