Decision Support Framework for Optimal Reservoir Operation to Mitigate Cyanobacterial Blooms in Rivers

Flow control flushing water from reservoirs has been imposed in South Korea for mitigating harmful cyanobacterial blooms (CyanoHABs) in rivers. This measure, however, can cause water shortage in reservoirs, as the measure adopting this flow control may require an additional amount of water which exceeds the water demand allocated to the...

An Analysis of the Emerging “Shared Mobility Hub” Concept in European Cities: Definition and a Proposed Typology

Seamless, efficient transport intermodality is a key aspect of the transition of cities toward sustainable mobility. The new “shared mobility hub” concept is increasingly gaining attention as a potential way to make this urgently needed transition happen. The present paper aims to provide an insightful view of the promising concept of shared...

Question-based development of high-risk medical devices: A proposal for a structured design and review process

Introduction: The recent introduction of the European Medical Device Regulation poses stricter legislation for manufacturers developing medical devices in the EU. Many devices have been placed into a higher risk category, thus requiring more data before market approval, and a much larger focus has been placed on safety. For implantable and...

A Unifying Framework for Reinforcement Learning and Planning

Sequential decision making, commonly formalized as optimization of a Markov Decision Process, is a key challenge in artificial intelligence. Two successful approaches to MDP optimization are reinforcement learning and planning, which both largely have their own research communities. However, if both research fields solve the same problem,...

A Multi-layer Modelling Framework for Techno-Socio-Economical Penetration of Photovoltaics

Urban areas rely on the wide implementation of X-Integrated Photovoltaic (X-IPV) systems to provide green electricity for the sustainable electrification. In this research, a modelling framework to accurately predicting their output energy yield and asses their impact on the low voltage distribution grid has been developed. This tool can compute...

Making the design process in design education explicit: two exploratory case studies

The aim of design education is that students learn to think and act like designers. However, the focus in the design studio is mainly on the design product, whereas the ‘why and how’ of the design process are barely addressed. A risk of learning by performing real-life tasks without addressing the skills involved, that is, without receiving...

A Holistic Sustainability Framework for Waste Management in European Cities: Concept Development

Waste management represents a challenge for public authorities due to many reasons such as increased waste generation following urban population growth, economic burdens imposed on the municipal budget, and nuisances inevitably caused to the environment and local inhabitants. To optimize the system from a sustainability perspective, moving the...

A Framework for Strengthening Data Ecosystems to Serve Humanitarian Purposes

The incidence of natural disasters worldwide is increasing. As a result, a growing number of people is in need of humanitarian support, for which limited resources are available. This requires an effective and efficient prioritization of the most vulnerable people in the preparedness phase, and the most affected people in the response phase of...

Leidraad Transformatiekader: Pilot Erfgoedfabriek Noord Brabant

Proposition and testing of a conceptual model describing the movement of individual pedestrians within a crowd

Our understanding of crowd movements has rapidly improved over the course of the last decades. This study shows that the empirical research has not kept up with the pace of the simulation studies. Based on an extensive literature review, this study proposes a conceptual model describing the movements of individuals within a crowd. The model...

A Quality Framework for Agile Requirements: A Practitioner’s Perspective

Verification activities are necessary to ensure that the requirements are specified in a correct way. However, until now requirements verification research has focused on traditional up-front requirements. Agile or just-in-time requirements are by definition incomplete, not specific and might be ambiguous when initially specified, indicating a...

A conceptual framework for road safety and mobility applied to cycling safety

Scientific literature lacks a model which combines exposure to risk, risk, and the relationship between them. This paper presents a conceptual road safety framework comprising mutually interacting factors for exposure to risk resulting from travel behaviour (volumes, modal split, and distribution of traffic over time and space) and for risk ...

Modeling Socio-technical Systems with AgentSpring

AgentSpring is a new agent-based modeling framework especially suited to model and simulate complex socio-technical systems, such as energy markets or transport infrastructures. Common problems encountered when modeling and analyzing such systems are how to represent the variety of facts that describe the system and how to allow agents to make...

A framework for indicator-based reporting on sustainable consumption and production

The policy area of sustainable consumption and production (SCP) takes a holistic perspective on how society and the economy can be changed and better aligned with the goals of sustainability. This paper presents a framework developed for the selection of Indicators for use by the European Environment Agency (EEA) for assessing and reporting on...

A conceptual model for the development of household sustainable consumption indicators

Despite the diversity of tools to measure household consumption, indicators are one of the approaches with great potential, due to their communication and comprehensible easiness for non-scientific public, like families. The main objective of this research was the development of a framework to define the main steps and criteria to built...

Improving international relations conferences through virtual interactions: Embodying a multi-agent Z specification framework

This study investigates virtual interactions in distributed collaboration, with the aim to improve international relations conferences through virtual interactions. This is done by addressing the problems and issues of operation, context and strategy that frequently affect international relations conferences, while preserving conference...

A study on micro-gripping technologies

Scale Selection for Wave Models

The selection of scales for models with short waves, long waves and unindirectional current is discussed with particular emphasis on boundary layer motion and movement of sediment. The paper attempts to outline the present state of the art and to provide a framework for future research in the area of coastal sediment transport models at Queen's...