RoadLab — A constraint based laboratory for road design

Constraints provide a powerful computational model to support designing, different from global optimization or rule-based decision-making. This paper reviews the theory of constraints and techniques of constraint management with respect to geometric road layout. We describe RoadLab, a constraint-based graphic programming environment, and discuss the application of the constraint model to designing.     

Technical note - Tracking the Indonesian forest fire using NOAA/AVHRR images

The large scale air pollution episode due to the out-of-control biomass burning for agricultural purposes in Indonesia, which started in June 1997, has become a severe environmental problem for the neighbouring countries. Its impact on the health of the residents and ecology in the affected areas is expected to be substantial, costly and possibly long lasting. In this paper, NOAA/AVHRR images of the fire in September are reported.     

Ordinal and nominal classification of wind speed from synoptic pressurepatterns

Wind speed reconstruction is a challenging problem in areas (mainly wind farms) where there are not direct wind measures available. Different approaches have been applied to this reconstruction, such as measure-correlate-predict algorithms, approaches based on physical models such as reanalysis methods, or more recently, indirect measures such as pressure, and its relation to wind speed. This paper adopts the latter method, and deals with wind speed estimation in wind farms from pressure measures, but including different novelties in the problem treatment. Existing synoptic pressure-based indirect approaches for wind speed estimation are based on considering the wind speed as a continuous target variable, estimating then the corresponding wind series of continuous values. However, the exact wind speed is not always needed by wind farm managers, and a general idea of the level of speed is, in the majority of cases, enough to set functional operations for the farm (such as wind turbines stop, for example). Moreover, the accuracy of the models obtained is usually improved for the classification task, given that the problem is simplified. Thus, this paper tackles the problem of wind speed prediction from synoptic pressure patterns by considering wind speed as a discrete variable and, consequently, wind speed prediction as a classification problem, with four wind level categories: low, moderate, high or very high. Moreover, taking into account that these four different classes are associated to four values in an ordinal scale, the problem can be considered as an ordinal regression problem. The performance of several ordinal and nominal classifiers and the improvement achieved by considering the ordering information are evaluated. The results obtained in this paper present the support vector machine as the best tested classifier for this task. In addition, the use of the intrinsic ordering information of the problem is shown to significantly improve ranks with respect to nominal classification, although differences in accuracy aresmall.     

A multi-agent model system for land-use change simulation

This paper presents a multi-agent model system to characterize land-use change dynamics. The replicable parameterization process should be useful to the development of simulation frameworks, important to environmental policy makers to analyze different scenarios during decision making process. The methodological two-fold approach intends to form a solid backbone based on: (i) the systematic and structured empirical characterization of the model; and (ii) the conceptual structure definition according to the agent-based model documentation protocol – Overview, Design concepts and Details. A multi-agent system for land-use change simulation was developed to validate the model, which is illustrated with a case study of the Brazilian Cerrado using LANDSAT ETM images. The simulation results prove the model importance with a figure of merit greater than 50%, what means the amount of correctly predicted change is larger than the sum of any type of error. The results are very good compared with nine popular peer-reviewed land change models.     

OpenMI-based integrated sediment transport modelling of the river Zenne,Belgium

Recent observations show that the river Zenne (Belgium) remains well below the water quality goals stated by the European Union Water Framework Directive. An interuniversity, multidisciplinary research project was therefore launched to evaluate the effects of wastewater management plans on the ecological functioning of the river. To this end, different water quantity and quality processes had to be considered and modelled, e.g., the hydrology in the river basin, hydraulics in the river and sewers, erosion and sediment transport, faecal bacteria transport and decay. This paper considers the development of an Open Modelling Interface (OpenMI) based integrated model for the purpose of simulating the river's sediment dynamics. We used the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) to model water and sediment fluxes from rural areas. The Storm Water Management Model (SWMM) was used to simulate the hydraulics of the river, canal, and sewer systems in urban catchments. New model codes for sediment transport and stream water temperature were developed to complement SWMM. The results show that the integrated sediment transport model reproduced the sediment concentrations in the river Zenne with ‘good’ to ‘satisfactory’ accuracy. We may therefore conclude that the OpenMI has been successfully implemented to integrate water quality models into a hydraulic one. While the OpenMI run-time data communication inflicted calculation time overhead, we found that the overhead was not significant with respect to the total run-time of the integrated model.     

A study on local cooling of garments with ventilation fans and openings placed at different torso sites

The aim of the study was to examine the various design features of ventilated garments on cooling performance. Five jackets with small ventilation units and closable openings were designed. The ventilation units with a flow rate of 12 l/s were placed at five different torso sites. They were examined on a sweating thermal manikin in four clothing opening conditions in a warm environment (T_a = T_manikin = 34 °C, RH = 60%, V_a = 0.4 m/s). Total torso cooling was increased by 137–251%, and clothing total dynamic evaporative resistance was decreased by 43–69%. Neither the ventilation location nor the opening design had a significant difference on total torso cooling. The ventilation location had a significant difference on localized intra-torso cooling, but not the opening design. When the ventilation units were placed at the local zone where it was ventilated, that zone underwent the highest cooling than other local zones. The study indicated that the ventilation units should be placed at the region where it required the most evaporative cooling, e.g. along the spine area and the lower back. The openings could be adjusted (closed or opened) to make comfortable air pressure for the wearers but without making significant difference on the whole torso cooling under this flow rate.Relevance to industryHeat strain is frequently reported in hot environments, especially for those industries, such as construction, mining and steel. Clothing equipped with the small ventilation units could circulate the ambient air around the body and thus decrease heat strain and improve productivity.     

A population-based iterated greedy algorithm for the delimitation and zoning of rural settlements

In this paper we present a Population-Based Iterated Greedy (PBIG) algorithm for delimiting and zoning rural settlements. Each cadastral plots is allocated to a category (traditional–historical, common or none) considering restrictions such as the characteristics of the existing edifications and the building density. Since the problem has multiple solutions, heuristic search algorithms, as PBIG, are a good strategy to solve it. Besides the resolution of the problem according to the requirements of the laws, our work explores also new methods of delimitation. The comparison between both types of solutions can help to improve the current methodology. The algorithm, implemented using the Java programming language and integrated into an open-source GIS software, has been tested in rural settlements with different morphological characteristics, providing adjustable solutions to the specific needs of each rural settlement.