Academic literature on the topic 'HASH METHODS'

<p>As global location systems offer only restricted availability, they are not suitable for a world- </p><p>wide tracking application without extensions. This thesis contains a goods-tracking solution, </p><p>which can be considered globally working in contrast to formerly developed technologies. For </p><p>the creation of an innovative approach, an evaluation of the previous efforts has to be made. </p><p>As a result of this assessment, a newly developed solution is presented in this thesis that uses </p><p>the Global Positioning System (GPS) in connection with the database correlation method </p><p>involving Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) fingerprints. The database </p><p>entries are generated automatically by measuring numerous GSM parameters such as Cell </p><p>Identity and signal strength involving handsets of several different providers and the real </p><p>reference position obtained via a high sensitivity GPS receiver.</p>

<p>The lifetime of the built environment depends strongly on the severity of local climatic conditions. A well-functioning and reliable infrastructure is a precondition for economic growth and social development. The climate and topography of Norway puts great demands on the design and localization of buildings. The relationship between materials, structures and climatic impact is highly complex; illustrating the need for new and improved methods for vulnerability assessment of building envelope performance in relation to externally imposed climatic strains. Historically, major variations in climatic impact have led to corresponding large variations in building practice throughout the country - often well suited to local conditions. Today it is fair to say that sound building traditions and practice to some extent are being rejected in the quest for cost-effective solutions. Furthermore, projected changes in climatic conditions due to global warming will enhance the vulnerability within the built environment.</p><p>The primary objectives of the present dissertation are to increase the knowledge about possible impacts of climate change on building envelope performance, and to analyse and update methods for the planning and design of external envelopes in relation to climatic impact. This is accomplished through the development of integrated approaches and improved methods for assessing impacts of external climatic parameters on building envelopes, combining knowledge on materials, structures and relevant climate data, applicable for both historical data and scenarios for climate change. The results will contribute to more accurate building physics design guidelines, promoting high-performance building envelopes in harsh climates.</p><p>Approaches to assessments of the risks associated with climate change and buildings are suggested, identifying main areas of vulnerability in the construction industry. It is shown that there are benefits to be gained from the introduction of risk management strategies within a greater extent of the construction industry. A way of analysing the building economics of climate change is also proposed </p><p>Analyses of building defects are necessary in order to further develop tools, solutions and preventive measures ensuring high-performance building envelopes. To illuminate the vulnerability of different building envelope elements under varying climatic exposure, a comprehensive analysis of empirical data gathered from process induced building defect assignments is carried out. The amount of building defects in Norway clearly illustrates that it is not only the extreme weather events that need to be studied as a foundation for adaptation towards a changing climate. Furthermore, the analyses of defects reveal a fundamental need for climate differentiated design guidelines.</p><p>New and improved methods for geographically dependent design of building envelopes are proposed:</p><p>- A method for assessing the relative potential of frost decay or frost damage of porous, mineral building materials exposed to a given climate is developed.</p><p>- A national map of the potential for decay in wood structures is developed. Detailed scenarios for climate change for selected locations in Norway are used to provide an indication of the possible future development of decay rates.</p><p>- A method for assessing driving rain exposures based on multi-year records of synoptic observations of present weather, wind speed and direction is also presented.</p><p>These climate indices can be used as a tool for evaluation of changes in performance requirements or decay rates due to climate change under global warming incorporating data from regional- and local-level climate change scenarios. Historical records of climate data have finally been used to illuminate challenges arising when introducing international standards at the national level, without considering the need for adjustments to reflect varying local climatic conditions.</p><p>At present, building standards and design guidelines presuppose use of historic weather data. Historically, location-specific climate data have only to a very limited extent been applied systematically for design purposes, life cycle assessments, and climate differentiation of the suitability of a given technical solution in a given climate. The work is a first step towards methods and approaches allowing for geographically dependent climate considerations to be made in the development of design guidelines for high-performance building envelopes, and also approaches to assess the risks associated with the future performance of building envelopes due to climate change.</p><p>The dissertation focuses on methods for assessing impacts of external climatic parameters on a local scale, but with the use of daily and monthly averages of climate data. The reliability of climate indices or climate differentiated design guidelines is strongly dependent on the geographical spreading of the observing station network. The Norwegian network is not optimally distributed to fully embrace local variations, but provides a solid platform for the development of methods for geographically dependent design and guidelines on the appropriateness of different solutions in different climates.</p><p>Climate indices (using geographic information systems technology)allowing for quantitative assessment of building envelope performance or decay potential may be an important element in the development of adaptation measures to meet the future risks of climate change in different parts of the world. Finally, the work offers a conceptual point of departure for the development of a vintage model of the robustness of the Norwegian building stock.</p><br>Paper VII, IX, XI and XII reprinted with kind permission of Elsevier, sciencedirect.com

Sono ormai molti anni che si discute riguardo la possibilità di uniformare il sistema domotico, ovvero quello relativo all'automazione della casa e sembra che si stia progredendo verso un periodo in cui potrebbero esserci tutti i fattori necessari per il corretto sviluppo delle tematiche relative all'Home Automation, in particolar modo l'amministrazione e lo studio della logica che governa i dispositivi che popolano le abitazioni. La domotica, ovvero l'insieme delle tecnologie impiegate nell'automazione delle abitazioni, è considerata pronta per il salto di qualità che la possa condurre fuori dalle applicazioni più tradizionali, anche con grandi ripercussioni economiche. Il mercato attuale dell'industria mondiale dell'Home Automation si aggira sui 2,5 miliardi di dollari, ma entro il 2014 dovrebbe raggiungere i 13,4 miliardi (fonte ING Direct). La casa intelligente, o Smart Home, utilizzando la dicitura corretta insieme al concetto di Smat Grid, gurano nell'ultimo rapporto annuale della Consumer Electronics Association tra le cinque tecnologie da tenere d'occhio. C'è però da considerare una differenza tra quello che le tecnologie promettono e ciò che un end-user può oggettivamente pensare di installare in questo momento. Dal primo punto di vista, teoricamente è già tutto pronto per la realizzazione di uno scenario in cui gli impianti di casa sono interconnessi, dialogano tra loro e con gli abitanti, segnalano guasti e in qualche caso anticipano gli stessi desideri del proprietario. D'altro canto però è tuttavia vero che i maggiori produttori di elettrodomestici e dispositivi non hanno trovato un accordo circa lo standard di comunicazione da adottare per far dialogare questi dispositivi, men che meno sono state de nite uniformemente delle politiche di controllo relativamente alla coordinazione degli stessi per soddisfare i bisogni dell'end-user. Questo lavoro di tesi si inserisce nella suddetta tematica, a rontando i prob- lemi appena citati, che caratterizzano e limitano lo sviluppo della Smart Home nel contesto del programma Smart grid, de nito e sviluppato sia in Europa che negli Stati Uniti. Le tematiche aff rontate sono state descritte distinguendole in due macroaree: la prima riguarda lo studio e l'analisi dei protocolli di comunicazione per dotare la casa di un'infrastruttura di rete necessaria a sopperire tutte le richieste relative all'Home Automation. Si è quindi proceduto in una prima fase ad analizzare quelli erano i requisiti richiesti ad un'infrastruttura di questo tipo, quali, ad esempio, il consumo energetico, il costo di installazione, il raggio di copertura e la velocità di trasferimento dati. In seguito è stata fatta un'analisi esauriente di diversi protocolli di comunicazione legati al mondo dell'Home Automation, focalizzandoci in particolar modo a quelli candidati a diventare lo HAN (Home Automation Network), aderendo alle speci che de nite dai vari consorzi Smart Grid. Ognuno di questi protocolli è stato ra rontato con i requisiti individuati in precedenza, creando una sorta di classi cazione in base all'attinenza o meno a queste speci fiche. Al termine di questa analisi le tecnologie candidate a ricoprire il ruolo di HAN sono state 3 e nello specifi co il Bluetooth, lo ZigBee e il protocollo LonWorks. Alla fine lo ZigBee è riuscito a prevalere tra questi tre, o rendo una migliore rispondenza alle speci che Smart Grid (Energy Pro le 2.0) ed essendo già accolto molto bene dal mercato come infrastruttura di rete per l'Home Automation. La seconda fase di questa analisi si è quindi concentrata sulla seconda prob- lematica, relativa alla logica di controllo e coordinamento tra i vari dispositivi che compongono un tipico scenario domestico. In particolar modo, la prima sezione si è concentrata sulla definizione e sulla determinazione dell'impianto teorico necessario alla trattazione dei due metodi sviluppati: si è mostrato quindi l'approccio di Woolridge alla trattazione dei MASs, modi candone alcuni aspetti per rendere più conformi tali concetti alla classe degli HASs. L'analisi si è quindi concentrata nello studio dello Stato dell'Arte esistente, sia per quanto concerne la Teoria dei Sistemi Multi Agente che quella riguardante le problematiche relative all'allocazione delle risorse. Questi due metodi sviluppati hanno quindi lo scopo di risolvere i conflitti che si possono venire ad instaurare sull'utilizzo concorrenziale delle risorse condivise che si trovano all'interno di una tipica installazione domestica, come ad esempio la corrente elettrica e l'acqua calda. L'obiettivo nella risoluzione di tali con itti tende ad ottimizzare l'intero sistema, cercando di trovare un regime di funzionamento dei vari dispositivi che possa soddisfare e esigenze e i desideri dell'end-user. Entrambi i metodi sviluppati, chiamati GT-HAS (Game Theoretic-HAS) e MKP-HAS (Multiperiod Knapsack Problem-HAS) utilizzano dei funzionali la cui massimizzazione permette di ottenere, localmente e, date le proprietà dei sistemi costruiti, anche globalmente, delle performance che soddisfano le preferenze dell'end-user. L'analisi di questa problematica si conclude con la validazione dei due metodi prendendo alcuni scenari di esempio in esame e facendo un confronto delle prestazioni relative ed assolute fornite dai GT-HASs e dai MKP-HASs.La fase conclusiva del lavoro si concentra su alcune considerazioni riguardanti la teoria elaborata e alcune proposte riguardanti gli sviluppi futuri, come il miglioramento dei metodi GT-HAS e MKP-HAS e la possibilità di estendere l'ottimizzazione anche ad una famiglia di risorse. In attesa che il mercato si evolva verso una soluzione convergente e standard.<br>There were many years that the possibility of uniforming the domotic system has been discussed, or rather the one relative to the automation of the house and it seems that we are proceeding to a period in which all the necessary factors for developing the Home Automation problematic will be available, in particular for those concerning the administration and the study of the logic that manages the house devices. The domotic, that is the set of technologies implemented to automate the house, is considered ready for the quality leap that would lead it out of the more traditional applications, also with big economical repercussions. The present worldwide market of the Home Automation industry has a total turnover of about 2.5 dollar billions, but within the 2014 it will be reach a value of 13.4 billions (source ING Direct). The smart home in addition with the concept of the Smart Grid appear, on the last annual report of the Consumer Electronics Association, as one of the rst ve technology to keep an eye on. However, it is necessary to consider a di erence between what the technologies allow to do and what an end-user could e ectively think to install at the moment. From the rst point of view, theoretically, it is all already done to realize a scenario in which the house installations are interconnected, dialogue with each other and with the users, eventually signal faults and, in some cases, anticipate the wishes of the owner. On the other hand, it is nevertheless true that the major white goods and home devices producers have not jet found an agreement about the communication standard to use for the data exchange among these appliances and, furthermore, the control policies relative to the coordination of the devices that have the objective of satisfying the end-user needs have not jet been de ned. This PhD thesis enters in the aforementioned topic, facing the just cited problems that characterize and limit the development of the Smart Home in the framework of the Smart grid programme, de ned and currently developed in Europe and United States. The approached thematics have been described distinguish them in two macro-areas: the rst one concerns the study and the analysis of the communication protocols to endow the house with a network in- frastructure needed to provide all the requests relative to the Home Automation. Thus, in a rst phase, the requisites for an home network infrastructure have been analyzed, such, for example, the energy consumption, the installation cost, the coverage range and the data transfer rate. In the following, an exhaustive analysis of the various communication protocols for the Home Automation has been done, focusing in particular in those ones candidate to become the HAN (Home Automation Network), complying with the speci cations de ned by the various Smart Grid consortium. Each one of these protocols has been compared with the requisites identi ed in the previous steps, creating a sort of classi cation on the basis of the accordance or less with these speci cations. At the end of this study, the candidate technologies for the role of HAN were three and, more speci cally, they were Bluetooth, ZigBee and the Lonworks protocol. After further tests, ZigBee prevailed among the two opponents, o ering a better correspondence with the Smart Grid requirements (Energy Pro le 2.0) and being already well accepted in the market as network infrastructure for the Home Automation. The second phase of this analysis was focused on the second problematic, relative to the control logic and coordination of the various devices that composes a typical household scenario. In particular, the rst section was concentrated on the de nition and determination of the needed theoretical framework for managing the two developed methods: it was showed the Woolridge approach to handle the MASs, modifying some aspects and concepts to comply them with the HASs class. Then, the analysis was focused on the study of the existent State of the Art, both for what concerns the the Multi Agent theory and that regarding the problematics relative to the resource allocation. These two developed methods have the purpose of resolving conflicts which can occur when the devices are trying to use shared resources in a typical household installation like, for example, the electricity and the hot water. The objective in resolving such conflicts consists in optimizing the whole system, trying to nd a functioning scheme of the various devices that can satisfy the demands and wishes of the end-user. Both the developed methods, called GT-HAS (Game Theoretic-HAS) and MKP-HAS (Multiperiod Knapsack Problem-HAS), use functions whose maximization permits to obtain locally and, given the properties of the built frameworks, also globally, performances that satisfy the preferences of the end-user. The analysis of this kind of problematic ends with the validation of the two methods, taking in exam some exemplifying scenarios and comparing the relative and absolute performances provided by GT-HAS and MKP-HAS.