A Discrete Process Modelling and Simulation Methodology for Industrial Systems within the Concept of Digital Twins

A generic well-defined methodology for the construction and operation of dynamic process models of discrete industrial systems following a number of well-defined steps is introduced. The sequence of steps for the application of the method as well as the necessary inputs, conditions, constraints and the results obtained are defined. The proposed methodology covers the classical offline modelling and simulation applications as well as their online counterpart, which use the physical system in the context of digital twins, with extensive data exchange and interaction with sensors, actuators and tools from other scientific fields as analytics and optimisation. The implemented process models can be used for what-if analysis, comparative evaluation of alternative scenarios and for the calculation of key performance indicators describing the behaviour of the physical systems under given conditions as well as for online monitoring, management and adjustment of the physical industrial system operations with respect to given rules and targets. An application of the proposed methodology in a discrete industrial system is presented, and interesting conclusions arise and are discussed. Finally, the open issues, limitations and future extensions of the research are considered.

Ferric Iron Reduction in Extreme Acidophiles

Biochemical processes are a key element of natural cycles occurring in the environment and enabling life on earth. With regard to microbially catalyzed iron transformation, research predominantly has focused on iron oxidation in acidophiles, whereas iron reduction played a minor role. Microbial conversion of ferric to ferrous iron has however become more relevant in recent years. While there are several reviews on neutrophilic iron reducers, this article summarizes the research on extreme acidophilic iron reducers. After the first reports of dissimilatory iron reduction by acidophilic, chemolithoautotrophic Acidithiobacillus strains and heterotrophic Acidiphilium species, many other prokaryotes were shown to reduce iron as part of their metabolism. Still, little is known about the exact mechanisms of iron reduction in extreme acidophiles. Initially, hypotheses and postulations for the occurring mechanisms relied on observations of growth behavior or predictions based on the genome. By comparing genomes of well-studied neutrophilic with acidophilic iron reducers (e.g., Ferroglobus placidus and Sulfolobus spp.), it became clear that the electron transport for iron reduction proceeds differently in acidophiles. Moreover, transcriptomic investigations indicated an enzymatically-mediated process in Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans using respiratory chain components of the iron oxidation in reverse. Depending on the strain of At. ferrooxidans, further mechanisms were postulated, e.g., indirect iron reduction by hydrogen sulfide, which may form by disproportionation of elemental sulfur. Alternative scenarios include Hip, a high potential iron-sulfur protein, and further cytochromes. Apart from the anaerobic iron reduction mechanisms, sulfur-oxidizing acidithiobacilli have been shown to mediate iron reduction at low pH (< 1.3) under aerobic conditions. This presumably non-enzymatic process may be attributed to intermediates formed during sulfur/tetrathionate and/or hydrogen oxidation and has already been successfully applied for the reductive bioleaching of laterites. The aim of this review is to provide an up-to-date overview on ferric iron reduction by acidophiles. The importance of this process in anaerobic habitats will be demonstrated as well as its potential for application.

Future scenarios of fish supply and demand for food and nutrition security in Bangladesh: An analysis with the AsiaFish model

Bangladesh has made significant progress in social and economic development in recent years, but micronutrient deficiencies and poor dietary diversity remain a significant challenge. This paper developed eight scenarios to explore fish supply-demand futures in Bangladesh using the AsiaFish model, with special emphasis on the role of fish in micronutrient supply to address the nation’s malnutrition and nutrition security challenges. A business-as-usual (BAU) scenario followed historical trends for exogenous variables used in the model. The seven alternative scenarios explored were: the implications of increase productivity of farmed tilapia, pangasius and rohu carp (AS1); productivity changes in hilsa production (AS2); improvements in the quality of feeds (AS3); reduction in the price of plant-based feeds (AS4); disease outbreak in farmed shrimps and prawns (AS5); and climate change impact (AS6) and stagnant capture fisheries (AS7). The BAU scenario indicates that aquaculture growth will be a prominent contribution to increasing total fish supply and demand and fish exports to 2040. Apart from the scenarios that are favourable to aquaculture sector development, other alternative scenarios highlighted the lower growth rate of capture fisheries and aquaculture compared to BAU, resulting in declining in per capita fish consumption, fish exports and nutrient supply from fish as a consequence. Increased availability of aquaculture fish can slightly compensate for the lower growth of capture fisheries in term of their nutrition quality and dietary diversity, particularly for poor consumers. Policies towards sustaining fisheries and a nutrition-sensitive approach to aquaculture is recommended as both capture fisheries and aquaculture are essential for sustaining healthy and nutritious diets in Bangladesh.

Role of Neighborhood Design in Reducing Impacts of Development and Climate Change, West Sherwood, OR

We used the EPA SWMM-5. 1 model to evaluate the relative impact of neighborhood design and constructed Low Impact Development (LID) features on infiltration, evaporation, and runoff for three future scenarios. In the Current Course (CC) future, current regulations and policies remain in place under lower rates of climate change and population growth. In the Stressed Resources (SR) future, rapid rates of population growth and climate change stress water systems, and conventional development patterns and management actions fail to keep pace with a changing environment. In the Integrated Water (IW) future, with the same rapid rates of climate change and population growth as the SR future, informed water management anticipates and adapts to expected changes. The IW scenario retains public open space, extensive use of constructed LID features, and has the lowest proportion of impervious surface. Neighborhood designs varied in the number of dwelling units, density of development, and spatial extent of nature-based solutions and constructed LID features used for stormwater management. We compared the scenarios using SWMM-5.1 for a set of NRCS Type 1a design storms (2-yr, 25-yr, 20% increase over 25-yr, 30% increase over 25-yr) with precipitation input at 6-min time steps as well as a set of 10-year continuous runs. Results illustrate the importance of neighborhood design in urban hydrology. The design with the highest proportion of impervious surface (SR future) produced runoff of up to 45–50% of precipitation for all variations of the 25-year storm, compared to 34–44 and 23–39% for the CC and IW futures, respectively. Evaporation accounted for only 2–3% of precipitation in the 25-year design storm simulations for any scenario. Results of continuous 10-year simulations were similar to the results of design storms. The proportion of precipitation that became runoff was highest in the SR future (33%), intermediate in the CC (16%), and lowest in the IW future (9%). Evaporation accounted for 6, 11, and 14 of precipitation in the SR, CC, and IW futures with LID, respectively. Infiltration was higher in scenarios with LID than for the same scenario without LID, and varied with the extent of LID employed, accounting for 59, 71, and 74% of precipitation in the SR, CC, and IW scenarios with LID. In addition to differences in performance for stormwater management, the alternative scenarios also provide different sets of co-benefits. The IW and SR future designs both provide more housing than the CC, and the IW future has the lowest cost of development per dwelling unit.

Assessing the Impacts of Crowdshipping Using Public Transport: A Case Study in a Middle-Sized Greek City

Crowdsourced deliveries or crowdshipping is identified in recent literature as an emerging urban freight transport solution, aiming at reducing delivery costs, congestion, and environmental impacts. By leveraging the pervasive use of mobile technology, crowdshipping is an emerging solution of the sharing economy in the transport domain, as parcels are delivered by commuters rather than corporations. The objective of this research is to evaluate the impacts of crowdshipping through alternative scenarios that consider various levels of demand and adoption by public transport users who act as crowdshippers, based on a case study example in the city of Volos, Greece. This is achieved through the establishment of a tailored evaluation framework and a city-scale urban freight traffic microsimulation model. Results show that crowdshipping has the potential to mitigate last-mile delivery impacts and effectively contribute to improving the system’s performance.

Designing simulation model for minimizing coal train unloading time: A case study of Kereta Api Logistik Company

The increase in coal production every year has influence the transport volume of coal trains of Kereta Api Logistik Company is getting higher. This increase causes the current number of train unloading equipment to be unable to keep up with this increase and has an impact on the poor performance of train unloading, which is indicated by the unachieved of train’s waiting time target. The coal train unloading system is a very complex system and many uncertainties occur, so the appropriate method to use is discrete event simulation. The simulation model is designed using the Simulation Arena software. The results of the simulation method are 4 alternative scenarios will be selected by the Bonferonni test. Scenario 4 has the highest reduction in train unloading operating time, which is 30.7%. The results of this study recommend the addition of a tool with a combination of 1 unit of Gantry Crane integrated with coal traveling hopper and 5 units of Dump Truck and for management, this recommendation can reduce high overtime costs every month and increase coal transport capacity so that coal transport profits will increase.

Getting Real: The Challenge of Building and Validating a Large-Scale Digital Twin of Barcelona’s Traffic with Empirical Data

Large-scale microsimulations are increasingly resourceful tools for analysing in detail citywide effects and alternative scenarios of our policy decisions, approximating the ideal of ‘urban digital twins’. Yet, these models are costly and impractical, and there are surprisingly few published examples robustly validated with empirical data. This paper, therefore, presents a new large-scale agent-based traffic microsimulation for the Barcelona urban area using SUMO to show the possibilities and challenges of building these scenarios based on novel fine-grained empirical big data. It combines novel mobility data from real cell phone records with conventional surveys to calibrate the model comparing two different dynamic assignment methods for getting an operationally realistic and efficient simulation. Including through traffic and the use of a stochastic adaptive routing approach results in a larger 24-hour model closer to reality. Based on an extensive multi-scalar evaluation including traffic counts, hourly distribution of trips, and macroscopic metrics, this model expands and outperforms previous large-scale scenarios, which provides new operational opportunities in city co-creation and policy. The novelty of this work relies on the effective modelling approach using newly available data and the realistic robust evaluation. This allows the identification of the fundamental challenges of simulation to accurately capture real-world dynamical systems and to their predictive power at a large scale, even when fed by big data, as envisioned by the digital twin concept applied to smart cities.

Future Low-Carbon Transport Scenarios: Practice Theory-Based Visioning for Backcasting Studies

Backcasting is a well-established methodology particularly suitable for analyzing complex problems where the business-as-usual projection is no longer appropriate, which can be used to effectively address the challenges of climate change mitigation in transport. It is characterised by designing endpoints in the future and working backward from these visions to establish policy pathways that can achieve desired futures. The visioning phase, which involves the construction of a set of scenarios describing alternative futures, is the first phase in backcasting, and engaging different stakeholders during the visioning phase is considered an important aspect in transport studies. This paper aims to demonstrate the findings from a participatory visioning exercise carried out as part of a backcasting study on sustainable transport in the islands of Malta. It is based on a methodological approach that combines social practice theory with stakeholder workshops. The visioning exercise resulted in the development of four different scenarios: the business-as-usual scenario and three alternative scenarios for transport in 2050 in Malta; High-Tech Mobility (with a focus on clean technology); Local Mobility (with more local travel and reducing the need to travel over longer distances); and Green and Active Mobility (where active forms of travel are prioritised over motorised forms of transport). In the alternative scenarios, the elements of mobility practices and other social practices influencing mobility have been reconfigured to allow for low-carbon travel and significantly reducing GHG emissions. The results of this study demonstrate how insights from a theory of social practices approach can be utilized to provide narratives for future visions in transport backcasting studies, and how this approach could open new possibilities for the transition towards more sustainable mobility through the reconfiguration of mobility and other everyday social practices.

Designing alternative scenarios for the provincial region development based on the scenario planning methodology

Subject. This article considers the issues of application of scenario planning techniques in the process of constructing alternative scenarios for the development of spatial socio-economic systems in the context of changes, complexity, and uncertainty. Objectives. The article aims to form a scenario planning algorithm for spatial socio-economic systems and its implementation in relation to the Mari El Republic. Methods. For the study, we used the systems approach and foresight techniques. Results. The article presents four alternative scenarios for the development of the provincial region: intensive, technological, moderately technological and pessimistic. The article presents four alternative scenarios for the development of the provincial region, namely, the intensive, technological, moderate technological, and worst-case ones. Conclusions and Relevance. The technological scenario for the provincial region’s development seems to be the most likely. It assumes moderately favorable prospects for attracting investment, which can stimulate the development of regional key industries. The proposed alternative scenarios can serve as a basis for the policy making by regional and municipal authorities.

POLITICAL AND LEGAL INSTITUTIONAL TRANSFORMATIONS IDEAL DETERMINATION ROLE FOR MODERN WORLD DEVELOPMENT

Произошедший в социальных науках идеационный поворот способствовал усилению внимания к идеям и повышению их роли в самых различных процессах. Несмотря на отмеченную тенденцию большинство отечественных исследователей до сих склоняются к материальным интерпретациям, отводя идеям в лучшем случае вспомогательную роль. Обращение внимания к идейной детерминации институциональных преобразований в политико-правовой сфере представляет чрезвычайную значимость по ряду причин: (1) данные институты до сих пор занимают ведущее место среди прочих установлений, предлагая надежные объяснения развития конкретных обществ; (2) интеллектуальные ресурсы в контексте современного мира обладают несомненными преимуществами перед материальными условиями, поскольку сегодня далеко не всегда ресурсное изобилие коррелирует с эволюционной траекторией развития государств; (3) идеи трансграничны и трансисторичны, а содержащиеся в них смыслы легко операционализируются и адаптируются под необходимые реалии. Настоящая статья посвящена прикладному значению идей, которые воплощаются в политико-правовых институциональных формах как решающих структурах мирового развития. Обоснована значимость идей в контексте современного мира. Показано, что критическое отношение к односторонним концепциям позволяет создавать альтернативные сценарии мирового развития. Выявлена значимость учета адаптации содержания интеллектуальных конструктов для политико-правовых институтов в их взаимосвязи с последствиями для других сфер общественной жизни. В логике авторского подхода рассмотрены примеры идейной детерминации политико-правовых институциональных преобразований с учетом ведущих мегатрендов современности. Актуализирован междисциплинарный поиск в прикладных контекстах как ведущее направление сегодняшней социальной философии. Приведены соображения по поводу поливариантности мирового развития и необходимости адаптации конфигураций передовых идей под множественные цивилизационные геномы, что позволяет исключить устаревшую дихотомию «Запад - Незапад». В заключение обобщаются основные выводы и подводятся итоги исследования. The ideational turn that has taken place in the social sciences has contributed to an increased attention to ideas and an increase in their role in a variety of processes. Despite the noted tendency, the majority of Russian researchers are still inclined towards material interpretations, assigning ideas, at best, to an auxiliary role. Paying attention to the ideological determination of institutional transformations in the political and legal sphere is of extreme importance for a number of reasons: (1) these institutions still occupy a leading place among other institutions, offering reliable explanations for the development of specific societies; (2) intellectual resources in the context of the modern world have undoubted advantages over material conditions, since today resource abundance does not always correlate with the evolutionary trajectory of development of states; (3) ideas are transboundary and transhistorical, and the meanings contained in them are easily operationalized and adapted to the necessary realities. This article is devoted to the applied meaning of ideas that are embodied in political and legal institutional forms as decisive structures of world development. The significance of ideas in the context of the modern world has been substantiated. It is shown that a critical attitude to one-sided concepts allows one to create alternative scenarios of world development. Revealed the importance of taking into account the adaptation of the content of intellectual constructs for political and legal institutions in their relationship with the consequences for other spheres of public life. In the logic of the author's approach, examples of ideological determination of political and legal institutional transformations are considered, taking into account the leading megatrends of our time. The interdisciplinary search in applied contexts as the leading direction of today's social philosophy has been updated. Considerations are given about the polyvariety of world development and the need to adapt the configurations of advanced ideas for multiple civilizational genomes, which makes it possible to exclude the outdated dichotomy «West-Non-West». In conclusion, the main findings are summarized and the results of the study are summed up.