Layout Analysis Research Articles

The Voice of the Authorized Heritage Discourse: A Critical Analysis of Signs at Ancient Monuments in Skåne, Southern Sweden

The study presents an investigation of a regional authorized heritage discourse, represented by the County Administrative Board on signs set up at an- cient monuments and sites in the province of Skåne in southern Sweden. The starting point is a critical analysis of layout, texts and illustrations to ascertain the narratives conveyed by the signs. The results show that slightly less than half of the studied signs work well according to the criteria set up for the study. The result also demonstrates that more than half of the studied signs do not work well according to these cri- teria. Those that work well give detailed information about the ancient monument or site. The signs that do not work well give inadequate information and risk excluding a majority of the people who read them. The latter signs confirm what so many other discourse analyses have shown, that the authorized heritage dis- course to a large extent still privileges the perspectives of a white, middle-class male. The former signs, that is, those that are judged to work well in terms of the criteria applied in this study, show that the authorized heritage discourse does not only offer something that privileges the perspectives of that white, middle class male, but also has the ability to offer narratives with other perspectives.

Layout analysis and optimization design for Zhengding Bus Terminal

As an important component of road transportation, the bus terminal has always been the focus of research. Therefore, this article uses a combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis to study Zhengding third-level bus terminal from the perspective of layout analysis. On the basis of actual investigation, the relevant indicators of the bus terminal scale are calculated. At the same time, the analysis of the three functional areas and process flow lines inside the passenger station revealed that the passenger station has the problems of intersection of pedestrians and vehicles and the unreasonable and imperfect layout of the ticket waiting hall. Finally, a specific optimization plan is proposed and optimized for the problems existing in Zhengding bus terminal.

Компоновка электропривода вагона метрополитена

Objective: Analysis of various layouts of the electric drive of wheelsets and the control traction con- verter on transistor modules. Methods: The assessment and comparison of the layout solutions of asynchronous electric drives with one inverter supplying two or four traction motors is carried out. A mathematical analysis of the influence of the difference in the diameters of wheelsets leading to an inequality of traction forces and causing sliding has been carried out. Results: It was revealed that the use of the layout one inverter — four asynchronous motors is the least efficient and leads to a greater extent to negative consequences during the operation of wheelsets. Practical importance: The use of an electric drive scheme for subway cars with one inverter feeding two traction motors is substantiated, which leads to a more even distribution of traction and braking forces and significantly reduces the risk of slipping and skidding. Thus, the wear of wheelsets and the rest of the kinematic chain is reduced and the resource of their nodes and elements increases to a large extent

Techno-economic evaluation and analysis of solar hybrid cooling systems with cool energy buffer for cold storages

The energy saving of solar absorption-subcooled compression hybrid cooling system (SASCHCS) for cold storages is dramatically lower than its upper limit. Such phenomenon is attributed to that heat capacities of subcoolers are too small to guarantee the reliable operation of large size absorption subsystems. The cool energy buffer is employed to address above-mentioned issues. In this regard, appropriate design guidelines are highly important because the cool energy buffer inevitably leads to losses of solar cooling power and increases the capital cost. As a result, three layouts, traditional SASCHCS, SASCHCS with the cool energy buffer including and excluding the shift of solar cooling power, are compared technically and financially based on the 8760 h annual simulation and the parametric analysis of the best layout is implemented. Finally, three layouts are optimized by the genetic algorithm. It is displayed that the SASCHCS with the cool energy buffer excluding the shift of solar cooling power is the best and 11.4% of compressor work is saved. Additionally, its least payback period is 4.69 y and the maximal net present value is 2.88 million CNY, respectively. The proposed layout can be connected with photovoltaic thermal collectors and solar power plants for trigeneration purpose.

Multi-criteria decision analysis for tower crane layout planning in high-rise modular integrated construction

Tower crane layout planning (TCLP) is critical to high-rise modular integrated construction (MiC) that involves multiple heavy-duty lifts. However, previous studies have rarely addressed TCLP in modular construction. This study thus develops a new decision-making framework for selecting an optimal tower crane layout for high-rise MiC. First, the feasibility and performance criteria considering MiC-specific features are established based on a critical literature review and expert interviews. Second, a two-step framework of TCLP is proposed with fuzzy-integrated techniques for feasibility assessment and performance analysis. Third, the framework is validated using a real-life MiC project. Results indicate that the framework is effective in balancing the safety and economic performance of a crane layout, and the performance is considerably sensitive to modularized floor plan and weightings of criteria. By proposing the new framework of TCLP with multi-criteria decision-making techniques, the paper should facilitate safe and efficient module installation in high-rise MiC.

Impact analysis of different axis layouts of detached breakwater on flow and sediment transport

An incorporation and application of a two-dimensional, unstructured grid hydrodynamic model with a suspended sediment transport module is presented in the study. The model has a satisfactory verification with available measured data. After the verification, the variation of tidal current field and the seabed evolution are simulated. Based on the simulation results, the paper compares and analyzes the effects of different axis layouts of detached breakwater on flow field and seabed evolution. The results show that after the construction of the breakwater, the flow velocity of the both sides of the breakwater decreases, the flow velocity of the east entrance increases, and the erosion and siltation of sediment are consistent with the change of the flow field. In addition, the smaller the angle between the breakwater axis and the depth contour is, the smaller the impact on the change of the tidal current field and sediment erosion and siltation is.

The Influence of Spatial Grid Division on the Layout Analysis of Urban Functional Areas

The identification of urban functional areas is essential for urban planning and sustainable development. Spatial grids are the basic units for the implementation of urban plans and management by cities or development zones. The emergence of internet “big data” provides new ideas for the identification of urban functional areas. Based on point of interest (POI) data from Baidu Maps, the Xicheng District of Beijing was divided into grids with side lengths of 200, 500, and 1000 m in this study. The kernel density method was used to analyze the spatial structure of POI data. Two indicators, that is, the frequency density and category ratio, were then used to identify single- and mixed-functional areas. The results show that (1) commercial and financial areas are concentrated in the city center and multiple business centers have not developed; (2) scenic areas account for the largest proportion of single-functional areas in the Xicheng District of Beijing, followed by education and training, residence, and party and government organizations areas; and (3) the 200 × 200 m and 500 × 500 m grids are the most suitable for the identification of single- and mixed-functional areas, respectively.

Strength Analysis of Alternative Airframe Layouts of Regional Aircraft on the Basis of Automated Parametrical Models

This publication presents the results of complex parametrical strength investigations of typical wings for regional aircrafts obtained by means of the new version of the four-level algorithm (FLA) with the modified module responsible for the analysis of aerodynamic loading. This version of FLA, as well as a base one, is focused on significant decreasing time and labor input of a complex strength analysis of airframes by using simultaneously different principles of decomposition. The base version includes four-level decomposition of airframe and decomposition of strength tasks. The new one realizes additional decomposition of alternative variants of load cases during the process of determination of critical load cases. Such an algorithm is very suitable for strength analysis and designing airframes of regional aircrafts having a wide range of aerodynamic concepts. Results of validation of the new version of FLA for a high-aspect-ratio wing obtained in this work confirmed high performance of the algorithm in decreasing time and labor input of strength analysis of airframes at the preliminary stages of designing. During parametrical design investigation, some interesting results for strut-braced wings having high aspect ratios were obtained.

On the Detection of Structural Aesthetic Defects of Android Mobile User Interfaces with a Metrics-based Tool

Smartphone users are striving for easy-to-learn and use mobile apps user interfaces. Accomplishing these qualities demands an iterative evaluation of the Mobile User Interface (MUI). Several studies stress the value of providing a MUI with a pleasing look and feel to engaging end-users. The MUI, therefore, needs to be free from all kinds of structural aesthetic defects. Such defects are indicators of poor design decisions interfering with the consistency of a MUI and making it more difficult to use. To this end, we are proposing a tool (Aesthetic Defects DEtection Tool (ADDET)) to determine the structural aesthetic dimension of MUIs. Automating this process is useful to designers in evaluating the quality of their designs. Our approach is composed of two modules. (1) Metrics assessment is based on the static analysis of a tree-structured layout of the MUI. We used 15 geometric metrics (also known as structural or aesthetic metrics) to check various structural properties before a defect is triggered. (2) Defects detection: The manual combination of metrics and defects are time-consuming and user-dependent when determining a detection rule. Thus, we perceive the process of identification of defects as an optimization problem. We aim to automatically combine the metrics related to a particular defect and optimize the accuracy of the rules created by assigning a weight, representing the metric importance in detecting a defect. We conducted a quantitative and qualitative analysis to evaluate the accuracy of the proposed tool in computing metrics and detecting defects. The findings affirm the tool’s reliability when assessing a MUI’s structural design problems with 71% accuracy.

Combination of deep neural networks and logical rules for record segmentation in historical handwritten registers using few examples

This work focuses on the layout analysis of historical handwritten registers, in which local religious ceremonies were recorded. The aim of this work is to delimit each record using few available training data. To this end, two approaches are proposed. Firstly, three state-of-the-art object detection networks are explored and compared. Further experiments are then conducted on Mask R-CNN, as it yields the best performance. Secondly, we introduce and investigate Deep&Syntax, a hybrid system that takes advantages of recurrent patterns to delimit each record, by combining u-shaped networks and logical rules. Finally, these two approaches are evaluated on 3708 French records (sixteenth–eighteenth centuries), as well as on the Esposalles public database, containing 253 Spanish records (seventeenth century). While both systems perform well on homogeneous documents, we observe a significant drop in performance with Mask R-CNN on more challenging documents, especially when trained on a small, non-representative subset. By contrast, Deep&Syntax relies on steady patterns and is therefore able to process a wider range of documents with less training data. When both systems are trained on 120 documents, Deep&Syntax produces 15% more match configurations and reduces the ZoneMap surface error metric by 30%. It also outperforms Mask R-CNN when trained on a database three times smaller. As Deep&Syntax generalizes better, we believe it can be used for massive parish register processing, as collecting and annotating a sufficiently large and representative set of training data is not always achievable.

Few-shot prototype alignment regularization network for document image layout segementation

Despite the great performance in layout analysis tasks made by semantic segmentation, they usually need a large number of annotated images for training and are difficult to learn a new category which is absent in the training categories. Meta-learning and few-shot segmentation have been developed to solve the above two difficulties. In this paper, we propose a novel method dubbed Few-Shot Prototype Alignment Regularization Network (FS-PARN). The FS-PARN method is inspired by recent studies in both metric learning and few-shot segmentation, which just need a few annotated images to solve the above two difficulties. Our FS-PARN method can make better use of the information of the support set by metric learning and have a better effect on image segmentation. It learns classification prototype within an embedding space and then completes pixel classification by matching each pixel on the query image with the learned prototype. In addition to obtaining high-quality prototypes through metric learning methods, our FS-PARN method also introduces prototype alignment regularization between support and query sets to make segmentation better. Notably, our FS-PARN model achieves the mean-IoU score of 28.8% and 31.7% on the practical document image datasets, i.e. PASCAL-5i, DSSE-200, and Layout Analysis Dataset, for 1-shot and 5-shot settings respectively.

Comparative Study of Layout Analysis of Tabulated Historical Documents

Nowadays, the field of multimedia retrieval system has earned a lot of attention as it helps retrieve information more efficiently and accelerates daily tasks. Within this context, image processing techniques such as layout analysis and word recognition play an important role in transcribing content in printed or handwritten documents into digital data that can be further processed. This transcription procedure is called document digitization. This work stems from an industrial need, namely, a Swedish company (ArkivDigital AB) has scanned more than 80 million pages of Swedish historical documents from all over the country and there is a high demand to transcribe the contents into digital data. Such process starts by figuring out text location which, seen from another angle, is merely table layout analysis. In this study, the aim is to reveal the most effective solution to extract document layout w.r.t Swedish handwritten historical documents that are featured by their tabular forms. In short, outcome of public tools (i.e., Breuel's OCRopus method), traditional image processing techniques (e.g., Hessian/Gabor filters, Hough transform, Histograms of oriented gradients -HOG- features), machine learning techniques (e.g., support vector machines, transfer learning) are studied and compared. Results show that the existing OCR tool cannot carry layout analysis task on our Swedish historical handwritten documents. Traditional image processing techniques are mildly capable of extracting the general table layout in these documents, but the accuracy is enhanced by introducing machine learning techniques. The best performing approach will be used in our future document mining research to allow for the development of scalable resource-efficient systems for big data analytics.

Designing lightweight diesel engine alternator support bracket with topology optimization methodology

Decreasing fuel consumption and tailpipe emissions have been an important issue nowadays for automotive industry after new regulations. Fuel consumption is also an important parameter that highly affects the customers’ choice. Reduction of total vehicle weight with optimization is one of the common methods to improve fuel consumption and emissions. There are a lot of studies on body, interior, and engine components of the vehicle to improve fuel efficiency and emissions including design modifications, using alternative material and architectural optimizations. In this article, the optimization of an aluminum support bracket that carry alternator and hydraulic steering pump is studied. First, design space is determined with layout analysis defining constraints and fixing points. Then, topology optimization method is applied in order to explore the load carrying path of the component. Final design is frozen through computational analysis verifications and industrialization phase modifications. A comparison of the new design with the actual production showed that the mass of the current design could be reduced by 37%, while all product expectations were met.

Accurate Fine-Grained Layout Analysis for the Historical Tibetan Document Based on the Instance Segmentation

Accurate layout analysis without subsequent text-line segmentation remains an ongoing challenge, especially when facing the Kangyur, a kind of historical Tibetan document featuring considerable touching components and mottled background. Aiming at identifying different regions in document images, layout analysis is indispensable for subsequent procedures such as character recognition. However, there was only a little research being carried out to perform line-level layout analysis which failed to deal with the Kangyur. To obtain the optimal results, a fine-grained sub-line level layout analysis approach is presented. Firstly, we introduced an accelerated method to build the dataset which is dynamic and reliable. Secondly, enhancement had been made to the SOLOv2 according to the characteristics of the Kangyur. Then, we fed the enhanced SOLOv2 with the prepared annotation file during the training phase. Once the network is trained, instances of the text line, sentence, and titles can be segmented and identified during the inference stage. The experimental results show that the proposed method delivers a decent 72.7% average precision on our dataset. In general, this preliminary research provides insights into the fine-grained sub-line level layout analysis and testifies the SOLOv2-based approaches. We also believe that the proposed methods can be adopted on other language documents with various layouts.

Экспериментальные исследования уровней звукового давления на рабочих местах операторов средств малой механизации при шлифовании рельсов

Intensive wear of rails in curves significantly reduces their service life, reduces the efficiency of operational work. A promising direction in solving this problem is the technology of rail grinding, which allows mechanical processing of the rail head without dismantling them in the conditions of a railway track. The article presents the results of studies of the noise impact on track workers when grinding rails by means of small mechanization-a rail-grinding machine SH-1, a grinding machine 2152D and a manual machine for grinding rails MRSH3. The analysis of various layouts of rail grinding machines, their features, technical characteristics and octave levels of sound pressure when these machines are running at idle and under load was carried out. According to the results of experimental studies, graphical dependences of the sound pressure levels of rail grinding machines are constructed, the excess of the noise level over the permissible sanitary standards in the area of rail grinding by means of small mechanization is revealed.

ИСТОРИЧЕСКИЙ АСПЕКТ РАЗВИТИЯ УСАДЕБНОГО КОМПЛЕКСА ГРЕБНЕВО И СОВРЕМЕННОЕ СОСТОЯНИЕ ТЕРРИТОРИИ ПЛОДОВОГО САДА

This article provides a historical reference to the estate of Grebnevo, its owners are indicated. Particular attention is paid to the period of the retired cavalry general G.I. Bibikov, in which the manor of Grebnevo received its heyday. Under him, a large construction was carried out: the main house, the road park layout were decided in a single style, which was characterized by rigor, lack of decorations, work in proportions and large-scale solutions. Bar ponds were also completed and islands were created. The estate held ceremonial receptions with theatrical performances and festivities on the islands. The manor complex was further developed under Prince S.M. Golitsyn, with him triumphant front entrance gates, the Nikolsky Church, a horse yard with an arena, stables, carriage sheds, stables bedrooms, an office and a two-story stone hospital were built. Further, the article provides an analysis of the historical layout of the fruit garden, analyzes the modern relief and spatial structure.

Numerical parametric study on steel-concrete composite floor beams vibrations due to pedestrian traffic

Human perception of floor vibrations and uncompromised serviceability of equipment are two most important acceptability criteria considering floor vibrations. While verification of deflection is a simple and well-known procedure in structures' design for serviceability limit state, the fulfilment of floor vibrations acceptability criteria are presented in different standards in the form of various calculation procedures. Results achieved through those calculation procedures are presented in the form of various classification of floor structures. Classification of composite floor structures due to vibrations is inconsistent considering different calculation procedures. Comparison of various calculation procedures for the definition of composite floor vibrations is presented in this paper. In addition, a parametric analysis is performed on the wide range of steel-concrete composite floor structures, through analysis of various composite floor layouts and a wide range of imposed loads values. The analysis of the relation between deflection, vertical vibrations and accelerations of steel-concrete composite floor beams is presented in this paper. The results of the parametric analysis are given through direct relation between deflections of composite beams and achieved floor class for the fulfilment of vibrations acceptability criteria due to the pedestrian walking.

Evaluation and Optimization of Urban Basic Education Facilities Layout based on GIS——A Case Study in Xuzhou, China

The layout of educational facilities has become a hot topic in urban geography research. Guides by rational demand consensus, typical human settlements extraction and matching of physical property planning, this paper constructs an evaluation system for the spatial layout of urban basic education facilities from the perspective of “Homo-Urbanicus” theory. The content includes the evaluation of accessibility, evaluation of bearing pressure, classification of layout types, selection and analysis of excellent communities. This paper conducts an empirical research on the basic education facilities of kindergartens, elementary schools and middle schools in the main urban area of Xuzhou City. And then, we delineated excellent community, standard communities, under-covered communities, overstressed communities, undeveloped communities on the basis of evaluation results. Finally, we selected sample communities for analysis, and put forward relevant optimization strategies.

Deep Learning in Time-Frequency Domain for Document Layout Analysis

Document layout analysis plays an important role in the area of Document Understanding. It is responsible for identifying and classifying the different components of digital documents. Currently, there is no universal algorithm that fits all types of digital documents. This work presents a novel approach for identifying tables, figures, isolated equations and text regions in scientific papers using deep learning and computer vision techniques. Our proposed approach is a three-stage system: (i) obtaining the spectrograms of the horizontal and vertical intensity histograms of segmented regions of interest; (ii) labeling segmented regions of interest into text, table, and figures using a deep convolutional neural network classifier; and (iii) identifying isolated equations in text regions using Bag of Visual Words (BOVW) with Zernike moments. We built a new dataset composed of 11007 papers to perform the experiments, using two common segmentation metrics to evaluate our model: (1) Adjusted Rand Index (ARI) and (2) Variation of Information (VI). The proposed document layout analysis system reached an overall accuracy of 96.2685%, outperforming prior art with a less computational cost.

Arabic Documents Information Retrieval for Printed, Handwritten, and Calligraphy Image

This paper presents a new computational backend model that supports Arabic document information retrieval (ADIR) as a dataset and OCR services. Therefore, different services that support document analysis, retrieving, processing including dataset preparation, and recognition will be discussed. Consequently, ADIR services provide general functions of the Arabic OCR to compose many other services in the OCR domain. Furthermore, the proposed work can provide accessing different methods of document layout analysis with a platform where they can share and handle such methods (services) without any setup requirements. One of the used datasets composed from 16,800 Arabic letters written by 60 writers. Each writer wrote each letter from Alif to Ya 10 times in two forms. The forms were scanned at 300 DPI resolution and are segmented in two sets: training set with 13,440 letters for 48 images per class label, and testing set with 3,360 letters to 120 images per class label Convolutional neural network (CNN) is used and adapted for Arabic handwritten letters classification. In an experimental test, we showed that our results outperform 100% classification accuracy rate on testing images. Therefore, the ADIR services provide a “service description”, which includes an interface and a server's URL. The interface allows communication process between clients and services. Although, in this article we evaluate IR results and compared them with respect to corrected equivalent.