1,721,250 research outputs found
Environmental Effectiveness of Swine Sewage Management: A Multicriteria AHP-Based Model for a Reliable Quick Assessment
No full textEnvironmental issues related to swine production are still a major concern for the general public and represent a key challenge for the swine industry. The environmental impact of higher livestock concentration is particularly significant where it coincides with weaker policy standards and poor manure management. Effective tools for environmental monitoring of the swine sewage management process become essential for verifying the environmental compatibility of farming facilities and for defining suitable policies aimed at increasing swine production sustainability. This research aims at the development and application of a model for a quick assessment of the environmental effectiveness of the pig farming sewage management process. In order to define the model, multicriteria techniques, and in particular, Saaty’s analytic hierarchy process, were used to develop an iterative process in which the various key factors influencing the process under investigation were analyzed. The model, named EASE (Environmental Assessment of Sewages management Effectiveness), was optimized and applied to the Lake Trasimeno basin (Umbria, Italy), an area of high natural, environmental and aesthetic value. In this context, inadequate disposal of pig sewage represents a potential source of very considerable pollution. The results have demonstrated how the multicriteria model can represent a very effective and adaptable tool also in those decision-making processes aimed at the sustainable management of livestock production
Special Issue on Sustainable Land Uses and Rural Governance
No full textLandscape is the dynamic result of the interactions between human activities and natural drivers. It is our living natural and cultural heritage and has an important public interest. The achievement of sustainable land use involves a balanced and harmonious fulfillment of three well-known pillars: Social needs, economic development, and environmental protection. Thus, a major issue in contemporary rural governance is the correct compromise between land use expansion and intensification for satisfying ever-growing human-needs—a major driver of habitat and natural resources loss—and the decline of rural populations and traditional land uses, leading to the abandonment of marginal areas. Moreover, rural/urban landscapes are still undergoing rapid changes connected to the loss of agricultural land, resulting in a mix of fragmented ecosystems.
With respect to the argument above, this Special Issue welcomes theoretical and case study contributions dealing with sustainable landscape governance at local and regional scales. Typical contributions deal with natural areas, rural landscapes, urban landscapes, metropolitan regions, ecosystem services, and human-environment systems around the world. Innovative and interdisciplinary approaches to the support of community-based landscape governance in rural as well as urban/rural areas are very much encouraged. We also welcome papers from broadly defined topics that are relevant to the theme of this Special Issue
A Survey on the Use of Lightweight Virtualization in I4.0 Manufacturing Environments
Full text linkOver the past decade, in the industrial sector we have witnessed the rise of a revolutionary movement, known as Industry 4.0, that promotes the digital transformation as the key to increase the competitiveness of manufacturing factories. Among the many technologies recognized as "drivers" of such revolutionary transition, microservices stand out as a software development paradigm capable of bringing several benefits to the manufacturing process. Whilst the literature offers many examples of initiatives exploiting microservices in digitally-advanced sectors (e.g., finance, telecommunication, retailing), its potential in the industrial manufacturing is yet to be fully unleashed. We conducted an extensive literature survey in the twofold aim of bringing to the reader's attention the many benefits that the microservices paradigm may offer in industrial manufacturing settings, and drawing a picture of how light virtualization techniques are actually being exploited to achieve Industry 4.0 digitization goals. In this paper, we propose a structured analysis of the collected literature proposals which combines the benefits sought by authors when approaching to the microservices techniques and the specific scope of application of proposals. We conclude the paper highlighting the research aspects that have not been sufficiently explored in the literature and that would deserve further attention in the near future
IoTwins: Implementing Distributed and Hybrid Digital Twins in Industrial Manufacturing and Facility Management Settings
Full text linkA Digital Twin (DT) refers to a virtual representation or digital replica of a physical object, system, process, or entity. This concept involves creating a detailed, real-time digital counterpart that mimics the behavior, characteristics, and attributes of its physical counterpart. DTs have the potential to improve efficiency, reduce costs, and enhance decision-making by providing a detailed, real-time understanding of the physical systems they represent. While this technology is finding application in numerous fields, such as energy, healthcare, and transportation, it appears to be a key component of the digital transformation of industries fostered by the fourth Industrial revolution (Industry 4.0). In this paper, we present the research results achieved by IoTwins, a European research project aimed at investigating opportunities and issues of adopting DTs in the fields of industrial manufacturing and facility management. Particularly, we discuss a DT model and a reference architecture for use by the research community to implement a platform for the development and deployment of industrial DTs in the cloud continuum. Guided by the devised architectures’ principles, we implemented an open platform and a development methodology to help companies build DT-based industrial applications and deploy them in the so-called Edge/Cloud continuum. To prove the research value and the usability of the implemented platform, we discuss a simple yet practical development use case
Web interactive non intrusive load disaggregation system for active demand in smart grids
Full text linkA Smart Grid combines the use of traditional technology with innovative digital solutions, making the management of the electricity grid more flexible. It allows for monitoring, analysis, control and communication within the supply chain to improve efficiency, reduce the energy consumption and cost, and maximize the transparency and reliability of the energy supply chain. The optimization of energy consumption in Smart Grids is possible by using an innovative system based on Non Intrusive Appliance Load Monitoring (NIALM) algorithms, in which individual appliance power consumption information is disaggregated from single-point measurements, that provide a feedback in such a way to make energy more visible and more amenable to understanding and control. We contribute with an approach for monitoring consumption of electric power in households based on both a NILM algorithm, that uses a simple load signatures, and a web interactive systems that allows an active role played by users
A framework for the management of dynamic SLAs in composite service scenarios
No full textThe advent of information and communication technology has changed the nature of business-to-business interaction among organizations. The use of electronic contracts with automated support for their management allows an increase of effectiveness and efficiency in contract processing, opening new possibilities for interaction among parties. Service Providers and their customers negotiate utility based Service Level Agreements (SLA) to determine costs and penalties based on the achieved performance levels. The global QoS to be provided to the end customer can be strongly affected by any violation on each single SLA. In order to prevent such violations, SLAs need to be flexible and dynamically adaptable. In this work we focus on the WS-Agreement specification, a Web Service protocol to establish agreements on the QoS level to be guaranteed in the provision of a service. We propose to enhance the flexibility of its approach by integrating new functionality to the protocol that enable the parties of a WS-Agreement to re-negotiate and modify its terms during the service provisio
A semantic framework to characterise and monitor territories affected by environmental risks
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TORCH: a TOSCA-Based Orchestrator of Multi-Cloud Containerised Applications
Full text linkThe growth in the number and types of cloud-based services offered to IT customers is supported by the constant entry of new actors in the market and the consolidation of disruptive technologies such as AI, Big Data and Micro-services. From the customer's perspective, in a market landscape where the cloud offer is highly diversified due to the presence of multiple competing service providers, picking the service that best accommodate their specific needs is a critical challenge. Once the choice is made, so called ``cloud orchestration tools'' (orchestrators) are required to take care of the customer application's life-cycle. While big players offer their customers proprietary orchestrators, in the literature quite a number of open-source initiatives have launched multi-cloud orchestrators capable of transparently managing applications on top of the most representative cloud platforms. In this paper, we propose TORCH, a TOSCA-based framework for the deployment and orchestration of cloud applications, both classical and containerised, on multiple cloud providers. The framework assists the cloud customer in defining application requirements by using standard specification models. Unlike other multi-cloud orchestrators, TORCH adopts a strategy that separates the provisioning workflow from the actual invocation of proprietary cloud services API. The main benefit is the possibility to add support to any cloud platforms at a very low implementation cost. In the paper, we present a prototypical implementation of TORCH and showcase its interaction with two different container-based cluster platforms. Preliminary performance tests conducted on a small-scale test-bed confirm the potential of TORC
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