Reinforcement learning in sustainable energy and electric systems: a survey

The dynamic nature of sustainable energy and electric systems can vary significantly along with the environment and load change, and they represent the features of multivariate, high complexity and uncertainty of the nonlinear system. Moreover, the integration of intermittent renewable energy sources and energy consumption behaviours of households introduce more uncertainty into sustainable energy and electric systems. The operation, control and decision-making in such an environment definitely require increasing intelligence and flexibility in the control and optimization to ensure the quality of service of sustainable energy and electric systems. Reinforcement learning is a wide class of optimal control strategies that uses estimating value functions from experience, simulation, or search to learn in highly dynamic, stochastic environment. The interactive context enables reinforcement learning to develop strong learning ability and high adaptability. Reinforcement learning does not require the use of the model of system dynamics, which makes it suitable for sustainable energy and electric systems with complex nonlinearity and uncertainty. The use of reinforcement learning in sustainable energy and electric systems will certainly change the traditional energy utilization mode and bring more intelligence into the system. In this survey, an overview of reinforcement learning, the demand for reinforcement learning in sustainable energy and electric systems, reinforcement learning applications in sustainable energy and electric systems, and future challenges and opportunities will be explicitly addressed.     

Semantic Web computing in industry

The Semantic Web has attracted significant attention during the last decade. On the one hand, many research groups have changed their focus towards Semantic Web research and research funding agencies particularly in Europe have explicitly mentioned Semantic Web in their calls for proposals. On the other hand, industry has also begun to watch developments with interest and a number of large companies have started to experiment with Semantic Web technologies to ascertain if these new technologies can be leveraged to add more value for their customers or internally within the company, while there are already several offers of vendors of Semantic Web solutions on the market. The essence of the Semantic Web is to structure Web-based information to make it more interoperable, machine-readable and thereafter to provide a means to relate various information concepts more easily and in a reusable way. The Semantic Web acts as an additional layer on the top of the Web, and is built around explicit representations of information concepts and their relationships such as ontologies and taxonomies. Furthermore, Semantic Web technologies are not only valuable on an open environment like the Web, but also in closed systems such as in industrial settings. Hence, these technologies can be efficiently deployed for domains including Web Services, Enterprise Application Integration, Knowledge Management and E-Commerce, fulfilling existing gaps in current applications. This paper focuses on this synthesis between Semantic Web technologies and systems problems within industrial applications. There will be a short review of Semantic Web standards, languages and technologies followed by a more detailed review of applications of Semantic Web computing in industry. The paper covers theoretical considerations as well as use cases and experience reports on the topic, and we also present some current challenges and opportunities in the domain.     

Web-based evolutionary and adaptive information retrieval

The Internet and World Wide Web are becoming more and more dynamic in terms of their content and use. Information retrieval (IR) efforts aim to keep up with this dynamic environment by designing intelligent systems which can deliver Web content in real time to various wired or wireless devices. Evolutionary and adaptive systems (EASs) are emerging as typical examples of such systems. This paper contains one of the first attempts to gather and evaluate the nature of current research on Web-based IR using EAS and proposes future research directions in parallel to developments on the Web environments.     

Trends in built environment semantic Web applications: Where are we today?

The built environment sector impacts significantly on communities. At the same time, it is the sector with the highest cost and environmental saving potentials provided effective strategies are implemented. The emerging Semantic Web promises new opportunities for efficient management of information and knowledge about various domains. While other domains, particularly bioinformatics have fully embraced the Semantic Web, knowledge about how the same has been applied to the built environment is sketchy. This study investigates the development and trend of Semantic Web applications in the built environment. Understanding the different applications of the Semantic Web is essential for evaluation, improvement and opening of new research. A review of over 120 refereed articles on built environment Semantic Web applications has been conducted. A classification of the different Semantic Web applications in relation to their year of application is presented to highlight the trend. Two major findings have emerged. Firstly, despite limited research about easy-to-use applications, progress is being made from often too-common ontological concepts to more innovative concepts such as Linked Data. Secondly, a shift from traditional construction applications to Semantic Web sustainable construction applications is gradually emerging. To conclude, research challenges, potential future development and research directions have been discussed.     

Power-aware optimization for heterogeneous multi-tier clusters

Complex web applications are usually served by multi-tier web clusters. With the growing cost of energy, the importance of reducing power consumption in server systems is now well-known and has become a major research topic. However, most existing research focused solely on homogeneous clusters. This paper addresses the challenge of power management in Heterogeneous Multi-tier Web Clusters. We apply Generalized Benders Decomposition (GBD) to decompose the global optimization problem into small sub-problems. This algorithm achieves the optimal solution in an iterative fashion. The evaluation results show that our algorithm achieves more energy conservation than the previous work.     

Editorial: Introduction to Web Information Systems Engineering

With the recent advances in the World Wide Web development, more and more users have access to web information, and more and more information providers are able to put information of various types on the web. The web has now become one of the most important Internet information systems for various professionals and users. However, owing to the huge amount of information of various types available and various users on the Internet and Web, efficient query and information retrieval as well as the management of Internet information have become a challenging and difficult task. Therefore, systematic research on the design, implementation, and management of Internet and web-based information systems has been increasingly attractive and important. The Web Information Systems Engineering (WISE) Conference Series (see http://www.i-wise.org) has emerged since 2000 as an excellent forum for researchers, professionals, and industrial practitioners to share their rapidly developing knowledge and report on new advances in web-based information systems.     

Web system requirements: an overview

The development of online and Web-based systems is becoming increasingly critical to the business strategy of many organisations. Although this development can be viewed as a form of software development, it has various unique characteristics. One of the most significant is the uncertainty in domain understanding by both clients and developers. Another is the way in which Web solutions typically lead to changes in business models and hence requirements. These are manifested as significant volatility in the requirements of these systems. In this survey paper we investigate the handling of requirements for Web systems including looking at both commercial practice and current research. We report on the outcomes of a comprehensive set of interviews and follow-up surveys, and argue that the Web system requirements process needs to be fundamentally different from more conventional systems, incorporating the design process into the identification of requirements resulting in a design-driven requirements process.     

Deploying intelligent systems on a global scale

Intelligent systems are rarely deployed in isolation. Furthermore, with the advent of the global Internet, corporate intranets, and the Web, the potential for interactions between intelligent systems has never been greater. However, new technologies such as Web services, the semantic Web, grid computing, and peer-to-peer networks have made it easier than ever to create intelligent applications that span not only multiple machines but also multiple sites and organizations. So, one great challenge in intelligent systems research is to harness these technologies to verify and apply longstanding theories from distributed AI, agent systems, and other areas of networked intelligent systems research. Although we can generate knowledge from models, simulations, and small-scale trials, gaining a thorough understanding of intelligent systems requires increasingly large-scale deployments in challenging environments. Unfortunately, such experimentation is time consuming and costly-often requiring significant infrastructure development, maintenance, and low-level implementation before we can tackle more challenging and innovative elements. As the environments in which we employ intelligent systems continue to grow, so do the costs of deploying, testing, and verifying such systems.     

Web信息集成的研究

在信息和服务迅猛增长的Web上构建信息集成系统是当前的一个研究热点，本文针对web信息集成的目标，结合XML和RDF等主要的Web技术及本体的概念，构建了一个基于本体的查询-应答框架，它通过有效地集成Web上的各种异构数据源来为终端用户提供更为方便的服务和应用。     

Web信息集成的研究

在信息和服务迅猛增长的Web上构建信息集成系统是当前的一个研究热点,本文针对Web信息集成的目标,结合XML和RDF等主要的Web技术及本体的概念,构建了一个基于本体的查询-应答框架,它通过有效地集成Web上的各种异构数据源来为终端用户提供更为方便的服务和应用。     

基于结构化信息源的本体构建方法综述

作为一种能够在语义层和知识层上描述信息系统的概念建模工具,本体在许多领域得到了广泛应用。由于本体的构建和维护工作费时费力,本体的构建方法研究成为了实现语义Web应用的最重要技术。综述了从不同的结构化信息源(数据库、XML文档以及Web表格)构建本体的方法,进行了详细分析与对比,并给出其存在的不足之处以及未来可能的研究方向。     

Special section on testing and security of Web systems

This special section is devoted to a selection of papers that have been originally published in the Proceedings of the International Workshop on Web Quality, Verification and Validation (WQVV) held in Como, Italy, in July 2007. The workshop was part of the Seventh International Conference on Web Engineering (ICWE 2007). These papers investigate different issues of two fundamental “aspects” of quality and dependability of modern Web systems: testing and security. The main contribution of this special section consists in trying to bring the gap between research and “industrial” practice in Web systems. The use of new technologies, tools and methodologies is increasing in the Web and it makes the systems more and more interactive and responsive than in the past. Therefore, limits and problems related to specific aspects of systems quality and dependability are investigated, and new approaches and ideas are proposed to overcome such limitations.     

数据驱动的综合能源系统运行优化方法研究综述

构建清洁、低碳、安全、高效和可持续的现代能源体系被列为我国国家能源发展战略.综合能源系统(integrated energy system,IES)包含多类能源的产生、传输、转换、存储以及分配等过程,其综合管控与协同优化是在系统工艺与装备相对完备的情况下提升能源效率、降低成本、保护环境的关键技术,可为我国构建低碳可持续发展的能源运行模式,特别是工业园区的能源管控提供技术基础.随着大数据与机器学习技术的发展,一系列数据驱动的方法在IES相关研究中相继出现,其研究重点涵盖了IES的建模、评估以及动态调度等内容.鉴于此,综述数据驱动方法应用于以上几个方面的国内外研究现状,详细分析当前研究中亟需解决的科学问题与技术挑战,在此基础上探讨数据驱动的IES运行优化研究的未来发展方向.     

External Web content and its influence on organizational performance

Research into the Internet has experienced a tremendous growth within the field of information systems. In this sense, the recent literature focuses on more complex research topics. However, there is a need to further investigate into the more basic and primary use of Internet, the external Web site to interact with stakeholders. By external, we mean publicly accessible contents. This paper develops a framework that allows evaluation of external Web content of business Web sites and examines the influence on firm performance. Here, external Web content is studied according to three Web orientations: e-information, e-communication, and e-transaction. In addition, differences in external Web content are analysed according to two contingency factors: business size and business industry. To achieve these goals, a sample comprising 288 Spanish SMEs firms was employed. The results show a positive relationship between external Web content and firm performance. Furthermore, this research indicates the existence of complementarities among the Web orientations. Thus, existing e-information was found as critical for enabling e-transaction to impact upon firm performance. Additionally, e-information and e-communication (jointly considered) were found to mutually reinforce the impact of e-transaction on firm performance. The results also confirm that external Web content is not related to business size and differs slightly by business industry.     

Web Service在工业过程监控系统中的应用

研究了Web Service,XML,SOAP,WSDL,UDDI等相关网络技术,以及基于XML Web Service服务架构技术在过程监控领域中的应用。由于采用了web Service技术构建实时工业过程监控服务器,实现了监控平台跨越应用系统的对象体系、运行平台、开发语言等界限,以服务的形式封装应用并对外发布,提供用户或其他平台调用,从而形成了基于Web的服务的监控共享平台。以实际例子介绍了Web Service应用的具体方案。     

Web information fusion: A review of the state of the art

In this paper, we introduce and overview advances in the field of Web information fusion and integration. As it is such a broad and diverse topic that is researched in many different fields, we choose to provide a unified view by focusing on selected survey articles that extensively cover earlier research contributions. Given the important role that ontologies are playing in Web information fusion and the emergence and fast development of the Semantic Web and Web 3.0 technologies, a separate section is devoted to the topic of ontology research and the Semantic Web. Then, in the section on Web-based support systems, several applications that are enabled as the result of advances in Web information fusion are discussed.     

可扩展 Web 集群的可调节负载均衡

近年来,Web技术得到了长足的发展,Web集群系统对于Internet体系来说变得越来越重要。如何均衡地分配客户端发来的请求,如何平衡Web集群中各服务器之间的负载成为一个研究热点。文章设计和实现了一个负载均衡软件,可以用来很好地解决这些问题,测试结果证明该软件具有很高的实用价值。     

适应性Web缓存的研究

近年来,由于Web缓存技术对缓解因特网上热点现象的有效性,它已迅速得到了研究人员和业界的关注。适应性Web缓存(adaptive Web caching)由于能够根据用户的不同访问模式,自适应地调整热点数据在缓存系统中的分布,自动均衡整个缓存系统的负载,因而成为了缓存技术研究的一个新的热点。本文介绍了适应性Web缓存领域的研究状况,详细分析了基于组播和基于单播这两种主要的适应性缓存技术。最后,指出了适应性Web缓存研究存在的问题和值得进一步改进的方向。     

Web服务器集群系统的实现方法及负载管理

影响WWW网站应用的一个主要因素是用户请求的响应时间太慢,这严重影响了基于Internet的各项应用的发展。本文主要阐述了如何通过多个分布式的Web服务器结点来构筑Web服务器集群系统。文中详细说明了Web服务器集群系统的实现原理及方法,并讨论提出了实出其中各个服务结点之间负载平衡的一些基本技术及机制。