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Keywords = automatic energy calibration

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30 pages, 27482 KB  
Article
An IoT-Based Real-Time Energy-Management System for Smart Load Control in a Residential Microgrid
by Mohammed Sabah, Akram Elmitwally and Abdelfattah A. Eladl
Eng 2026, 7(8), 418; https://doi.org/10.3390/eng7080418 - 17 Aug 2026
Viewed by 259
Abstract
The increasing complexity of residential energy systems and the growing penetration of distributed resources require practical energy-management solutions that extend beyond conventional metering. This paper presents the design and implementation of a real-time Internet of Things (IoT)-based energy-management system for monitoring and controlling [...] Read more.
The increasing complexity of residential energy systems and the growing penetration of distributed resources require practical energy-management solutions that extend beyond conventional metering. This paper presents the design and implementation of a real-time Internet of Things (IoT)-based energy-management system for monitoring and controlling household energy consumption under different operating conditions. The proposed system adopts a dual-processor architecture, in which a primary microcontroller performs time-critical electrical measurements and low-level load switching, while a secondary processor operates as a local IoT gateway for data handling, rule-based control decisions, local visualization, and message queuing telemetry transport (MQTT)-based cloud communication through a 4G link. The contribution of this work is not associated with the individual use of dual processing, cellular communication, cloud monitoring, load shedding, or backup power, as these technologies have been previously reported in smart-metering and home energy-management systems. Instead, the study focuses on their coordinated integration within a residential-scale prototype that combines calibrated per-load monitoring, priority-based load control, outage-resilient reporting, and credit-aware load restriction. The system measures voltage, current, active and apparent power, power factor, and energy consumption for individual loads and supports centralized visualization through a cloud-based dashboard. The prototype was experimentally evaluated under three representative scenarios: overload, main power outage, and low-credit operation. In the overload scenario, automatic priority-based load shedding reduced the total load by up to 75%. During power outages, a battery-supported subsystem maintained monitoring and communication for real-time outage reporting. In the low-credit scenario, non-essential loads were disconnected when the user balance fell below a predefined threshold, while essential loads remained energized. The results demonstrate that the implemented prototype can provide integrated monitoring, local rule-based control, cloud reporting, and backup-supported operation within a unified residential energy-management platform. Full article
(This article belongs to the Section Electrical and Electronic Engineering)
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26 pages, 6844 KB  
Article
Per-Vertebra Prediction of Future Osteoporotic Fractures from Routine Computed Tomography Using a Two-Stage Machine Learning Framework
by Kirill Riazanovskiy, Dāvids Orlovs, Jekaterina Stepanova, Victor Sineglazov, Ardis Platkajis and Olena Chumachenko
Medicina 2026, 62(8), 1518; https://doi.org/10.3390/medicina62081518 - 6 Aug 2026
Viewed by 262
Abstract
Background and Objectives: Osteoporotic vertebral compression fractures affect approximately one in four postmenopausal women and carry substantial morbidity, yet established clinical tools such as dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) provide only patient-level risk and do not identify which specific vertebra is most likely to [...] Read more.
Background and Objectives: Osteoporotic vertebral compression fractures affect approximately one in four postmenopausal women and carry substantial morbidity, yet established clinical tools such as dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) provide only patient-level risk and do not identify which specific vertebra is most likely to fail. Computed tomography (CT) acquired for unrelated indications is the most widely available three-dimensional substrate for opportunistic screening, but published machine learning models for vertebral fracture risk almost universally operate at the patient level. The present study aimed to develop and rigorously validate a per-vertebra prediction pipeline applicable to both routine clinical lumbar-spine CT and opportunistic abdominal CT, both acquired for indications unrelated to osteoporosis screening. Materials and Methods: Two independent retrospective cohorts were assembled from a single academic centre: a routine clinical lumbar-spine CT cohort of 106 patients yielding 478 evaluable vertebrae, and a routine abdominal CT cohort of 126 patients yielding 589 evaluable vertebrae. Vertebral bodies were segmented automatically with TotalSegmentator v2 and the trabecular core isolated by morphological erosion. A panel of 505 quantitative imaging biomarkers compliant with Image Biomarker Standardisation Initiative recommendations was extracted, covering trabecular density, vertebral morphometry, classical texture, trabecular network architecture, sub-endplate vulnerability, low-density topology, radial heterogeneity and adjacent muscle quality. Within-patient feature engineering expanded the input pool to 1293 contextual descriptors. Three model families were evaluated under fully nested leave-one-patient-out cross-validation: ElasticNet logistic regression, a softmax-ranking approximation of conditional logistic regression, and a Two-Stage model combining a patient-level fragility score with a within-patient vertebral outlier score. Patient-level bootstrap resampling (2000 iterations) was used to obtain 95% confidence intervals. Results: On routine clinical lumbar-spine CT the Two-Stage model achieved a per-vertebra AUC of 0.750 (95% CI 0.704 to 0.795), an F1 of 0.549, a within-patient concordance index of 0.693, an expected calibration error of 0.044, and Hit@3 of 0.934. It was the only model evaluated that returned calibrated probabilities; the softmax-ranking and ElasticNet baselines gave expected calibration errors of 0.232 and 0.218 respectively. On opportunistic abdominal CT, the softmax-ranking model gave AUC 0.672 (95% CI 0.615 to 0.727). Selected biomarkers were dominated by regional trabecular density and trabecular network architecture; a stable core of lumbar features entered the model in 100% of cross-validation folds, indicating high reproducibility. The closest prior per-vertebra CT-based predictor in primary, non-surgical patients (Muehlematter and colleagues, 58-patient cohort) reported a per-vertebra AUC of 0.64, which is one of several reference points for the present results. Ten methodological variants and sensitivity analyses, including rank fusion, internal tissue normalisation and additional biomechanical features, did not provide statistically significant gains, indicating that the binding constraint at this sample size is data volume rather than methodology. Conclusions: A two-stage decomposition that separates systemic skeletal fragility from within-patient vertebral outlier status produces well-calibrated per-vertebra fracture-risk estimates from routine clinical lumbar spine CT and was the only model evaluated to do so, which is what permits a per-vertebra output to be reported as an absolute risk rather than as an ordering alone; a within-patient ranking model is preferable for opportunistic abdominal CT. The discrimination advantage of the decomposition over that baseline is numerical and consistent but not statistically established at this sample size, and the work is presented as a transparent and reproducible single-centre benchmark for the still under-developed per-vertebra prediction task. Its clearest near-term value is opportunistic, namely flagging elevated per-vertebra fracture risk on CTs already acquired for unrelated indications without additional radiation, cost or a dedicated densitometric study. External multi-centre validation is the necessary next step. Full article
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30 pages, 20781 KB  
Article
Field-Scale Evapotranspiration of Flood-Irrigated Rice with Automated METRIC on Google Earth Engine in an Arid Region of Northern Peru
by José Huanuqueño-Murillo, Javier Quille-Mamani, Cesar Vilca-Gamarra, Roxana Peña-Amaro, David Quispe-Tito, Walter Campos-Ugaz, Jorge Panta-Cosmópolis and Lia Ramos-Fernández
Remote Sens. 2026, 18(15), 2584; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs18152584 - 4 Aug 2026
Viewed by 323
Abstract
Irrigation water management in arid systems requires spatially distributed estimates of crop evapotranspiration (ET) that fixed crop coefficients cannot provide. The actual ET of flood-irrigated rice (Oryza sativa L.) on the arid northern coast of Peru was mapped with the METRIC surface [...] Read more.
Irrigation water management in arid systems requires spatially distributed estimates of crop evapotranspiration (ET) that fixed crop coefficients cannot provide. The actual ET of flood-irrigated rice (Oryza sativa L.) on the arid northern coast of Peru was mapped with the METRIC surface energy balance model (Mapping EvapoTranspiration at high Resolution with Internalized Calibration) on Google Earth Engine (GEE). Ten cloud-free Landsat 8/9 scenes (January–July 2022) were processed over 113 ha at Ferreñafe (Lambayeque) on the 30 m product grid, onto which the 100 m native thermal observation was resampled, with internal calibration based on automatic anchor-pixel selection and hourly ERA5-Land data. Daily field-mean ET ranged from 4.2 to 8.1 mm d−1, peaking during flooding and establishment and declining towards harvest. Because the same reference ETo underlies the METRIC internal calibration and the FAO-56 estimate, this is a comparison between two modelling approaches rather than an independent validation. Against the FAO-56 reference ET, METRIC showed a positive bias of +0.65 mm d−1 (percent bias (PBIAS) =+13%; root mean square error (RMSE) =1.23 mm d−1; r2=0.57; n=9, after excluding one date with anomalous reanalysis forcing), concentrated during flooding and after harvest, whereas at full canopy cover the two estimates converged. Two global ET products that share neither the METRIC formulation nor the ERA5-Land forcing reproduce the same seasonal decline once the canopy closes (r=0.63 and 0.91) but stay far below in magnitude, as expected from their 500 m pixel. ET did not differ between sowing methods and varied only slightly among cultivars (∼0.3 mm d−1), against marked intra-field variability. The METRIC–GEE workflow offers a low-cost, high-resolution tool for monitoring water use in data-scarce arid rice systems. Full article
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27 pages, 26649 KB  
Article
Evaluating Deep Learning Local Features for RGB-Thermal Image Matching and 3D InfraRed Thermography
by Luca Morelli, Neil Sutherland, Francesco Ioli, Alfonso Vitti, Stuart Marsh, Jon Mills, Paul Bryan and Fabio Remondino
Geomatics 2026, 6(4), 83; https://doi.org/10.3390/geomatics6040083 - 29 Jul 2026
Viewed by 392
Abstract
InfraRed Thermography (IRT), a non-invasive, non-contact, and non-destructive testing (NDT) technique, has become an established tool in the assessment of a building’s behavior and energy performance. However, the inherent low spatial resolution of thermal infrared (TIR) cameras has led recent work to fuse [...] Read more.
InfraRed Thermography (IRT), a non-invasive, non-contact, and non-destructive testing (NDT) technique, has become an established tool in the assessment of a building’s behavior and energy performance. However, the inherent low spatial resolution of thermal infrared (TIR) cameras has led recent work to fuse thermographic and geometric data to generate accurate 3D representations of buildings encapsulating temperature information. Whilst existing data fusion methods have relied on sensors in fixed relative orientation (RO), the co-registration of independent TIR and RGB blocks using ground control points (GCPs), or the reprojection of TIR images onto additional geometric or parametric models, approaches that directly match multi-modal images remain limited. In principle, if multi-modal tie points were available, it would be possible to directly align the RGB block with the TIR block; however, such matching is extremely challenging due to the substantial differences in radiometric properties. The main contribution of this paper is to demonstrate the applicability of off-the-shelf deep learning-based image matching algorithms, originally trained on mono-modal datasets, to multi-modal matching tasks for InfraRed Thermography 3D-Data Fusion (IRT-3DDF). We conduct a comparative evaluation of the principal algorithms developed in recent years, with particular emphasis on 3D accuracy and computational efficiency, under the hypothesis that, owing to the inherently local nature of the problem they address, these algorithms can generalize from a mono-modal training domain to a multi-modal application domain. The results are benchmarked against existing hand-crafted open-source multi-modal reference methods. Importantly, the proposed method is fully-automatic, obviating the need for sensor pre-calibration, manual co-registration, or associated positioning information. Results demonstrate that DL-based image matching, using pre-trained neural networks outside of their expected training domain, provides a viable approach for IRT-3DDF capable of co-registering blocks of multi-modal images across varying scales, settings, sensors, and subjects. Our results indicate accuracy in 3D is up to seven times better than multi-modal hand-crafted algorithms, while hand-crafted mono-modal methods fail to co-register images in their entirety. Full article
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15 pages, 1526 KB  
Article
Opportunistic Screening for Low Bone Density Using Automated Vertebral Trabecular CT Attenuation from Low-Dose CT Acquired During FDG PET/CT: A Single-Center Retrospective Study
by Hyun-Kyeong Yuk, Sung-Hoon Oh and Do-Hoon Kim
Tomography 2026, 12(6), 89; https://doi.org/10.3390/tomography12060089 - 17 Jun 2026
Viewed by 588
Abstract
Objectives: To evaluate the diagnostic performance of automated vertebral trabecular Hounsfield unit (HU) measurements derived from routine fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography/computed tomography (FDG PET/CT) for identifying low bone density. Methods: This retrospective study included 131 consecutive women (mean age, 53.5 ± 9.6 years) [...] Read more.
Objectives: To evaluate the diagnostic performance of automated vertebral trabecular Hounsfield unit (HU) measurements derived from routine fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography/computed tomography (FDG PET/CT) for identifying low bone density. Methods: This retrospective study included 131 consecutive women (mean age, 53.5 ± 9.6 years) undergoing health screening with FDG PET/CT and dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) between January 2020 and December 2024. A deep learning-based model (TotalSegmentator) automatically segmented the lumbar vertebrae (L1–L4). HU-based metrics in trabecular regions were calculated, and their correlations with DXA-derived bone mineral density (BMD) were assessed. Diagnostic performance was evaluated using receiver operating characteristic analysis. A multivariable logistic regression model incorporating mean HU, age, and body mass index was developed and internally validated using bootstrap resampling. Results: According to WHO criteria, 47 of 131 participants (35.9%) had low bone density. Mean HU demonstrated strong diagnostic performance (area under the curve [95% confidence interval]: L1, 0.861 [0.800–0.923]; L2, 0.852 [0.788–0.915]; L3, 0.861 [0.800–0.921]; L4, 0.845 [0.781–0.909]). L1 mean HU provided the most balanced performance (sensitivity, 0.851; specificity, 0.750); L3 mean HU was slightly inferior. L1 mean HU was strongly correlated with BMD (r = 0.821, p < 0.001). In multivariable analysis, mean HU independently predicted low bone density (odds ratio: 0.949, p < 0.001). The model achieved an accuracy of 0.786 and demonstrated favorable calibration performance. Conclusions: The automated assessment of vertebral trabecular HU from routine FDG PET/CT provides a reliable and highly efficient method for screening low bone density without additional radiation exposure or cost. Full article
(This article belongs to the Section Artificial Intelligence in Medical Imaging)
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37 pages, 6289 KB  
Article
An Indoor Occupancy Detection Method and Application by Fusing Field-of-View Information and Events with a Single Camera
by Pengchen Chen, Chuang Wang and Jingjing An
Buildings 2026, 16(11), 2133; https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings16112133 - 26 May 2026
Viewed by 450
Abstract
Accurate and stable indoor occupancy information is essential for occupant-based intelligent ventilation control. Under a single-camera setting, existing indoor occupancy detection methods commonly suffer from missed detections caused by occlusion and blind zones, false detections caused by people outside the room, and cumulative [...] Read more.
Accurate and stable indoor occupancy information is essential for occupant-based intelligent ventilation control. Under a single-camera setting, existing indoor occupancy detection methods commonly suffer from missed detections caused by occlusion and blind zones, false detections caused by people outside the room, and cumulative entry–exit errors that are difficult to correct. These problems lead to false fluctuations in detected occupancy, affect control performance, and may further reduce indoor comfort or cause unnecessary energy use. To address the practical situation in which indoor spaces are commonly equipped with a single security camera, this study proposes an indoor occupancy detection method by fusing field-of-view information and entry–exit events with a single camera. The study covers method development, multi-scenario validation, parameter analysis, and a ventilation control application. The proposed method uses YOLOv8x and DeepSORT as front-end models and performs post-processing on their outputs to extract field-of-view occupancy information, entry–exit events, and blind-zone events. An occupancy confirmation and correction module is then constructed. The blind-zone event mechanism reduces the influence of missed entry–exit events and camera blind zones on occupancy judgment. The correction module integrates frame-by-frame ID counts, historical outputs, and multiple event signals to verify and suppress false occupancy changes caused by false detections, missed detections, and blind zones, thereby producing more stable indoor occupancy results. Experimental results show that the proposed method outperforms the baseline methods based on front-end object detection and tracking in terms of score, RMSE, and F1 score in three typical scenarios: an office, a home, and a classroom. In the office scenario, the proposed method achieved a score of 99.36%, an RMSE of 0.081, and an F1 score of 0.781. The detection stability was also improved in the home and classroom scenarios. In the high-density and strongly occluded classroom scenario, the absolute detection performance of the fusion-based detection method was limited by the front-end models, indicating that the method still has certain applicability boundaries in complex high-density scenes. Parameter sensitivity analysis shows that key parameters, including the entry–exit area depth, confidence threshold, and time threshold, affect the detection results of the fusion-based detection method. Under the test conditions of this study, the method performs well when the entry–exit area depth is approximately 1.5d, the YOLOv8x confidence threshold is 40%, and the time threshold is 5 × FPS. These results can provide a reference for initial parameter setting and on-site calibration in similar scenarios. Using the office scenario as a case study, the method was further applied to occupant-based ventilation control. The average CO2 concentration during occupied periods under the proposed method was 622.43 ppm, which was closest to the result under ground-truth occupancy control, with a deviation of only 0.9 ppm. This indicates that the method can help improve indoor air quality. Compared with conventional schedule-based control, occupant-based ventilation control driven by the proposed fusion method reduced cumulative fan energy consumption by approximately 65.2%, showing good energy-saving potential at the ventilation-control level. In summary, the proposed method can effectively improve the accuracy and stability of indoor occupancy detection under a single-camera setting and provide more reliable input for occupant-based ventilation control. The framework is modular, and the front-end object detection and tracking models can be replaced according to actual deployment needs. However, the validation in this study is still mainly based on scenarios where existing security cameras can cover the main activity areas and all entry–exit passages. The applicability of the method under more complex camera arrangements, lighting variations, and automatic region configuration requires further investigation. Full article
(This article belongs to the Section Building Energy, Physics, Environment, and Systems)
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23 pages, 5479 KB  
Article
Development and Validation of a Physical Model Optimized by Evolutionary Algorithms for the Accurate Estimation of Cell Temperature in Photovoltaic Systems
by Doroteya Dimitrova-Angelova, Diego Carmona Fernández, Manuel Calderón Godoy, Juan Antonio Álvarez Moreno and Juan Félix González González
Energies 2026, 19(10), 2286; https://doi.org/10.3390/en19102286 - 9 May 2026
Viewed by 464
Abstract
Accurate photovoltaic cell temperature estimation is critical for maximizing energy management and improving digital twin fidelity in building-integrated solar systems. Classical models, NOCT (Nominal Operating Cell Temperature), King, Skoplaki, and PVsyst/Faiman, provide a practical baseline but exhibit significant limitations when applied to complex, [...] Read more.
Accurate photovoltaic cell temperature estimation is critical for maximizing energy management and improving digital twin fidelity in building-integrated solar systems. Classical models, NOCT (Nominal Operating Cell Temperature), King, Skoplaki, and PVsyst/Faiman, provide a practical baseline but exhibit significant limitations when applied to complex, real-world scenarios. These static and linear approaches fail to capture dynamic thermal phenomena such as thermal inertia, nonlinear irradiance effects, and wind-temperature interactions. This paper presents an advanced physical model that incorporates thermal memory effects, sophisticated wind modeling, transient cloud-response mechanisms, and non-linear thermal dependencies. Parameter calibration was performed using a differential evolution algorithm, automatically optimizing the model fit to one year of experimental data from a 2.79 kW pilot installation at the University of Extremadura. The validation results demonstrate consistent improvements across all seasons: RMSE reductions of up to 4.9% and MAE reductions of up to 14.4% compared to classical approaches, with particularly pronounced gains during the summer and autumn. The methodology is readily transferable to diverse installations and climatic contexts, providing a robust framework for developing high-accuracy PV digital twins and enabling early fault detection and operational optimization. Full article
(This article belongs to the Topic Sustainable Energy Systems)
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32 pages, 5657 KB  
Article
Study on MPC Regulation Control Strategy Based on Dynamic Characteristics of Heating Systems
by Xiaoyu Ma, Shuo Ma, Yuanfan Chen, Chenyi Yang, Jiwei Yang and Hongting Ma
Energies 2026, 19(9), 2096; https://doi.org/10.3390/en19092096 - 27 Apr 2026
Viewed by 497
Abstract
Driven by the growing energy demand and severe challenges posed by climate change, reducing the high energy consumption of district heating systems while enhancing their flexibility and operational reliability has become an urgent priority. This study focuses on the heating system of a [...] Read more.
Driven by the growing energy demand and severe challenges posed by climate change, reducing the high energy consumption of district heating systems while enhancing their flexibility and operational reliability has become an urgent priority. This study focuses on the heating system of a residential community in Zhengzhou, China, by developing a joint source-network-load simulation model and proposing a model predictive control (MPC) strategy tailored to the dynamic characteristics of the system. A white-box model of the building complex and heating system was established by coupling EnergyPlus and Modelica. Subsequently, the model was automatically calibrated using actual operational data and the GenOpt optimization tool, which further improved the simulation accuracy and optimal control performance of the model. The results show that the root mean square errors (RMSEs) of the calibrated secondary network supply water temperature, return water temperature, and indoor temperature decreased by 34.6% and 15.7%, respectively, verifying the effectiveness of the proposed calibration method. Furthermore, the proposed MPC strategy demonstrates significant advantages over conventional control baselines, greatly improving the temperature regulation accuracy and system stability. Compared to the baseline operation without MPC, the proposed strategy increases the user-side thermal comfort index from 56% to 100%, thereby significantly enhancing overall heating quality. Full article
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8 pages, 467 KB  
Proceeding Paper
A Low-Cost IoT Sensor for Streamflow Monitoring: A Proof-of-Concept Using Commercial off the Shelf (COTS) Hardware
by Konstantinos Ioannou, Stefanos Stefanidis and Ilias Karmiris
Environ. Earth Sci. Proc. 2026, 40(1), 14; https://doi.org/10.3390/eesp2026040014 - 23 Apr 2026
Viewed by 1026
Abstract
Accurate measurement of streamflow is fundamental for water resources management, ecological conservation, flash flood early warning, and climate change impact studies. This study presents a proof of concept on the usage of Internet of Things (IoT) for automatic streamflow measurements using commercial off-the-shelf [...] Read more.
Accurate measurement of streamflow is fundamental for water resources management, ecological conservation, flash flood early warning, and climate change impact studies. This study presents a proof of concept on the usage of Internet of Things (IoT) for automatic streamflow measurements using commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware. The system is designed, implemented, and experimentally evaluated as a low-cost, solar-powered IoT device tailored to small-order streams and headwater tributaries. At its core is the Hall-effect YF-S201 flow sensor. Although primarily designed for closed-conduit applications, the sensor was tested in a controlled setup where stream water was diverted into a short pipe section, enabling continuous monitoring and calibration. This paper provides details on the design and validation of a low-cost (approximately 24 Euros), solar-powered streamflow measurement system based on a water flow sensor, using wireless communications, and cloud storage based on an ESP32 board, PostgreSQL, and a web interface. The device was tested in a simulated environment. Results indicate the proposed device reliably tracks flow variability, while offering portability, energy autonomy, and cost efficiency, and may serve as a feasible alternative for low-infrastructure, temporary deployments. Full article
(This article belongs to the Proceedings of The 9th International Electronic Conference on Water Sciences)
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34 pages, 7515 KB  
Article
A Simplified and Automated Building Energy Retrofit Analysis Approach
by Phani Arvind Vadali, Ashit Harode and Moncef Krarti
Energies 2026, 19(8), 1907; https://doi.org/10.3390/en19081907 - 14 Apr 2026
Viewed by 815
Abstract
Retrofitting existing buildings is widely recognized as a critical strategy for achieving global decarbonization goals. As a part of this effort, several tools have been developed for building retrofit analysis, each offering distinct advantages and limitations. However, the current approaches and tools still [...] Read more.
Retrofitting existing buildings is widely recognized as a critical strategy for achieving global decarbonization goals. As a part of this effort, several tools have been developed for building retrofit analysis, each offering distinct advantages and limitations. However, the current approaches and tools still lack the capability to generate well-calibrated detailed building energy models that can evaluate both individual and combined energy efficiency measures. Moreover, no existing analysis tool can identify the most cost-optimal combination of retrofit measures through a comprehensive optimization search using different objectives. To address these shortcomings, this paper describes a new Simplified and Automated Building Energy Retrofit (SABER) analysis approach and tool. The SABER tool is a Python-based interactive platform designed to assist users by automatically creating detailed energy models of existing buildings. It incorporates a novel automatic calibration algorithm that adjusts operational schedules using building energy signature characteristics, ensuring accurate model performance. In addition, SABER can assess various building energy efficiency measures using a sequential search technique to determine the most cost-effective retrofit packages. This paper describes the key functionalities of SABER and demonstrates its capabilities through two residential building case studies. By integrating several key features into a unified framework, SABER represents a significant step toward the next generation of building energy retrofit analysis tools that can effectively assist the industry’s transition to a sustainable future. Full article
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21 pages, 5711 KB  
Article
A Study on High-Precision Dimensional Measurement of Irregularly Shaped Carbonitrided 820CrMnTi Components
by Xiaojiao Gu, Dongyang Zheng, Jinghua Li and He Lu
Materials 2026, 19(8), 1491; https://doi.org/10.3390/ma19081491 - 8 Apr 2026
Viewed by 483
Abstract
For irregularly shaped 820CrMnTi carburizing and nitriding parts, the challenges of high reflectivity-induced overexposure, low surface contrast, and interference from minute burrs in industrial online inspection are addressed in this paper. An innovative precision detection method integrating adaptive imaging and a dual-drive heterogeneous [...] Read more.
For irregularly shaped 820CrMnTi carburizing and nitriding parts, the challenges of high reflectivity-induced overexposure, low surface contrast, and interference from minute burrs in industrial online inspection are addressed in this paper. An innovative precision detection method integrating adaptive imaging and a dual-drive heterogeneous coupling model (RGFCN) is proposed. Such parts, due to surface photovoltaic characteristic changes caused by carburizing and nitriding heat treatment and the complex on-site lighting environment, are prone to local overexposure and “false out-of-tolerance” measurements caused by outlier sensitivity in traditional inspections. First, an innovative programmatic adaptive exposure control algorithm based on grayscale histogram feedback is introduced, which dynamically adjusts imaging parameters in real time to effectively suppress high-brightness overexposure under specific working conditions. Second, a novel adaptive main-axis scanning strategy is designed to construct a dynamic follow-up coordinate system, eliminating projection errors introduced by random positioning from a geometric perspective. Additionally, Gaussian gradient energy fields are combined with the Huber M-estimation robust fitting mechanism to suppress thermal noise while automatically reducing the weight of burrs and oil stains, achieving “immunity” to non-functional defects. Meanwhile, a data-driven innovative compensation approach is introduced. Based on sample training, gradient boosting decision trees (GBDTs) are integrated to explore the nonlinear mapping relationship between multidimensional feature spaces and system residuals, achieving implicit calibration of lens distortion and environmental coupling errors. By simulating factory conditions with drastic 24 h day–night lighting fluctuations and strong oil stain interference, statistical analysis of over 1000 mass-produced parts shows that this method exhibits excellent robustness in complex environments. It reduces the false out-of-tolerance rate caused by burrs by over 90%, and the standard deviation of repeated measurements converges to the micrometer level. This effectively addresses the visual inspection challenges of irregular, highly reflective parts on dynamic production lines. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Latest Developments in Advanced Machining Technologies for Materials)
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36 pages, 7011 KB  
Article
BIM-to-BEM Framework for Energy Retrofit in Industrial Buildings: From Simulation Scenarios to Decision Support Dashboards
by Matteo Del Giudice, Angelo Juliano Donato, Maria Adelaide Loffa, Pietro Rando Mazzarino, Lorenzo Bottaccioli, Edoardo Patti and Anna Osello
Sustainability 2026, 18(2), 1023; https://doi.org/10.3390/su18021023 - 19 Jan 2026
Viewed by 1338
Abstract
The digital and ecological transition of the industrial sector requires methodological tools that integrate information modelling, performance simulation, and operational decision support. In this context, the present study introduces and tests a semi-automatic BIM-to-BEM framework to optimise human–machine interaction and support critical data [...] Read more.
The digital and ecological transition of the industrial sector requires methodological tools that integrate information modelling, performance simulation, and operational decision support. In this context, the present study introduces and tests a semi-automatic BIM-to-BEM framework to optimise human–machine interaction and support critical data interpretation through Graphical User Interfaces. The objective is to propose and validate a BIM-to-BEM workflow for an existing industrial facility to enable comparative evaluation of energy retrofit scenarios. The information model, developed through an interdisciplinary federated approach and calibrated using parametric procedures, was exported in the gbXML format to generate a dynamic, interoperable energy model. Six simulation scenarios were defined incrementally, including interventions on the building envelope, Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) systems, photovoltaic production, and relamping. Results are made accessible through dashboards developed with Business Intelligence tools, allowing direct comparison of different design configurations in terms of thermal loads and indoor environmental stability, highlighting the effectiveness of integrated solutions. For example, the combined interventions reduced heating demand by up to 32% without compromising thermal comfort, while in the relamping scenario alone, the building could achieve an estimated 300 MWh reduction in annual electricity consumption. The proposed workflow serves as a technical foundation for developing an operational and evolving Digital Twin, oriented toward the sustainable governance of building–system interactions. The method proves to be replicable and scalable, offering a practical reference model to support the energy transition of existing industrial environments. Full article
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25 pages, 32460 KB  
Article
Physically Consistent Radar High-Resolution Range Profile Generation via Spectral-Aware Diffusion for Robust Automatic Target Recognition Under Data Scarcity
by Shuai Li, Yu Wang, Jingyang Xie and Biao Tian
Remote Sens. 2026, 18(2), 316; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs18020316 - 16 Jan 2026
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1271
Abstract
High-Resolution Range Profile (HRRP) represents the electromagnetic backscattering distribution of targets and plays a pivotal role in remote-sensing-based Automatic Target Recognition (RATR). However, in non-cooperative sensing scenarios, acquiring sufficient measured data is severely constrained by operational costs and physical limitations, leading to data [...] Read more.
High-Resolution Range Profile (HRRP) represents the electromagnetic backscattering distribution of targets and plays a pivotal role in remote-sensing-based Automatic Target Recognition (RATR). However, in non-cooperative sensing scenarios, acquiring sufficient measured data is severely constrained by operational costs and physical limitations, leading to data scarcity that hampers model robustness. To overcome this, we propose SpecM-DDPM, a spectral-aware Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models (DDPM) tailored for generating high-fidelity HRRPs that preserve physical scattering properties. Unlike generic generative models, SpecM-DDPM incorporates radar signal physics into the diffusion process. Specifically, a parallel multi-scale block is designed to adaptively capture both local scattering centers and global target resonance structures. To ensure spectral fidelity, a spectral gating mechanism serves as a physics-constrained filter to calibrate the energy distribution in the frequency domain. Furthermore, a Frequency-Aware Curriculum Learning (FACL) strategy is introduced to guide the progressive reconstruction from low-frequency structural components to high-frequency scattering details. Experiments on measured aircraft data demonstrate that SpecM-DDPM generates samples with high physical consistency, significantly enhancing the generalization performance of radar recognition systems in data-limited environments. Full article
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31 pages, 13729 KB  
Article
Stage-Wise SOH Prediction Using an Improved Random Forest Regression Algorithm
by Wei Xiao, Jun Jia, Wensheng Gao, Haibo Li, Hong Xu, Weidong Zhong and Ke He
Electronics 2026, 15(2), 287; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics15020287 - 8 Jan 2026
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 738
Abstract
In complex energy storage operating scenarios, batteries seldom undergo complete charge–discharge cycles required for periodic capacity calibration. Methods based on accelerated aging experiments can indicate possible aging paths; however, due to uncertainties like changing operating conditions, environmental variations, and manufacturing inconsistencies, the degradation [...] Read more.
In complex energy storage operating scenarios, batteries seldom undergo complete charge–discharge cycles required for periodic capacity calibration. Methods based on accelerated aging experiments can indicate possible aging paths; however, due to uncertainties like changing operating conditions, environmental variations, and manufacturing inconsistencies, the degradation information obtained from such experiments may not be applicable to the entire lifecycle. To address this, we developed a stage-wise state-of-health (SOH) prediction approach that combined offline training with online updating. During the offline training phase, multiple single-cell experiments were conducted under various combinations of depth of discharge (DOD) and C-rate. Multi-dimensional health features (HFs) were extracted, and an accelerated aging probability pAA was defined. Based on the correlation statistics between HFs, kHF, the SOH, and pAA, all cells in the dataset were divided into general early, middle, and late aging stages. For each stage, cells were further classified by their longevity (long, medium, and short), and multiple models were trained offline for each category. The results show that models trained on cells following similar aging paths achieve significantly better performance than a model trained on all data combined. Meanwhile, HF optimization was performed via a three-step process: an initial screening based on expert knowledge, a second screening using Spearman correlation coefficients, and an automatic feature importance ranking using a random forest regression (RFR) model. The proposed method is innovative in the following ways: (1) The stage-wise multi-model strategy significantly improves the SOH prediction accuracy across the entire lifecycle, maintaining the mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) within 1%. (2) The improved model provides uncertainty quantification, issuing a warning signal at least 50 cycles before the onset of accelerated aging. (3) The analysis of feature importance from the model outputs allows the indirect identification of the primary aging mechanisms at different stages. (4) The model is robust against missing or low-quality HFs. If certain features cannot be obtained or are of poor quality, the prediction process does not fail. Full article
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36 pages, 968 KB  
Review
Applications of Artificial Intelligence in Fisheries: From Data to Decisions
by Syed Ariful Haque and Saud M. Al Jufaili
Big Data Cogn. Comput. 2026, 10(1), 19; https://doi.org/10.3390/bdcc10010019 - 5 Jan 2026
Cited by 11 | Viewed by 6771
Abstract
AI enhances aquatic resource management by automating species detection, optimizing feed, forecasting water quality, protecting species interactions, and strengthening the detection of illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing activities. However, these advancements are inconsistently employed, subject to domain shifts, limited by the availability of [...] Read more.
AI enhances aquatic resource management by automating species detection, optimizing feed, forecasting water quality, protecting species interactions, and strengthening the detection of illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing activities. However, these advancements are inconsistently employed, subject to domain shifts, limited by the availability of labeled data, and poorly benchmarked across operational contexts. Recent developments in technology and applications in fisheries genetics and monitoring, precision aquaculture, management, and sensing infrastructure are summarized in this paper. We studied automated species recognition, genomic trait inference, environmental DNA metabarcoding, acoustic analysis, and trait-based population modeling in fisheries genetics and monitoring. We used digital-twin frameworks for supervised learning in feed optimization, reinforcement learning for water quality control, vision-based welfare monitoring, and harvest forecasting in aquaculture. We explored automatic identification system trajectory analysis for illicit fishing detection, global effort mapping, electronic bycatch monitoring, protected species tracking, and multi-sensor vessel surveillance in fisheries management. Acoustic echogram automation, convolutional neural network-based fish detection, edge-computing architectures, and marine-domain foundation models are foundational developments in sensing infrastructure. Implementation challenges include performance degradation across habitat and seasonal transitions, insufficient standardized multi-region datasets for rare and protected taxa, inadequate incorporation of model uncertainty into management decisions, and structural inequalities in data access and technology adoption among smallholder producers. Standardized multi-region benchmarks with rare-taxa coverage, calibrated uncertainty quantification in assessment and control systems, domain-robust energy-efficient algorithms, and privacy-preserving data partnerships are our priorities. These integrated priorities enable transition from experimental prototypes to a reliable, collaborative infrastructure for sustainable wild capture and farmed aquatic systems. Full article
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