• Wind and Structures
• /
• v.14 no.4
• /
• pp.285-300
• /
• 2011

Researchers at the International Hurricane Research Center (IHRC), Florida International University (FIU), are working in stages on the construction of a large state-of-the-art Wall of Wind (WoW) facility to support research in the area of Wind Engineering. In this paper, the challenges of simulating hurricane winds for the WoW are presented and investigated based on a scale model study. Three wind profiles were simulated using airfoils, and/or adjustable planks mechanism with and without grids. Evaluations of flow characteristics were performed in order to enhance the WoW's flow simulation capabilities. Characteristics of the simulated wind fields are compared to the results obtained from a study using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and also validated via pressure measurements on small-scale models of the Silsoe cube building. Optimal scale of the test model and its optimal distance from the WoW contraction exit are determined - which are two important aspects for testing using an open jet facility such as the WoW. The main objective of this study is to further the understanding of the WoW capabilities and the characteristics of its test section by means of intensive tests and validations at small scale in order to apply this knowledge to the design of the full-scale WoW and for future wind engineering testing.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
• /
• v.36 no.1
• /
• pp.15-27
• /
• 2020

Accurate knowledge of land use/land cover (LULC) features and their relative changes over upon the time are essential for sustainable urban management. Urban sprawl growth has been always also a worldwide concern that needs to carefully monitor particularly in a developing country where unplanned building constriction has been expanding at a high rate. Recently, remotely sensed imageries with a very high spatial/spectral resolution and state of the art machine learning approaches sent the urban classification and growth monitoring to a higher level. In this research, we classified the Quickbird satellite imagery by object-based image analysis of Dempster-Shafer (OBIA-DS) for the years of 2002 and 2015 at Karbala-Iraq. The real LULC changes including, residential sprawl expansion, amongst these years, were identified via change detection procedure. In accordance with extracted features of LULC and detected trend of urban pattern, the future LULC dynamic was simulated by using land transformation model (LTM) in geospatial information system (GIS) platform. Both classification and prediction stages were successfully validated using ground control points (GCPs) through accuracy assessment metric of Kappa coefficient that indicated 0.87 and 0.91 for 2002 and 2015 classification as well as 0.79 for prediction part. Detail results revealed a substantial growth in building over fifteen years that mostly replaced by agriculture and orchard field. The prediction scenario of LULC sprawl development for 2030 revealed a substantial decline in green and agriculture land as well as an extensive increment in build-up area especially at the countryside of the city without following the residential pattern standard. The proposed method helps urban decision-makers to identify the detail temporal-spatial growth pattern of highly populated cities like Karbala. Additionally, the results of this study can be considered as a probable future map in order to design enough future social services and amenities for the local inhabitants.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
• /
• v.15 no.5
• /
• pp.1761-1777
• /
• 2021

An image with infrared features and visible details is obtained by processing infrared and visible images. In this paper, a fusion method based on Laplacian pyramid and generative adversarial network is proposed to obtain high quality fusion images, termed as Laplacian-GAN. Firstly, the base and detail layers are obtained by decomposing the source images. Secondly, we utilize the Laplacian pyramid-based method to fuse these base layers to obtain more information of the base layer. Thirdly, the detail part is fused by a generative adversarial network. In addition, generative adversarial network avoids the manual design complicated fusion rules. Finally, the fused base layer and fused detail layer are reconstructed to obtain the fused image. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method can obtain state-of-the-art fusion performance in both visual quality and objective assessment. In terms of visual observation, the fusion image obtained by Laplacian-GAN algorithm in this paper is clearer in detail. At the same time, in the six metrics of MI, AG, EI, MS_SSIM, Q_abf and SCD, the algorithm presented in this paper has improved by 0.62%, 7.10%, 14.53%, 12.18%, 34.33% and 12.23%, respectively, compared with the best of the other three algorithms.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
• /
• v.13 no.6
• /
• pp.3199-3218
• /
• 2019

Location-based services (LBSs) have become popular in recent years due to the ever-increasing usage of smart mobile devices and mobile applications through networks. Although LBS application provides great benefits to mobile users, it also raises a sever privacy concern of users due to the untrusted service providers. In the lack of privacy enhancing mechanisms, most applications of the LBS may discourage the user's acceptance of location services in general, and endanger the user's privacy in particular. Therefore, it is a great interest to discuss on the recent privacy-preserving mechanisms in LBSs. Many existing location-privacy protection-mechanisms (LPPMs) make great efforts to increase the attacker's uncertainty on the user's actual whereabouts by generating a multiple of fake-locations together with user's actual positions. In this survey, we present a study and analysis of existing LPPMs and the state-of-art privacy measures in service quality aware LBS applications. We first study the general architecture of privacy qualification system for LBSs by surveying the existing framework and outlining its main feature components. We then give an overview of the basic privacy requirements to be considered in the design and evaluation of LPPMs. Furthermore, we discuss the classification and countermeasure solutions of existing LPPMs for mitigating the current LBS privacy protection challenges. These classifications include anonymization, obfuscation, and an encryption-based technique, as well as the combination of them is called a hybrid mechanism. Finally, we discuss several open issues and research challenges based on the latest progresses for on-going LBS and location privacy research.

• IEIE Transactions on Smart Processing and Computing
• /
• v.4 no.5
• /
• pp.354-365
• /
• 2015

This work presents an Internet of Things (IoT) system for home energy management based on a custom-designed Impulse Radio Ultra-Wideband (IR-UWB) transceiver that targets a generic and multi-standard control system. This control system enables the interoperability of heterogeneous devices: it integrates various sensor nodes based on ZigBee, EnOcean and UWB in the same middleware by utilizing an ad-hoc layer as an interface between the hardware and software. The paper presents as a first the design of the IR-UWB transceiver for a portable sensor node integrated with the middleware layer, and also describes the receiver connected to the control system. The custom-designed low-power transmitter on the sensor node is fabricated with 130 nm CMOS technology. It generates a signal with a 1.1 ns pulse width while consuming $39{\mu}W$ at 1 Mbps. The UWB sensor node with a temperature measurement capability consumes 5.31 mW, which is lower than the power level of state-of-the-art solutions for smart-home applications. The UWB hardware and software layers necessary to interface with the control system are verified in over-the-air measurements in an actual office environment. With the implementation of the presented sensor node and its integration in the energy management system, we demonstrate achievement of the broad flexibility demanded for IoT.

• Journal of Navigation and Port Research
• /
• v.37 no.6
• /
• pp.587-595
• /
• 2013

Establishment and operation of Aids to Navigation in the process of port design, construction and management are crucial factor of maritime safety and collision prevention. According to the IMO SOLAS Chapter 5, regulation 13, the establishment and operation of maritime safety facilities are mandated for the competent authorities. The facilities of Aids to Navigations are moving to a concept of e-Navigation with state-of-the-art technology of radio navigation equipments such as AIS, DGPS and e-Loran from the traditional visual facilities (optics, shape), Although the autonomous maritime traffic system is a new trend, yet the traditional and conventional Aids to Navigation like lighthouses and beacons are still imperative for vessel's safe navigation. In this paper, for decision of service level of maritime traffic facilities to enhance the efficiency of visual navigation system management it was proposed the Aids to Navigation availability as an efficient management system incorporating the whole maritime traffic facilities under one management system. Comparison of foreign level of services and analysis of the theoretical background of them were analyzed and the proposed LOS was applied to Incheon area to evaluate the safety of navigation routes.

• International Journal of Computer Science & Network Security
• /
• v.21 no.12spc
• /
• pp.463-468
• /
• 2021

Single image super-resolution (SISR) is an image processing technique, and its main target is to reconstruct the high-quality or high-resolution (HR) image from the low-quality or low-resolution (LR) image. Currently, deep learning-based convolutional neural network (CNN) image super-resolution approaches achieved remarkable improvement over the previous approaches. Furthermore, earlier approaches used hand designed filter to upscale the LR image into HR image. The design architecture of such approaches is easy, but it introduces the extra unwanted pixels in the reconstructed image. To resolve these issues, we propose novel deep learning-based approach known as Lightweight deep CNN-based approach for Single Image Super-Resolution (LDCSIR). In this paper, we propose a new architecture which is inspired by ResNet with Inception blocks, which significantly drop the computational cost of the model and increase the processing time for reconstructing the HR image. Compared with the other state of the art methods, LDCSIR achieves better performance in terms of quantitively (PSNR/SSIM) and qualitatively.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
• /
• v.64 no.5
• /
• pp.779-785
• /
• 2015

Recently, home energy management system (HEMS) for power consumption reduction has been widely used and studied. The HEMS performs electric power consumption control for the indoor electric device connected to the HEMS. However, a traditional HEMS is used for passive control method using some particular power saving devices. Disadvantages with this traditional HEMS is that these power saving devices should be newly installed to build HEMS environment instead of existing home appliances. Therefore, an HEMS, which performs with existing home appliances, is needed to prevent additional expenses due to the purchase of state-of-the-art devices. In this paper, an intelligent inference algorithm for EMS at home for non-power saving electronic equipment, called legacy devices, is proposed. The algorithm is based on the adaptive network fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) and has a subsystem that notifies retraining schedule to the ANFIS to increase the inference performance. This paper discusses the overview and the architecture of the system, especially in terms of the retraining schedule. In addition, the comparison results show that the proposed algorithm is more accurate than the classic ANFIS-based EMS system.

• Safety and Health at Work
• /
• v.5 no.3
• /
• pp.140-146
• /
• 2014

Background: Young male and female workers are over-represented in statistics concerning negative outcomes of poor work environment and risky work. Young workers often have low awareness of risk, a lack of safety training, and inadequate introduction to the work. The aim of this study was to identify the knowledge and experiences of pupils of vocational schools concerning potential work environment risks in their future work. Methods: The study design was a dual one, and included a questionnaire and focus group interviews. The study group consisted of 239 pupils from 10 upper secondary schools, who were graduating pupils in four vocational programs: the Industrial Technology Programme, the Restaurant Management and Food Programme, the Transport Programme, and the Handicraft Programme (in which students specialize in wood products). The upper secondary schools were located in the central region of Sweden. Results: The pupils had limited knowledge that employers must, by law, conduct risk analyses and prevent risks. Many felt that they themselves are mainly responsible for performing their tasks safely. Pupils in all programs mentioned acute risk as the greatest risk at work. The theoretical education about safety at work was provided in the $1^{st}$ year of the 3-year vocational programs. Conclusion: A systematic approach to pupils' training in work environment, which is a basis for a safe and healthy workplace, is lacking. The study findings indicate that pupils are offered knowledge far from that intended by laws and by state-of-the-art occupational health risk research.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.51 no.4
• /
• pp.1109-1116
• /
• 2019

It is essential to predict the radioactivity distribution around the reactor cooling system (RCS) during obligatory cyclic operation of AP-1000. A home-developed program CPA-AP1000 is upgraded to predict the response of activated corrosion products (ACPs) in the RCS. The program is written in MATLAB and it uses state of the art MCNP as a subroutine for flux calculations. A pair of cyclic power profiles were superimposed after initial full power operation. The effect of cyclic operation is noticed to be more prominent for in-core surfaces, followed by the primary coolant and out-of-core structures. The results have shown that specific activity trends of $^{56}Mn$ and $^{24}Na$ promptly follow the power variations, whereas, $^{59}Fe$, $^{58}Co$, $^{99}Mo$ and $^{60}Co$ exhibit a sluggish power-following response. The investigations pointed out that promptly power-following response of ACPs in the coolant is vital as an instant radioactivity source during leakage incidents. However, the ACPs with delayed power-following response in the out-of-core components are perceived to cause a long-term activity. The present results are found in good agreement with those for a reference PWR. The results are useful for source term monitoring and optimization of work procedures for an innovative reactor design.