6 research outputs found
Natural gas system expansion plan / ǂby Mary Fitzpatrick, principal analyst
No full text1 online resource (5 pages)"October 26, 2021."Discusses the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority's (PURA) decision reviewing the 2019 system expansion reconciliation mechanisms filed by the local distribution companies (LDCs, i.e., Connecticut Natural Gas (CNG), Southern Natural Gas (SNG), and Yankee
Solar projects on brownfields, carports, and canopies / by Mary Fitzpatrick, principal analyst
No full text1 online resource (12 pages) : 1 color map"October 6, 2021."; Includes bibliographical references (page 12)Discusses barriers to developing solar projects on brownfields, carports, and canopies, and, policy options to encourage these project
State agencies serving people who are deaf or hard of hearing / by Mary Fitzpatrick, principal analyst
No full text1 online resource (13 pages)"September 10, 2021."Discusses state agencies in other states that primarily serve deaf or hard of hearing people. Highlights those agencies that act as a "gateway" to other state services or have interpreters on staff who provide services in the communit
COVID-19 executive orders affecting health and human services / by Nicole Dube (principal analyst, report coordinator), Mary Fitzpatrick (associate analyst, report co-coordinator) and Office of Legislative Research staff
No full text1 online resource (33 pages)Updated August 11, 2020Provides brief summaries of the governor's COVID-19 executive orders concerning health and human services. Also includes all related executive orders since the governor's March 10, 2020, declaration of public health and civil preparedness emergencies, through August 10, 202
Requirements engineering for business workflow systems: a scenario-based approach
No full textWorkflow implementations require a deep understanding of business and human cooperation. Several approaches have been proposed to address this need for understanding, but largely in a descriptive way. Attempts to use them in software development have had mixed results. The work reported here proposes that these approaches can be used in a generative way, as part of the requirement engineering process, by (a) extending requirements engineering modelling techniques with underlying cooperation properties, (b) integrating these techniques through the use of a derivation modelling approach, and (c) providing pragmatic heuristics and guidelines that support the real-world requirements engineering practitioner to ensure a high probability of success for the business workflow system to be developed. This thesis develops and evaluates a derivation modelling approach that is based on scenario modelling. It supports clear and structured views of cooperation properties, and allows the derivation of articulation protocols from business workflow models in a scenario-driven manner. This enables requirements engineering to define how the expectations of the cooperative situation are to be fulfilled by the system to be built - a statement of requirements for business workflow systems that reflects the richness of these systems, but also acts as a feasible starting point for development. The work is evaluated through a real-world case study of business workflow management. The main contribution of this work is a demonstration that the above problems in modelling requirements for business workflow systems can be addressed by scenario-based derivation modelling approach. The method transforms models through a series of properties involving cooperation, which can be addressed by using what are effectively extensions of current requirements engineering methods
Physical and geochemical characterisation of canal sediments in the Black Country, West Midlands.
No full textA thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements of the University of
Wolverhampton for the award of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)Potentially harmful elements (PHEs) have been researched in a wide variety of disciplines, including pedology, chemistry, pollution science and medicine. Within the scientific community, emphasis has usually been placed on the toxic elements, such as cadmium, chromium, lead and arsenic, but rarely has there been consideration of interactions between PHEs, the sediment matrix and processes occurring in the sediments. Dredging of canals is needed for navigability purposes and consequently testing of dredged sediments (to assess whether sediments are hazardous) and landfilling can be costly for British Waterways facing constantly changing regulations and reduction in government grants. PHE mobility and availability in canal sediments can be affected by oxygen availability, pH and Redox. Remediation is thus becoming a priority for British Waterways to limit their operational costs. Zeolites, a type of remediation tool, have been widely studied in the past 30 years due to their attractive properties, such as molecular-sieving, high cation exchange capacities and their affinity for PHEs. The pilot study to investigate the efficiency of the clinoptilolite showed that there was a concentration difference between PHEs adsorbed by the clinoptilolite and the PHE concentration lost from the sediments from three sites in the West Midlands. Thorough characterisation of the sediments was needed to understand the speciation of the PHEs and the secondary processes occurring in the sediments. The different components of the sediments were analysed using various analytical methods, such as X-Ray Fluorescence spectroscopy (XRF), particle size and X-ray Diffraction (XRD) for the solid-inorganic phase, Ion Chromatography (IC) and Inductively Coupled Plasma-Optical Emissions Spectroscopy (ICP-OES) for the liquid phase (pore water), Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS) and organic loss on ignition for the organic phase, pH and Redox for the electrochemistry of the sediments and Scanning Electron Microscope with Energy Dispersive X-Ray analysis (SEM-EDX) for microscopy and imaging. The British Geological Survey (BGS) sequential extraction method was used to investigate the different phases in the sediments. pH remained near neutral for all three sites and Redox remained anoxic. Organic contents for all three sites were around 30% and contained most of the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons considered hazardous. Pore water showed only high concentrations of sulphates but low concentrations of PHEs, suggesting PHEs were not mobile. Sequential extraction confirmed the other results showing that PHEs were mainly associated with stable phases, such as iron and manganese oxides or sulphides. The results have been taken into consideration to design a new remediation strategy to maximise efficiency of the zeolite
