Centralized Management System Research Articles

Implementing an Optimal Energy Management System for a Set of Microgrids Using the Harmony Search Algorithm

A microgrid (MG) refers to a set of loads, generation resources and energy storage systems acting as a controllable load or a generator to supply power and heating to a local area. The MG-generated power management is a central topic for MG design and operation. The existence of dispersed generation (DG) resources has faced MG management with new issues. Depending on the level of exchanges between an MG and the main grid, the MG operation states can be divided into independent or grid-connected ones. Energy management in MGs aims to supply power at the lowest cost for optimal load response. This study examines MG energy management in two operational modes of islanded and grid-connected, and proposes a structure with two control layers (primary and secondary) for energy management. At the principal level of control, the energy management system is determined individually for all MG by taking into consideration the probability constraints and RES uncertainty by the Weibull the probability density function (PDF), generation resources’ power as well as the generation surplus and deficit of each MG. Then, the information of the power surplus and deficit of each MG must be sent to the central energy management system. To confirm the proposed structure, a case system with two MGs and a condensive load is simulated by using a multi-time harmony search algorithm. Several scenarios are applied to evaluate the performance of this algorithm. The findings clearly show the effectiveness of the proposed system in the energy management of several MGs, leading to the optimal performance of the resources per MG. Moreover, the proposed control scheme properly controls the MG and grid’s performance in their interactions and offers a high level of robustness, stable behavior under different conditions and high quality of power supply.

Buildings Participation in Resilience Enhancement of Community Microgrids: Synergy Between Microgrid and Building Management Systems

Military bases, communities, and university-scale microgrids are being implemented to serve critical loads of high priority. Remote switch scheduling and distributed energy resources (DERs) operation strategies for post-disaster service restoration have been explored in previous literature. Flexible buildings offer the central microgrid management system an opportunity to ensure available energy is directed to the critical loads. This work presents a novel bi-level optimal sequence of operations for managing the controllable devices in small-scale microgrids to serve loads based on a priority scheme in campus-scale microgrids. This study introduces a technique for step-by-step restoration of customers’ granular loads. After and during an outage scenario, the facilities’ internal loads are energized in sequence according to their customer and local criticality levels, as well as the amount of energy available from the bulk system and DERs. The proposed methodology is formulated as a mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) model and adapts to various operating conditions. The proposed method is validated by performing controller hardware-in-loop (CHIL) case studies on the Banshee microgrid benchmark model on a real-time simulator.

Scientific and Technical Policy of the USSR of the 1950—1960s: from the Problem of Implementation to Attempts of Systemic Reform

The Soviet Union history of the late 1940s — early 1950s embraces the end of the post-war economic recovery, the change of the country’s top leadership and emerging attempts to reform the existing centralized management system. Within the framework of these processes, a key role is given to science. The Soviet functionaries tended to consider scientific and technological progress as a resource for improving economic indicators and boosting the economy of the country. The author analyzes the main prerequisites for changing the goal-setting of the Soviet science and technology policy in the period of the 1950s; examines the problem of integrating the latest developments into production processes in the framework of the planned economy; and describes the key institutional transformations that took place during this period. Conducting such an analysis makes it possible to single out the key problems in the implementation of the science and technology policy of the Soviet Union in the middle of the 20th century and to trace how it was combined with the economic reforms carried out in the country.

Zonal Machine Learning-Based Protection for Distribution Systems

Adaptive protection is defined as a real-time system that can modify the protective actions according to the changes in the system condition. An adaptive protection system (APS) is conventionally coordinated through a central management system located at the distribution system substation. An APS depends significantly on the communication infrastructure to monitor the latest status of the electric power grid and send appropriate settings to all of the protection relays existing in the grid. This makes an APS highly vulnerable to communication system failures (e.g., broken communication links due to natural disasters as well as wide-range cyber-attacks). To this end, this paper presents the addition of local adaptive modular protection (LAMP) units to the protection system to guarantee its reliable operation under extreme events when the operation of the APS is compromised. LAMP units operate in parallel with the conventional APS. As a backup, if APS fails to operate because of an issue in the communication system, LAMP units can accommodate a reliable fault detection and location on behalf of the protection relay. The performance of the proposed APS is verified using IEEE 123 node test system.

SYSTEM OF INTELLIGENT MEASUREMENT AND CONTROL FOR THE CONDITION OF MOVING OBJECTS

An intelligent system that monitors the speed and condition of a moving object is designed to reduce the risk of potential threats that may arise with autonomous decision-making capabilities depending on the situation and exchange information with databases via remote network sensors. Risk assessment based on information obtained from stationary metering stations installed at intersections and control crossings, object characteristics parameters and side-effect parameters, alerting the central management system based on the results, and making decisions on regulating the speed of the facility, depending on the level of danger and whether the decision is approved by the center, providing information about the facility on the board, sending alerts to security systems at intersections, and identifying opportunities for change by influencing decisions based on risks The characteristic technical parameters of the inflated object depend on internal and external factors and making appropriate decisions according to the risk assessment, etc. information on processes, monitoring, and control. Monitoring of working conditions with the participation of the remote control wireless sensor network in the central control room.

Tools for solving management tasks in economic systems of the «organization» type

The digital economy requires the digital transformation of firms. There is no single solution to the digital transformation process. For each company, the process is carried out according to an individual plan. You can use world experience, but in certain segments of the digital economy, the Russian Federation has gone further than other countries. The authors proposed to consider the problems of digital transformation of energy companies separately. Then combine it into a single approach.
 Digital transformation is much broader than the digitization of the workflow. Often, digitizing documents does not provide the synergistic effect of digital transformation. Digital transformation requires a change in the entire management system. All strategic documents should be reengineered. Digital transformation requires new models and methods that can use the information technologies and artificial intelligence systems that appear in the future. The introduction of blockchain technologies as part of digital transformation will allow changing the centralized management system. This will lead to significant cost savings. Digital transformation has highlighted a problem related to the lack of basic competencies of the digital economy among the leaders of energy firms. It is necessary to solve the identified problem in the shortest possible lines. The article reveals the problems associated with the use of information technologies by energy companies supplied from other countries with the possibility of remote change.

A hybrid threat model for system-centric and attack-centric for effective security design in SDLC

Threat modeling is an essential activity in the security development lifecycle. To provide security at the design phase of software development, Microsoft introduced threat modeling stride to identify the vulnerabilities and attacks of application. An efficient solution is necessary to deal with these issues in the software development life cycle. In this context, the paper focused on the analysis of threats and attack tree techniques that are traditionally available and frequently used. Automated Threat modeling enables to simulate attacks and visualized the existing vulnerabilities and misconfiguration. A hybrid model is proposed based on system-centric and attacker-centric to identify the threats in the software application during the software design phase. This model is built by STRIDE by defining security architecture and then analyzed the risks regarding its security characteristics and applied to its real application system. Our model is applied in a case study of the health center management system and shows a better result is identifying the threats and severity in the design phase. And also attack tree defines the stages of threats to understand the severity.

Profile of a Modern Hunter and the Socio-Economic Significance of Hunting in Poland as Compared to European Data

Hunting is a unique form of activity in rural areas with a high proportion of forest areas, which involves nature conservation and meets social needs for recreation and the preservation of traditions while being an important part of economic activity. The presented study results, based on a literature review and questionnaire surveys conducted among hunters associated in hunting clubs in the north-eastern part of Poland, provide the basis for a discussion on the socio-economic significance of hunting, both in the country and throughout the European continent. Based on the results presented in the paper, it can be concluded that the number and density of hunters differ in individual countries. Moreover, hunting is practised in Europe by almost 7 million people, of which 127,000 are in Poland, and is a typical male activity. Most hunters in Poland and other European countries are professionally active inhabitants of rural areas, aged approximately 50 years, with several years of shooting experience and an income exceeding average values. Hunting is an important part of socio-economic activities, particularly in rural areas. It is estimated that in the EU alone, hunting can be worth approximately EUR 16 billion, and creates 100–120 thousand jobs. The most recent results of studies conducted in certain EU countries and the wide range of services provided by the hunting sector indicate that these values may be considerably higher. Regarding Poland, despite the centralised game resource management system, there are no extensive studies of the economic significance of hunting, and the official data are limited to a few basic indices related to hunting statistics. As indicated by the study results presented in this paper, in Poland, hunting-related expenditures are clearly lower than the European average and, thus, the economic significance of hunting is relatively low in this country. Despite this, it is a hunting community that, as a result of the adopted system solutions, is responsible for the functioning of reasonable game management while significantly affecting the management of the vast majority of rural areas.

How Blockchain Will Improve Private Ambulance Service Challenge

The ambulance service system for the patient's transport to the hospital is essential for the healthcare system. However, traffic congestion increases the urban population, a centralized management system, and increased demand for prehospital emergency services challenge the health system; there is a risk of lack of information sharing and information reliability, the consequences of which may directly and detrimentally affect patient well-being. This paper has built a blockchain-based ambulance model to solve these problems. The model can solve existing problems by decentralizing centralized ambulance system information and processes. All users in the emergency medical services (EMS) network can participate and use the service in the blockchain, using real-time state information such as patient location, ambulance, and ambulance attendants. To effectively implement blockchain in the medical sector, the ambulance business logic for a smart contract must reflect and confirm the operation of the defined functions suggested in this paper.

Development of the Technical Structure of the “Cow Energy” Concept

Regional energy supply is an important topic in the context of the energy transition in Germany. The “Cow Energy” project aims to combine the production of energy and milk for the farmer. In order to take the different needs into account, a central energy management system (EMS) is being established. This system records and simulates how much electricity is generated from renewable sources (biogas, solar, wind, etc.) on the farm. This is compared with the consumption of the barn technology (milking robot, feeding robot, etc.). This energy management is regulated according to the needs of the cows. In order to balance the fluctuations between energy production and energy consumption, the EMS regulates various battery systems. One goal is to network this energy system with the region and to establish regional energy networks.

An Optimized Framework for Energy Management of Multi-Microgrid Systems

Regarding different challenges, such as integration of green energy and autonomy of microgrid (MG) in the multi-microgrid (MMG) system, this paper presents an optimized and coordinated strategy for energy management of MMG systems that consider multiple scenarios of MGs. The proposed strategy operates at two optimization levels: local and global. At an MG level, each energy management system satisfies its local demand by utilizing all available resources via local optimization, and only sends surplus/deficit energy data signals to MMG level, which enhances customer privacy. Thereafter, at an MMG level, a central energy management system performs global optimization and selects optimized options from the available resources, which include charging/discharging energy to/from the community battery energy storage system, selling/buying power to/from other MGs, and trading with the grid. Two types of loads are considered in this model: sensitive and non-sensitive. The algorithm tries to make the system reliable by avoiding utmost load curtailment and prefers to shed non-sensitive loads over sensitive loads in the case of load shedding. To verify the robustness of the proposed scheme, several test cases are generated by Monte Carlo Simulations and simulated on the IEEE 33-bus distribution system. The results show the effectiveness of the proposed model.

MANAGEMENT OF TRANSPORTATION AND TECHNOLOGICAL EQUIPMENT OF THE INDUSTRY BASED ON THE SMART SYSTEM

High productivity and power of technological and transport mechanisms, large capacity and number of storage equipment, a variety of types of grain crops simultaneously processed at the elevator require the operator to make a lightning-fast decision, the optimal choice of grain transportation routes.One of the first control systems consisted of huge energy-intensive cabinets with starting equipment, allowing remote control of equipment, without the functions of elementary control of their operation.As storage volumes increased, these systems were supplemented with relay cabinets, whose task was to conduct interlocked control of an ever-increasing number of mechanisms, so that at least somehow it was possible to control such a complex. These relay cabinets had a low degree of reliability (contact elements), consumed a large amount of energy, and required the constant presence of large maintenance personnel.The era of microelectronics has come, which completely changed the idea of the capabilities of control systems. At first, it seemed very expensive and not a quick payback. But every year, the cost of automation equipment is decreasing, reliability has grown to high levels and this technique has come to the management systems of grain storages and elevators.Modern automation at the majority of Ukrainian elevators makes it possible to control technological processes. At the same time, many processes are regulated in a mode that requires a sufficiently high qualification of service personnel. The exchange of data on the operation of SMART-INDIVIDUAL equipment is carried out by logical controllers by polling sensors, generating control actions, monitoring equipment operating modes with display in the WEB-interface system. The SMART-INDIVIDUAL system has undeniable advantages over existing centralized control and management systems. SMART technology is inextricably linked with the dispatch control and data collection system - SCADA, designed to monitor and supervise a large number of remote objects or one geographically distributed object. The SMART-INDIVIDUAL system is equipped with a module with a regulation for monitoring parameters, equipment according to the passport characteristics. At the same time, the system maintains an archive and controls the timing of maintenance. The laboratory installation SMART-INDIVIDUAL includes technological and transport equipment, which is most used in the elevator industry: air filter ZEO-FCS, bucket elevator ZEO-BE, scraper chain conveyor ZEO-DC. On the basis of the SMART-INDIVIDUAL software and hardware complex at the Department of Technological Equipment for Grain Production of the Odessa National Academy of Food Technologies, students are trained in the new specialty "IT service of equipment".

Deep autoencoder architecture for bridge damage assessment using responses from several vehicles

Vehicle-assisted monitoring is a promising alternative for rapid and low-cost bridge health monitoring compared to direct instrumentation of bridges. In recent years, centralized management systems for fleets of heavy vehicles have been adopted in transportation networks for logistics and other applications. These vehicles can be instrumented and easily integrated with the existing fleet management systems to provide information that can be used for bridge health monitoring. In this study, a numerical investigation is carried out to evaluate the feasibility of an indirect bridge monitoring system considering responses from several vehicles under operational conditions. The proposed method uses the vertical acceleration responses from a fleet of vehicles passing over a healthy bridge to train a deep autoencoder model (DAE) for bridge damage sensitive features. It is shown that the error in signal reconstruction from the trained DAE is sensitive to damage, when considering the distribution or results from several separate vehicle-crossing events. The bridge damage is quantified with a damage index based on the Kullback-Leibler divergence that evaluates the change in the distributions of the reconstruction errors. The performance of the proposed method is evaluated for two numerical scenarios of vehicle populations, for different damage cases including the effect of operational uncertainties (road profile, measurement noise, and variability in vehicle properties). The proposed method is also evaluated for more realistic multi-span continuous bridge for different damage cases in the presence of random traffic. The result show that the proposed method can detect damage under operational conditions and that it has the potential to become a new tool for cost-effective bridge health monitoring.

Blockchain Adoption: Applications and Challenges

In recent times, more scholastic and social attention have been paid to blockchain and its distributed ledger system mechanism. The reasons for this ever-increasing attention cannot be far-fetched: blockchain now occupies a copious position in the present-day ways of doing things economically, digitally and ‘digital-socially’. Blockchain could be described as a distributed ledger system that allows secure transactions without a central management system. In this distributed ledger system, transactions are coded into blocks, which are linked to each other in the form of a chain. The first application of blockchain is in the bitcoin cryptocurrency. Though not limited to bitcoin, blockchain finds usefulness in security and trusts for instance, digital assets could be coded into blocks to ensure and enforce quality of trust. Consequent upon the quality of trust the blockchain confers on a digital asset, transparency among participating nodes is guaranteed. This is because, any change made to any record in a given block automatically initiates and enforces a corresponding change in all other blocks in the chain hence tampering or breach is almost impossible. Owing to its impressive prospects in the socioeconomic and political ecosystem, this paper was conceived to examine the current developments around this novel technology with particular emphasis on its benefits and proposed challenges and needs to fill the gap created in the vital socioeconomic domains. The paper concludes that the blockchain technology is a plausible approach to restoring the trust, confidentiality, availability and integrity in transactions in the cyberspace and the world at large as majority of the global economy thrives in the cloud.

Implementation of Centralized Administration and Management of Funds in Enterprise Groups

Enterprise groups are characterized by multiple levels of enterprises with large scales of assets and complex business models. In the process of administration and management of funds, there are often some problems, such as unreasonable internal funds allocation, high financing costs, and flawed funds control. Centralized fund management is a tool for the overall allocation of intra-group funds and the coordinated management of group investment and financing. It can optimize the resource allocation of enterprise groups and reduce financing costs as well as capital risks. By selecting centralized fund management, establishing control and early warning system, as well as building information system and other steps, enterprise groups can better implement centralized fund management and improve their capital control.

State Estimation within IED Based Smart Grid Using Kalman Estimates

State Estimation is a traditional and reliable technique within power distribution and control systems. It is used for building a topology of the power grid network based on state measurements and current operational state of different nodes & buses. The protection of sensors and measurement units such as Intelligent Electronic Devices (IED) in Central Energy Management System (CEMS) against False Data Injection Attacks (FDIAs) is a big concern to grid operators. These are special kind of cyber-attacks that are directed towards the state & measurement data in such a way that mislead the CEMS into making incorrect decisions and create generation load imbalance. These are known to bypass the traditional bad data detection systems within central estimators. This paper presents the use of an additional novel state estimator based on Kalman filter along with traditional Distributed State Estimation (DSE) which is based on Weighted Least Square (WLS). Kalman filter is a feedback control mechanism that constantly updates itself based on state prediction and state correction technique and shows improvement in the estimates. The additional estimator output is compared with the results of DSE in order to identify anomalies and injection of false data. We evaluated our methodology by simulating proposed technique using MATPOWER over IEEE-14, IEEE-30, IEEE-118, IEEE-300 bus. The results clearly demonstrate the superiority of the proposed method over traditional state estimation.

Assessing and managing the impact of COVID-19: a study of six European cities participating in a circular economy project

PurposeThis paper aims to explore the role of performance measurement systems as technologies of government for the assessment and management of the effects of COVID-19 in the context of six cities involved in a large European project.Design/methodology/approachBased on the field study of a large European project, this paper relies on a comparative case study research approach (Yin, 2003). This research design allows insights into the role of central and local key performance indicators (KPIs) in managing the ongoing pandemic.FindingsThis paper explores the role of accounting in the assessment of the COVID-19 pandemic. Its findings illustrate how the “adjudicating” and “territorialising” roles (Miller and Power, 2013) of local and central accounting technologies rendered the COVID-19 pandemic calculable.Originality/valueThis paper connects central and local performance management systems in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. It relies on a governmentality approach to discuss how different programmes and the relative KPIs were impacted by the ongoing global crisis.

Virtual Studies - Academic Revolution of COVID-19: A Case Study of Department of Anthropology, University of Arid Agriculture, Rawalpindi

The pandemic of Covid-19 has indeed affected the overall modern lifestyle globally. The lockdown leads to the closure of educational institutes around the world. The situation is not different in twin cities (Rawalpindi and Islamabad). The present research was designed to collect the opinions and perceptions of students regarding virtual learning. Department of Anthropology offers Facebook online classes for its students combined with the University's central learning management system (LMS) to provide an online platform for sharing course material(s). 64 students of Anthropology participated in this study voluntarily. Google form was designed and shared with the students through Google link for the collection of data on certain indicators such as class, location of the respondent, internet access and related technological issues, comprehension of LMS, etc. The shift towards virtual studies has revolutionized and also created certain operational challenges.

Health-ID: A Blockchain-Based Decentralized Identity Management for Remote Healthcare.

COVID-19 has made eHealth an imperative. The pandemic has been a true catalyst for remote eHealth solutions such as teleHealth. Telehealth facilitates care, diagnoses, and treatment remotely, making them more efficient, accessible, and economical. However, they have a centralized identity management system that restricts the interoperability of patient and healthcare provider identification. Thus, creating silos of users that are unable to authenticate themselves beyond their eHealth application’s domain. Furthermore, the consumers of remote eHealth applications are forced to trust their service providers completely. They cannot check whether their eHealth service providers adhere to the regulations to ensure the security and privacy of their identity information. Therefore, we present a blockchain-based decentralized identity management system that allows patients and healthcare providers to identify and authenticate themselves transparently and securely across different eHealth domains. Patients and healthcare providers are uniquely identified by their health identifiers (healthIDs). The identity attributes are attested by a healthcare regulator, indexed on the blockchain, and stored by the identity owner. We implemented smart contracts on an Ethereum consortium blockchain to facilities identification and authentication procedures. We further analyze the performance using different metrics, including transaction gas cost, transaction per second, number of blocks lost, and block propagation time. Parameters including block-time, gas-limit, and sealers are adjusted to achieve the optimal performance of our consortium blockchain.

Covid Tracker for Medical Front-Liners- A Survey

This paper studies the need and suggests a centralized pandemic management system for monitoring and managing the Covid-19 positive patients. The initial process of the system will be data collection from a standard medical organization and performing suitable preprocessing. Following this, is the Geocoding process of the patient’s address and area wise sub clustering. Next is plotting the patient on a map for better visualization. After this the medical staff will access this data and field staff will fillup the patient’s symptoms and upload it to a database. A doctor can assign the type of treatment, ambulance and hospital to the patient. Finally, tracking the patient’s arrival to the hospital via ambulance and treating the patient will mark the end. Analysis and visualization on the patients live data will help the authorities in decision-making. Through all these steps, the monitoring of a Covid-19 positive patient will become very easy and convenient for the medical front liners and other concerned authorities