Evaluation de la durabilité des systèmes de production agricoles : limites des démarches normatives et voies d'amélioration

International audienceThe concepts of sustainable development and multifunctional agriculture are at the origin of several efforts aiming at their clarification and the development of methods to make them operational. The main principles of agricultural sustainability stress the importance of economic viability, environmental protection and social equity. For farms and farmers, the concept of sustainability is commonly grounded by methods and tools to evaluate their contribution these principles. These methods and tools, abundantly developed in France (IDEA, DIALECTE, ARBRE ...) are commonly based on a fixed set of criteria and indicators chosen a priori, a series of preset measurement and monitoring methods to quantify indicators and aggregation and weighting methods aiming at a single note for the sustainability of the farm. The objective of this contribution is to critically review such types of methods and tools showing their unsuitability for common cases in the context of French agriculture such as (i) farms in transition phases or aiming at radical changes in the farming activities, (ii) multifunctional farms or farms strongly dependent upon off-farm activities and (iii) farms inserted in a territory where their sustainability depends on the spatial and organizational arrangements among different farms. The contribution concludes with some principle to develop evaluation approaches to overcome some of the limitations of existing methods

Collective Intelligence to solve creative problems in conceptual design phase

In industry, there is an interest in the collective resolution of creative problems found on the phase of conceptual design. In this work we introduce an information-based software framework for collaboration in the problem resolution process. This framework proposes the implementation of techniques from the collective intelligence research field in combination with the systematic methods provided by TRIZ theory. Both approaches are centered in the human aspect of the innovation process, and are complementary. While collective intelligence focuses on the intelligence or behavior that emerges in collaborative work, the TRIZ theory is centered in the individual's capacity to solve problems. The framework's objective is to improve the individual creativity provided by TRIZ method and tools, with the value created by the collective contributions. This work aims to expand the horizon in the field of computer aided innovation (CAI), to the next evolutionary step called Open CAI 2.0

Management of «Systematic Innovation»: A kind of quest for the Holy Grail!

In this paper, authors propose a contribution for improving the open innovation processes. It shows the necessity to get an efficient methodology for open innovation in order to build a computer aided tool for inventive design in Process Systems Engineering (PSE). The proposed methodology will be evocated to be fully used in the context of the “revolutionary” concepts around the so-called factory for the future, also called integrated digital factory, innovative factory… As a result the main contribution of this paper is to propose a software prototype for an Open Computer Aided Innovation 2.0. By definition this open innovation relies on collaboration. This collaboration should enable a community, with a very broad spectrum of skills, to share data, information, knowledge and ideas. As a consequence, a first sub objective is to create a methodological framework that takes advantages of collaboration and collective intelligence (with its capacity to join intelligence and knowledge). Furthermore, the raise of the digital company and more particularly the breakthroughs in information technologies is a powerful enabler to extend and improve the potential of collective intelligence. The second sub objective is to propose a problem resolution process to impel creativity of expert but also to develop, validate and select innovative solutions. After dealing with the importance of Process Innovation and Problem solving investigation in PSE, the proposed approach originally based on an extension of the TRIZ theory (Russian acronym for Theory of Inventive Problem Solving), has been improved by using approach such as case-based reasoning, in order to tackle and revisit problems encountered in the PSE. A case study on biomass is used to illustrate the capabilities of the methodology and the tool

HOW TO EVALUATE THE IMPACTS OF THE EXTENSION OF INNOVATIVE FARMING SYSTEMS AT THE REGIONAL SCALE? SCENARIO ANALYSIS OF ORGANIC AGRICULTURE IN THE CAMARGUE

N° ISBN - 978-2-7380-1284-5International audienceThe Camargue, South of France, is an agricultural region highly multifunctional and with strong issues linking the environment and the society. Evaluating scenarios of alternative agricultural systems extension in this region imply to use tools that allow Prospective, Integrated, Multiscale and Participatory Assessment of Agricultural Systems (PIMPAAS). In this paper, we reviewed the use of three approaches (BEM, ABM and LUCC) for PIMPAAS. After a presentation of the three approaches, we analyzed their advantages and drawbacks, and possible complementarities. As it is not possible to implement the three approaches together at one time, our aim was to make a choice for the Camargue. We found LUCC to be the least suitable approach, mainly because it does not allow participatory processes at farm scale. BEM and MAS appeared to be the most suitable tools as they allow quantitative and ex-ante studies and are able to incorporate the three sustainability domains. Their ways of up-scaling are complementary: BEM seems efficient for up-scaling from field to farm and field to region, whereas MAS allow up-scaling without aggregation from farm to region. We believe that the combination of the two approaches will enable highly participatory evaluations of alternative farming systems. Using the results of this analysis, we recommend using a combination of MAS and BEM in a global framework. We are currently implementing a framework in the Camargue to test this combination and to evaluate its suitability for prospective, multiscale, multicriteria and participatory evaluation

Case Based Reasoning for Chemical Engineering Design

With current industrial environment (competition, lower profit margin, reduced time to market, decreased product life cycle, environmental constraints, sustainable development, reactivity, innovation…), we must decrease the time for design of new products or processes. While the design activity is marked out by several steps, this article proposed a decision support tool for the preliminary design step. This tool is based on the Case Based Reasoning (CBR) method. This method has demonstrated its effectiveness in other domains (medical, architecture…) and more recently in chemical engineering. This method, coming from Artificial Intelligence, is based on the reusing of earlier experiences to solve new problems. The goal of this article is to show the utility of such method for unit operation (for example) pre-design but also to propose several evolutions for CBR through a domain as complex as the chemical engineering is (because of its interactions, non linearity, intensification problems…). During the pre-design step, some parameters like operating conditions are not precisely known but we have an interval of possible values, worse we only have a partial description of the problem.. To take into account this imprecision in the problem description, the CBR method is coupled with the fuzzy sets theory. After a mere presentation of the CBR method, a practical implementation is described with the choice and the pre-design of packing for separation columns

Trajectographie multisenseurs en détection passive radar : application au cas d'une force militaire navale

- Cet article traite de la trajectographie passive multisenseurs appliquée à la tenue de situation tactique radar. L'estimateur mis en oeuvre est celui du maximum de vraisemblance. Deux types de mesures sont considérés: les mesures angulaires et les mesures de différence de temps d'arrivée des signaux sur les deux capteurs. L'estimateur basé sur la prise en compte simultanée des deux types de mesures est étudié

Application de la théorie de l'information pour l'extraction passive radar en guerre électronique marine

Dans l'environnement électromagnétique naval, les impulsions émises par les radars sont recueillies par des récepteurs passifs. Ces impulsions sont regroupées en blocs selon la similitude de certains paramètres. Le but de cette étude est alors de mettre en place un critère de regroupement des blocs d'impulsions pour reconstruire les formes d'ondes émises par les radars. Cela doit permettre d'obtenir une meilleure qualité d'identification d'émetteur. La méthode de regroupement des blocs utilisée est une méthode de fusion basée sur un calcul d'entropie, l'entropie permettant d'estimer le degré de désordre du signal obtenu pour les cas de fusion envisagés

Exploiting Long-Term Connectivity and Visual Motion in CRF-based Multi-Person Tracking

We present a Conditional Random Field (CRF) approach to tracking-by-detection in which we model pairwise factors linking pairs of detections and their hidden labels, as well as higher order potentials defined in terms of label costs. To the contrary of previous works, our method considers long-term connectivity between pairs of detections and models similarities as well as dissimilarities between them, based on position, color and as novelty, visual motion cues. We introduce a set of feature-specific confidence scores which aim at weighting feature contributions according to their reliability. Pairwise potential parameters are then learned in an unsupervised way from detections or from tracklets. Label costs are defined so as to penalize the complexity of the labeling, based on prior knowledge about the scene, e.g. about the location of entry/exit zones. Experiments on PETS 2009, TUD and CAVIAR datasets show the validity of our approach, and similar or better performance than recent state-of-the-art algorithms

Design acceleration in chemical engineering

Nowadays, Chemical Engineering has to face a new industrial context with for example: the gradually falling of hydrocarbon reserves after 2020-2030, relocation, emerging of new domains of application (nano-micro technologies) which necessitate new solutions and knowledges… All this tendencies and demands accelerate the need of tool for design and innovation (technically, technologically). In this context, this paper presents a tool to accelerate innovative preliminary design. This model is based on the synergy between: TRIZ (Russian acronym for Theory of Inventive Problem Solving) and Case Based Reasoning (CBR). The proposed model offers a structure to solve problem, and also to store and make available past experiences in problems solving. A tool dedicated to chemical engineering problems, is created on this model and a simple example is treated to explain the possibilities of this tool