Search results for "Turing"
showing 10 items of 2644 documents
A sustainability point of view on sheet metal forming operations: material wasting and energy consumption in incremental forming and stamping process…
2012
Abstract Sustainability and sustainable production is nowadays a wide research field due the urgency of reducing environmental burdens of industrial production. Sustainable manufacturing issues are widely investigated too. In particular, due to the relevance such issues assume for automotive and aeronautical industry, the investigation of sheet metal forming processes sustainability is worth studying and, within this research fields, a certain lack of knowledge is still present. Many studies have been presented concerning the evaluation and reduction of environmental burdens in manufacturing. In this paper, the authors focus on sheet metal forming and aim to investigate both the efficient u…
Assessing the efficiency of wastewater treatment plants: A double-bootstrap approach
2017
Abstract Benchmarking the performance of wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) is essential for promoting their long-term sustainability. Recent research has applied data envelopment analysis (DEA) models to evaluate the efficiency of WWTPs providing a synthetic index of their performance. However, the traditional DEA is a deterministic method; therefore, regression analysis cannot be used to explore the external factors influencing efficiency scores. To overcome this limitation, in this study, a double bootstrap DEA model was used for the first time to compute the efficiency scores for a sample of WWTPs. The confidence intervals for efficiency scores were estimated for each facility. Results…
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of protected crops: an Italian case study
2012
Abstract In this paper a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of protected crops was carried out. In particular, energy and environmental performances of peppers, melons, tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, and zucchini in different typologies of greenhouses (tunnel and pavilion) were assessed. The study aimed at assessing the ecoprofile of each product and the share of each life-cycle step on the total environmental impacts. The related process flow chart, the relevant mass and energy flows and the key environmental issues were identified for each product. Collection of primary data was conducted by means of a detailed questionnaire distributed to a producer company in southern Italy. The analysis was devel…
Improving eco-efficiency of a swimming hall through customer involvement
2013
Abstract Findings from a project aiming to improve eco-efficiency of a swimming hall in Finland are presented in this article. There are various opportunities for eco-efficiency improvements for a swimming hall, many of which belong to responsibilities of the staff. However, there are aspects where also customers could participate. Consequently, changes in the current behavior of the swimming hall management, staff and customers are required. Results from customer survey and staff interviews suggest that lack of knowledge about the swimming hall-specific environmental impacts and possibilities of the respondent (either staff or customers) to actively engage in pro-environmental work at the …
CiceRobot: a cognitive robot for interactive museum tours
2007
PurposeThe aim of this paper is to integrate perception, action and symbolic knowledge to allow an autonomous robot to operate in unstructured environments and to interact with non‐expert users.Design/methodology/approachTo achieve such goals, a cognitive robot architecture is proposed based on the integration between subsymbolic and linguistic computations through the introduction of an intermediate level of representation based on conceptual spaces.FindingsThe architecture has been tested in the CiceRobot project on tasks related to guided tours in the Archaeological Museum of Agrigento. Experimental results show that robot cognitive behaviors allow one to achieve a full functional roboti…
A combined multi-criteria approach to support FMECA analyses: A real-world case
2018
[EN] The paper proposes an approach that combines reliability analyses and multi-criteria decision methods to optimize maintenance activities of complex systems. A failure mode, effects, and criticality analysts (FMECA) is initially performed and the fuzzy TOPSIS (FTOPSIS) method is then applied to rank previously identified failure modes. For prioritization, failure modes are assessed against three evaluation criteria that differ from those traditionally involved in risk priority number (RPN) computation (i.e. severity, occurrence and detection). Two criteria refer to the maintenance management reflecting the operational time taken by the maintenance activity performed after the occurrence…
Comparison between GPR measurements and ultrasonic tomography with different inversion algorithms: an application to the base of an ancient Egyptian …
2011
By late 2008 one of the most important pieces of the ‘Museo delle Antichit`a Egizie’ of Turin, the sculpture of the Pharaoh with god Amun, was planned to be one of the masterpieces of a travelling exhibition in Japan. The ‘Fondazione Museo delle Antichit`a Egizie di Torino’, who manages the museum, was concerned with the integrity of the base of the statue which actually presents visible signs of restoration dating back to the early 19th century. It was required to estimate the persistence of the visible fractures, to search for unknown ones and to provide information about the overall mechanical strength of the base. To tackle the first question a GPR reflection survey along three sides of…
Towards more equity concerning quality of Urban Waste Management services in the context of cities
2018
Abstract An innovative combined evaluation approach is proposed in the present paper to deal with the issue of the performance measurement and comparison of Urban Waste Management (UWM) services in the context of cities. The ELECTRE III method is initially considered as tool able to execute a multi-criteria analysis aimed at ranking UWM systems based on their integration and sustainability levels. The latter are comprehensively evaluated via the recently developed “Wasteaware” Integrated and Sustainability Waste Management indicators framework, which takes into account physical components and governance aspects of UWM systems. Then, on the basis on ELECTRE III results, a practical gaps inve…
Embedding “substrate” in environmental assessment of green roofs life cycle: evidences from an application to the whole chain in a Mediterranean site
2012
Abstract A classical LCA methodology is here applied to green roofs including in this analysis also the whole life cycle of the substrate, that represented a lack of previous LCA studies on green roofs. This inclusion will allow a complete and proper application of the LCA methodology to achieve an environmental accounting of the “green roof” performance. We have here chosen to approach the problem by analysing a specific substrate, that is used within an actual extensive green roof. Afterwards, we have applied the LCA methodology to the whole actual extensive green roof whose substrate under analysis is part of. In this manner, we achieved an environmental accounting of the “green roof” pe…
A small scale prototype of a wave energy conversion system for hydrogen production
2015
In this paper a small scale prototype of sea wave energy converter for hydrogen production and storage is presented. Laboratory prototypes of the wave energy converter device and sea water electrolyzer are presented. Experimental results are shown. A cost-effective and efficient power electronics system is designed. Experimental waveforms of the wave energy converter are imported in the power electronics simulation model to simulate the whole system as closely as possible to its effective behavior. Simulation results are shown to test the efficiency of the proposed solution.