The building sector plays a significant role regarding CO2 generation in the UK, accounting for 37%. Efforts have been oriented to lower the energy consumption by increasing the efficiency of conditioning systems and by integrating smart designs that lower the energy requirements. The newest storage facility from NMS was designed to use energy efficiently to provide the necessary environmental conditions to approximately 10 million items with specific climate conditions. However, the designers are interested to know how the building is performing and how the energy usage could be lowered. In this report, an assessment of this distinctive building with a dual nature of a storage facility coexisting with a research workplace is conducted. Initially, it was unforeseen how much energy had been used by each piece of equipment; given the type of data recorded, the assessment is performed in a detailed fashion to provide the figures that could help to make decisions to modify the energy usage. Additionally, even though the building was designed using efficient equipment, with air-tightness that was classified as better than typical and a good isolated envelop, opportunities were still found to improve even more its operative functions and hence to reduce the annual cost of energy and the CO2 emissions generation. The results show how to reduce the energy consumption at practically zero cost by making more flexible the temperature settings and by modifying the control strategy, resulting mainly in savings up to 35% in gas consumption. Another potential solution is provided by calculating the energy that a PV array could harvest. Two other recommendations that cannot be implemented are assessed. More elaborated strategies can be analysed and implemented when environmental-friendly buildings are designed. 

Mixing sound in headphones has always been a very attractive idea. They are portable, allow for surgical listening and are very affordable when compared to the cost of an adequately treated mixing room equipped with high-fidelity loudspeakers. The approach in this project was to design a workflow permitting to mix in surround format while monitoring through headphones. By reproducing the filtering responsible for accurate localization of sounds that occurs in the human auditory system using Binaural technology, a portable “virtual mixing studio” was designed and employed in the creation of three surround soundtracks for film material. Chapter 1 of this paper gives a description of the 5.1 surround system features and Binaural technology. Chapter 2 outlines the tools used to design a workflow allowing to produce and render a mix in 5.1 format. Chapter 3 describes the process of creating a 5.1 mix while monitoring through headphones. Chapter 4 provides a description of a listening experiment: aims, method, result, and discussion.

The results of this report indicate how niche product developments for Space Based Solar Power (SBSP) can be easily achieved using present day technology, which markets need to be addressed, which niche configurations to pursue, and which organizations have the needed competencies to proceed. Classical SBSP concepts generally call for large rigid systems to be placed in orbit to collect and transmit several GW of energy down to Earth’s commercial electricity grid, and are still faced with many problems including system complexity, development, and costs. Smaller more specific niche applications of these concepts focus on different markets with lower complexity and barriers to entry while developing technologies and infrastructure needed for the classical SBSP. Technical research was performed in order to identify potential system configurations as well as crucial competencies and technologies needed by the SBSP effort. A pair of unique technical configurations was proposed in an attempt to mitigate standard SBSP challenges such as construction, rigidity, and launch costs. A strategic evaluation tool was created to evaluate all potential system configurations in terms of risk and complexity; ideal configurations were chosen based on anticipated markets and the results from the strategic analysis. Market research was performed in order to understand and valuate the utility of different niche configurations; these included the scientific, remote, green, space to space, and military markets. Very high value segments were observed in each of these market areas with a range of $0.37 to $1.88 USD per kwh for Terrestrial applications, and a range of $380.00 to $1200.00 per kwh for space applications. Exploration of the European Carbon Trading Exchange as a source of revenue is explored due to CO2 offsets. A unique satellite product is proposed and valuated which receives energy directly from an external on orbit source. The value of restoring functionality to damaged satellites is estimated in the millions of dollars.

In order to receive the title of Master of Science in Industrial Engineering and Management, the author Juan Pablo Rolón Paz, developed the current Master Thesis, which by the hand of the Dutch company ASML Holding, identified, described and analysed strategies to service generations of machines developed by ASML, now referred as platforms, during the decline stage and post Product Life Cycle (PLC). ASML is a company that designs, develops, integrates, markets and services machines to create chips that power electronic, communications, and information technology products. The services provided by ASML include spare parts, tooling and labour. ASML is characterised to offer perpetual support for their products. They service their recently released equipment, to the ones developed over the life of the company. In this light, ASML wants to identify strategies to service their platforms during the decline stage of product life cycle. This means, strategies to service their aged platforms. ASML is interested in identifying the criteria for deciding whether to stop offering their service products or not, and in the situation they agree to stop offering their service products, what approaches to take regarding post PLC.  To identify strategies to service platforms in the decline stage and post PLC, we decided to do a literature and benchmarking study, to get the best practices in service management, service parts management and service parts logistics for aged products. We met with people within ASML, and people of other companies in The Netherlands, and the United States of America. The results were triangulated with the information gathered through the literature research, meetings with experts on product life cycle and spare parts management, and having feedback from managerial people of ASML. In the next chapter, we define the research, developing the research statement, objectives, questions, scope, delineation, deliverables, method and structure.

Worldwide electricity power systems are evolving from conventional/dispatchable sources to environmental friendly but Not-dispatchable renewable energy (RE) sources. This has effects on the dynamic of the system and on conventional and RE generators, electricity quality and energy cost. This research identifies the main effects of higher portions of Non-dispatchable RE based on a reference case. An MATLAB/EXCEL “ad-hoc” model has been developed. It simulates the Unit Commitment (UC) and Economic Dispatch (ED) with 10 conventional generators and one zero fuel cost RE generator (Non-dispatchable RE as “study-case” and Dispatchable RE “reference-case”). Results indicated that higher portions of Non-dispatchable RE had a swapping effect where base load units were displaced. Consequently, the system ran at lower cost-efficient point, the number of Start-ups and RE curtailment increased compared to the reference case. Furthermore, conventional generators running cost and system running cost followed the variable pattern of the Non-dispatchable RE source. Meanwhile, these costs were linked to the demand in the reference case. Ultimately, higher portions of Non-dispatchable RE made the system underperform compared to the reference case. Therefore, this incentive technology that lessen unwanted effects. Future studies shall focus on increasing the number of units and complexity of the system by using more powerful software.

The FreshWaterMill project is a transfer of Environmentally Sound Technology (EST) from The Netherlands to Colombia that involves several Dutch companies, the Delft University of Technology and Coralina (corporation for sustainable development of the Archipelago San Andrés, Providence and Saint Kathleen). The installation place is Johnny Cay, a small islet 1.5 km northeast from San Andrés, Colombia, uninhabited and exclusive for touristic use (Van Tonningen, 2014). The technology is a wind powered reverse osmosis (RO) system that can fulfil the drinkable water and electricity demands of the Cay. This way can be alleviated the sanitary conditions resulting from unsustainable touristic practices. Moreover, this project is seen as a promoter of sustainable development in the Archipelago (Coralina, 2006), and as a potential solution to provide electricity and water to rural and remote areas of low utility coverage but abundant wind power. There are no environmental or social impact analyses that validate the sustainable character of the technology transfer. Moreover, although it is intended to improve the livelihood of target users their opinions are not reflected in the project plans. This situation resembles those factors that describe the trend to failure of technology transfers. Therefore this research made an integral assessment of the project as a Socio-Technical System (STS) to provide useful findings and recommendations that could lead it away from such trend. The Functions of Innovation Systems (FIS) framework (Van Alphen, 2008) was chosen for a systems approach analysis. Through this was found that poor planning, insufficient financial resources and ineffective communication channels are the most relevant barriers for a successful implementation of the FreshWaterMill. The most relevant drivers are the suitability of the place for a wind/RO system, the planning of a local educational center, a remarkable advocacy for Renewable Energy Technologies (RETs) in the Archipelago and the existence of local human capital and R&D on RE. Five conditions for self-organization were derived from the PAR (Participatory Action Research) methodology to explore the likeliness of self-organization for bottom-up management. Through this methodology was shown that the difficult relationship between the corporation and the touristic service providers, their lack of group cohesion, managerial and operational capacities, ignorance and/or misuse of instruments for self-organization, make unfeasible for this group to address the barriers and support the drivers of the project. Relevant conditions from the context not covered by the previous methodologies were also included. These reflected that the advocacy for RETs is counteracted by the fragmentation between institutional actors and their lack of managerial skills on technology topics, which makes them rely on national and international assistance to achieve a technological transition. The regular interaction that Johnny Cay workers will have with the windmill, the affinity of the life plan of young adults to the project objectives and the likeliness of this group to make economic contributions urges the need for a participatory approach. The socio-cultural crisis of the Archipelago supports this recommendation. However, the difficulty of institutional entities to understand and assume the roles that require a participatory approach and the path dependency on top-down regulation makes it a complex challenge. A participatory approach for the FreshWaterMill is indirectly supported by the management plan of the Natural Regional Park Johnny Cay and the Community and institutional participation board. Additional to the commitment of the corporation to assume an enabling role, the process needs a mediator so the touristic service.

Unnamed Aerial Vehicles (UAV) are known for their application in surveillance and tracking with on-board cameras. Videos from UAV usually suffer from jitter and high frequency unintended movements which makes necessary stabilize the footage. This is a Computer Vision problem, particularly difficult due to level of noise in acquisition and different types of scenarios which make hard to implement online stabilizer (on the fly). The present thesis explains in depth algorithms, methods and implementations of the OpenCV module videostab. We presented a version in C++ of videostab in context of video from UAV. Two main blocks constitute the current implementation: motion estimation and motion stabilization. In the former, the system robustly estimates global displacement in between every consecutive pair of frames. The latter can be used in two possible ways: Assuming that estimated motion contains intended UAV motion and high frequency vibrations or assuming that all estimated motion is undesirable. The first case is solved with a Gaussian filter to smooth motions and, in the second case, a filter called Zero Motion was implemented to give sensation of stillness. Results show that the implementation is robust and can work in different scenarios of UAV. Moreover, it is possible to run it in a general purpose computer with high speed performance. Online performance can be achieved using some function with graphic processing unit (GPU).

In this thesis two different studies are presented separately because each study has a different purpose even though the two studies are complementary. For the first study an available dataset for BCI is used. This dataset is consistent with the aim of the first study because it allows the implementation and development of the proposed technique for BCI based on imaginary limb movement with a small amount of electrodes. The technique I implemented trough this study is a reliable option to be used for a BCI-based on imaginary movements. In the second study a different dataset is used because the requirements for the technique to be implemented are different. Training and testing dataset are necessary to describe a practical computational technique that is applied for a single trial classification based on a Common Spatial Pattern and complemented with a linear discriminator. The training data is used to build a classifier and the testing data allows measuring the performance of the classifier implemented. After testing the classifier the good performance obtained makes this technique of great interest for any imaginary movement based-BCI.

The sum of small and big decisions made in all levels of companies determines its performance. Also, the quality of the decisions can be improved when there is information available to help decision makers in their task. All this has motivated the development of specific types of information systems aimed to provide the information necessary in the different levels of the company to support structured and semi-structured decision making. This research will be focused on a specific group of information systems to support decisions that make intensive use of historic data integrated from multiple sources; Data-driven Decision Support Systems (DDSS). On the other hand the features of the systems to support decisions together with tasks and techniques that are unique for these systems demanded the creation of specific development methodologies to perform the development process. In response to that demand, several proposals have been elaborated but there is no consensus in the field. Currently there is a debate around two development methodologies that are analysed on this paper. After the analysis of the proposed methodologies a case study organization with experience on the development of DDSS will be analysed. The research aims to understand and present the development process carried out in the organization to develop DDSS. In the analysis the influence of the existing methodologies and other sources, like traditional development methodologies and standardization is included. Finally a proposal to improve the development of DDSS in the case study organization is presented. The proposal is generated in the light of the existing methodologies and other particular proposals that deal with single tasks on the development process.

As it has been proved in several researches carried out by different authors, riverine floods and the scour induced by these are one of the main causes of bridge collapse. More specifically, local scour causes a loss in the lateral resistance of bridge foundation, thus potentially increasing the seismic vulnerability of a bridge system. The present study assesses the combination of scour and earthquake effects for a bridge located in a road network crossing valleys in the Pyrenees Mountain range (France). The bridge spans over a river stream of trapezoidal cross-section, which is more able to capture actual physical behaviours than the rectangular section generally used for similar studies. The bridge consists in a continuous RC deck supported by two multi-column piers. Making use of the OpenSees software, a 3D finite-element model of the bridge is built and subjected to a suite of 312 ground motions (i.e., non-linear time history analyses). Fragility curves are developed for this multi-hazard case study, considering specific levels of damage that might be of interest, as well a comparison between fragility characteristics obtained in the absence and presence of scour. In order to fully study the potentially detrimental effects of scour on the dynamic behavior of the considered bridge, it is considered different scour combinations in the non-linear time-history analyses, such as: • Equal scour depth in all columns. • Same scour depth in the columns of the same pier. • Same scour depth in columns of different piers. • Scour depth concentrated in just one column of the bridge This study demonstrates the ability of a given numerical model to account for various hazard loadings and failure mechanisms, thus providing support to decision making regarding bridge management and monitoring.