2024
Authors
Matos, T; Martins, MS; Henriques, R; Goncalves, LM;
Publication
JOURNAL OF WATER PROCESS ENGINEERING
Abstract
Turbidity and suspended sediment concentration are crucial parameters indicative of water quality, playing pivotal roles in evaluating the well-being of aquatic ecosystems and the effectiveness of water treatment processes. This manuscript provides an in-depth review of various methods and instruments in use for in situ and inline applications. The exploration of optical instrumentation is central to this review, examining its widespread use and current challenges within standard methods, commercial instruments and scientific research. The study also delves into alternative techniques, such as acoustic and capacitive methods, elucidating their applications, calibration intricacies, and practical considerations. Furthermore, the paper scrutinizes the emerging importance of satellite and aerial imaging processing as a supplementary tool for turbidity monitoring, underscoring its potential to offer comprehensive insights on a larger scale. The review emphasizes the key accomplishments and challenges of the state-of-the-art technologies, providing a comprehensive overview of the current stage of the field and its prospects. and aims to provide valuable insights for researchers, practitioners, and decision-makers involved in environmental monitoring and water facility management, enabling a deeper comprehension of the significance of turbidity and suspended sediment concentration in safeguarding water quality and ecosystem health.
2024
Authors
Ribeiro, FJ; Lopes, JAP; Soares, FJ; Madureira, AG;
Publication
UTILITIES POLICY
Abstract
Frequency Containment Reserve (FCR) Cooperation is a European effort to integrate several countries in an integrated international electricity market platform for FCR procurement. In this market, Balancing Service Providers (BSPs) are on the supply side and Transmission System Operators (TSOs) on the demand side. This paper proposes a novel settlement scheme for sharing costs among TSOs; it proposes no changes to existing market clearing rules or to the existing settlement of the BSPs' revenues. It is shown that the current TSO settlement scheme is an inequitable mechanism that originates negative costs for some TSOs in specific conditions, which are extensively discussed. The proposed TSO settlement scheme overcomes these inequities. In the proposed scheme, TSOs begin paying the local BSPs for the cleared bids needed locally, and the remaining imports are calculated in a subsequent step. Doing so avoids using the so-called import/export costs, which are demonstrated to be the source of the inequities in the current scheme. It is shown that if the proposed pricing scheme had been adopted from July 2019 to December 2022, all TSOs would have been affected. Specifically, the most negatively impacted TSO would have its accumulated costs increased by 16% and the most positively impacted TSO would have its accumulated cost decreased by 32%. The inequities of the current mechanism amount to more than 50 Me or 7.4% of the total accumulated costs. Although the proposed mechanism is tested here under the FCR Cooperation, it can be applied to other markets where the rules allow different local settlement prices.
2024
Authors
Dudkina E.; Villar J.; Bessa R.J.; Crisostomi E.;
Publication
4th International Conference on Smart Grid and Renewable Energy, SGRE 2024 - Proceedings
Abstract
Hydrogen is currently getting more and more attention in the European climate strategy as a promising enabling technology to decarbonize industry, transport sector and to provide a long-term, high-capacity energy storage solution. However, to truly contribute to the reduction of CO2 emissions, hydrogen must be produced respecting a principle of additionality, to ensure that it is produced using renewable energy sources and that its production does not decrease the green energy supplied to other loads. This study tracks the share of renewables generation in the energy mix used to produce hydrogen by applying a power flow tracing technique integrated with an optimal power flow analysis. This method allows the minimization of the system operation costs, while maximizing the green hydrogen production and considering the additionality principle. The system cost function is also modified to include the sizing and allocation of conventional batteries in the grid, and assess their ability to further increase the share of green energy in hydrogen production.
2024
Authors
Khanal, SR; Sharma, P; Thapa, K; Fernandes, H; Barroso, J; Filipe, V;
Publication
PROCEEDINGS OF THE 11TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT AND TECHNOLOGIES FOR ENHANCING ACCESSIBILITY AND FIGHTING INFO-EXCLUSION, DSAI 2024
Abstract
Facial expression is a way of communication that can be used to interact with computers or other electronic devices and the recognition of emotion from faces is an emerging practice with applications in many fields. Many cloud-based vision application programming interfaces are available that recognize emotion from facial images and video. In this article, the performances of two well-known APIs were compared using a public dataset of 980 images of facial emotions. For these experiments, a client program was developed that iterates over the image set, calls the cloud services, and caches the results of the emotion detection for each image. The performance was evaluated in each class of emotions using prediction accuracy. It has been found that the prediction accuracy for each emotion varies according to the cloud service being used. Similarly, each service provider presents a strong variation of performance according to the class being analyzed, as can be seen in more detail in these articles.
2024
Authors
Spano, LD; Campos, JC; Dittmar, A;
Publication
DESIGN FOR EQUALITY AND JUSTICE, INTERACT 2023, PT I
Abstract
The second workshop on HCI Engineering Education continued the effort of the IFIP Working Group 2.7/13.4 on User Interface Engineering by discussing the issues and identifying the opportunities in teaching and learning Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) Engineering. The workshop attracted eight papers covering different teaching contexts, ranging from massive university courses, passing through different teaching experiences in specific academic curricula, and even teaching engineering concepts to children. In addition, the workshop received input for improving and adapting the repository material to the dynamic nature of this field. The discussion after the presentation of the contributions focused on how to model competencies, the support to interdisciplinary work, the overall course design, the recruitment of the students and the provision of educational resources, paving the way for further editions of the workshop.
2024
Authors
Ribeiro, S; Cerveira, A; Soares, P; Ribeiro, NA; Camilo-Alves, C; Fonseca, TF;
Publication
FRONTIERS IN FORESTS AND GLOBAL CHANGE
Abstract
The sustainability of forest species is directly related to the success of stand regeneration. Assuring success is particularly critical in stands where perpetuity relies on natural regeneration, as is often the case with cork oak forests. However, 59% of the stand in Portugal have no natural regeneration, and climate change could further worsen the sustainability of the system. The study summarizes the factors that affect the natural regeneration of cork oak (Quercus suber L.) based on current knowledge and presents a case study on a forest in Northeast Portugal, where the natural regeneration of Quercus suber under the effect of climate change have been monitored and analyzed. The present work focuses on the effect of stand density, i.e., tree cover, on the production of acorns, the establishment and survival of seedlings, and the impact of the summer season on seedling mortality. The monitoring was carried out in February, June, September 2022, and January 2023 in two stands with distinct stand canopy cover, when the region was under extreme drought. Data analysis was performed using the analysis of variance for repeated measures and the Mann-Whitney-Wilcoxon test. The study showed that cork oak regeneration is influenced by stand density, which promoted the establishment success and survival of natural regeneration in a period of reduced precipitation, despite possible competition for water resources. The mean number of seedlings differed significantly between the two stands. However, there were no significant differences in the mean number of seedlings throughout the field measurements. Additionally, the percentage of dead seedlings was low even after the summer season (9.5% of the total seedlings) in the denser stand. These results indicate that high canopy cover can have a protective effect for extreme climatic events and should be considered in forestry management to promote regeneration of the cork oak forests.
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