Abstract
This paper shows the conceptual differences between adopting a probabilistic weighting of the futures and a risk averse strategy, in power system planning under uncertain scenarios. It is illustrated with a distribution planning problem, where optimal solutions in both cases are determined by a Genetic Algorithm. It shows that the probabilistic approach is less safe and cannot detect some interesting solutions.

Abstract

Abstract
A fuzzy identification model and fuzzy logic controller was developed aiming the environmental control of an agriculture greenhouse. The fuzzy identification of the process was performed by the analysis of the data collected either during normal operation, as well in reaction to random generated actuating signals on the heating, ventilation and CO2 injection systems. A comparative study has been realized between fuzzy and physical models. Using the fuzzy model it was possible to implement an accurate Generalized Predictive Control (GPC) strategy in order to regulate the environment and to minimize energy consumption. The optimal setpoints were computed by means of balancing the benefits associated with the marketable produce against the costs associated with its production. The calculations use growth, photosynthesis and climate models. This work describes the practical development of an fuzzy controller that memorize the optimal strategy, executed by the GPC, to regulate the temperature and the CO2 concentration of the greenhouse inside air.

Abstract
The growth dynamics of UV induced IR absorption and related refractive index change in hydrogen loaded GeO2-doped fibers have been studied. We report a higher initial rate and strong saturation for Ge-OH generation compared with Si-OH formation under UV exposure. A close correlation was found between the Ge/Si-OH groups concentration and the induced index change as a function of the UV exposure time. (C) 1998 American Institute of Physics.

Abstract
The recent new developments in hardware and software tools, and in particular of the microprocessors and microcontrollers, are leading to more complex control and management potentialities in the agriculture applications. For the quality and productivity improvement of greenhouse crops it is necessary to measure and control several interacting physical variables. Also, to achieve competitiveness in the market, the production costs must be kept as low as possible. These tasks can only be accomplished using control and management systems with adequate built in software. At the University of Tras-os-Montes and Alto Douro, Vila Real, a data acquisition and control network was implemented with the aim of being applied to agricultural processes. This network has three main operating levels. At the lower level, a set of remote microcontroller stations performs the data acquisition and transmission by radio frequency to a collecting and control station. The control station generates the actuating signals for the agricultural process and communicates with a higher level network, based on PC's. This higher level network is responsible for the system management and supervision. In this paper it will be described the implemented network and the results achieved in its application to the greenhouse environmental and control.

Abstract
This paper illustrates the application of formal specification techniques to the experimental development of a CAD tool for building-specification and automatic building-plan plotting. Buildings are specified in an abstract way which records what the architect wants, to build and not how it is actually built in terms of construction materials. Building designs are not recorded in terms of their drawings, but lather in a linguistic way, by structural composition of standard space units according to an abstract syntax equipped with space aggregation constructs, subject to formal properties which check for building well-formedness. A formal model is developed for such an abstract syntax and for its associated functionality which (as later prototyped in a rapid-prototyping shell) has mainly to do with automatically generating building plans from abstract descriptions. At prototype level, this is first achieved by structurally calculating LATEX picture format drawings as a pictorial semantics of the abstract descriptions. In a second phase, the adopted output graphical server is the AUTOCAD(TM) system. Throughout these experiments, not only did formal methods greatly increase confidence on the building-description language correctness, expressive power and conciseness, but also rapid prototyping provided a great deal of insight on the design, at a very low cost. A future implementation is discussed which not only will provide the system as a 'plug-in' extension of AUTOCAD for WINDOWS(TM), but will also connect it to an underlying production database allowing for automatic construction materials planning and budget control.