Artificial intelligence for decision making in energy demand-side response

This thesis examines the role and application of data-driven Artificial Intelligence (AI) approaches for the energy demand-side response (DR). It follows the point of view of a service provider company/aggregator looking to support its decision-making and operation. Overall, the study identifies data-driven AI methods as an essential tool and a key enabler for DR. The thesis is organised into two parts. It first provides an overview of AI methods utilised for DR applications based on a systematic review of over 160 papers, 40 commercial initiatives, and 21 large-scale projects. The reviewed work is categorised based on the type of AI algorithm(s) employed and the DR application area of the AI methods. The end of the first part of the thesis discusses the advantages and potential limitations of the reviewed AI techniques for different DR tasks and how they compare to traditional approaches. The second part of the thesis centres around designing machine learning algorithms for DR. The undertaken empirical work highlights the importance of data quality for providing fair, robust, and safe AI systems in DR — a high-stakes domain. It furthers the state of the art by providing a structured approach for data preparation and data augmentation in DR to minimise propagating effects in the modelling process. The empirical findings on residential response behaviour show better response behaviour in households with internet access, air-conditioning systems, power-intensive appliances, and lower gas usage. However, some insights raise questions about whether the reported levels of consumers’ engagement in DR schemes translate to actual curtailment behaviour and the individual rationale of customer response to DR signals. The presented approach also proposes a reinforcement learning framework for the decision problem of an aggregator selecting a set of consumers for DR events. This approach can support an aggregator in leveraging small-scale flexibility resources by providing an automated end-to-end framework to select the set of consumers for demand curtailment during Demand-Side Response (DR) signals in a dynamic environment while considering a long-term view of their selection process

Best Environmental Management Practice for the Waste Management Sector

The way communities generate and manage their waste plays an absolutely key role in their ability to use resources efficiently. While making European economy more resource efficient and circular requires a large spectrum of actions, a huge potential for saving resources lays in improving waste management at local level in Europe. On the basis of an in-depth analysis of the actions implemented by frontrunner organisations in the waste management sector, this report describes a set of best practices with high potential for broad uptake. They are called Best Environmental Management Practices (BEMPs) and aim to help local authorities in charge of waste management and waste management companies move towards circular economy. The BEMPs, identified in close cooperation with a technical working group comprising experts from the sector, cover the waste management areas which determine the most the overall waste management performance: setting a waste management strategy, promoting waste prevention, establishing an efficient waste collection that supports re-use and recycling, and stimulating waste and product re-use. Certain areas of waste treatment are also covered. The BEMPs address mainly the management of municipal solid waste, but also of construction and demolition waste and healthcare waste. Additionally, the report provides a set of environmental performance indicators that organisations can use to assess their waste management performance and monitor progress as well as benchmarks of excellence that give an indication of the levels achieved by best performers. The report presents a wide range of information (environmental benefits, economics, case studies, references, etc.) for each of the best practices and aims to provide inspiration and guidance to organisations of the sector. In addition, the report will be the technical basis for the development of an EMAS (EU Eco-Management and Audit Scheme) Sectoral Reference Document on Best Environmental Management Practice for the Waste Management sector according to Article 46 of Regulation (EC) No 1221/2009 (EMAS Regulation).JRC.B.5-Circular Economy and Industrial Leadershi

Πλειομετρικές Ασκήσεις και Αύξηση Δύναμης και Ταχύτητας

Η πλειομετρική μέθοδος προπόνησης είναι μία μέθοδος προπόνησης που περιλαμβάνει ασκήσεις στις οποίες παρατηρείται η διάταση των μυών πριν από κάθε σύσπαση τους. Αυτή η προπόνηση επικεντρώνεται στην εκμάθηση της μετάβασης από την διαστολή (διάταση) των μυών σε μια συστολή (βράχυνση) με γρήγορο ή "εκρηκτικό" τρόπο, όπως σε εξειδικευμένα επαναλαμβανόμενα άλματα. Οι κινήσεις είναι δομημένες με τέτοιο τρόπο, ώστε να αξιοποιούνται όλα τα χαρακτηριστικά των μυών που συμμετέχουν στην διάταση και την επαναφορά (μυοτατικό και εκτατικό αντανακλαστικό) (Adams, O’Shea, O’Shea & Climstein, 1992). Οι πλειομετρικές ασκήσεις χρησιμοποιούνται κυρίως από αθλητές ταχυδυναμικών αθλημάτων και αγωνισμάτων, όπως σπρίντερ και άλτες. Ο σκοπός λοιπόν αυτής της μελέτης είναι ο καθορισμός της επίδρασης της πλειομετρικής προπόνησης στην αύξηση της ταχύτητας και της δύναμης των αθλητών έτσι όπως διαμορφώνεται από την πρόσφατη διεθνή βιβλιογραφία.The plyometric training method is a training method that includes exercises in which muscle stretching is observed before each contraction. This training focuses on learning the transition from muscle dilation to a contraction in a fast or "explosive" way, such as specialized repetitive jumps. The movements are structured in such a way as to exploit all the characteristics of the muscles involved in the distension and restoration (myotactic and extensive reflex) (Adams, O'Shea, O'Shea & Climstein, 1992). Plyometric exercises are mainly used by athletes of fast-moving sports and sports such as sprinters and jumpers. The aim of this study is to determine the effect of plyometric training on increasing the speed and strength of athletes as it is shaped by recent international bibliography

Best Environmental Management Practice for the Car Manufacturing Sector Learning from frontrunners

The European automotive industry is one of the EU's largest manufacturing sectors, and the automotive value chain covers many activities largely carried out within the EU, such as design and engineering, manufacturing, maintenance and repair, and end-of-life vehicle (ELV) handling. This Best Practice report describes Best Environmental Management Practices (BEMPs), i.e. techniques, measures or actions that are implemented by the organisations within the sector which are most advanced in terms of environmental performance in areas such as energy and resource efficiency, emissions, or supply chain management. The BEMPs provide inspirational examples for any organisation within the sector to improve its environmental performance. The report firstly outlines technical information on the contribution of car manufacturing and end-of-life vehicle (ELV) handling to key environmental burdens in the EU, alongside data on the economic relevance of the sector. The second chapter presents best environmental management practice of interest primarily for manufacturing companies (car manufacturers and associated manufacturers in the supply chain) covering cross-cutting issues related to key environmental impacts (such as energy, waste, water management, or biodiversity) before exploring best practice linked to specific topics, such as supply chain management. Subsequently, specific information concerning actors in the treatment of end-of-life vehicles is presented in the third chapter, focussing in particular on best practice applicable to processers of ELVs. This Best Practice Report was developed with support from a Technical Working Group of experts from the car manufacturing and ELV sector and associated fields. The report gives a wide range of information (environmental benefits, economics, indicators, benchmarks, references, etc.) for each of the proposed best practices in order to be a source of inspiration and guidance for any company of the sector wishing to improve environmental performance. In addition, it will be the technical basis for a Sectoral Reference Document on the car manufacturing sector, to be produced by the European Commission according to the EMAS Regulation.JRC.B.5-Circular Economy and Industrial Leadershi

Best Environmental Management Practice in the Fabricated Metal Product manufacturing sector

This report encloses technical information pertinent to the development of Best Environmental Management Practices (BEMPs) for the Sectoral Reference Document on the Fabricated Metal Products manufacturing sector, to be produced by the European Commission according to Article 46 of Regulation (EC) No 1221/2009 (EMAS Regulation). The BEMPs, both of technological and management nature (identified in close cooperation with a technical working group) address all the relevant environmental aspects of the Fabricated Metal Products manufacturing facilities. The BEMPs described in this report provide guidance on the cross-cutting issues and optimisation of utilities of the manufacturing facilities. Moreover, the BEMPs cover also the most relevant manufacturing processes, looking at energy and material efficiency, protecting and enhancing biodiversity, using of renewable energy and using rationally and effectively chemicals e.g. for cooling of various machining processes. Each BEMP gives a wide range of information and outlines the achieved environmental benefits, appropriate environmental performance indicators to measure environmental performance against the proposed benchmarks of excellence, economics etc. aiming at giving inspiration and guidance to any company of the sector who wishes to improve its environmental performance.JRC.B.5-Circular Economy and Industrial Leadershi

Hierarchical Face Clustering using SIFT Image Features

ABSTRACT In this paper an algorithm to cluster face images found in video sequences is proposed. A novel method for creating a dissimilarity matrix using SIFT image features is introduced. This dissimilarity matrix is used as an input in a hierarchical average linkage clustering algorithm, which yields the clustering result. Three well known clustering validity measures are provided to asses the quality of the resulting clustering, namely the F measure, the overall entropy (OE) and the Γ statistic. The final result is found to be quite robust to significant scale, pose and illumination variations, encountered in facial images

Η εγκατάσταση των Γότθων στη βυζαντινή αυτοκρατορία (4ος-6ος αι.). Οι επιπτώσεις στη βυζαντινή Πολιτεία και κοινωνία.

Η εγκατάσταση των βαρβαρικών φύλων εντός της αυτοκρατορίας αποτέλεσε μια από τις σημαντικότερες διαδικασίες του βυζαντινού κράτους κατά την πρώιμη βυζαντινή περίοδο. Η πολιτική εξουσία προωθούσε την πολιτική της εποίκισης των συνοριακών περιοχών με ξένους λαούς, στοχεύοντας στη δημογραφική, οικονομική και κυρίως στρατιωτική ενίσχυση της αυτοκρατορικής επικράτειας μέσα σε μια περίοδο κατά την οποία το Βυζάντιο ενεπλάκη σε πλήθος πολεμικών αναμετρήσεων πολλές φορές σε πολλαπλά μέτωπα. Επιπροσθέτως, με την υποταγή και αφομοίωση μέρους του πληθυσμού θα πετύχαινε κάποιο έλεγχο στις κινήσεις τους και μακροπρόθεσμα τη σταδιακή διάσπαση και αποδυνάμωση τους. Από τους λαούς που εγκαταστάθηκαν εντός της αυτοκρατορίας και υπηρέτησαν στον βυζαντινό στρατό, σημαντικό ήταν το ποσοστό των πολεμιστών που προσέφεραν οι λαοί του παραδουνάβιου χώρου. Από τους λαούς αυτούς διακρίνονταν κυρίως οι γερμανικής καταγωγής Γότθοι. Πληροφορίες για την εγκατάσταση και τη συμμετοχή τους στις εκστρατείες του βυζαντινού κράτους διαθέτουμε από τα τέλη του 4ου αιώνα μέχρι και τα μέσα του 6ου. Στο πρώτο μέρος της παρούσας διπλωματικής εργασίας επιχειρείται η μελέτη του ζητήματος της εγκατάστασης των Γότθων στην αυτοκρατορία, από τις αρχές του 4ου αιώνα μέχρι και τα μέσα του 6ου. Εξετάζονται οι περιοχές όπου οι Γότθοι εγκαταστάθηκαν, οι όροι εγκατάστασης τους και τα κριτήρια επιλογής των περιοχών αυτών. Οι σχέσεις όμως του Βυζαντίου με τους Γότθους δεν ήταν ανέκαθεν φιλικές. Οι βυζαντινές πηγές της πρώιμης βυζαντινής περιόδου κάνουν συχνά αναφορές στις πολεμικές συγκρούσεις της βυζαντινής αυτοκρατορίας με τους Γότθους. Μάλιστα, κατά τη διάρκεια των αναμετρήσεων αυτών το βυζαντινό κράτος γνώρισε μεγάλη ήττα στην περιοχή της Αδριανούπολης το 378, συνέπεια της οποίας να χαθούν τα 2/3 του βυζαντινού στρατού μαζί με τον αυτοκράτορα Ουάλη (364-378). Επομένως, η εγκατάσταση ενός λαού, ανέκαθεν εχθρικού προς το Βυζάντιο, εντός της αυτοκρατορίας δεν αποτέλεσε μια εύκολη διαδικασία. Η κεντρική εξουσία έπρεπε να κερδίσει την εμπιστοσύνη των γότθων εποίκων, προκειμένου να υλοποιήσει ένα ομαλό σχέδιο εγκατάστασης. Από την άλλη, η βυζαντινή κοινωνία κλήθηκε να εντάξει στον ιστό της ανομοιογενείς ομάδες πληθυσμού με τις οποίες είχε έρθει πολλές φορές σε σύγκρουση. Στο δεύτερο μέρος εξετάζονται οι επιπτώσεις της εγκατάστασης των Γότθων στην βυζαντινή Πολιτεία και κοινωνία καθώς επίσης και οι ιδεολογικές αντιλήψεις των Βυζαντινών για τους Γότθους. Η εργασία ολοκληρώνεται με τη μελέτη των επιδιώξεων και των αντιλήψεων των Γότθων για το Βυζάντιο. Δυστυχώς, η απουσία γραπτών κειμένων από φορείς του δικού τους πολιτισμού καθιστούν θολή την εικόνα του Βυζαντίου όπως την αντιλήφθηκαν οι τελευταίοι. Ωστόσο, η προσεχτική εξέταση των βυζαντινών πηγών επιτρέπει σε ένα βαθμό την εξαγωγή ορισμένων σημαντικών συμπερασμάτων σχετικά με τις προσδοκίες των διαφόρων γοτθικών πληθυσμιακών ομάδων που εγκαταστάθηκαν στην αυτοκρατορία.The barbarian's installation within the empire was one of the most important proceedings of the Byzantine state during the Early Byzantine period. The political authority promoted the policy of colonization of the boarded areas with foreign people with a view to enrichment of the demographic, economic, and mainly the military reinforcement of the imperial territory during a period which the Byzantium was involved in the numerous amount of wars. Additionaly with their subjugation and assimilation, part of their population, would achieve to have control of their movements and diminish their power. Between the peoples who settled within the empire and served in the Byzantine army, those of the Danube area offered significant number of warriors, especially the germanic people of Goths. Informations for their installations and participations in the Byzantine expeditions are known from the 4th century until the middle of the 6th century. In the premier part of this thesis, i attempt to study the importance of the gothic's settlements inside the Empire, from the beginning of the 4th century untill the middle of the 6th. I examine the areas where the Goths were settled, the conditions of their settlements and the selection criteria of these areas. However the Byzantine empire wasnt always friendly with the Goths. The Byzantine sources of the Early Byzantine period often mention the war conflicts between the Byzantium and the Goths. During these confrontations, the Byzantine Empire suffered a great defeat in the Battle of the Adrianopolis in 378, in which the Byzantine army lost 2/3 of its army and the emperor Valens was killed. Therefore, the establishment of the people who were always hostile to the Byzantine empire was not an easy process. The centrall government had to win the Goth's trust in orfer to achieved their friendly established. On the other hand, the Byzantine society forced to accept heterogenous populations with which had come into conflict for many years ago. The second part examines the effects of the gothic's settlements in the Byzantine state and society, as well as the ideological perceptions of the Byzantines about the Goths. This thesis is completed with the study of the gothic aspirations and perceptions about Byzantium. Unfortunately, the absence of their written texts from institutions of their own culture obscures the images of Byzantium as perceived by the Goths. However, a careful study of the Byzantines sources allows to draw some important conclusions about the expectations of the various Gothic populations which settled in the empire

Fog-enabled Scalable C-V2X Architecture for Distributed 5G and Beyond Applications

The Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem, as fostered by fifth generation (5G) applications, demands a highly available network infrastructure. In particular, the internet of vehicles use cases, as a subset of the overall IoT environment, require a combination of high availability and low latency in big volumes support. This can be enabled by a network function virtualization architecture that is able to provide resources wherever and whenever needed, from the core to the edge up to the end user proximity, in accordance with the fog computing paradigm. In this article, we propose a fog-enabled cellular vehicle-to-everything architecture that provides resources at the core, the edge and the vehicle layers. The proposed architecture enables the connection of virtual machines, containers and unikernels that form an application-as-a-service function chain that can be deployed across the three layers. Furthermore, we provide lifecycle management mechanisms that can efficiently manage and orchestrate the underlying physical resources by leveraging live migration and scaling functionalities. Additionally, we design and implement a 5G platform to evaluate the basic functionalities of our proposed mechanisms in real-life scenarios. Finally, the experimental results demonstrate that our proposed scheme maximizes the accepted requests, without violating the applications’ service level agreement.This work has been supported in part by the research projects SPOTLIGHT (722788), AGAUR (2017-SGR-891), 5G-DIVE (859881), SPOT5G (TEC2017-87456-P), MonB5G (871780) and 5G-Routes (951867)

Best Environmental Management Practice for the Food and Beverage Manufacturing Sector

This report describes best environmental management practices for food and beverage manufacturers. Best environmental management practices are those techniques, measures and actions that can be implemented by food and beverage manufacturers to minimise their impact on the environment all along the value chain of their products. They were identified together with sectoral experts on the basis of practices actually implemented by environmental frontrunners. The report outlines best environmental management practices that are broadly applicable to all food and beverage manufacturers, such as the carrying out of an environmental assessment, sustainable supply chain management, cleaning operations, improvement of energy efficiency, use of renewable energy, optimisation of transport and distribution, refrigeration and freezing operations and food waste prevention. Additionally, specific best practices for nine individual subsectors are presented, namely the processing of coffee, manufacture of olive oil, manufacture of soft drinks, manufacture of beer, production of meat and poultry meat products, manufacture of fruit juice, cheese making operations, manufacture of bread, biscuits and cakes and manufacture of wine. Alongside best environmental management practices, the report also identifies suitable sector specific environmental performance indicators related to the topic of each best practices, and, when possible, benchmarks of excellence, corresponding to the level of performance achieved by frontrunners. This report can be used by food and beverage manufacturers as a source of information to identify relevant actions they can implement to improve their environmental performance. On its basis, the EMAS (EU Eco-Management and Audit Scheme) Sectoral Reference Document on Best Environmental Management Practice for the food and beverage manufacturing sector was developed (according to Article 46 of Regulation (EC) No 1221/2009).JRC.B.5-Circular Economy and Industrial Leadershi

Best Environmental Management Practice in the Telecommunications and ICT Services sector: Learning from front runners

The steady growth over the past decades of the Telecommunications and ICT Services sector, and its uninterrupted progress with the constant provision of renewed and ever-faster services as well as new applications, has transformed many aspects of our society and lives but has also spurred the development of ever more power- and resource-hungry systems, contributing to the sector’s ever-growing environmental footprint. On the basis of an in-depth analysis of the actions implemented by environmental front runners and of existing EU and industry initiatives addressing the environmental performance of the sector, this report describes a set of best practices with high potential for larger uptake. These are called Best Environmental Management Practices (BEMPs). The BEMPs, identified in close cooperation with a technical working group comprising experts from the sector, cover improvement of environmental performance across all significant environmental aspects (energy consumption, resource consumption, etc.) at the different life cycle stages (planning and design, installation, operation, end-of-life management, etc.) and for different ICT assets (software, data centres, etc.). Besides actions aimed at reducing the environmental impact of Telecommunications and ICT Services operations (with a special focus on data centres and telecommunications networks), the report also identifies best practices in the ICT sector that contribute towards reducing the environmental impact of other sectors of the economy ("greening by ICT" measures). The report gives a wide range of information (environmental benefits, economics, indicators, benchmarks, references, etc.) for each of the proposed best practices in order to be a source of inspiration and guidance for any company in the sector wishing to improve its environmental performance. In addition, it will be the technical basis for a Sectoral Reference Document on Best Environmental Management Practice for the Telecommunications and ICT Services sector, to be produced by the European Commission according to Article 46 of Regulation (EC) No 1221/2009 (EMAS Regulation).JRC.B.5-Circular Economy and Industrial Leadershi