This book brings together emerging objectives and paradigms in the control of both AC and DC microgrids; further, it facilitates the integration of renewable-energy and distribution systems through localization of generation, storage and consumption. The control objectives in a microgrid are addressed through the hierarchical control structure. After providing a comprehensive survey on the state of the art in microgrid control, the book goes on to address the most recent control schemes for both AC and DC microgrids, which are based on the distributed cooperative control of multi-agent systems. The cooperative control structure discussed distributes the co-ordination and optimization tasks across all distributed generators. This does away with the need for a central controller, and the control system will not collapse in response to the outage of a single unit. This avoids adverse effects on system flexibility and configurability, as well as the reliability concerns in connection with single points of failure that arise in traditional, centralized microgrid control schemes. Rigorous proofs develop each control methodology covered in the book, and simulation examples are provided to justify all of the proposed algorithms. Given its extensive yet self-contained content, the book offers a comprehensive source of information for graduate students, academic researchers, and practicing engineers working in the field of microgrid control and optimization.
The outcome of the author's experience confirms that what our societies need is to institutionalize and instill the concept of the "National State". We must carry out this process in a nuanced and unprecedented meaning, and move beyond the conventional idea of the nation-state as manifested in the West. The National State is the "State of Citizenship", the State of a legal or social contract between Man and the State; the State that serves its people and realizes their ambitions and aspirations regardless of their background and the State that rules by law. It is the State where the law governs all its acts with the citizens and where all are equal before the law. It is the State that truly believes that pluralism is a source of strength and that coexistence is a source of inspiration to all who live on its soil. It is a State of neither a particular race, sect, cult nor an ethnic group. It is not a State of a given superior human race over others. As the State of Citizenship and rule of law, it is not at all the State of nationalistic and/ or racist people.
This book brings together emerging objectives and paradigms in the control of both AC and DC microgrids; further, it facilitates the integration of renewable-energy and distribution systems through localization of generation, storage and consumption. The control objectives in a microgrid are addressed through the hierarchical control structure. After providing a comprehensive survey on the state of the art in microgrid control, the book goes on to address the most recent control schemes for both AC and DC microgrids, which are based on the distributed cooperative control of multi-agent systems. The cooperative control structure discussed distributes the co-ordination and optimization tasks across all distributed generators. This does away with the need for a central controller, and the control system will not collapse in response to the outage of a single unit. This avoids adverse effects on system flexibility and configurability, as well as the reliability concerns in connection with single points of failure that arise in traditional, centralized microgrid control schemes. Rigorous proofs develop each control methodology covered in the book, and simulation examples are provided to justify all of the proposed algorithms. Given its extensive yet self-contained content, the book offers a comprehensive source of information for graduate students, academic researchers, and practicing engineers working in the field of microgrid control and optimization.
Views on spatial planning and its role have changed significantly over the past few years and the issues it deals with have become increasingly more complex. There are more players involved in the development of a particular area or place than ever before and there is also a greater interest in urban design issues. There are also new ways of conceiving of place, space and society relations. It is therefore necessary that all those involved in the production, consumption and valuing of places and territories develop and (re)learn new ways of analyzing and managing space. This volume provides a platform for such a re-examination. It first discusses how spaces and places are understood and conceptualized, and offers a dialogue between different approaches to the understanding of space, emphasizing the need for a dynamic perspective. The book then goes on to examine the changing governance processes through various case studies, which illustrate a range of innovative spatial planning projects from across Europe and the United States. By bringing together an examination of both space and the process through which the space is created and managed, this volume offers a unique multi-dimensional understanding of spatial planning and suggests new ways of negotiating how society should shape and influence the transformation of places.
Iran is currently experiencing the most important change in its history since the revolution of 1979 and the establishment of the Islamic Republic: The regime in Tehran, traditionally ruled by the Shia clergy, is transforming into a military dictatorship dominated by the officers of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC; Sepah-e Pasdaran-e Enqelab-e Eslami). This transformation is changing not only the economy and society in Iran, but also the Islamic Republic’s relations with the United States and its allies.
This book fills a major gap in academic research, by exploring ‘urban resilience measures’ and ‘city management issues’ during disruptive disease outbreak events. Based on the overarching concept of ‘resilience thinking’, it addresses critical issues of preparedness, responsiveness and reflectiveness in the event of outbreak, focusing on cities and how they should prepare to combat a variety of adversities and uncertainties caused by outbreaks. This comprehensive book is an essential guide for decision-makers, city authorities, planners, healthcare and public health authorities, and those communities and businesses that face disease outbreak events. It also offers a set of practical measures to support the development of tailor-made strategies in the form of an action plan. These strategies should address outbreak control and containment measures, institutional rearrangements, management of urban systems, and healthiness of the society. Divided into six chapters, this book explores important topics of ‘urban resilience’ and ‘city management’ for preparedness action plans and responsiveness planning. Further, it presents a comprehensive urban resilience approach used to support city management in the recent outbreaks in Chinese cities, which can be applied in cities around the globe to strengthen their resilience and maximise the practicality of urban resilience and minimise urban vulnerabilities during disease outbreaks. Highlighting topics such as maintaining societal well-being, community engagement, and multi-sectoral city management enhancement, this book offers a unique combination of research, practices and lessons learned to aid cities in need.
This monograph represents the outcome of research effort of the authors on scalable synchronization of large-scale multi-agent systems (MAS). Cooperative control of multi-agent systems has been growing in popularity and is highly interdisciplinary in recent years. The application of synchronization of MAS includes automobile systems, aerospace systems, multiple-satellite GPS, high-resolution satellite imagery, aircraft formations, highway traffic platooning, industrial process control with multiple processes, and more. Most of the proposed protocols in the literature for synchronization of MAS require some knowledge of the communication network such as bounds on the spectrum of the associated Laplacian matrix and the number of agents. These protocols suffer from scale fragility wherein stability properties are lost for large-scale networks or when the communication graph changes. In the past few years, the authors of this monograph have worked on developing scale-free protocol design for various cases of MAS problems. The key contribution of the monograph is to offer a scale-free design framework and provide scale-free protocols to achieve synchronization, delayed synchronization, and almost synchronization in the presence of input and communication delays, input saturation and external disturbances. The scale-free design framework solely is based on the knowledge of agent models and does not depend on information about the communication network such as the spectrum of the associated Laplacian matrix or size of the network. Drawing upon their extensive work in this area, the authors provide a thorough treatment of agents with higher-order dynamics, different classes of models for agents, and the underlying networks representing actions of the agents. The high technical level of their presentation and their rigorous mathematical approach make this monograph a timely and valuable resource that will fill a gap in the existing literature.
Ali Hakeem was born near the Tower of Babel. For him and for all Mesopotamians, the morning of the 9th of April, 2003 was horrific, as their capital was invaded, occupied and consequently looted. He was destined in this lifetime to experience the tumultuous situations that he and his homeland would face. In the first of many previous wars, Ali lost Ai, the love of his life. He lived under severe sanction and aerial bombing during the "Desert Fox" then "Desert Storm" wars and yet, he climbed high in his profession. Following the invasion called "Operation Freedom" he was abducted from his molecular world and illegally detained in an occupation military camp until his captors realized their mistake. This book is about two lives, wars, lies and the fantasies of the Weapons of Mass Destruction. It is self-portrait of a man stands in the empty train station of his life, unites memoir fiction with truth and fascination with the past.
THE ECONOMICS OF MICROGRIDS An incisive and practical exploration of the engineering economics of microgrids In The Economics of Microgrids, a pair of distinguished researchers delivers an expert discussion of the microeconomic perspectives on microgrids in the context of low-carbon, sustainable energy delivery. In the book, readers will explore an engineering economics framework on the investment decisions and capital expenditure analyses required for an assessment of microgrid projects. The authors also examine economic concepts and models for minimizing microgrid operation costs, including the cost of local generation resources and energy purchases from main grids to supply local loads. The book presents economic models for the expansion of microgrids under load and market price uncertainties, as well as discussions of the economics of resilience in microgrids for optimal operation during outages and power disturbances. Readers will also find: A thorough introduction to the engineering and economics of microgrids Comprehensive explorations of microgrid planning under uncertainty Practical discussions of microgrid expansion planning, operations management, and renewable energy integration Fulsome treatments of asset management and resilience economics in microgrids Perfect for senior undergraduate and graduate students as well as researchers studying power system design, The Economics of Microgrids will also benefit professionals working in the power system industry and government regulators and policymakers with an interest in microgrid technologies and infrastructure.
Sustainable Urbanism in China explores the notion of "Sustainable Urbanism" by considering the role sustainable neighborhood planning plays in the larger picture of sustainable urbanism and suggests innovations and best practices that are either developed or adopted by China. These are narrated as lessons learnt for other countries where we see similar trends of development patterns or emerging practices. Through various explorations of challenges, paradigms, and innovations of urban sustainability, this book highlights how planning, policy, and design are forming and reforming in the context of China. These are offered through a set of guidelines and pathways for urban sustainability at the scale of neighborhoods/communities or districts in a wider context of urban environments, as well as strategies for planners, developers, policy makers, and educators in the field of the built environment. Through a comprehensive overview of urban sustainability practices in China, this book investigates 12 case study projects. These comprehensive explorations should in turn help construct the future directions of China’s sustainable urban development and provide innovative pathways of sustainable urbanism in China and around the globe.
From street-markets and pop-up shops to art installations and Olympic parks, the temporary use of urban space is a growing international trend in architecture and urban design. Partly a response to economic and ecological crisis, it also claims to offer a critique of the status quo and an innovative way forward for the urban future. Cities in Time aims to explore and understand the phenomenon, offering a first critical and theoretical evaluation of temporary urbanism and its implications for the present and future of our cities. The book argues that temporary urbanism needs to be understood within the broader context of how different concepts of time are embedded in the city. In any urban place, multiple, discordant and diverse timeframes are at play – and the chapters here explore these different conceptions of temporality, their causes and their effects. Themes explored include how institutionalised time regulates everyday urban life, how technological and economic changes have accelerated the city's rhythms, our existential and personal senses of time, concepts of memory and identity, virtual spaces, ephemerality and permanence.
Mustard Lung: Diagnosis and Treatment of Respiratory Disorders in Sulfur-Mustard Injured Patients brings together the details regarding pathophysiology, medication, and protective issues to provide a comprehensive look at health problems associated with sulfur mustard injury. It provides a bench-to-bedside look at the long term complications of vesicant exposure in humans as well as how mustard gas exposure affects lung function. By providing guidelines and approaches for the diagnosis, pathogenesis, and treatment of SM injury cases, this book is helpful for a wide range of medical researchers and clinicians. For decades, chemical respiratory disorders were diagnosed and managed traditionally similar to other chronic respiratory diseases. However, the exact nature of chemical respiratory disorders is different and needs to be treated as such. Includes the most up-to-date basic and clinical research findings on sulfur mustard from top researchers Provides information on chemical agents, complications that arise due to sulfur mustard exposure, and drugs available to treat injuries Contains an appendix with practical prescription recommendations for patients affected by mustard lung Provides a bench-to-bedside look at the long term complications of vesicant exposure in humans as well as how mustard gas exposure affects lung function
The relationship between public and private spheres is one of the key concerns of the modern society. This book investigates this relationship, especially as manifested in the urban space with its social and psychological significance. Through theoretical and historical examination, it explores how and why the space of human socities is subdivided into public and private sections. It starts with the private, interior space of the mind and moves step by step, through the body, home, neighborhood and the city, outwards to the most public, impersonal spaces, exploring the nature of each realm and their complex, interdependent realtionships. A stimulating and thought provoking book for any architect, architectural historian, urban planner or designer.
This book approaches law as a process embedded in transnational personal, religious, communicative and economic relationships that mediate between international, national and local practices, norms and values. It uses the concept "living law" to describe the multiplicity of norms manifest in transnational moral, social or economic practices that transgress the territorial and legal boundaries of the nation-state. Focusing on transnational legal encounters located in family life, diasporic religious institutions and media events in countries like Norway, Sweden, Britain and Scotland, it demonstrates the multiple challenges that accelerated mobility and increased cultural and normative diversity is posing for Northern European law. For in this part of the world, as elsewhere, national law is challenged by a mixture of expanding human rights obligations and unprecedented cultural and normative pluralism enhanced by expanding global communication and market relations. As a consequence, transnationalization of law appears to create homogeneity, fragmentation and ambiguity, expanding space for some actors while silencing others. Through the lens of a variety of important contemporary subjects, the authors thus engage with the nature of power and how it is accommodated, ignored or resisted by various actors when transnational practices encounter national and local law.
The European Union has established itself as a leading text that provides readers from all disciplines with a sound understanding of the economics and policies of the EU. Its wealth of information, detail and analysis has ensured that previous editions have been read by a generation of students, researchers and policy makers. It covers all major EU policy areas as well as theories of economic integration, the theory of economic and monetary union (EMU), the measurement of the economic effects of European integration and the legal dimension in EU integration. It also includes an explanation and analysis of all recent developments affecting the EU such as enlargement, the ratification of the Nice Treaty and the Convention for the Future of Europe. This edition has been thoroughly revised and updated and includes new resources to help students and teachers, including summaries, review questions, suggestions for essay titles and further reading lists.
Taking a critical perspective, this book rethinks public space in the context of contemporary global health and economic crises, as well as technological, political and cultural change. In order to do so, Ali Madanipour brings together two often unrelated discourses: public space and social inclusion, interrogating the potential for public spaces to contribute to inclusive social practices.
This book is about how to make the method of morphological regionalization, proposed in the early 1960s, more useful and practicable for planning, urban design and architecture. This book is about cities; more precisely, about how cities can be characterized based on the main elements of urban form. It provides a systematic way of description and explanation of the historico-geographical structure of the urban landscape. It offers a step-by-step methodology for the identification of morphological regions as a key tool for planning practice and townscape management. The book is divided in seven parts. The first part is the introduction, motivation, research goal and objectives, and the structure of the book. The second part of the book offers an overview of urban morphology, urban morphological approaches, the concept of morphological region and its past applications worldwide. The third part is the methodological procedures for the implementation of this morphological approach to cities. The fourth and fifth parts are the implementation of this methodology into two case studies, Istanbul and Antequera. The sixth part offers a discussion of results. And, finally, the seventh part is constituted by a set of conclusions.
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