1,720,994 research outputs found
Unveiling Residential Water Consumers’ Behaviour and Profiles Through Machine Learning Techniques
No full textThe continuous development of urban areas worldwide in the near future is foreseen to boost household water demand, thus placing a challenge to the distribution and supply of drinking water. Whereas several studies demonstrated the potential of customized demand management strategies to pursue water saving attitudes in the residential sector, still their effects rely on the level of understanding we have about consumers’ typical behaviours. Retrieving information on users’ behaviors at the household level, as well as their explanatory and/or causal factors, is key to spot areas towards which water saving efforts can be prioritized. This, in turn, aids the design of personalized water demand management strategies, such as education campaigns and recommendations and, coupled with monitoring programs, allows evaluating their effects in terms of behavioral change and customers’ engagement.
In this work, we contribute a data-driven approach to identify and model household water users’ consumption profiles. State-of-the-art clustering methods are coupled with machine learning techniques with the aim of extracting predominant user behaviors from a set of water consumption data collected at the household scale. This allows identifying heterogeneous groups of consumers from the studied sample, as well as characterizing them with respect to several consumption features.
The approach we propose in this work is validated onto a real-world household water consumption dataset, showing its potential for understanding and modeling consumers’ profiles, as well as data mining the structure of the considered community with respect to water consumption habits, ultimately informing the bottom-up collaboration between managers and customers
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
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Food Waste Geographies: A GIS-based Spatial Analysis of Food Waste in Los Angeles County
Full text linkIn 2016, California passed Senate Bill (SB) 1383 which requires a 75% reduction in organic waste disposed of in landfills by 2025 as part of a larger mandate to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the state. These targets will be achieved primarily through diversion to compost and anaerobic digestion (AD), however significant infrastructural investments are needed to capture and treat this waste stream. Food waste (FW) is the largest portion of the municipal organics waste stream and is an ideal target for diversion to AD, which can be built as self-contained, scalable units deployed throughout urban areas. Using spatial models, an optimal network of ADs can be developed that not only reduces GHG emissions associated with FW disposal, but also reduces those associated with the collection and transportation stages of the waste system. Within this context, this research presents a novel method of estimating commercial FW generation in Los Angeles County, California that can be used to model a network of containerized ADs for FW.Following a review of three classes of spatial models and their practical use in waste management modelling, a simulated “FW Geography” (FWG) dataset is developed that consists of 273,023 points representing FW generators from 16 industry groups that in total generate 1,046,713 tons FW/year. This dataset was developed using non-spatial waste generation data from California Department of Resources and Recovery (CalRecycle) in the form of Tons Per Employee Per Year (TPEPY) values as well as spatial, Census-tract level employment and business data from ESRI Business Analyst (BA) and parcel-scale land use data from the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG). Significant preprocessing of the datasets was needed to match the production-oriented industry groups of the ESRI BA and SCAG data to the waste-oriented industry groups of the CalRecycle TPEPY values. The FWG is less spatially aggregated than the municipal level waste generation estimates released by CalRecycle and can be used as an input to spatial models to develop a network of ADs.
Using the FWG to develop a network of ADs requires careful consideration of the strengths and weaknesses of the spatial models, balancing model runtime with solution quality in real world instances. The time it takes to run a model is dependent on the number of points in the input dataset; with over 200,000 points in the FWG, these models will take an unreasonable time to solve. This problem is addressed in the discussion, which outlines methods of data aggregation that not only reduces the size of the FWG, but also increases its accuracy. These methods make use of a Tons Per Business Per Year (TPBPY) value developed for this study which captures the competing modelling goals of maximizing FW treatment while minimizing collection points and the Vehicle Miles Travelled (VMT) between them. The fine spatial scale of the SCAG zoning dataset can also be leveraged to reduce the size of the FWG; by aggregating FW generator points in close proximity to one another, modelling shared collection bins among FW producers, the spatial accuracy of the FWG can be increased. The resulting FWG can be used to develop a network of containerized ADs for FW that reduces overall GHG emissions of the waste management system and creates a circular economy of food
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Informality in Urban Water Systems: Affordability, Energy-Water Nexus and Social Network Aspects in Beirut, Lebanon
Full text linkMany parts of the world with chronic and intermittent water shortages rely on informal water systems for all or part of their daily water uses, such as water deliveries from water tanker trucks, purchased bottled water, or water pumped from local wells. These alternative sources tend to burden water users with additional costs, require additional energy inputs, and are managed by informal stakeholders. Using a political ecology lens and a mixed methods approach, this research examines informal water services in Beirut (Lebanon), their socio-economic and environmental impacts, and aspects of their organization. The research analyzes affordability disparities between high- and low-income communities, considering the additional costs of informal water sources and residents’ different coping behaviors and capabilities. The research also assesses environmental impacts of informal water systems with a comparative energy-water nexus and carbon footprint analysis of formal (piped infrastructure) and informal water sources. The research also applies social network analysis to identify and characterize informal water tanker firms, and shows indirect socio-cultural and environmental driving forces influencing their organization, cooperation and competition. Finally, while recognizing the importance of informal services to achieve water security, the research addresses their social injustice outcomes through hybrid policy recommendations for hybrid systems that target formal piped infrastructure and informal sources to balance resilience with sustainability and attenuate the inequalities of those services
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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A sustainability analysis of near-term animal cell-based meat
Full text linkInvestment in animal cell-based meat (ACBM) or cultured meat has been increasing at a rapid pace with the total investment being greater than 2 billion USD by 2021. When the investment in ACBM initially occurred ACBM had not been economically vetted. This dissertation contains the first publicly available technoeconomic assessment of ACBM. This assessment was conducted utilizing cellular metabolic requirements and chemical/process engineering conventions. Findings of the first TEA ACBM indicate that nearly all technical hurdles would need to be resolved before economic viability could be achieved. Shortly after publication of the first TEA of ACBM, two other TEAs of ACBM were published and all three were normalized and critically examined for this dissertation. This critical examination is contained within this dissertation to provide readers with a comparison of the methods and assumptions contained within each ACBM TEA. An additional TEA was conducted for an economically viable protein alternative, mycoprotein to validate methods which were utilized in the initial TEA of ACBM. Findings of the mycoprotein TEA indicate that the utilized method provided reasonable estimates for the cost of food produced in bioreactors. The initial ACBM TEA indicated that a substantial quantity of animal cell growth medium may be necessary to produce ACBM at an industrial scale. To understand the potential environmental impact of ACBM production, quantification of the embedded resources contained within the animal growth medium was deemed necessary. Essential 8TM (E8) is a stem cell growth medium that had been suggested as a suitable growth medium for ACBM with some modification. A cradle-to-production gate life cycle assessment (LCA) was conducted for E8. The embedded resources were quantified for each E8 component (when possible) and the environmental impact of a liter of E8 was calculated. Utilizing data obtained from the analyzed TEAs and E8 LCA, a LCA of near-term ACBM was conducted. The LCA of ACBM indicated that the environmental impact of near-term ACBM was likely greater than commercially produced beef potentially by orders of magnitude
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