Liveability Versus Sustainability in Spanish Cities: First Evidences Using Synthetic Indicators

The aim of liveable, sustainable cities has become one of the major challenges for urban planning. However, achieving both goals at the same time is no easy task, particularly when liveability and sustainability may be defined by certain elements that tend to be in conflict. The main goal of this work is to analyse the relationship between liveability and environmental sustainability within the context of Spanish urban spaces. To this end, we propose two synthetic indicators: one for liveability and the other for urban environmental sustainability. Each of these indicators is constructed using a technique based on goal programming. A bivariate analysis is carried out using these indicators, which allows us to compare the extent to which Spanish cities are liveable and sustainable. This analysis should be useful for urban planners when taking and implementing policy decisions. By comparing cities with similar profiles using a benchmarking system, it becomes possible to judge the margin for improvement in one attribute without detriment to the other. This benchmarking system also allows us to reveal the specific dimensions of liveability or sustainability for which there is the greatest opportunity for improvement.

Fibromine is a multi-omics database and mining tool for target discovery in pulmonary fibrosis

Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis is a lethal lung fibroproliferative disease with limited therapeutic options. Differential expression profiling of affected sites has been instrumental for involved pathogenetic mechanisms dissection and therapeutic targets discovery. However, there have been limited efforts to comparatively analyse/mine the numerous related publicly available datasets, to fully exploit their potential on the validation/creation of novel research hypotheses. In this context and towards that goal, we present Fibromine, an integrated database and exploration environment comprising of consistently re-analysed, manually curated transcriptomic and proteomic pulmonary fibrosis datasets covering a wide range of experimental designs in both patients and animal models. Fibromine can be accessed via an R Shiny application (http://www.fibromine.com/Fibromine) which offers dynamic data exploration and real-time integration functionalities. Moreover, we introduce a novel benchmarking system based on transcriptomic datasets underlying characteristics, resulting to dataset accreditation aiming to aid the user on dataset selection. Cell specificity of gene expression can be visualised and/or explored in several scRNA-seq datasets, in an effort to link legacy data with this cutting-edge methodology and paving the way to their integration. Several use case examples are presented, that, importantly, can be reproduced on-the-fly by a non-specialist user, the primary target and potential user of this endeavour.

Benchmarking systems for greenhouse gases specific emissions in steel industry

The incipient low-carbon transformation of the world economy requires elaboration of market mechanisms, based on determination and comparison of carbon intensity of products (benchmarking), separate facilities, enterprises, countries, regions and the world as a whole. Description of foreign benchmarking systems for specific energy consumption and specific greenhouse gases (GHG) in steel industry given. Results of benchmarking of energy efficiency of steel production in the countries of G20 presented, which was accomplished by International Energy Agency (IEA) in 2021. Russian experience of selective benchmarking by ecological parameters (in information and technical reference books on best available technologies) considered as well as experience of Russian metallurgical companies on evaluation specific emissions of GHG. Comparison of IEA data and those of Russian companies showed that result of benchmarking substantially depends on chosen calculation system and reliability of the initial information, as well as highlighted necessity of harmonization of benchmarking systems and provision of possibility to obtain results in various benchmarking systems based on the same initial information. Actuality and necessity substantiated to create a Russian benchmarking system for specific emissions of GHG first of all to keep ability of exporting Russian products of steel industry into EC, where from 2023 a system of boundary carbon control will come into force, as well as to keep and expand market niches at other markets, including the internal Russian one. The list of products of steel industry and limits of technological processes of their production in the Russian benchmarking system being created, must provide a possibility of comparison with foreign systems and comparison with benchmarking for products which can be covered by CBAM (Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism) system. Basic items of CBAM concept being discussed by European parliament presented. It was noted that in view of plans to introduce CBAM, the provision of correspondence of Russian system to the system of trade by EC quotas or to other scheme, due to which the CBAM mechanism will be launched becomes a matter of particular actuality. The list of products of steel industry, covered by benchmarking within European system of trade by quotas for GHG emissions, limits of a product production system and significance of benchmarkers presented. It was noted that for Russian exporters of steel industry products, the benchmarking for specific GHG emissions should become a routine procedure. It was proposed to elaborate a calculator “Benchmarking of carbon intensity of products of steel industry of Russia”, which could provide comparison of the results obtained with benchmarkers of other international systems.

A new flexible benchmarking monitoring system: a case study for the civil construction sector in Brazil

This paper aims at presenting a new flexible benchmarking model in civil construction. It describes an explanatory case study whereby data are collected through an internet benchmarking system with multi-criteria performance. This case study was based on the Production Arrangements Monitoring and Benchmarking System (SIMAP), the authors describe a flexible benchmarking model considering 46 criteria classified into 7 subsystems. The proposed benchmarking system can be used by companies from other countries with proper adaptations.

CARDAMOM-FluxVal Version 1.0: a FLUXNET-based Validation System for CARDAMOM Carbon and Water Flux Estimates

Land-atmosphere carbon and water exchanges have large uncertainty in land surface and biosphere models. Using observations to reduce land biosphere model structural and parametric errors is a key priority for both understanding and accurately predicting carbon and water fluxes. Recent implementations of the Bayesian CARDAMOM model-data fusion framework have yielded key insights into ecosystem carbon and water cycling. CARDAMOM analyses—informed by co-located C and H2O flux observations—have exhibited considerable skill in both representing the variability of assimilated observations and predicting withheld observations. While CARDAMOM model configurations (namely CARDAMOM-compatible biogeochemical model structures) have been continuously developed to accommodate new scientific challenges and an expanding variety of observational constraints, there has so far been no concerted effort to globally and systematically validate CARDAMOM performance across individual model-data fusion configurations. Here we use the FLUXNET-2015 dataset—an ensemble of 200+ eddy covariance flux tower sites—to formulate a concerted benchmarking framework for CARDAMOM carbon (GPP, NEE) and water (ET) flux estimates (CARDAMOM-FLUXVal version 1.0). We present a concise set of skill metrics to evaluate CARDAMOM performance against both assimilated and withheld FLUXNET-2015 GPP, NEE and ET data. We further demonstrate the potential for tailored CARDAMOM evaluations by categorizing performance in terms of (i) individual land cover types, (ii) monthly, annual and mean fluxes, and (iii) length of assimilation data. The CARDAMOM benchmarking system—along with CARDAMOM driver files provided—can be readily repeated to support both the intercomparison between existing CARDAMOM model configurations and the formulation, development and testing of new CARDAMOM model structures.

Enterprise Intelligent Procurement Management Model Exploration

With the development of big data analysis, blockchain and other technologies, the supply chain of enterprises is transforming to lean and intelligent. As an important link in the enterprise supply chain, the intelligent transformation of procurement plays an important role in the improvement of the supply chain efficiency, therefore, the construction of a common method supporting the intelligent upgrade of the enterprise procurement business has become a key concern for enterprise managers. Based on the balanced scorecard theory and the supply chain maturity model, this study combines the actual situation of procurement management in Chinese energy enterprises and constructs a procurement benchmarking system that balances the development direction of the industry and the actual needs of enterprises. Meanwhile, based on the grounded theory, three major themes of the intelligent procurement system (digital business module, procurement synergy mechanism and procurement ecosystem) are extracted to provide a methodological reference for the construction of intelligent procurement systems of energy enterprises. The study concludes with a case study of China National Energy Group Materials Company to demonstrate the application of the intelligent procurement system built in this paper, with a view to providing methodological reference for the intelligent procurement management in energy enterprises.

Performance evaluation of DNS servers to build a benchmarking system of DNS64 implementations

DNS64 is an important IPv6 transition technology that facilitates the communication of an IPv6 only client with an IPv4 only server, which becomes a more and more common scenario. Several different DNS64 implementations exist, and their performance is a relevant decision factor for network operators. RFC 8219 has defined a benchmarking methodology for DNS64 servers, which requires the operation of an authoritative DNS server at 220% of the query rate used for DNS64 benchmarking. In this paper, we aim to build an authoritative DNS server that operates at 2.2 million qps (queries per second) rate, thus it facilitates DNS64 benchmarking up to 1,000,000 qps rate. To that end, we compare the performance of BIND, YADIFA, NSD, Knot DNS and FakeDNS (a special purpose software) to find the best suiting one of them. We fully disclose the details of our measurements including the configuration of the DNS implementations, the usage of our improved software tester called dns64perf ++, and the details of the hardware and software measurement environment in the NICT StarBED, Japan. We perform a series of measurements to examine, how the performance of the tested solutions scale up with the number of the active CPU cores from 1 to 32. Besides their performance, we also measure their memory consumption and zone load time. We present and discuss all the results. In addition to successfully building an authoritative DNS server with the required performance, we also make recommendations, which solutions suit to different special needs.

Quality assessment for objective inter-comparison of coronal models

<p>With the increasing amount of space weather forecasting simulation codes being developed, assessing their performance becomes crucial. Especially the errors resulting from coronal magnetic field models are a critical factor, because these will get propagated further by various solar wind models. We present a first result for a benchmarking system that allows a rather easy-to-implement  assessment of the performance quality of any coronal magnetic field model. This will allow for a standardized comparison between different models. The benchmarking system is based on stepwise visual and semi-automatized comparisons between model output and EUV on-disk and coronograph white-light data. We are using various viewpoints and instrumental data provided by STEREO, SOHO and SDO. <br>In our work we exemplarily apply this scheme to the coronal model currently implemented in EUHFORIA, an adaption of the Wang-Sheeley-Arge (WSA) model, with varying input parameters. Furthermore, with this system we also show its possible usage for the derivation of an ideal parameter set. </p>