This thesis examines my theoretical research and practical experimentation performed over a period of 10 months concerning stereophonic recording arrays and the effect of Stereophonic Recording Angle (SRA) and Angular Distortion (AD), based on Williams’ research. In essence, the objective of this personal experience is to serve as a guide for any recording engineer or audio student interested in taking a closer look into stereophonic microphone arrays and its relation to the recorded stereo image. The emphasis made on the study of Stereophonic Recording Angle and Angular Distortion will provide the reader with the necessar information in order to decide which stereo microphone combination will provide the best result for any given recording situation. The research portion of this paper delivers a comprehensive approach to the fundamental physics and psychoacoustics involved in the recording and reproduction of stereophonic microphone techniques and how they relate to SRA and AD. Furthermore, the sections of analysis of the recording exercises and final recordings describe the methodology and results of hours of recorded rehearsals with several acoustic music ensembles at Middle Tennessee State University. 

This study presents an analysis on data from multiple power meters across Monash University in Australia. Special emphasis is made on the methodology to fill the missing values and fix the wrong data. Different techniques were used to analyse the data: visual analytics, k-means clustering and principal component analysis. Este estudio presenta un analisis de datos provenientes de multiples medidores de consumo eletrico en la Universidad Monash en Australia. Se hace especial enfasis en la metodologia para llenar los datos faltantes y depurar los existentes. Ademas de “visual analytics” se usaron diversas tecnicas, entre ellas: “principal component analysis” y “k-means clustering”.

The flood event is a problem that may affect drastically any settlement and can bring dramatic consequences, especially when it is not considered as one of the urbanization dynamics. It is important to reduce floods with measures that can be as simple as self‐preparedness, as well as an integrated long‐term plan. Hence, it is essential to avoid loss of lives taking preventive measures and building a resilience perspective into the population. The present document describes the main concepts that should be taken into consideration to understand the flood risk. Consequently, analyses the current flood risk in Bogota, Colombia and seeks to determine the zones where vulnerable settlements overlay flood hazard areas. Finally, it is examined how flood risk management can be targeted to reduce the risk level and how can the design solutions help to prevent and manage the flood problem within the city. Resumen La inundación es un problema que puede afectar drásticamente cualquier asentamiento y puede traer severas consecuencias, especialmente cuando no se considera como una de las dinámicas de la urbanización. Es importante reducir las inundaciones con medidas que pueden ser tan simples como el autoaprendizaje, así como un plan integrado a largo plazo. Por lo tanto, es esencial evitar la pérdida de vidas tomando medidas preventivas y construyendo una perspectiva de resiliencia en la población. El presente documento describe los conceptos principales que deben tomarse en consideración para comprender el riesgo de inundación. En consecuencia, analiza el riesgo de inundación actual en Bogotá, Colombia y busca determinar las zonas donde los asentamientos vulnerables se sobreponen a las áreas en peligro de inundación. Finalmente, se examina cómo la gestión del riesgo de inundación puede orientarse para reducir sus niveles y cómo las soluciones de diseño pueden ayudar a prevenir y gestionar el problema de inundación dentro de la ciudad.

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.

El tema de aseguramiento del suministro energético, especialmente en lo concerniente a la protección de las infraestructuras energéticas, ha suscitado especial interés en los países de la OCDE en los últimos años. Al respecto, el Consejo de la Unión Europea ha aprobado la Directiva 2008/114/CE (sobre la identificación y designación de infraestructuras críticas europeas) y el Departamento de Seguridad Nacional de EE.UU ha publicado el NIPP en 2009 (National Infrastructure Protection Plan). Dichos planes contemplan el establecimiento de procedimientos para la protección y seguridad de las infraestructuras críticas, en el marco de estrategias de gestión de riesgos. A partir de los conceptos establecidos en ambos programas, en esta tesis se presentan propuestas metodológicas aplicables a la identificación de riesgos y a la evaluación de amenazas en la red de infraestructura eléctrica. Se propone el uso de mapas interconectados de riesgos, complementados con la determinación de componentes de riesgo en el sistema de infraestructura. Así mismo, se propone el uso de las cartas de riesgos, mediante las cuales se obtiene una representación gráfica e intuitiva de la evaluación semicuantitativa de los riesgos más relevantes. Por otro lado, se formulan y validan estrategias metodológicas para la evaluación de la vulnerabilidad estructural en redes de transporte de alta tensión, a partir de la combinación de modelos de flujos de carga y medidas de grafos de libre-escala. De esta manera, es posible estudiar los escenarios de riesgos en función de los eventos que pueden desencadenar fallos en cascada dentro de un sistema eléctrico de potencia. Se demuestra la utilidad de las técnicas de teoría de grafos para analizar las respuestas de los sistemas eléctricos de potencia y evaluar la vulnerabilidad de las redes de transporte. Un ejemplo de dicha evaluación se desarrolla mediante valoración de la tolerancia de redes de prueba IEEE contra fallos aleatorios y contra ataques deliberados. Adicionalmente, se ha realizado una aplicación de la propuesta metodológica para evaluación de vulnerabilidad en los sistemas eléctricos de alta tensión en Colombia y España. Como resultado, los trabajos desarrollados en la tesis aportan nuevos instrumentos para la gestión de riesgos en infraestructuras eléctricas, en particular en redes de transporte en alta tensión.

En la Salud y la Producción animal a medida que aumentan los conocimientos, los criterios para determinar las prioridades en el control e intervención también se incrementan. Con el cambio continuo y los ajustes en los sistemas de producción animal, el rango y las características de sus limitantes están variando constantemente (Villamil, 1986 - 1988). Lo anterior ha estimulado la demanda por sistemas de información que permitan a los asesores, a los productores y a las agencias administradoras de recursos tomar decisiones sobre bases reales. El factor limitante para el diseño y operación de los sistemas nombrados anteriormente continúa siendo la recolección y el manejo de la información especialmente en los países en vía de desarrollo.

El objetivo principal de la presente tesis doctoral es la determinación de los HCG e HAP asociados a las partículas, emitidos por un motor diésel utilizando diversos combustibles de origen renovable. A partir de este objetivo general se definen varios objetivos específicos: La puesta a punto de un método efectivo para la identificación y cuantificación de los HCG individuales en los gases de escape del motor diésel. Este procedimiento debe incluir la metodología de muestreo, extracción, concentración y análisis, garantizando la conservación de los analitos objetivo. El desarrollo y validación de una metodología novedosa de especiación de los HAP asociados a las partículas. Esta técnica debe utilizar una combinación de extracción térmica y microextracción en fase sólida, de modo que se eliminen los inconvenientes de la extracción con disolventes tradicional y se incremente la selectividad y repetitividad del método.

The successful evolution of a power system is achieved when its future growth path is visualized. Visualizing and interpreting the future are crucial to understand the risks to which the power system is exposed. These are mostly caused by the interdependencies between the power system and other systems (e.g., transportation sector, fuels sector, industry, etc.); and the resulting uncertain environment where these systems perform. Then, the objectives of planning are to reduce the risks of uncertainties and to gain some control over the future by linking it with the past; otherwise risks might materialize in catastrophic consequences. In particular, motivated by the need of mitigating future risks in power systems, this work focuses on finding robust and flexible investment strategies in the generation capacity expansion planning problem under exposure to multiple uncertainties. They are present in different sources and types such as fuel costs, investment and operational costs, demand growth, renewables variability, transmission capacity, environmental policies, and regulation. The problem when considering multiple uncertainties is much harder, not only because the increased computational effort, but also because it is hard to model the combination of their occurrences in a single optimization problem. Since each uncertainty deserves special treatment, they are grouped into two categories. Those (categorical) uncertainties that really impact the portfolio investment decisions are classified as global; whereas those that quantitatively describe the intrinsic imperfect knowledge of the categorical are considered local uncertainties. So, to effectively account for robustness, defined as the ability to perform well under unforeseen situations, and flexibility, defined as the ability to adapt cost-efficiently to different situations, modern tools are illustrated and implemented in a computationally tractable manner, resulting in promising planning tools under uncertainty.

In earlier decades, a number of authors have been looking at how commuters value the usefulness of travel time and at which point it is still considered to be a disutility to minimize. This document presents the results of a survey which was carried out on different transportation modes in Northern California. The results of this study show how the utility of travel time may change from one person to another, unveiling the latent relationship between several factors (i.e. Attitudinal factors, primary mode of transportation, age, gender, etc.) and what we consider the usefulness of travel time. This study included several considerations made from different approaches, including linear regression analysis and ordered probit models. The dependent variable was always considered to be the usefulness of travel time represented in the final survey by an ordinal variable. Moreover, the study comprised data segmentation (i.e. primary mode of transportation) which explained some conceptual differences between a pooled model and “active-passive” models. Finally, the outcome of this study shows how active travel modes (i.e. Car driving) are usually the most unattractive, for the reason that the possibility of engaging in different activities while traveling is very limited. Similarly, how the activity itself may change the perception of travel from a disutility to minimize to a transition or mostly useful time.