scholarly journals Waste generation prediction under uncertainty in smart cities through deep neuroevolution

Author(s):  
Andrés Camero ◽  
Jamal Toutouh ◽  
Javier Ferrer ◽  
Enrique Alba

The unsustainable development of countries has created a problem due to the unstoppable waste generation. Moreover, waste collection is carried out following a pre-defined route that does not take into account the actual level of the containers collected. Therefore, optimizing the way the waste is collected presents an interesting opportunity. In this study, we tackle the problem of predicting the waste generation ratio in real-world conditions, i.e., under uncertainty. Particularly, we use a deep neuroevolutionary technique to automatically design a recurrent network that captures the filling level of all waste containers in a city at once, and we study the suitability of our proposal when faced to noisy and faulty data. We validate our proposal using a real-world case study, consisting of more than two hundred waste containers located in a city in Spain, and we compare our results to the state-of-the-art. The results show that our approach exceeds all its competitors and that its accuracy in a real-world scenario, i.e., under uncertain data, is good enough for optimizing the waste collection planning.

Publications ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 49
Author(s):  
Diogo Correia ◽  
Leonor Teixeira ◽  
João Lourenço Marques

The lack of examples of smart-city initiatives and the sharing of best practices in Portugal confirm the gap in the transference of empirical knowledge to the scientific literature in this area. The smart-city concept has passed through three stages. However, its evolution has not been noted equally throughout countries and their territories. The literature only provides information about specific projects implemented in a few cities. Therefore, the aim of this paper was to study the state-of-the-art of smart cities in Portugal by analyzing 25 editions of the most relevant national-wide smart-cities magazine. First, the objective of analyzing the magazine was to study each Portuguese city in terms of the subject areas and types of existing initiatives in order, ultimately, to frame cities within their respective smart-city phases, as per the literature. Second, the aim of the paper was also to provide information about the evolution of the concept through analyses of embedded experts’ quotes. The results of the first are complemented with the analysis of interviews with policymakers to provide information about the existing challenges to implementing a smart city and to understand the role of government therein. Qualitative and quantitative analyses were performed on the case study. The findings suggest that the three smart-city phases are perceived in slightly different ways in Portugal and heterogeneity within the country can be noted from the lack of strategies and a standard framework.


2021 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 146-180
Author(s):  
Roslina Abdul Latif ◽  
◽  
Sojoud Elgarrai ◽  

The following study of selected works of art by Zulkiflee Anwar Haque or better known as Zunar, a Malaysian political cartoonist from his book ‘Twit Twit Cincin’. This study is guided by the visual rhetoric theory that has three areas of study - nature, function and evaluation. The study looks at selected cartoons that addressed political figures, politics and social issues. The research looked at the way the caricatures portrayed Malaysian politicians, his perspectives on the political and social issues and how these issues were addressed. The researcher also looked at metaphors used by the cartoonist to communicate his ideas to the audiences. The study found that Zunar’s portrait of Malaysian politicians is not always positive. He is critical but not in an inflammatory way. The metaphors found in Zunar’s work are found to be common themes and simple to understand. They are also very well-known, visually appealing and a tool to tie his messages together and to get his ideas across. Zunar has managed to resist the oppression of the state through his cartoons while looking at institutional reform, puts forth an alternative articulation of history and nation that juxtapose the current government. Keywords: Zunar, political cartoonist, political and social issues, Twit Twit Cincin, metaphors.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pouyan Tabasinejad

Scholars of transnational entrepreneurship have largely focused on the issue of institutional barriers within the country of origin (COO) context, asserting that transnational entrepreneurs (TEs) can overcome these barriers in a way that constitutes a competitive advantage. What has not been analyzed in the literature is the way in which institutional barriers that are imposed from outside of TE networks can affect TE behaviour and success. In this study, I will introduce the concept of externally imposed institutional barriers, using the example of Iranian TEs as a case study in which to understand this concept. By looking at three cases of Iranian TEs functioning within the context of Iran’s exclusion from the global financial system, this study will draw conclusions on the state of Iranian-Canadian TE activity and its implications for scholars, practitioners, and policymakers.


Author(s):  
Peer Hasselmeyer ◽  
Gregory Katsaros ◽  
Bastian Koller ◽  
Philipp Wieder

The management of the entire service landscape comprising a Cloud environment is a complex and challenging venture. There, one task of utmost importance, is the generation and processing of information about the state, health, and performance of the various services and IT components, something which is generally referred to as monitoring. Such information is the foundation for proper assessment and management of the whole Cloud. This chapter pursues two objectives: first, to provide an overview of monitoring in Cloud environments and, second, to propose a solution for interoperable and vendor-independent Cloud monitoring. Along the way, the authors motivate the necessity of monitoring at the different levels of Cloud infrastructures, introduce selected state-of-the-art, and extract requirements for Cloud monitoring. Based on these requirements, the following sections depict a Cloud monitoring solution and describe current developments towards interoperable, open, and extensible Cloud monitoring frameworks.


2019 ◽  
pp. 194-202
Author(s):  
Claudia Lange ◽  
Sven Leuckert
Keyword(s):  

Semiotica ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 (228) ◽  
pp. 223-235
Author(s):  
Winfried Nöth

AbstractThe paper begins with a survey of the state of the art in multimodal research, an international trend in applied semiotics, linguistics, and media studies, and goes on to compare its approach to verbal and nonverbal signs to Charles S. Peirce’s approach to signs and their classification. The author introduces the concept of transmodality to characterize the way in which Peirce’s classification of signs reflects the modes of multimodality research and argues that Peirce’s classification of the signs takes modes and modalities in two different respects into consideration, (1) from the perspective of the sign and (2) from the one of its interpretant. While current research in multimodality has its focus on the (external) sign in a communicative process, Peirce considers additionally the multimodality of the interpretants, i.e., the mental icons and indexical scenarios evoked in the interpreters’ minds. The paper illustrates and comments on the Peircean method of studying the multi and transmodality of signs in an analysis of Peirce’s close reading of Luke 19:30 in MS 599, Reason’s Rules, of c. 1902. As a sign, this text is “monomodal” insofar as it consists of printed words only. The study shows in which respects the interpretants of this text evince trans and multimodality.


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