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Improving the Resilience of Historic Areas Coping with Natural and Climate Change Hazards: Interventions Based on Multi-Criteria Methodology
Get PDFPublisher Copyright: © 2023 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.Cultural and Natural Heritage (CNH), a legacy bequeathed to present and future generations, casts light on the humanity of past generations. However, the increase and the intensity of natural and climate-change-related hazards threaten the conservation of such heritage. The aim of this research is to develop a multi-criteria prioritization methodology in support of intervention decisions, to enhance the resilience of CNH conservation through sustainable development. The application of two methods, the Integrated Value Model for Sustainability Assessment and the Analytical Hierarchy Process, ensures both the contribution of a wide panel of experts of heritage conservation and equitable indicator assessment measured on different scales. The prioritization methodology has been developed considering the most common hazards and specific disaster-risk scenarios. The three dimensions of sustainable development and both technical and cultural dimensions are also considered in the methodology. All dimensions and their indicators are weighted to produce a Prioritization Index to support decision-making.The authors wish to acknowledge funding received from the European Commission through the SHELTER project (GA 821282) and, especially to the contribution of the University of Bologna, Tecnalia Research and Innovation, and EKOU. Additionally, the authors are thankful for the funding received from the SAREN Research Group (IT1619-22, Basque Government).Peer reviewe
Is your city planned for all citizens as they age? Selecting the indicators to measure neighbourhoods’ age-friendliness in the urban planning field
Get PDFPublisher Copyright: © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.In many countries, urban population ageing trends are a recognized policy issue that requires a multidisciplinary approach. Although some fields, such as urban planning, encounter challenges in incorporating age-friendliness, they are crucial in enhancing the quality of life and well-being of all urban inhabitants. Additionally, they should provide solutions on how cities can cater to the needs of a population that is living longer than ever before. To accomplish this, older people’s needs can be translated into multidomain indicators to be adopted when planning the cities. Using the World Health Organization’s age-friendly cities indicators framework as a basis, the objective of this research is to establish a new indicators framework for urban planners and policymakers. With this aim, within the H2020 URBANAGE project, various cities have followed a process to adapt the WHO´s general framework to their specific needs and interests, through research, iteration with the cities and co-creation methodologies with older people and civil servants. This process has resulted in the definition of an indicators framework, which aims to evaluate the age-friendliness of various neighbourhoods within a city. It also intends to inform the development of decision-support technologies to achieve age-friendly cities in the different cities involved.Peer reviewe
Modelling and Measuring Trust in Human–Robot Collaboration
Get PDFPublisher Copyright: © 2024 by the authors.Recognizing trust as a pivotal element for success within Human–Robot Collaboration (HRC) environments, this article examines its nature, exploring the different dimensions of trust, analysing the factors affecting each of them, and proposing alternatives for trust measurement. To do so, we designed an experimental procedure involving 50 participants interacting with a modified ‘Inspector game’ while we monitored their brain, electrodermal, respiratory, and ocular activities. This procedure allowed us to map dispositional (static individual baseline) and learned (dynamic, based on prior interactions) dimensions of trust, considering both demographic and psychophysiological aspects. Our findings challenge traditional assumptions regarding the dispositional dimension of trust and establish clear evidence that the first interactions are critical for the trust-building process and the temporal evolution of trust. By identifying more significant psychophysiological features for trust detection and underscoring the importance of individualized trust assessment, this research contributes to understanding the nature of trust in HRC. Such insights are crucial for enabling more seamless human–robot interaction in collaborative environments.Peer reviewe
Ionogels based on protic ionic liquid - lithium salt mixtures
Get PDFPublisher Copyright: © 2024 The Author(s)The effect of the addition of lithium nitrate on the liquid range and electrical conductivity of mixtures of a protic ionic liquid, ethylammonium nitrate (EAN) with LiNO3 is reported in this work. Moreover, changes in these properties upon confinement in silica-based matrices are also analysed and related to variations on the microstructure of the mixtures. Our results show that gelation of the mixtures induces amorphous behaviour in all the samples, but no significant changes in the thermal stability are detected. However, important differences on the electrical conductivity of the liquid and gel states of the mixtures were observed. While this magnitude decreases with the addition of salt in the liquid samples for all the temperatures it increases at low concentrations of LiNO3 up to a maximum in the gelled samples with the lowest concentration of added salt (0.1 mol of salt by kg of EAN). High resolution magic angle spinning (HRMAS) NMR shows that the addition of lithium nitrate increases the mobility (both rotational and translational motion) of the cation EA+ within the ionogel and the diffusion of the cation provides evidence of the presence of two different populations of the same molecules experiencing two distinct apparent diffusion coefficients (bi-exponential decay of magnetization in diffusion NMR experiments), while it is mono-exponential in the pure ionic liquid. The Li+ cation is shown to display a higher mobility (both rotational and translational motion) in the ionogel than in the neat ionic liquid. The frustration of the formation of solvation complexes due to the confinement is suspected to be behind this behaviour.Peer reviewe
Assessment of the Potential of Commercial Buildings for Energy Management in Energy Performance Contracts
No full textPublisher Copyright: © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024.The Energy Performance Building Directive encourages Member States to establish clear long-term renovation strategies, highlighting the value of energy renovation for both the envelope and the smart services application in buildings. There is, however, a lack of works that effectively examine the cost-effectiveness linked to both the envelope retrofitting and the smartness of the building, which could hinder the effective implementation and prevent building owners, occupants, and stakeholders from taking full advantage of these strategies. This study presents a methodology to assess the most suitable “target” market across Europe for energy renovation. The work focuses on different typologies of commercial buildings, evaluating their potential for energy renovation under different boundary conditions such as climate or demand response market maturity. The assessment is performed in two stages: qualitative identification of those countries with the highest interest for renovation and energy management and quantitative assessment of the top candidates regarding their potential for renovation under different retrofitting scenarios in energy and economic terms. The study aims to serve as a decision-making process to explore and identify the potential for energy performance contracts for different typologies at the European level.Peer reviewe
Automated Driving Vehicle Functionality as Guardian Angel
No full textPublisher Copyright: © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024.The concept of the Guardian Angel system represents a pivotal advancement in vehicular safety, with a focus on enhancing the driving experience for individuals with diminished driving skills, particularly elderly drivers seeking to retain their mobility. This system functions as an unobtrusive co-pilot, intervening only when necessary, and empowering drivers to maintain control while ensuring their safety. By actively monitoring both the external environment and the interior of the vehicle, the Guardian Angel system adeptly identifies potential hazards and triggers interventions in response to imminent collisions, road departures, or internal factors such as driver distraction or drowsiness. Through a comprehensive array of Human–Machine Interfaces (HMIs), the Guardian Angel system communicates critical information to the driver, enhancing situational awareness and facilitating seamless cooperation between humans and machine. The holistic design ensures that the system operates unobtrusively in the background, engaging only in safety–critical situations and providing clear explanations for its interventions. This paper presents a detailed exposition of the Guardian Angel system's architecture, its controller design, and the diverse range of HMIs employed to relay information to the driver. The focus here lies in articulating the system's conceptual foundation, design principles, and the potential it holds for transforming the driving experience into a safer and more empowering endeavor for drivers of varying skills.Peer reviewe
Dimensionally Stable Anion Exchange Membranes Based on Macromolecular-Cross-Linked Poly(arylene piperidinium) for Water Electrolysis
Get PDFPublisher Copyright: © 2024 The Authors. Published by American Chemical SocietyThe advancement of anion exchange membranes (AEMs) with superior ionic conductivity has been greatly hindered due to the inherent “trade-off” between membrane swelling and ionic conductivity. To resolve this dilemma, macromolecular covalently cross-linked C-FPVBC-x AEMs were fabricated by combining partially functionalized ether-bond-free polystyrene (FPVBC) with poly(arylene piperidinium). The results from atomic force microscopy reveal that an increase in the ratio of FPVBC promotes the fabrication of microphase separation morphology, resulting in a high ionic conductivity of 40.15 mS cm-1 (30 °C) for the C-FPVBC-1.7 membrane. Molecular dynamics simulations further examine the ionic conduction effect of cross-linked AEMs. Besides, the unique cross-linking structure significantly improves mechanical and alkaline stability. After treatment in 1 M KOH at 50 °C for 1200 h, the C-FPVBC-1.7 membrane shows only a 6.9% decrease in conductivity. The C-FPVBC-1.7 AEM-based water electrolyzer achieves a high current density of 890 mA cm-2 at 2.4 V (80 °C) and maintains good stability, enduring over 100 h at 100 mA cm-2 (50 °C). These results demonstrate the significant potential of macromolecularly cross-linked AEMs for practical applications in water electrolysis.We greatly appreciate financial support from The Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) as a part of the Vici project STW 016.160.312. The China Scholarship Council (CSC) is gratefully acknowledged.Peer reviewe
On the applicability of PdAg membranes in propane dehydrogenation processes
Get PDFPublisher Copyright: © 2023 The AuthorsThe applicability of PdAg membranes in the propane dehydrogenation process has been evaluated in this work. The integration of membranes into the propane dehydrogenation process has the potential of making a significant step forward in energy and resource efficiency of the selective production of propylene. To assess the compatibility of the PdAg membrane with the process conditions of propane dehydrogenation, two double-skin PdAg membranes were exposed to the emulated process conditions of two cases: 1. A fully integrated membrane-reactor system (higher temperature) and 2. A cascade of catalyst and membrane separator units (lower temperature). The results of this study showed that at high temperature (475–500 °C) strong reduction of the hydrogen flux is observed during exposure to reactant and product containing mixtures. The reason for this is the deposition of carbonaceous species on the active sites of the membrane. Additionally, also the lifetime of the membrane (in terms of selectivity) was significantly lower due to the regeneration performed at high temperature in diluted air. The lower temperature experiments (300–350 °C) showed a much lower degree of deactivation and at the same time the membrane could be regenerated in air repeatedly without visible reduction of its selectivity. These findings show that the DS-PdAg membrane can be repeatedly exposed to reaction-regeneration cycles at acceptable activity and without significant loss of selectivity when operated in a cascade configuration at a temperature at or below 350 °C.This work has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program under grant agreement No 869896 (MACBETH).Peer reviewe
An Early Decision Support Tool for Energy-Focused Renovation of Residential Buildings
No full textPublisher Copyright: © 2024 University of Split, FESB.In the early stages of building renovation projects, the lack of information on the existing building and an unclear definition of project objectives have been identified as critical bottlenecks. An early decision support tool has been developed to mitigate or overcome these barriers. The tool provides initial estimates tailored to the specific building and climate being assessed, and can be used to guide the renovation design at an early stage, even from very limited information. It includes the automatic generation of potential renovation scenarios, a dynamic energy simulation of existing and renovated cases, integrated economic and environmental assessments from a life cycle perspective, and a multicriteria analysis that ranks renovation alternatives to meet the interests of the stakeholders involved. The user obtains an initial indicative budget and the expected potential benefits of several renovation projects over comfort, energy consumption, economic cost and environmental performance. One of the main assets of the tool is the reduction in time and cost at initial phases of the renovation process, avoiding the need of site visits and the use of more laborious simulation tools.Peer reviewe
Effect of processing on thermal properties of pentaglycerine-based solid-solid phase change materials
Get PDFPublisher Copyright: © 2023 The Author(s)Plastic crystals hold great potential for compact and cost-effective thermal energy storage (TES) systems due to their solid-solid transitions, high latent heat, and tunable transition temperatures. However, the impact of processing on their thermal properties remains underexplored. Pentaglycerine (PG)-based composites, suitable for TES applications at 80 °C, doped with two sizes of expanded graphite (EG) are investigated in this work. Effects of pressing and casting and common processing methods are evaluated. A comprehensive analysis of key thermal properties characterizing phase change materials was conducted. Specifically, the research focuses on the evaluation of thermal conductivity in both radial and axial directions, performing a thorough study of latent heats and subcooling using differential scanning calorimetry, conducting in situ characterization through solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance, and assessing solid-solid transition kinetics. This study highlights the significant influence of processing on the thermal properties of organic plastic crystals. Adequate processing enhances the effectiveness of EG in addressing the low thermal conductivity of plastic crystals and preventing latent heat drops associated with nanoconfinement effects. Additionally, notable reductions in subcooling can be achieved in PG-based composites simply through this processing, by reducing grain size and consequently lowering the activation energies in the plastic-to-crystal transitions.The research is funded by the Department of Economic Development, Sustainability and Environment of the Basque Government (Programa Elkartek 2023, KK-2023/00063). The authors also gratefully acknowledge Yagmur Polat and Cristina Luengo for their technical support.Peer reviewe