Search results for " value"
showing 10 items of 3662 documents
Dynamic goal programming synthetic indicator: an application for water companies sustainability assessment
2018
ABSTRACTThis study proposes to evaluate the sustainability of water companies through time by using a new approach, one that involves a dynamic synthetic indicator derived from goal programming techniques. This dynamic indicator approach incorporates catch-up and innovation indices, which enables one to identify the main factors that drive changes in sustainability through time. We used a case study approach to clarify this dynamic approach by evaluating indicator values from a sample of 129 Portuguese water companies over the 2012 to 2015 time period. For most of the water companies we evaluated, sustainability values changed over time, which illustrates the importance of evaluating dynami…
Economic feasibility of stationary electrochemical storages for electric bill management applications: The Italian scenario
2016
Battery energy storage systems (BESSs) are expected to become a fundamental element of the electricity infrastructure, thanks to their ability to decouple generation and demand over time. BESSs can also be used to store electricity during low-price hours, when the demand is low, and to meet the demand during peak hours, thus leading to savings for the consumer. This work focuses on the economic viability of BESS from the point of view of the electricity customer. The analysis refers to a lithium-ion (Li-ion), an advanced lead-acid, a zinc-based, a sodium-sulphur (NaS) and a flow battery. The total investment and replacement costs are estimated in order to calculate the cumulated cash flow, …
Improving stock index forecasts by using a new weighted fuzzy-trend time series method
2017
Define a new technical indicator for measuring the trend of the fuzzy time series.Introduce a new weighted fuzzy-trend time series method to forecast stock indices.Compare ex-post performances of weighted FTS methods using stock market indices.Assess statistical significance of ex-post forecast accuracy for weighted FTS methods. We propose using new weighted operators in fuzzy time series to forecast the future performance of stock market indices. Based on the chronological sequence of weights associated with the original fuzzy logical relationships, we define both chronological-order and trend-order weights, and incorporate our proposals for the ex-post forecast into the classical modeling…
Harsanyi Power Solutions for Cooperative Games on Voting Structures
2019
International audience; This paper deals with Harsanyi power solutions for cooperative games in which partial cooperation is based on specific union stable systems given by the winning coalitions derived from a voting game. This framework allows for analyzing new and real situations in which there exists a feedback between the economic influence of each coalition of agents and its political power. We provide an axiomatic characterization of the Harsanyi power solutions on the subclass of union stable systems arisen from the winning coalitions from a voting game when the influence is determined by a power index. In particular, we establish comparable axiomatizations, in this context, when co…
Cross-Layer MAC Protocol for Unbiased Average Consensus Under Random Interference
2019
Wireless Sensor Networks have been revealed as a powerful technology to solve many different problems through sensor nodes cooperation. One important cooperative process is the so-called average gossip algorithm, which constitutes a building block to perform many inference tasks in an efficient and distributed manner. From the theoretical designs proposed in most previous work, this algorithm requires instantaneous symmetric links in order to reach average consensus. However, in a realistic scenario wireless communications are subject to interferences and other environmental factors, which results in random instantaneous topologies that are, in general, asymmetric. Consequently, the estimat…
Dynamic Modeling of Planar Multi-Link Flexible Manipulators
2021
A closed-form dynamic model of the planar multi-link flexible manipulator is presented. The assumed modes method is used with the Lagrangian formulation to obtain the dynamic equations of motion. Explicit equations of motion are derived for a three-link case assuming two modes of vibration for each link. The eigenvalue problem associated with the mass boundary conditions, which changes with the robot configuration and payload, is discussed. The time-domain simulation results and frequency-domain analysis of the dynamic model are presented to show the validity of the theoretical derivation.
K-nearest neighbor driving active contours to delineate biological tumor volumes
2019
Abstract An algorithm for tumor delineation in positron emission tomography (PET) is presented. Segmentation is achieved by a local active contour algorithm, integrated and optimized with the k-nearest neighbor (KNN) classification method, which takes advantage of the stratified k-fold cross-validation strategy. The proposed approach is evaluated considering the delineation of cancers located in different body districts (i.e. brain, head and neck, and lung), and considering different PET radioactive tracers. Data are pre-processed in order to be expressed in terms of standardized uptake value, the most widely used PET quantification index. The algorithm uses an initial, operator selected re…
Buckling and post-buckling analysis of cracked stiffened panels via an X-Ritz method
2019
Abstract A multi-domain eXtended Ritz formulation, called X-Ritz, for the analysis of buckling and post-buckling of stiffened panels with cracks is presented. The theoretical framework is based on the First-order Shear Deformation Theory and accounts for von Karman's geometric nonlinearities. The structure is modeled as assembly of plate elements. Penalty techniques are used to fulfill the continuity condition along the edges of contiguous elements and to satisfy essential boundary conditions requirements. The use of an extended set of approximating functions allows to model through-the-thickness cracks and to capture the crack opening and tip singular fields as well as the structural behav…
A singular elliptic equation and a related functional
2021
We study a class of Dirichlet boundary value problems whose prototype is [see formula in PDF] where 0 < p < 1 and f belongs to a suitable Lebesgue space. The main features of this problem are the presence of a singular term |u|p−2u and a datum f which possibly changes its sign. We introduce a notion of solution in this singular setting and we prove an existence result for such a solution. The motivation of our notion of solution to problem above is due to a minimization problem for a non–differentiable functional on [see formula in PDF] whose formal Euler–Lagrange equation is an equation of that type. For nonnegative solutions a uniqueness result is obtained.
Do Randomized Algorithms Improve the Efficiency of Minimal Learning Machine?
2020
Minimal Learning Machine (MLM) is a recently popularized supervised learning method, which is composed of distance-regression and multilateration steps. The computational complexity of MLM is dominated by the solution of an ordinary least-squares problem. Several different solvers can be applied to the resulting linear problem. In this paper, a thorough comparison of possible and recently proposed, especially randomized, algorithms is carried out for this problem with a representative set of regression datasets. In addition, we compare MLM with shallow and deep feedforward neural network models and study the effects of the number of observations and the number of features with a special dat…