Proceedings — Open Access Journal

Energy recovery in water supply systems (WSS) is environmentally friendly, since it is a renewable energy based on exploiting the excess pressure existing in water pipes for obtaining electricity. This paper presents the methodology development for the identification of the hydropower potential in WSS and the possible installations by means of a Matlab rutine. The results showed the interactions among the design flow and maximum head have provided the possible scenarios with electric potential and the selection of possible turbines. The methodology proposed allows determining the suitability of electricity production in the urban water cycle by MHPs, in order to avoid the need for the installation of dissipation devices for this energy. Full article

The article deals with cement supplementary materials based on ground granulated blast furnace slag and zeolite. Purpose of the experiment was to observe dependences (if they exist) between selected parameters (modulus of basicity, modulus of hydraulicity and initial setting time) and activity indexes, for easier and quicker way to determine or predict the activity index. Testing showed that moderate dependences between those parameters and activity indexes were observed. Results showed that prediction of activity indexes based on chemical composition is feasible. Full article

Paper is focused on the assessment of two alternatives of family house from environmental performance. Environmental impact categories such as Global warming potential (GWP), Acidification potential (AP) and Eutrophication potential (EP) expressed as CO_2eq, SO_2eq and PO₄³⁻_eq using the LCA assessment method are presented. Alternative solutions of building materials are also compared from phase shift of thermal oscillation. Results show that natural building materials are characterized by lower environmental impacts expressed as equivalent emissions of CO₂ (6%), SO₂ (24%) and PO₄³⁻ (44%). The wood fiber board can store nearly 24 times more heat than the mineral wool. The wood fiber boards have a phase shift of thermal oscillation of 7–13 h, while other insulation materials only about 3–4 h. Full article

The utilization of solar energy is one of the best effective methods to combat the climate change. The estimation of solar potential in urban areas can vary depending on the urban morphology. This paper performs a directional statistical analysis of the distribution of the monthly solar potential of rooftops in Cáceres city, related to the orientation of the rooftops in different neighborhoods. The orientation values of the roofs will be treated as a directional data and the radiation values as a linear data. The circular graphics representing the orientation data is a suitable representation of the distribution of the buildings being related with the urban framework. Full article

Although there have been many studies aimed at the field of Human Activity Recognition, the relationship between what we do and where we do it has been little explored in this field. The objective of this paper is to propose an approach based on machine learning to address the challenge of the 1st UCAmI cup, which is the recognition of 24 activities of daily living using a dataset that allows to explore the aforementioned relationship, since it contains data collected from four data sources: binary sensors, an intelligent floor, proximity and acceleration sensors. The methodology for data mining projects CRISP-DM was followed in this work. To perform synchronization and classification tasks a java desktop application was developed. As a result, the accuracy achieved in the classification of the 24 activities using 10-fold-cross-validation on the training dataset was 92.1%, but an accuracy of 60.1% was obtained on the test dataset. The low accuracy of the classification might be caused by the class imbalance of the training dataset; therefore, more labeled data are necessary for training the algorithm. Although we could not obtain an optimal result, it is possible to iterate in the methodology to look for a way to improve the obtained results. Full article

Activity recognition (AR) is a subtask in pervasive computing and context-aware systems, which presents the physical state of human in real-time. These systems offer a new dimension to the widely spread applications by fusing recognized activities obtained from the raw sensory data generated by the obtrusive as well as unobtrusive revolutionary digital technologies. In recent years, an exponential growth has been observed for AR technologies and much literature exists focusing on applying machine learning algorithms on obtrusive single modality sensor devices. However, University of Jaén Ambient Intelligence (UJAmI), a Smart Lab in Spain has initiated a 1st UCAmI Cup challenge by sharing aforementioned varieties of the sensory data in order to recognize the human activities in the smart environment. This paper presents the fusion, both at the feature level and decision level for multimodal sensors by preprocessing and predicting the activities within the context of training and test datasets. Though it achieves 94% accuracy for training data and 47% accuracy for test data. However, this study further evaluates post-confusion matrix also and draws a conclusion for various discrepancies such as imbalanced class distribution within the training and test dataset. Additionally, this study also highlights challenges associated with the datasets for which, could improve further analysis. Full article

Detecting activities of daily living (ADL) allows for rich inference about user behavior, which can be of use in the care of for example, elderly people, chronic diseases, and psychological conditions. This paper proposes a domain knowledge-based solution for detecting 24 different ADLs in the UJA dataset. The solution is inspired by a Finite State Machine and performs activity recognition unobtrusively using only binary sensors. Each day in the dataset is segmented into: morning, day, evening in order to facilitate the inference from the sensors. The model performs the ADL recognition in two steps. The first step is to detect the sequence of activities in a given event stream of binary sensors, and the second step is to assign a starting and ending times for each of detected activities. Our proposed model achieved an accuracy of 81.3% using only a very small amount of operations, making it an interesting approach for resource-constrained devices that are common in smart environments. It should be noted, however, that the model can end up in faulty states which could cause a series of mis-classifications before the model is returned to the true state. Full article

In recent decades, the environment has suffered the negative consequences of industrial development and overexploitation, and the effect of growing population. There are many areas and sectors where actions can be taken to minimize negative environmental impacts. Despite the current technological advances in society, there is a pending debt to nature, environment and care of air quality. This paper presents a system based on Wireless Sensor Networks, whose objective is to monitor environmental conditions in airport environments. Since the proposed system allows managing notifications and alerts when dangerous conditions are detected, it can also be considered a procedure to protect critical infrastructures in general. Due to the importance of security requirements in these facilities, the system includes several cryptographic measures to provide robust authentication and encryption of information. Full article

High rates of indigence characterize several countries in Latin America, such as Mexico. In the north of our country, the phenomenon of migration contributes to indigence. To get a preliminary understanding of the needs of indigents in our community, we conducted interviews with homeless and migrants. This helped us identify preliminary system requirements that led to the design of a digital bracelet to enable local agencies to monitor and provide support to the indigents who roam the city. We refined our conceptual design through an iterative process of contextual inquiry, persona development, prototyping, and user assessment. An evaluation of our design was conducted with the coordinator of the main social assistance agency of the municipality, which allowed us to confirm the system potential to be used and adopted. Full article

An application of Bluetooth beacons is here proposed to perform real-time tracking of the locations and movements of airport staff through different monitored airport infrastructure elements, such as rooms, terminals or boarding gates. With respect to this, the aim is to provide an efficient location service of airport workers and users through an indoor tracking controller based on fuzzy logic. For this purpose, a mobile application and a Web service have been implemented. This location knowledge may be decisive while performing common airport procedures or managing airport resources, staff or emergency situations aiming at ensuring a short response time. Likewise, the proposed system integrates an operational module of coordination to facilitate the communications of users at the airport. Besides, particular attention has been paid to the security of communication between mobile devices and the Web service, both regarding secure authentication of users and protection of confidentiality of information exchanged between airport staff. Full article

Early warning consists of monitoring precursors of a potential hazard to understand if it is evolving to a real risk and then be able to orchestrate an early response before the event happens in order to reduce its impact and damages. It mainly consists on collecting updated and reliable data that can help emergency operators to understand how a situation is evolving and project its consequences, that is, to support situation awareness on a potential risk. This process could be improved by integrating volunteers and citizens into the data collection process given that they are intelligent sensors equipped with mobile devices that can be used almost everywhere to collect and share information. In this paper we introduce a system relying upon ubiquitous computing to integrate citizens in checking the evolution of potential hazards. An asynchronous focus group technique to assess the system with EM professionals is also described in the paper. Full article

Optimal power usage and consumption require continuous monitoring, forecasting electric energy consumption and renewable generation. To facilitate integration of renewable energies and optimize their resources, new communication and data processing technologies are used in new projects. This article shows the works and results obtained in the eoTICC project. The objective is to design and develop an intelligent energy manager using the Archimedes wind turbine and a solar generation system, both integrated in industrial and residential power facilities. Solutions based on Artificial Intelligence paradigms and Internet of Things protocols allow automatic decision making to optimize energy management. In a facility, the energy demand and weather forecasts can be known by an intelligent energy manager. With these conditions, the energy manager can develop rules based on decision trees to automate control actions aimed at optimizing the use of energy. This article shows the architecture of IoT infrastructure and the first rules designed in the project. The result obtained provides improvements in the use of renewable energy in current facilities that do not use this type of intelligent management. The improvements allow to use the energy at the time of generation, avoiding unnecessary storage. Full article

Blockchain enables the creation of distributed ledgers as a type of database that is shared, replicated, and synchronized among the members of a network. In this paper we analyze how distributed ledgers can be used for empowering end-users to self-manage their own data, enabling third parties to access those data under a cryptographic management model. We propose a use case where both blockchain and smart contracts are employed by using cryptographic technology to enable user empowerment of data management in AmI. Finally, we analyze strengths and weaknesses of the proposed scenario. Full article

Urban mobility optimization problem has a great focus in the context of Smart cities. To its solution a very important factor is the transport demand, which is mostly inferred using Big Data and Artificial Intelligence techniques from Automatic Fare Collection (AFC) and mobile devices data. In this paper a novel approach, based on Transport Demand Management techniques is proposed, using technology to produce a more active social involvement in the planning and optimization of mobility. This paper describes, a first step to this long-term objective, the general architecture and current implementation of an explicit multi-modal transport demand system for Smart Cities, which is being developed in the frame of MUSA—I project in the city of Madrid. Full article

Environmental noise is a pollutant considered by the World Health Organization (WHO) as a threat to public health due to its harmful effects on human health. In this regard, the European Environmental Agency (EEA) indicates that road traffic is the sound source that generates the greatest number of people exposed in Europe to sound levels above what is recommended by the European Noise Directive. In a similar way, the EEA also reports that air pollution is the most important environmental health risk in Europe, where road traffic is one of the main sources of emission of polluting gases. The relationship between both pollutants, leads to think about the development of common strategies. This paper presents a review on recent researches about the relationship of these two types of pollution in urban environments with different types of diseases. Full article

Rendering at the European Directive 2002/49/EC, all EU members have to draw up a strategic noise map for all agglomerations with more than 250,000 inhabitants and for all major airports, roads and railways. A study of environmental impact assessment on motorway A23 in the stretch between Castelo Branco–Alcains (Portugal), based in the impact of the environmental noise, allowed the modeling the noise variation, which can be useful for establishing mitigation measures. The results show that noise model can be a useful tool for the monitoring noise impact in surrounding of motorways. Full article

The reuse of slag for the extraction of iron oxides, besides allowing the use of potentially polluting material, allows its strategic use in biotechnological applications. For this it is necessary a characterization of the slag as the proportion of iron oxides to study the feasibility of extraction and reuse. For this work siderurgy slag was collected in the steel mill slag yards, as a remnant of the transformation of pig iron into steel and study for identify the presence of magnetite in the samples. Results were discussed in the context of reuse possibility in biotechnological application, for example, in implants of the magnetic materials. The siderurgy slag studied presents iron oxides in a proportion that encourages future work of extraction for use in the composition of magnetic materials for biotechnological applications. Full article

Present day steelmaking slags are being successfully used as a high quality mineral aggregate for the building industry. With this, it is of vital importance to be familiar with the technical significance of the secondary application of steel slag, because some steel slag might contain increased concentration of substances harmful to human health. In terms of steel slag impact on the environment, radionuclides are the least researched of all pollutants emitted from the metallurgical processes. This work presents the preliminary study about the presence of the uranium in siderurgy slag aggregates for the purpose of its use in the production of construction material. The results showed that this slag is free of uranium which brings greater security in its use as building material. Full article

Coastal areas play a crucial role in maintaining the ecological balance of ecosystems and developing the social and economic wellbeing of the countries bordering it. However, the pressure on both terrestrial and marine resources, the use of oceans as a wastes deposit, the growth of population and the increasing of urbanization and human activities in coastal areas are all causes for marine and coastal degradation. The present situation constitutes a significant danger in many places. As an example, the pollution of the coastal waters in the Mediterranean has increased in recent years. Industrialization, tourism and ports activities along the coastline of the Mediterranean are the main sources of many pollutants that have effects on human’s health and environment. So that, it is very important to examine seawater quality in order to protect the marine and coastal areas from degradation. Hence, comes the need to consider a physicochemical and bacteriological study to evaluate the quality of Tangier coastal seawater using the Water Quality Index (WQI). A campaign of 25 sampling points was conducted and the results of the WQI calculation have highlighted the Tangier water was between medium and bad. Full article