Refining the survey model of the LADM ISO 19152–2: Land registration

Cadastral surveying involves the delineation of property boundaries and the extent and documentation of easements and restrictions (imposed by private or public law), forming the foundation for Land Administration (LA). Survey models and processes constitute vital parts of Cadastres and Land Administration Systems (LASs). However, these...

Non-Contact Acoustic Emission Monitoring of Corrosion under Marine Growth

Offshore support structures and mooring systems are predominantly subject to corrosion and fatigue. These structures are typically covered with marine growth of various types. Conventional inspection methods for assessment of the structural integrity require access to the cleaned surface of these structures; however, the cleaning process is...

Microgrid planning based on computational intelligence methods for rural communities: A case study in the José Painecura Mapuche community, Chile

Microgrids (MGs) are sustainable solutions for rural zone electrification that use local renewable resources. However, only careful planning at the start of an MG project can ensure its future optimal operation. In this paper, a novel methodology for MG planning by using the uncertainty characterization of renewable resources and demand is...

The JOREK non-linear extended MHD code and applications to large-scale instabilities and their control in magnetically confined fusion plasmas

JOREK is a massively parallel fully implicit non-linear extended magneto-hydrodynamic (MHD) code for realistic tokamak X-point plasmas. It has become a widely used versatile simulation code for studying large-scale plasma instabilities and their control and is continuously developed in an international community with strong involvements in...

Cardiopulmonary coupling indices to assess weaning readiness from mechanical ventilation

The ideal moment to withdraw respiratory supply of patients under Mechanical Ventilation at Intensive Care Units (ICU), is not easy to be determined for clinicians. Although the Spontaneous Breathing Trial (SBT) provides a measure of the patients’ readiness, there is still around 15–20% of predictive failure rate. This work is a proof of...

Model-Based Evaluation of Methods for Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia Estimation

Objective: Respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) refers to heart rate oscillations synchronous with respiration, and it is one of the major representations of cardiorespiratory coupling. Its strength has been suggested as a biomarker to monitor different conditions, and diseases. Some approaches have been proposed to quantify the RSA, but it is...

A Robust Estimation of the Cardiorespiratory Coupling in the Presence of Abnormal Beats

Respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) is one of the forms of cardiorespiratory coupling. It has been suggested as a potential biomarker for diverse illnesses and conditions. In general, methods for non-invasive quantification of the RSA combine information from heart rate variability (HRV) and respiratory signals. Abnormal beats, which commonly...

A water-filling primal-dual algorithm for approximating non-linear covering problems

Obtaining strong linear relaxations of capacitated covering problems constitute a significant technical challenge even for simple settings. For one of the most basic cases, the Knapsack-Cover (Min-Knapsack) problem, the relaxation based on knapsack-cover inequalities has an integrality gap of 2. These inequalities are exploited in more...

Fouling mitigation by cationic polymer addition into a pilot‐scale anaerobic membrane bioreactor fed with blackwater

Cationic polymers have proven to be suitable flux enhancers (FEs) in large‐scale aerobic membrane bioreactors (MBRs), whereas in anaerobic membrane bioreactors (AnMBRs) research is scarce, and so far, only done at lab‐scale. Results from MBRs cannot be directly translated to AnMBRs because the extent and nature of membrane fouling under...

On the Design of a Modern and Generic Approach to Land Registration: The Colombia Experience

A significant number of undocumented people-to-land relationships exist in many countries; they constitute an important barrier to economic development, especially that of rural areas. Although countries often have established procedures to register these relationships, typically, procedures involve outdated, costly and time-consuming workflows,...

Load estimation for microgrid planning based on a self-organizing map methodology

This study presents a novel load estimation method for isolated communities that do not receive energy or only receive it for a limited time each day. These profiles have been used to determine the installed capacity of generating units for microgrid electrification projects. The social characteristics and lifestyles of isolated communities...

Microgrid planning based on fuzzy interval prediction models of renewable resources

Microgrids are sustainable solutions for electrification of rural zones that can make use of their local renewable resources. In this paper, we propose a new method for microgrid planning which includes the effect of the uncertainties of the renewable resources explicitly. Fuzzy interval models are used because they can capture nonlinearities...

Controlled water-level system for breach analysis of levees within an enhanced acceleration field

Correct scaling of breach analysis of river levees is a challenging task that is not easily accomplished by physical modelling. Several small-scale physical model tests have been conducted at 1-g level, which cannot truly represent the stress-dependency of soils, whereas the scaling issues arising from centrifuge modelling have not been fully...

Design and analysis procedure for centrifuge devices with a Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) system

Structural analysis of new devices to be used in centrifuge facilities can be a challenging task. Initial calculations, based on simple basic static principles, are usually used. However, as devices placed in a geotechnical centrifuge are often complex structures, advanced analysis methods to assess their performance under enhanced acceleration...

Insecticide contamination of the River Meuse in August 2007. Risk Assessment on the basis of MAM calculations

On 31 July the company Chimac-Agriphar from Ougrée discharged 64 kilo chlorpyrifos and 12 kilo cypermethrin into the River Meuse, imposing risks to recreation (swimming and fishing), ecology (about 20 to 25 ton fish were killed) and drinking water production. In this study a retrospective risk analysis of this accidental spill was done in order...

Causal Model for Air Transport Safety: Final report

Investigacion sobre los desechos solidos de la ciudad de Masaya, Nicaragua