Resilient Applications Research Articles

Approximate squaring circuits exploiting recursive architectures

Error resilient applications benefit from the use of approximate computing techniques that enhance electrical performances while allowing a deviation from the exact result. Many operations in signal processing require the square of a signal. Despite the fact that the squaring operation can be regarded as a special multiplication case, it is often preferable to develop independent squaring circuits to exploit possible architectural symmetries. This paper proposes novel approximate binary squarers, obtained by recursively exploiting 4-bit approximate multipliers and squarers. The final designs cover a wide range of computing precision, providing the user with multiple choices of different cost vs. accuracy trade-offs. The proposed circuits, as well as competitive designs, are synthesized targeting a 14 nm FinFET technology to determine the electrical characteristics. It is demonstrated that the proposed squarers outperform the state-of-the-art in terms of power vs. precision. Compared to the exact 8-bit squarer, the least dissipative proposed design reduces silicon area by 76%, power consumption by 71%, and critical delay by 72%. The same circuit dissipates 2.4% less power than the least dissipative design found in literature, while providing 34% more accurate results. The behavior of the considered designs is also tested in common error resilient applications, like signal demodulation and image processing.

Association between Psychological Resilience and Self-Rated Health in Patients with Knee Osteoarthritis.

This study aimed to evaluate whether psychological resilience is an independent factor of self-rated health (SRH) among patients with knee osteoarthritis (KOA). A cross-sectional study with convenience sampling was designed. Patients with doctor-diagnosed KOA were recruited from the orthopedic outpatient departments of a hospital in southern Taiwan. Psychological resilience was measured by the 10-item Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC-10), and SRH was measured by three items, including the current SRH, the preceding year-related SRH, and age-related SRH. The three-item SRH scale was categorized as "high" and "low-moderate" groups by terciles. Covariates included KOA history, site of knee pain, joint-specific symptoms measured by the Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Osteoarthritis Index (WOMAC), comorbidity measured by Charlson Comorbidity Index, and demographic variables (i.e., age, sex, education attainment, and living arrangements). A multiple logistic regression was used to detect the independent variables with significant odds ratios that can predict "high" SRH among participants. Results: In total, 98 patients with KOA (66 women and 32 men) with a mean age (±SD) of 68.3 ± 8.5 years were enrolled and were analyzed. A total of 38.8% (n = 38) of participants were categorized as "high SRH", while 61.2% (n = 60) were categorized as "low-moderate SRH". Multiple logistic regression showed that CD-RISC-10 had an increased odds ratio (OR) for high SRH (OR [95% CI] = 1.061 [1.003-1.122]; p = 0.038), whereas bilateral pain (vs. unilateral pain), WOMAC stiffness, and WOMAC physical limitation showed a decreased OR for high SRH (0.268 [0.098-0.732], 0.670 [0.450-0.998], and 0.943 [0.891-0.997], respectively). Our findings provide evidence indicating that psychological resilience plays a significant positive role in the SRH in our study sample. Further research is required to extend the growing knowledge regarding the application of psychological resilience on KOA.

Does engineering education research address resilience and if so, how? – a systematic literature review

ABSTRACT Future engineering professionals have to deal with increasing complexity and uncertainty, as global challenges, such as climate change, globalisation and digitalisation, require creative, innovative solutions and interdisciplinary perspectives. Accordingly, engineering graduates have to be prepared to deal with those kinds of problems at different levels. Coping with uncertain and highly complex problems as well as learning from them is referred to as resilience. However, it is not well understood how and to what concern resilience is discussed in engineering education. Therefore, this systematic literature review aims to clarify meanings, definitions and applications of resilience within engineering education. We reviewed 67 research articles and found that resilience in engineering education is either linked to engineering students as a personal attribute or to systems, in this case describing a teaching content. Moreover, the concept of resilience was seldomly defined and explained, indicating that future research should put greater emphasis on doing so.

Suggestions on the Cyber Resilience Application of Government-funded Institute

Suggestions on the Cyber Resilience Application of Government-funded Institute

Scalable Resilience Analysis Through Power Systems Co-Simulation

The ability to robustly characterize transmission and distribution grid resilience requires the ability to perform time-scale analysis that interweaves communications, control, and power contributions. This consideration is important to ensuring an understanding of how each individual aspect can affect the resulting systemic resilience. The combination of co-simulation of these time-based characteristics and a resilience-specific metric provides a likely method to inform both design planning and implementation/operational goals to ensure resilience in power systems. The Microgrids, Infrastructure Resilience, and Advanced Controls Launchpad co-simulation platform (MIRACL-CSP) has been developed to allow the modular integration of power grid models with control and metrics applications. This paper introduces MIRACL-CSP as a fundamental platform to study and improve the resilient operation of a microgrid. It offers a holistic investigation environment for systemically comparing the cyber-physical resilience to natural and manmade events. We emphasize the importance/advantage of intertwining the distribution system simulator GridLAB-D with the Power Distribution Designing for Resilience (PowDDeR) application to analyze the resilience of the St. Mary’s microgrid in Alaska. The resilience is evaluated in both short-term (frequency stability) and long-term (energy constrained) metrics. The results of the analysis of the St. Mary’s microgrid show that there is a trade-off between the two. As inertia-based generation assets are taken off-line, short-term resilience drops. However, the long-term resilience is retained longer as less fuel is being used.

Approximate Arithmetic Circuit Design for Error Resilient Applications

When the application context is ready to accept different levels of exactness in solutions and is supported by human perception quality, then the term ‘Approximate Computing’ tossed before one decade will become the first priority . Even though computer hardware and software are working to generate exact results, approximate results are preferred whenever an error is in predefined bound and adaptive. It will reduce power demand and critical path delay and improve other circuit metrics. When it comes to traditional arithmetic circuits, those generating correct results with limitations on performance are rapidly getting replaced by approximate arithmetic circuits which are the need of the hour, and so on about their design.

IMAGIN: Library of IMPLY and MAGIC NOR-Based Approximate Adders for In-Memory Computing

In-memory computing (IMC) has attracted significant interest in recent years as it aims to bridge the memory bottleneck in the Von Neumann architectures. IMC also improves the energy efficiency in these architectures. Another technique that has been explored to reduce the energy consumption is the use of approximate circuits, targeted toward error resilient applications. These applications have addition as one of their most frequently used operations. In literature, CMOS-based approximate adder libraries have been implemented to help designers choose from a variety of designs depending on the output quality requirements. However, the same is not true for memristor-based approximate adders targeted for IMC architectures. Hence, in this work, we developed a framework to generate approximate adder designs with varying output errors for the 8-, 12-, and 16-bit adders. We implemented a state-of-the-art scheduling algorithm to obtain the best mapping of these approximate adder designs for IMC. We performed an exhaustive design space exploration to obtain the pareto-optimal approximate adder designs for various design and error metrics. We then proposed IMAGIN, a library of approximate adders compatible with the memristor-based IMC architecture, which are based on the IMPLY and MAGIC design styles. We also performed mean filtering on the Kodak image dataset using the approximate adders from the IMAGIN library. IMAGIN can help designers select from a wide variety of approximate adders depending on the output quality requirements and serve as benchmarks for future research in this direction. All pareto-optimal designs will be made available at <uri xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">https://github.com/agra-uni-bremen/JxCDC2022-imagin-add</uri> .

Identification of Contributing Factors to Organizational Resilience in the Emergency Response Organization for Nuclear Power Plants

Resilience engineering is a new approach to safety, focused on systems for coping with complexity and balancing productivity with safety. Since the early 2000s, several studies have been conducted on the application of resilience to various industries. However, the nuclear industry has yet to harness the full potential of the resilience concept. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) gave an inkling of the use of this concept in its report on the human and organizational factors related to the Fukushima nuclear power plant (NPP) accident. Although the ability of emergency response organizations (EROs) to reduce the radiation risks to the public in the case of accidents is crucial, no method has been developed so far to evaluate ERO resilience in NPPs. This paper aims to determine the factors that contribute to the resilience of EROs in NPPs. This work commenced by providing a systematic review of the literature on resilience factors as applied in several domains within the last two decades, including general domains, healthcare, transportation, infrastructure, process plants, and business. Based on the review, and the application of additional procedures like resilience analysis grid filtering, ERO applicability assessment, and merger/reclassification, the resilience factors are determined. Fifty-two factors contributing to the resilience of EROs in NPPs are proposed. The identified contributing factors are expected to aid efforts to develop resilience strategies and to measure the resilience of EROs in NPPs.

Toward Core Indicators for Resilience Analysis: A framework to promote harmonized metrics and empirical coherence

As applications of resilience have increased the associated measurement options have grown. An unintended consequence of such growth is that the proliferation of resilience measurement approaches hinders efforts to generate evidence that is conceptually consistent and empirically comparable. To address this problem, the present paper provides a framework to promote harmonized measurement of resilience. The framework is structured around three components: fundamental resilience concepts, resilience measurement domains, and integrated resilience measurement. To illustrate how elements of the framework can be applied to an empirical investigation, a set of indicators from a resilience-focused food security study was examined. In the conclusion, potential benefits of harmonized resilience measurement are discussed, and some challenges are considered.

Accurate Reliability Boundary Evaluation of Approximate Arithmetic Circuit

Approximate arithmetic circuit (AAC) has emerged as a promising high-performance and energy-efficient circuit paradigm, which can be used in many applications with inherent error tolerance. To guarantee the usability of AACs and the availability of resilient applications, it is necessary to analyze the reliability of AACs. Most current literature focus on the error characteristics of AACs and few methods can be applied to estimate the reliability of AACs. These methods mostly have exponential time complexities and evaluate the average reliability assuming the input combinations are equally likely. In reality, the primary input (PI) signals can be given with any probability from 0 to 1. In this article, we assume that the PIs have random signal probabilities and propose approaches to reliability boundary estimation for AACs. First, we propose a new efficient and accurate method to evaluate the reliability of AACs. The method mainly calculates the AAC reliability for an input vector set, and furthermore, during the calculation, the correlation problem is considered to increase accuracy. Then, based upon the proposed AAC reliability evaluation method, we present the approaches to finding the reliability boundary. Randomly given signal probabilities of every PI, two heuristic search algorithms are utilized to find the lowest reliability. A comparison of the results on three series of AACs and the circuits in the EvoApprox8b library confirms that the proposed reliability evaluation method is more accurate and efficient than the previous method. Further experiments verify the plausibility of the calculated reliability boundary of AACs.

Seismic resilient rocking shear wall with dual self-centering energy dissipation system: Introduction and A preliminary study

In this paper, a new rocking shear wall with dual self-centering energy dissipation system is proposed for seismic resilient application. It mainly consists of pinned RC wall, pre-pressed disc spring friction damper (PDSFD) and pre-pressed disc spring brace with U-shaped steel damper (PDSBUSD), while the pinned wall with PDSFD located at the bottom (PDSFD-wall) and the PDSBUSD form the dual system to resist lateral load and dissipate energy. This study aims to introduce its details and preliminarily investigate the seismic performance. Firstly, mechanical models of PDSFD and PDSBUSD are revealed and reliable numerical models for them are built to analyze the hysteretic performance. Subsequently, theoretical skeleton model and design principle of PDSFD-wall component are derived, following which the cyclic behavior under different design parameters is numerically analyzed. Combined the above analyses, theoretical hysteresis model and design procedure of the presented rocking shear wall are given, and the influence of critical parameter on its cyclic behavior is discussed by performing numerical simulations. The results show that the theoretical hysteresis models are in accordance with the numerical results; by improving with PDSFD and PDSBUSD the bearing, energy dissipation and self-centering capacities are significantly enhanced, while the damage of RC wall is significantly reduced; the designed rocking shear walls exhibit desirable seismic resilience with about 80% of the energy dissipated by the replaceable friction and steel dampers, and the expected dual yielding energy dissipation mechanism is realized. During the design, it is suggested that the preload of PDSBUSD should be no less than the yielding strength of the steel damper; the ratio of preload to friction force for PDSFD adopts 1.5; the ratio of lateral resistance contribution of PDSBUSD to PDSFD-wall adopts 0.2–0.5.

Understandings and applications of rural community resilience amongst Scottish stakeholders: Introducing dual discourses

ABSTRACT This paper seeks to examine understandings and applications of rural community resilience. Scottish policy has shifted toward neoliberalismand community empowerment, with communities encouraged to play a proactive rolein enhancing their own resilience. We argue that it is important to understandthe perspectives of multiple stakeholders to identify what practical factorsthey believe enhance community resilience and to provide a greaterunderstanding of the mechanisms through which community resilience can bedelivered. Drawing on qualitative data collection, we question what resiliencemeans and what factors can facilitate it in practice. We find that dualdiscourses of resilience emerge: the emergency which reflects the policy focuson short-term damage reduction, and the everyday which reflects the desire formore long-term adaptive capacities developing in response to gradual change inrural communities. We conclude that the discourse which stakeholders align withwill affect how they understand, adopt, and practice the concept.

Conceptualisation of Hybrid Interference in the Czech Republic: How to Make it a Practically Researchable Phenomenon?

Abstract The text focuses on the definition and reconceptualisation of the concept of hybrid interference, traces the use of the concept in Czech security documents, presents the historical development of the use of the concept and then seeks a practical conceptualisation applicable towards research on the resilience against it. This conceptualisation includes a narrower definition of the concept, which is necessary for the real application, graspability and researchability of resilience in the context of the Czech environment. We arrive at a framework of hybrid interference that we believe to be more practical and useful, mostly due to its higher clarity and precision. Furthermore, we believe that definition of hybrid interference which is agnostic towards sectors, actors and specific tools used during such activities is preferable and more likely to remain universally relevant than those relying on enumeration and itemisation.

A review of resilience in higher education: toward the emerging concept of designer resilience

ABSTRACT Higher education (HE) students experience rates of depression and anxiety substantially higher than those found in the general population. Many psychological approaches to improving wellbeing and developing student resilience have been adopted by HE administrators and educators, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic. This article aims to review literature regarding integration of resilience and wellbeing in HE. A subsequent aim is to scope toward developing foundations for an emerging discipline specific concept – designer resilience. A literature scoping review is applied to chart various conceptual, theoretical and operational applications of resilience and wellbeing in HE. Twenty-seven (27) articles are identified and analysed. The scoping review finds that two general approaches to implementing resilience and wellbeing training exist in HE. First, articles reacting to a decline in student mental health and remedying this decline through general extra-curricular resilience or wellbeing programmes. Second, articles opting for a curricula and discipline-specific approach by establishing why resilience will be needed by future graduates before developing and testing new learning experiences. The presence of cognitive flexibility, storytelling, reframing and reflection lie at the core of the practice of resilience and design and therefore offer preliminary opportunities to develop ‘designer resilience’ training. Future research opportunities are identified throughout the article.

Hysteretic model and resilient application of corrugated shear panel dampers

In this study, corrugated steel shear panels were applied to a metallic shear panel damper (SPD) to improve its seismic performance. The seismic performance tests and analysis of eight specimens were performed for different corrugated steel panel directions, arrangement forms, and material strengths. The results showed that the metallic corrugated shear panel dampers (CSPDs) exhibited remarkable plastic deformation and plump hysteretic loops. The direction of corrugated shear panels had the most significant influence on the energy dissipation performance, and the results of the horizontal corrugated direction exhibited the great performance. Then, the improved Bouc–Wen model was used to predict the hysteretic behaviour of the CSPDs, and the universal global optimization algorithm was applied to identify the model parameters. Additionally, a typical 12 storey benchmark steel frame structure was retrofitted with the CSPDs to verify the application effect of the CSPDs on structural vibration control. And the seismic fragility analysis was implemented to quantify the exceeding probabilities of different damaged states for the original structure and the damper improved structure. Compared with the benchmark frame, the performance level of the damper improvement frame in operation, immediate occupancy, life safety, and collapse prevention increased by 1.51%, 11.50%, 45.59%, and 81.19%, respectively, under the maximum considered earthquake (MCE) level. The analyses showed that the CSPDs could significantly improve the seismic resilience performance of the structure.

From resilience attributes to city resilience

Resilience challenges for cities require bridging the gap between theorized concepts, such as resilience attributes, and its application to urban planning. Resilience attributes have been used by international policy initiatives to guide urban resilience without paying attention to how these attributes are represented in public policies. We present an analytical approach to examine the application of resilience attributes in resilience public policy. We apply our approach to evaluate the design of the Resilience Strategy developed for Mexico City under the 100 Resilient Cities Program. We find that creating tangible, meaningful action in government for urban resilience is hampered by concepts that cannot easily be translated into urban planning. Our analytical approach allows a practical and systematic assessment of the representation of resilience attributes, offering an opportunity to adjust and reframe the design of resilience policies balancing scientific knowledge with what is meaningful for decision-makers.

The application of resilience theory in urban development: a literature review.

In the complex context of urbanization and climate change, how to improve the resilience of cities to deal with various uncertain and unpredictable threats is a new topic with both theoretical and practical challenges. In this paper, the researches on urban resilience are summarized using the bibliometric analysis combined with the visualization analysis. We provide a systematic and objective review of resilience applied to urban development focusing on its conceptual frameworks, research tendencies, and assessment methods. The analysis results demonstrate that an increasing attention has been given to urban resilience, especially in the field of climate change. The degree of research varies significantly in different countries, with the USA dominating in the number of publications, followed by the UK and China. Scholars’ attention to urban resilience in different periods is closely related to the development background and disasters experienced by their countries, but there are also some commonalities. Meanwhile, the multi-dimensional research on urban resilience has been recognized by many scholars. Quantitative assessment tools such as simulation model and optimization model have been widely used to assess the level of urban resilience. Based on this, we put forward the future research trends in this field and provide a potential guide for future application of urban resilience.

Individualizing deep dynamic models for psychological resilience data

Deep learning approaches can uncover complex patterns in data. In particular, variational autoencoders achieve this by a non-linear mapping of data into a low-dimensional latent space. Motivated by an application to psychological resilience in the Mainz Resilience Project, which features intermittent longitudinal measurements of stressors and mental health, we propose an approach for individualized, dynamic modeling in this latent space. Specifically, we utilize ordinary differential equations (ODEs) and develop a novel technique for obtaining person-specific ODE parameters even in settings with a rather small number of individuals and observations, incomplete data, and a differing number of observations per individual. This technique allows us to subsequently investigate individual reactions to stimuli, such as the mental health impact of stressors. A potentially large number of baseline characteristics can then be linked to this individual response by regularized regression, e.g., for identifying resilience factors. Thus, our new method provides a way of connecting different kinds of complex longitudinal and baseline measures via individualized, dynamic models. The promising results obtained in the exemplary resilience application indicate that our proposal for dynamic deep learning might also be more generally useful for other application domains.

Bibliometric Analysis and Literature Review of Tourism Destination Resilience Research.

The application of resilience thinking to tourism destination research is a new perspective on sustainable tourism and has gradually become a popular research topic. Some literature has been conducted on tourism destination resilience, but there has not been a comprehensive review and analysis of the whole field. This study was based on the literature from 2000 to 2021 in the Web of Science core collection database. The collaboration analysis, literature co-citation analysis, keyword co-occurrence, burst detection analysis in CiteSpace, and qualitative analysis were adopted to conduct a holistic tourism destination resilience research review. The results indicated that the United States, Australia, China, and the United Kingdom were the primary countries involved in tourism destination resilience research. Five hot research themes were obtained. (1) concept and connotation of tourism destination resilience, (2) drivers of tourism destination resilience, (3) sustainable management framework and practices, (4) perception of tourism destination resilience, and (5) the resilience of the tourism community. Furthermore, four research gaps and future directions were proposed in this study, including the theoretical framework of tourism destination resilience, assessment of tourism destination resilience, sustainable management and resilience, and application of advanced technology in tourism destination resilience. This study assists researchers in understanding the development and future research directions in tourism destination resilience research.

Design of Approximate Restoring Dividers for Error Resilient Applications

In this paper, a low-power and high-speed approximate divider using restoring array architecture has been proposed. Approximation is realized by replacing the subtractor/divider cells with the approximate subtractor/divider cells through the use of reduced gate level complexity. Four approximate divider architectures, namely, AD1, AD2, AD3, and AD4, have been proposed. The amount of approximation can be scaled by introducing the approximation factor and the proposed dividers have been analyzed for different values of approximation factor. The simulation results show that the proposed dividers AD1, AD2, AD3, and AD4, with approximation factor of 10 have achieved power reduction of 17%, 30%, 23%, and 37% respectively, when compared to the exact restoring divider. The proposed dividers have also been compared with the existing approximate restoring divider and shows signification reduction in power and delay. All the simulations are carried out using 180nm CMOS technology. The image processing applications, such as change detection and background removal, have been implemented using the proposed divider to show the feasibility of employing the approximate divider for real time applications. The simulation results prove that the approximate dividers have realized a feasible PSNR for the resultant images.