A Thermal Discomfort Index for Demand Response Control in Residential Water Heaters

Demand-response techniques are crucial for providing a proper quality of service under the paradigm of smart electricity grids. However, control strategies may perturb and cause discomfort to clients. This article proposes a methodology for defining an index to estimate the discomfort associated with an active demand management consisting of the interruption of domestic electric water heaters. Methods are applied to build the index include pattern detection for estimating the water utilization using an Extra Trees ensemble learning method and a linear model for water temperature, both based on analysis of real data. In turn, Monte Carlo simulations are applied to calculate the defined index. The proposed approach is evaluated over one real scenario and two simulated scenarios to validate that the thermal discomfort index correctly models the impact on temperature. The simulated scenarios consider a number of households using water heaters to analyze and compare the thermal discomfort index for different interruptions and the effect of using different penalty terms for deviations of the comfort temperature. The obtained results allow designing a proper management strategy to fairly decide which water heaters should be interrupted to guarantee the lower discomfort of users.

Spatial data science for data driven urban planning: The youth economic discomfort index for Rome

Today, a consistent segment of the world’s population lives in urban areas, and this proportion will vastly increase in the next decades. Therefore, understanding the key trends in urbanization, likely to unfold over the coming years, is crucial to the implementation of sustainable urban strategies. In parallel, the daily amount of digital data produced will be expanding at an exponential rate during the following years. The analysis of various types of data sets and its derived applications have incredible potential across different crucial sectors such as healthcare, housing, transportation, energy, and education. Nevertheless, in city development, architects and urban planners appear to rely mostly on traditional and analogical techniques of data collection. This paper investigates the prospective of the data science field, appearing to be a formidable resource to assist city managers in identifying strategies to enhance the social, economic, and environmental sustainability of our urban areas. The collection of different new layers of information would definitely enhance planners' capabilities to comprehend more in-depth urban phenomena such as gentrification, land use definition, mobility, or critical infrastructural issues. Specifically, the research results correlate economic, commercial, demographic, and housing data with the purpose of defining the youth economic discomfort index. The statistical composite index provides insights regarding the economic disadvantage of citizens aged between 18 years and 29 years, and results clearly display that central urban zones and more disadvantaged than peripheral ones. The experimental set up selected the city of Rome as the testing ground of the whole investigation. The methodology aims at applying statistical and spatial analysis to construct a composite index supporting informed data-driven decisions for urban planning.

Vaccinium myrtillus L. in Kirov region (southern taiga subzone): phytocoenotic confinement and ecological preferences

Vaccinium myrtillus L. is an important component for forming phyto-environment in boreal forest ecosystems, in which it develops various consortium connections. Being a mycorrhizal species, V. myrtillus improves nutrition and stimulates the growth of plants of all layers, supporting inter- and intra-specific connections of different layers of forest communities. In order to estimate the environment-forming role of V. myrtillus in ecosystems it is essential to acquire data on quantitative presence of the species in plant communities composition and on ecological-phytocoenotic peculiarities within its range. The aim of the study is to define phytocoenotic parameters and ecological conditions of V. myrtillus habitats within the southern taiga part of its range (Kirov region). We collected the material during the growing seasons of 2009-2015 and made 110 geobotanical descriptions according to common geobotanical methods (Methods of studies…, 2002). Ecological conditions were estimated based on species compositions in communities using 10 ecological scales by Dmitry Tsyganov (1983). The ecological discomfort index was determined for each habitat (Klimenko, 2012). Common methods of soil analyses were used for different biotopes of the studied species (Arinushkina, 1962). Hemeroby was determined by the species composition in plant communities, in which every species has individual human impact tolerance spectre (Frank and Klotz, 1990). V. myrtillus acts as a dominant or codominant of the herbaceous-shrub synfolium of boreal coniferous and mixed forest communities with 30-70% cover. It is accompanied by the following species: Vaccinium vitis-idaea L., Rubus saxatilis L., Juncus filiformis L., Calamagrostis epigeios (L.) Roth., Thelypteris palustris Schot, Melampyrum sylvaticum L., and Majanthemum bifolium (L.) F. Schmidt. The species is found on gley and gleyic podzolic soils, mostly sabulous, rarely-sandy; and on peatygley and sod-podzolic soils (See Table 1). Bilberry is common on high acidity soils with pH varying from 2.54 to 4.93. The concentration of organic carbon in bilberry forest litter varies from 5.71 to 69.2% (See Fig. 1). V. myrtillus is a mesobiont species whose average ecologic valency coefficient reaches 55%. In the investigated coenopopulations, the species achieves 8.15 to 50.10% of its potential capabilities regarding the studied factors. V. myrtillus is a hemieurybiont by climatic factors (0.58 points). It achieves its maximum on ombroclimatic scale (44.5%). According to climatic scales, ecological conditions of the studied habitats occupy the central position of all possible. The generalized spectrum of soil scales shows the species as a mesobiont (It–0.45). This allows widening V. myrtillus soil humidity scale 1.27 point left and soil moisture variability scale 0.80 points right. On other scales, the environmental position of the studied coenopopulations are within the data given by Dmitry Tsyganov for the species (See Table 2 and Fig. 2). The discomfort index is also given to estimate habitat ecological conditions. Based on phytoindication data and according to the discomfort index, we defined that the most favorable conditions of edapho- and climatopes for V. myrtillus are formed in sphagnum phytocoenoses. The least favorable conditions were noted in bilberry pine and bilberrypleurocarpous moss pine-spruce forest types. The study of hemeroby showed that oligo-mesohemerob species (highly sensitive to anthropogenic factors) prevail in all V. myrtillus coenopopulations, i.e. 41%. A-hemerob, a-euhemerob and polyhemerob species were not noted in any of the studied CPs (See Table 3 and Fig. 3). This proves that the species is of low resistance to anthropogenic influence and can survive moderate intensity human impact. The studied plant communities with V. myrtillus are low-hemerobic.

Aplicação de Sensoriamento Remoto para a Identificação das Ilhas de Calor Urbanas e Avaliação do Conforto Térmico Humano nas Capitais dos Estados do Sul do Brasil

Os constantes processos de substituição de áreas verdes por áreas impermeabilizadas e edificadas tendem a modificar as temperaturas locais e alterar os microclimas. Como consequência, pode-se observar a ocorrência do fenômeno Ilhas de Calor (IC). O objetivo deste trabalho foi identificar a presença de ilhas de calor e avaliar o grau de desconforto térmico nas capitais dos estados da região sul do Brasil: Curitiba (PR), Santa Catarina (SC) e Rio Grande do Sul (RS). Utilizou-se imagens de sensoriamento remoto, dos satélites Landsat 5 e 8, como ferramenta para evidenciar tal fenômeno. Com base em ferramentas do geoprocessamento foi possível congregar camadas de informações, tais como: um mapeamento da ocupação urbana, da Temperatura da Superfície e da sensação térmica através do Índice de Desconforto de Kawamura. Curitiba apresentou uma melhor representatividade da urbanização e do aumento das IC, sendo que a maioria da sua extensão foi classificada como estresse devido ao calor. Florianópolis teve uma maior dimensão que foi classificada como confortável; com estresse e desconforto nas áreas mais circundantes, que correspondem aos locais mais frequentados pela população. Em Porto Alegre, na região que fica mais ao sul, houve um aumento na urbanização e uma redução nas áreas classificadas como confortáveis, principalmente nos quatro últimos anos analisados. Constatou-se que o sensoriamento remoto é uma importante fonte de dados e contribui para uma análise do clima urbano. Contudo, para uma melhor avaliação da evolução é recomendado uma ampliação da série histórica. Desta forma, ressalta-se que estudos como esse devem ser realizados também em outras regiões e municípios, para servir de subsídio para um melhor planejamento e para a adoção de diretrizes como planos de arborização. Application of remote sensing for the identification of urban surface heat islands and the Kawamura discomfort index in the capitals of the southern states of BrazilA B S T R A C TThe constant replacement processes of green areas by waterproofed and built-up areas tend to modify local temperatures and alter microclimates. Consequently, the Urban Heat Island phenomenon (UHI) can be observed. The objective of this study was to identify the presence of urban surface heat islands and evaluate the degree of thermal discomfort in the capitals of the states of the southern region of Brazil. Remote sensing images, from Landsat 5 and 8 satellites, from summer and spring thermal stations and representative years from the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s and 2010s, were used as a tool to highlight this phenomenon. Based on geoprocessing tools, it was possible to gather layers of information, such as: a mapping of urban occupation, surface temperature and thermal sensation through the Kawamura Discomfort Index. In Curitiba, the relationship between increased urbanization and UHI had been well represented over time, with the majority of its extension being classified as heat stress. In Florianópolis, the comfortable class was predominant, with stress and discomfort in the mainland and sectors to the north and south of the island. In the south region of Porto Alegre, there was an increase in urbanization and a decrease in areas classified as comfortable. However, for a better evaluation of the evolution, an expansion of the historical series is recommended. Thus, it is emphasized that studies like this should be carried out in other regions and municipalities, to serve as a subsidy for better urban planning.Keywords: bioclimatology, geotechnology, urban climate, heat island, remote sensing.