HighTech and Innovation Journal
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Sustainability Assessment in Housing Building Organizations for the Design of Strategies against Climate Change
Full text linkOne of the biggest problems facing humanity is climate change, and the construction industry is one of the sectors causing the greatest impact. Therefore, design strategies accompanied by new methodologies are necessary. In this sense, this paper aims to assess sustainability for the design of organizational strategies against climate change, based on a holistic and systemic approach to sustainability development, in order to contribute to the decision-making in housing building organizations. The assessment was based on: 1) climate change indicators were selected from a case study; 2) a survey based on climate change indicators was designed and applied to 21% of the total organizations under study; and 3) critical indicators were identified. The result shows that 58% of the climate change indicators are critical and give evidence of the negative outlook that housing building organizations have in terms of sustainability. About 69% of these indicators belong to the cultural dimension. This demonstrates the lack of knowledge, customs, habits, and commitment to implementing sustainable strategies against climate change in these organizations. Finally, the results can contribute to designing strategies to promote sustainable building by the local government, and thus achieve more sustainable organizations that contribute to reducing their impact on climate change. Doi: 10.28991/HIJ-2020-01-04-01 Full Text: PD
Topology Optimization by the use of 3D Printing Technology in the Product Design Process
Full text linkThe design process of a new product includes various stages, one of which is the evaluation of an idea for prototype manufacturing. The use of additive manufacturing is the most efficient and effective method for producing prototypes. In order to maximize the benefits from the use of additive manufacturing, we should choose the suitable printing parameters. The inner wall thickness is a vital parameter for defining the quantity of raw material used and the model solidity. Depending on the selected technique of additive manufacturing, the thickness of the inner wall may differ. In this study, we initially print furniture models with different wall thicknesses using the Inject Binder technique, and then we check their durability and resilience through compression tests. Evaluating the study results indicates the hollow printed specimens have high durability during compression tests and can be used to evaluate a design idea. Using the facts derived from lab tests, we perform Topology Optimization studies under different circumstances to evaluate the method and come up with the optimal design solution. Initially, the Topology Optimization study concerned only the table surface and not the whole model. The following studies were performed for the whole model, with different constraints and load cases defined. Then, the optimized models are redesigned in order to improve their durability. The performed studies show that Topology Optimization is a powerful tool, which is able to support the designers/ engineers to take the right decision during the design process. Doi: 10.28991/HIJ-2020-01-04-03 Full Text: PD
On the Role of Ethics in Shaping Technology Development
Full text linkImportant changes are taking place currently regarding the role of ethics in technology, particularly in the context of the fourth industrial revolution. The adoption by the General Assembly of the United Nations of the resolution A/RES/70/1 on September 27th, 2015, entitled "Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development", better known as "sustainable development goals", is making that different international organizations and countries adopt it as the minimum reference ethical framework for assuring that this revolution in course supports and contributes to achieving these goals. To better understand these changes, it is important to make a historical reference to how technology and the role of ethics have been understood during the past 50 years. In this paper, I take as reference the influential book "The Challenge Presented to Cultures by Science and Technology” (1977) by the Genevan philosopher Jean Ladriére, some ethical proposals made during the '90s, to end with some recent European Union (2019) and World Economic Forum (2018) ethical proposals. I conclude that there are continuities and discontinuities, first in Jean Ladriére's and others' conceptions of science and technology, and how recent proposals approach the issue, and second in the role of ethics in this fascinating and revolutionary process. However, we may envisage a radical transformation of the conception of technology in the context of the worldwide request to shape the fourth industrial revolution. Doi: 10.28991/HIJ-2020-01-02-05 Full Text: PD
Comparative Analysis of Implementation of Solar PV Systems Using the Advanced SPECA Modelling Tool and HOMER Software: Kenyan Scenario
Full text linkGlobally, attention has been focused on the pollution and exhaustion of fossil fuels allied to conventional energy sources, while non-conventional energy/renewable energy sources have always been considered clean and environmentally friendly. Of the two, the non-conventional (renewable) is being preferred because it is believed to be more environmentally friendly. Renewable Energy Technologies (RETs), especially Solar Photovoltaics, have seen many plants being constructed to either supplement the grid or as alternatives for those far from the grid. Solar Photovoltaics plants occupy large tracts of land that would have been used for other economic activities for revenue generation, such as agriculture, forestry, or tourism at archaeological sites. The negative impacts slow down the application of Solar PV, but a modelling tool that can easily and quantitively assess the impacts in monetary form would accelerate the Solar PV application. The work presents a developed modelling tool that is able to assess not only the techno-economic impacts but also the environmental impacts in monetary form, allowing one to be able to determine the viability of a plant in a given region. The results are compared with those of the HOMER software. Doi: 10.28991/HIJ-2020-01-01-02 Full Text: PD
Design and Implementation of a Web Application for Cultural Heritage
Full text linkWithin the field of Digital Humanities, a great effort has been made to digitize documents and collections in order to build catalogs and exhibitions on the Web. In this paper, we present WeME, a Web application for building a knowledge base, which can be used to describe digital documents. WeME can be used by different categories of users: archivists/librarians and scholars. WeME extracts information from some well-known Linked Data nodes, i.e. DBpedia and GeoNames, as well as traditional Web sources, i.e. VIAF. As a use case of WeME, we describe the knowledge base related to the Christopher Clavius's correspondence. Clavius was a mathematician and an astronomer of the XVI Century. He wrote more than 300 letters, most of which are owned by the Historical Archives of the Pontifical Gregorian University (APUG) in Rome. The built knowledge base contains 139 links to DBpedia, 83 links to GeoNames and 129 links to VIAF. In order to test the usability of WeME, we invited 26 users to test the application. Doi: 10.28991/HIJ-2020-01-02-04 Full Text: PD
DSS LANDS: A Decision Support System for Agriculture in Sardinia
Full text linkRecently, the use of DSSs application has been strongly increasing in the agricultural sector due to continuous climate change and the need to conduct more productive and sustainable agriculture. In this paper, we describe the prototype agricultural DSS LANDS developed for monitoring the main crop production in Sardinia. The DSS collects, organizes, integrates, and analyzes several types of data with different mathematical models. In particular, a case study on forecasting potato late blight is presented. We employed the Negative Prognosis model and the Fry model to forecast the period in which it is opportune to carry out fungicide treatments useful against the appearance of the pathogen. The experiments allowed us to outline the best criteria for local conditions, and the evaluation showed the effectiveness of the approach in a concrete case study. Doi: 10.28991/HIJ-2020-01-03-05 Full Text: PD
A Wearable MYO Gesture Armband Controlling Sphero BB-8 Robot
Full text linkIn this paper, we present the development and preliminary validation of a wearable system, which is combined with an algorithm interfacing the MYO gesture armband with a Sphero BB-8 robotic device. The MYO armband is a wearable device, which measures real-time EMG signals of the end user's forearm muscles as they execute a set of upper limb gestures. These gestures are interpreted and transmitted to the computing hardware via the Bluetooth Low Energy IEEE 802.15.1 wireless protocol. The algorithm analyzes and sorts the data and sends a set of commands to the Sphero robotic device while performing navigation movements. After designing and integrating the software and hardware architecture, we have validated the system with two sets of trials involving a series of commands performed in multiple iterations. The consequent reactions of the robots due to these commands, were recorded and the performance of the system was analyzed in a confusion matrix to obtain an average accuracy of the system outcome vs. the expected and desired actions. Results show that our integrated system can satisfactorily interface with the system in an intuitive way, with an accuracy rating of 85.7% and 92.9% for the two tests, respectively. Doi: 10.28991/HIJ-2020-01-04-05 Full Text: PD