A method to design job rotation schedules to prevent work-related musculoskeletal disorders in repetitive work

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis Group in International Journal of Production Research in 2012, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/00207543.2011.653452.Job rotation is an organisational strategy widely used in human-based production lines with the aim of preventing work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs). These work environments are characterised by the presence of a high repetition of movements, which is a major risk factor associated with WMSDs. This article presents a genetic algorithm to obtain rotation schedules aimed at preventing WMSDs in such environments. To do this, it combines the effectiveness of genetic algorithms optimisation with the ability to evaluate the presence of risk by repeated movements by following the OCRA ergonomic assessment method. The proposed algorithm can design solutions in which workers will switch jobs with high repeatability of movements with other less demanding jobs that support their recovery. In addition, these solutions are able to diversify the tasks performed by workers during the day, consider their disabilities and comply with restrictions arising from the work organisation.The authors wish to thank the Universitat Politecnica de Valencia which supported this research through its Program for the Support of Research and Development 2009 and its financing through the project PAID-06-09/2902.Asensio Cuesta, S.; Diego-Mas, JA.; Cremades Oliver, L.; González-Cruz, M. (2012). A method to design job rotation schedules to prevent work-related musculoskeletal disorders in repetitive work. International Journal of Production Research. 50(24):7467-7478. https://doi.org/10.1080/00207543.2011.653452S74677478502

An exploratory study on the use of digital sculpting in conceptual product design

The product design process involves intensive manipulation of graphical data, from pencil sketches to CAD files. The use of graphic software is common among professionals in this field. Despite this, the conceptual design stage remains intensive in paper and pencil work, as CAD systems are still too rigid to allow a creative production of concepts. In this paper the use of digital sculpting software is proposed as a way of producing 3D sketches in the early stages of the process. An experiment is conducted to determine to which extent 3D sculpt sketches can be considered as a suitable tool for conceptual design. The results show a better performance of 2D drawings, but support the complementary use of digital sculpting

Validación de un sistema online para la promoción de la salud mental en entornos universitarios

Introducción: En el contexto universitario la depresión afecta a estudiantes, profesores y personal de administración y servicios. El presente trabajo describe la validación de un sistema online integrado en el Portal E-UNIHEALTH dedicado a la prevención de la depresión en el ámbito universitario. Adicionalmente, se presentan los resultados clínicos obtenidos más destacados. Material y método: La Universidad Politécnica de Valencia (UPV) ha sido el entorno elegido para la validación del sistema online. Los colectivos involucrados han sido el Personal de Administración y Servicios (PAS) y el Personal Docente e Investigador (PDI). Para la validación del sistema online, basado en el cuestionario Beck-II, se reclutan voluntarios vía email. Los participantes contestan a través del sistema online, y una parte de ellos lo realiza también cara a cara con personal médico del Centro de salud laboral. Para la validación del sistema se comparan los resultados de ambos entornos. Resultados: Hasta la fecha han participado en el estudio 154 personas (62 PDI, 92 PAS). Los resultados demográficos revelan que los datos recogidos son representativos de los colectivos seleccionados. No se observan diferencias significativas entre ambos colectivos en relación a los niveles de depresión y al entorno de la evaluación. El 41% de los evaluados presenta indicios de depresión (38% PDI y 44% PAS). Los factores asociados con la depresión más frecuentes en ambos colectivos corresponden a problemas de sueño, perdida de energía y fatiga. Conclusiones: Los resultados obtenidos han permitido validar la fiabilidad del sistema online desarrollado. El uso de esta herramienta contribuye a la promoción de la salud mental en la comunidad universitaria de una manera sencilla y económica. Los niveles de depresión detectados ponen de relieve la necesidad de llevar a cabo medidas preventivas para la depresión en la UPV, como por ejemplo, actuaciones sobre la calidad del sueño y descanso

Assessing almond response to irrigation and soil management practices using vegetation indexes time-series and plant water status measurements

Current water scarcity scenario has led to the implementation of sustainable agricultural practices intended to improve water use efficiency. The present work evaluates during three agricultural campaigns (2018-2020) the response of a young almond orchard to two management practices in terms by combining remote sensing indexes (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, NDVI; and Soil Adjusted Vegetation Indexes, SAVI) and physiological/ morphological measurement (stem water potential, Ψstem; trunk perimeter and canopy diameter). The management practices included (I) sustained deficit irrigation and (II) soil management. Severe deficit irrigation resulted in lower vegetation indexes (VI) values, Ψstem and tree dimensions (13 %, 23 % and 14 % lower, respectively) than those obtained for full irrigation strategy; whereas moderate deficit irrigation did not affect any of the parameters analysed. The presence of vegetation cover in the inter-row resulted in a VIs increase (19-42 %) and in lower tree dimensions (reductions of 7-8 % for trunk perimeter and 0.34-0.37 m for canopy diameter) when compared to bare soil treatment, but did not have any influence on Ψstem. The present study proves the suitability of remote sensing and physiological measurements for assessing almond response to the different management practices

A Novel ArcGIS Toolbox for Estimating Crop Water Demands by Integrating the Dual Crop Coefficient Approach with Multi-Satellite Imagery

Advances in information and communication technologies facilitate the application of complex models for optimizing agricultural water management. This paper presents an easy-to-use tool for determining crop water demands using the dual crop coefficient approach and remote sensing imagery. The model was developed using Python as a programming language and integrated into an ArcGIS (geographic information system) toolbox. Inputs consist of images from satellites Landsat 7 and 8, and Sentinel 2A, along with data for defining crop, weather, soil type, and irrigation system. The tool produces a spatial distribution map of the crop evapotranspiration estimates, assuming no water stress, which allows quantifying the water demand and its variability within an agricultural field with a spatial resolution of either 10 m (for Sentinel) or 30 m (for Landsat). The model was validated by comparing the estimated basal crop coefficients (Kcb) of lettuce and peach during an irrigation season with those tabulated as a reference for these crops. Good agreements between Kcb derived from both methods were obtained with a root mean squared error ranging from 0.01 to 0.02 for both crops, although certain underestimations were observed resulting from the uneven crop development in the field (percent bias of −4.74% and −1.80% for lettuce and peach, respectively). The developed tool can be incorporated into commercial decision support systems for irrigation scheduling and other applications that account for the water balance in agro-ecosystems. This tool is freely available upon request to the corresponding author.This research was funded in the frame of the collaborative international consortium IRIDA financed under the ERA-NET Cofund Water-Works 2014 Call with Spanish national funds from the Agencia Estatal de Investigación grant PCIN-2015-263. This ERA-NET is an integral part of the 2015 Joint Activities developed by the Water Challenges for a Changing World Joint Programme Initiative (Water JPI) JPI Water WaterWorks 2014. Additional funding for the field study validations were obtained from the AEI-Feder financing project RiegoAsesor (RTC-2015-3453-2).We acknowledge support by the CSIC Open Access Publication Initiative through its Unit of Information Resources for Research (URICI)Peer reviewe

Some lessons learned about the use of water and nitrogen in vegetable crops

Trabajo presentado en el XXI International N workshop, celebrado en Madrid (España) del 24 al 28 de Octubre de 2022.During the last 7 years, within the framework of projects Riego-Asesor, Phertilizer and “Fertirriego de precisión para un manejo sostenible de la horticultura intensiva. Aspectos agronómicos e implicaciones ambientales” we have conducted multiple open field trials in the Campo de Cartagena and multiple greenhouse experiments in Santomera (Murcia), either in pot or hydroponic. The trials with vegetable crops include endive, baby lettuce, romaine lettuce, summer wonder lettuce, Iceberg lettuce, piel de sapo melon, and potato. The overall objective of all these projects was to make a more efficient use of two mayor resources used in agriculture; water and nutrients, with special focus on nitrogen. Here we resume the most notable results of these experiments; i) the amount of irrigation water applied by farmers was tightly adjusted and this amount closely mimics the FAO recommendations and custom-made water balance model named “Riego-Asesor”, ii) a fertigation strategy aimed to match water and fertilizer inputs with plant demand is key in improving water and nitrogen use efficiency, and simple to use decision support system was designed for this goal iii) irrigation frequency/dose plays a critical role in improving water and nitrogen use efficiency, with high frequency of irrigation resulting in higher yield and lower nitrate leaching iv) knowing how the nitrogen source (nitrate/ammonium) affects growth and development in different vegetable crops can be a further step of adjustment to increase nitrogen use efficiency. All this information can be used to designing fertigation strategies in intensive agriculture that match and integrate water and nutrients supplies with the needs of a given crop under a given growing conditions.The authors are grateful to the proyects; Retos Colaboración RTC-2015-3453-2: Riego-Asesor “Asesor virtual para la ayuda a la toma de decisiones sobre estrategias de riego sostenibles”, Retos Colaboración RTC-2017-6049-2: Phertilizer “Sistema circular para la recuperación y valoración agronómica del fósforo”, and project Nº20659/JLI/18 of Comunidad Autónoma de la Región de Murcia (CARM) “Fertirriego de precisión para un manejo sostenible de la horticultura intensiva. Aspectos agronómicos e implicaciones ambientales”

Irrigation-advisor—a decision support system for irrigation of vegetable crops

Climate change will intensify water scarcity, and therefore irrigation must be adapted to save water. Operational tools that provide watering recommendations to end-users are needed. This work presents a new tool, Irrigation-Advisor (IA), which is based on weather forecasts and is able to separately determine soil evaporation and crop transpiration, and thus is adaptable to a broad range of agricultural situations. By calculating several statistical indicators, IA was tested against the FAO-56 crop evapotranspiration (ETcFAO) methodology using local crop coefficients. Additionally, IA recommendations were compared with current standard practices by experienced farmers (F). Six field experiments with four widely cultivated species (endive, lettuce, muskmelon and potato) were performed in Southeast Spain. Irrigation water applied, crop yield, aboveground biomass and water productivity were determined. Crop water needs underestimations (5%–20%) were detected when comparing IA against ETcFAO, although the index of agreement proved reasonable adjustments. The IA recommendations led to water savings up to 13% when compared to F, except for lettuce, with a 31% surplus in irrigation when using IA. Crop yield was not compromised and water productivity was increased by IA. Therefore, IA mimicked the farmers′ irrigation strategies fairly well without deploying sensors on-site. Nevertheless, improvements are needed for increasing the accuracy of IA estimations.This research: including the APC, was funded by the Spanish MINISTERIO DE ECONOMÍA Y COMPETITIVIDAD (MINECO) with FEDER co-financing, projects “RiegoAsesor” and “Preciriego” (grant numbers RTC-2015-3453-2 and RTC-2017-6365-2) and by the European Commission with project “SHui” (grant number: 773903).Peer reviewe