This volume presents concepts, policies and cost models for various long-term warranty and maintenance contracts. It offers several numerical examples for estimating costs to both the manufacturer and consumer. Long-term warranties and maintenance contracts are becoming increasingly popular, as these types of aftersales services provide assurance to consumers that they can enjoy long, reliable service, and protect them from defects and the potentially high costs of repairs. Studying long-term warranty and service contracts is important to manufacturers and consumers alike, as offering long-term warranty and maintenance contracts produce additional costs for manufacturers / service providers over the product's service life. These costs must be factored into the price, or the manufacturer / dealer will incur losses instead of making a profit. On the other hand, the buyer / consumer needs to weigh the cost of maintaining it over its service life and to decide whether or not these policies are worth purchasing. There are a number of complexities involved in developing failure and cost models for these policies due to uncertainties concerning the service life, usage pattern, maintenance work and long-term costs of rectifications. Mathematical models for predicting failures and expected costs for various one-dimensional long-term warranty policies are developed at the system level and analyzed by taking into account the uncertainties in connection with longer coverage periods and the rectification costs over the warranty period. Failures and costs are modeled using stochastic techniques and illustrated by means of numerical examples for estimating costs to the manufacturer and consumer. Various rectification policies are proposed and analyzed. The models developed here can be used to aid in managerial decisions on purchasing products with long-term warranty policies and maintenance contracts or outsourcing maintenance.

This SpringerBrief offers careful assessments of the appropriateness and effectiveness of currently available methodologies for fire flow. It explains the water supply requirements for firefighting including rate of flow, the residual pressure required at that flow, and the duration that is necessary to control a major fire in a specific structure. First reviewing existing fire flow calculation methodologies in the U.S. and globally, the authors determine the new information necessary to validate the existing fire flow calculation methodologies. After identifying 19 methods from the U.S., UK, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New England, and Canada, two types of methods are evaluated: those for building planning based on fire and building code requirements, and those for on-scene fire service use. Building planning methods are also examined, including an explanation of the range of building variables that determine fire flow. A survey form for fire departments is provided to help fire departments identify key predictive features based on construction and building parameters. Researchers and professionals in fire engineering will find the recommendations in Evaluation of Fire Flow Methodologies valuable.

"Reliability Physics and Engineering" provides critically important information for designing and building reliable cost-effective products. The textbook contains numerous example problems with solutions. Included at the end of each chapter are exercise problems and answers. "Reliability Physics and Engineering" is a useful resource for students, engineers, and materials scientists.

Automated Measurement and Monitoring of Bioprocesses: Key Elements of the M3C Strategy, by Bernhard Sonnleitner Automatic Control of Bioprocesses, by Marc Stanke, Bernd Hitzmann An Advanced Monitoring Platform for Rational Design of Recombinant Processes, by G. Striedner, K. Bayer Modelling Approaches for Bio-Manufacturing Operations, by Sunil Chhatre Extreme Scale-Down Approaches for Rapid Chromatography Column Design and Scale-Up During Bioprocess Development, by Sunil Chhatre Applying Mechanistic Models in Bioprocess Development, by Rita Lencastre Fernandes, Vijaya Krishna Bodla, Magnus Carlquist, Anna-Lena Heins, Anna Eliasson Lantz, Gurkan Sin and Krist V. Gernaey Multivariate Data Analysis for Advancing the Interpretation of Bioprocess Measurement and Monitoring Data, by Jarka Glassey Design of Pathway-Level Bioprocess Monitoring and Control Strategies Supported by Metabolic Networks, by Ines A. Isidro, Ana R. Ferreira, Joao J. Clemente, Antonio E. Cunha, Joao M. L. Dias, Rui Oliveira Knowledge Management and Process Monitoring of Pharmaceutical Processes in the Quality by Design Paradigm, by Anurag S Rathore, Anshuman Bansal, Jaspinder Hans The Choice of Suitable Online Analytical Techniques and Data Processing for Monitoring of Bioprocesses, by Ian Marison, Siobhan Hennessy, Roisin Foley, Moira Schuler, Senthilkumar Sivaprakasam, Brian Freeland

This brief develops a data collection plan to assess loss related to electrical surges in homes, and explores the potential impact devices that prevent these surges could have in mitigating these losses. Key topics such as surge sources, surge effects and residential surge protection are clearly defined. Recent fire safety codes proposed a requirement that every dwelling unit be fitted with a surge protection device, as every year there is property damage to electrical and electronic equipment resulting from electrical surges. These proposals have not been implemented due to a lack of reliable data, which this brief seeks to change. The authors evaluate surge phenomena and their sources, surge protection methods, surge protection strategies and industry standards in order to present a data plan that can accurately assess loss related to electrical surges in homes.

The book summarizes the findings and contributions of the European ARTEMIS project, CESAR, for improving and enabling interoperability of methods, tools, and processes to meet the demands in embedded systems development across four domains - avionics, automotive, automation, and rail. The contributions give insight to an improved engineering and safety process life-cycle for the development of safety critical systems. They present new concept of engineering tools integration platform to improve the development of safety critical embedded systems and illustrate capacity of this framework for end-user instantiation to specific domain needs and processes. They also advance state-of-the-art in component-based development as well as component and system validation and verification, with tool support. And finally they describe industry relevant evaluated processes and methods especially designed for the embedded systems sector as well as easy adoptable common interoperability principles for software tool integration.

The world is witnessing a rapid growth in wind and other renewable based electricity generation due to environmental concerns associated with electricity generation from the conventional sources. Wind power behaves quite differently than conventional electric power generating units due to its intermittent and diffuse nature. System planners and operators face the variability and uncertainty of wind power availability, and therefore, encounter considerable challenges in making decisions to maintain the adequacy and security of wind integrated power systems. This volume intends to bring out the original research work of researchers from academia and industry in understanding, quantifying and managing the risks associated with the uncertainty in wind variability in order to plan and operate a modern power system integrated with a significant proportion of wind power generation with an acceptable level of reliability. Accurate modeling of wind power variability and proper incorporation of the models in reliability and risk evaluation is very important for the planning and operation of electric power systems, and will play a crucial role in defining the requirement of various types of resources and services, such as storage and ancillary services in power systems.

This SpringerBrief presents information on a wide variety of hazards and the damage potential caused by installation of a photovoltaic (PV) system. The current installation practices for PV systems on roofs create electrical, fire, structural, and weather-related hazards that do not comply to current codes, standards and guidance documents. Potential dangers include structural loading, wind loads, hail, snow, debris accumulation, seismic hazards, firefighting hazards, and electrical hazards. Despite the increased popularity of PV systems after the environmental movement, research shows that the costs of installing PV systems outweigh the benefits. Hazards of PV systems on roofs have caused several incidents in the United States; the most notable in Bakersfield, California, and Mount Holly, North Carolina. Designed for fire engineers and professionals, Best Practices for Commercial Roof-Mounted Photovoltaic System Installation offers recommendations to set up PV systems safely and sustainably.

Though the game-theoretic approach has been vastly studied and utilized in relation to economics of industrial organizations, it has hardly been used to tackle safety management in multi-plant chemical industrial settings. Using Game Theory for Improving Safety within Chemical Industrial Parks presents an in-depth discussion of game-theoretic modeling which may be applied to improve cross-company prevention and -safety management in a chemical industrial park. By systematically analyzing game-theoretic models and approaches in relation to managing safety in chemical industrial parks, Using Game Theory for Improving Safety within Chemical Industrial Parks explores the ways game theory can predict the outcome of complex strategic investment decision making processes involving several adjacent chemical plants. A number of game-theoretic decision models are discussed to provide strategic tools for decision-making situations. Offering clear and straightforward explanations of methodologies, Using Game Theory for Improving Safety within Chemical Industrial Parks provides managers and management teams with approaches to asses situations and to improve strategic safety- and prevention arrangements.

"An Industrial Product-Service System is characterized by the integrated and mutually determined planning, development, provision and use of product and service shares including its immanent software components in Business-to-Business applications and represents a knowledge-intensive socio-technical system." - Meier, Roy, Seliger (2010) Since the first conference in 2009, the CIRP International Conference on Industrial Product-Service Systems has become a well-established international forum for the review and discussion of advances, research results and industrial improvements. Researchers from all over the world have met at previous IPS(2) conferences in Cranfield (2009), Linkoeping (2010), Braunschweig (2011) and Tokyo (2012). In 2013, the 5th CIRP International Conference on Industrial Product-Service Systems is held in Bochum. Important topics of IPS(2) research presented at the conference are: planning and development, sustainability, business models, operation, service engineering, knowledge management, ICT, modeling and simulation, marketing and economic aspects as well as the role of the human in IPS(2).

A close-to-ideal blend of suburb and city, speedy construction of towers of Babylon, the sparkling proportion of glass and steel buildings' facade at night showcase the wisdom of humans. They also witness the footsteps, sweats and tears of architects and engineers. Unfortunately, these signatures of human civilizations are swathed in towering figures of construction accidents. Fretting about these on sites, different countries adopt different measures on sites. This book firstly sketches the construction accidents on sites, followed by a review on safety measures in some of the developing countries such as Bermuda, Egypt, Kuwait and China; as well as developed countries, for example, the United States, France and Singapore. It also highlights the enormous compensation costs with the courts' experiences in the United Kingdom and Hong Kong.

Today's society is completely dependent on critical networks such as water supply, sewage, electricity, ICT and transportation. Risk and vulnerability analyses are needed to grasp the impact of threats and hazards. However, these become quite complex as there are strong interdependencies both within and between infrastructure systems. Risk and Interdependencies in Critical Infrastructures: A guideline for analysis provides methods for analyzing risks and interdependencies of critical infrastructures. A number of analysis approaches are described and are adapted to each of these infrastructures. Various approaches are also revised, and all are supported by several examples and illustrations. Particular emphasis is given to the analysis of various interdependencies that often exist between the infrastructures. Risk and Interdependencies in Critical Infrastructures: A guideline for analysis provides a good tool to identify the hazards that are threatening your infrastructures, and will enhance the understanding on how these threats can propagate throughout the system and also affect other infrastructures, thereby identifying useful risk reducing measures. It is essential reading for municipalities and infrastructure owners that are obliged to know about and prepare for the risks and vulnerabilities of the critical infrastructures for which they are responsible.

Efficient and equitable policies for managing disaster risks and adapting to global environmental change are critically dependent on development of robust options supported by integrated modeling. The book is based on research and state-of-the art models developed at IIASA (International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis) and within its cooperation network. It addresses the methodological complexities of assessing disaster risks, which call for stochastic simulation, optimization methods and economic modeling. Furthermore, it describes policy frameworks for integrated disaster risk management, including stakeholder participation facilitated by user-interactive decision-support tools. Applications and results are presented for a number of case studies at different problem scales and in different socio-economic contexts, and their implications for loss sharing policies and economic development are discussed. Among others, the book presents studies for insurance policies for earthquakes in the Tuscany region in Italy and flood risk in the Tisza river basin in Hungary. Further, it investigates the economic impact of natural disasters on development and possible financial coping strategies; and applications are shown for selected South Asian countries. The book is addressed both to researchers and to organizations involved with catastrophe risk management and risk mitigation policies.

Flash floods typically develop in a period a few hours or less and can arise from heavy rainfall and other causes, such as dam or flood defence breaches, and ice jam breaks. The rapid development, often associated with a high debris content, can present a considerable risk to people and property. This book describes recent developments in techniques for monitoring and forecasting the development of flash floods, and providing flood warnings. Topics which are discussed include rainfall and river monitoring, nowcasting, Numerical Weather Prediction, rainfall-runoff modelling, and approaches to the dissemination of flood warnings and provision of an emergency response. The book is potentially useful on civil engineering, water resources, meteorology and hydrology courses (and for post graduate studies) but is primarily intended as a review of the topic for a wider audience.

Advanced Analysis and Design for Fire Safety of Steel Structures systematically presents the latest findings on behaviours of steel structural components in a fire, such as the catenary actions of restrained steel beams, the design methods for restrained steel columns, and the membrane actions of concrete floor slabs with steel decks. Using a systematic description of structural fire safety engineering principles, the authors illustrate the important difference between behaviours of an isolated structural element and the restrained component in a complete structure under fire conditions. The book will be an essential resource for structural engineers who wish to improve their understanding of steel buildings exposed to fires. It is also an ideal textbook for introductory courses in fire safety for master's degree programs in structural engineering, and is excellent reading material for final-year undergraduate students in civil engineering and fire safety engineering. Furthermore, it successfully bridges the information gap between fire safety engineers, structural engineers and building inspectors, and will be of significant interest to architects, code officials, building designers and fire fighters. Dr. Guoqiang Li is a Professor at the College of Civil Engineering of Tongji University, China; Dr. Peijun Wang is an Associate Professor at the School of Civil Engineering of Shandong University, China.

Equipment to be installed in electric power-transmission and distribution systems must pass acceptance tests with standardized high-voltage or high-current test impulses which simulate the stress on the insulation caused by external lightning discharges and switching operations in the grid. High impulse voltages and currents are also used in many other fields of science and engineering for various applications. Therefore, precise impulse-measurement techniques are necessary, either to prevent an over- or understressing of the insulation or to guarantee the effectiveness and quality of the application. The target audience primarily comprises engineers and technicians but the book may also be beneficial for graduate students of high-voltage engineering and electrical power supply systems.

This volume presents selected papers from the International Conference on Reliability, Safety, and Hazard. It presents the latest developments in reliability engineering and probabilistic safety assessment, and brings together contributions from a diverse international community and covers all aspects of safety, reliability, and hazard assessment across a host of interdisciplinary applications. This book will be of interest to researchers in both academia and the industry.

Quality is not a fixed or universal property of software; it depends on the context and goals of its stakeholders. Hence, when you want to develop a high-quality software system, the first step must be a clear and precise specification of quality. Yet even if you get it right and complete, you can be sure that it will become invalid over time. So the only solution is continuous quality control: the steady and explicit evaluation of a product's properties with respect to its updated quality goals. This book guides you in setting up and running continuous quality control in your environment. Starting with a general introduction on the notion of quality, it elaborates what the differences between process and product quality are and provides definitions for quality-related terms often used without the required level of precision. On this basis, the work then discusses quality models as the foundation of quality control, explaining how to plan desired product qualities and how to ensure they are delivered throughout the entire lifecycle. Next it presents the main concepts and techniques of continuous quality control, discussing the quality control loop and its main techniques such as reviews or testing. In addition to sample scenarios in all chapters, the book is rounded out by a dedicated chapter highlighting several applications of different subsets of the presented quality control techniques in an industrial setting. The book is primarily intended for practitioners working in software engineering or quality assurance, who will benefit by learning how to improve their current processes, how to plan for quality, and how to apply state-of-the-art quality control techniques. Students and lecturers in computer science and specializing in software engineering will also profit from this book, which they can use in practice-oriented courses on software quality, software maintenance and quality assurance.

Asset Condition, Information Systems and Decision Models, is the second volume of the Engineering Asset Management Review Series. The manuscripts provide examples of implementations of asset information systems as well as some practical applications of condition data for diagnostics and prognostics. The increasing trend is towards prognostics rather than diagnostics, hence the need for assessment and decision models that promote the conversion of condition data into prognostic information to improve life-cycle planning for engineered assets. The research papers included here serve to support the on-going development of Condition Monitoring standards. This volume comprises selected papers from the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd World Congresses on Engineering Asset Management, which were convened under the auspices of ISEAM in collaboration with a number of organisations, including CIEAM Australia, Asset Management Council Australia, BINDT UK, and Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, China. Asset Condition, Information Systems and Decision Models will be of particular interest to finance, maintenance, and operations personnel whose roles directly affect the capability value of engineering asset base, as well as asset managers in both industry and government.

Guaranteeing a high system performance over a wide operating range is an important issue surrounding the design of automatic control systems with successively increasing complexity. As a key technology in the search for a solution, advanced fault detection and identification (FDI) is receiving considerable attention. This book introduces basic model-based FDI schemes, advanced analysis and design algorithms, and mathematical and control-theoretic tools. This second edition of Model-Based Fault Diagnosis Techniques contains: * new material on fault isolation and identification and alarm management; * extended and revised treatment of systematic threshold determination for systems with both deterministic unknown inputs and stochastic noises; * addition of the continuously-stirred tank heater as a representative process-industrial benchmark; and * enhanced discussion of residual evaluation which now deals with stochastic processes. Model-based Fault Diagnosis Techniques will interest academic researchers working in fault identification and diagnosis and as a text it is suitable for graduate students in a formal university-based course or as a self-study aid for practising engineers working with automatic control or mechatronic systems from backgrounds as diverse as chemical process and power engineering.

21 years ago it was a joint idea with Hans Rottenkolber to organize a workshop dedicated to the discussion of the latest results in the automatic processing of fringe patterns. This idea was promoted by the insight that automatic and high precision phase measurement techniques will play a key role in all future industrial and scientific applications of optical metrology. A couple of months later more than 50 specialists from East and West met in East Berlin, the capital of the former GDR, to spend 3 days with the discussion of new principles of fringe processing. In the stimulating atmoshere the idea was born to repeat the workshop and to organize the meeting in an olympic schedule. And thus meanwhile 20 years have been passed and we have today Fringe number six. However, such a workshop takes place in a dynamic environment. Therefore the main topics of the previous events were always adapted to the most interesting subjects of the new period. In 1993 the workshop took place in Bremen and was dedicated to new principles of optical shape measurement, setup calibration, phase unwrapping and nondestructive testing, while in 1997 new approaches in multi-sensor metrology, active measurement strategies and hybrid processing technologies played a central role. 2001, the first meeting in the 21st century, was focused to optical methods for micromeasurements, hybrid measurement technologies and new sensor solutions for industrial inspection.

Synthetic biology is becoming one of the most dynamic new fields of biology, with the potential to revolutionize the way we do biotechnology today. By applying the toolbox of engineering disciplines to biology, a whole set of potential applications become possible ranging very widely across scientific and engineering disciplines. Some of the potential benefits of synthetic biology, such as the development of low-cost drugs or the production of chemicals and energy by engineered bacteria are enormous. There are, however, also potential and perceived risks due to deliberate or accidental damage. Also, ethical issues of synthetic biology just start being explored, with hardly any ethicists specifically focusing on the area of synthetic biology. This book will be the first of its kind focusing particularly on the safety, security and ethical concerns and other relevant societal aspects of this new emerging field. The foreseen impact of this book will be to stimulate a debate on these societal issues at an early stage. Past experiences, especially in the field of GM-crops and stem cells, have shown the importance of an early societal debate. The community and informed stakeholders recognize this need, but up to now discussions are fragmentary. This book will be the first comprehensive overview on relevant societal issues of synthetic biology, setting the scene for further important discussions within the scientific community and with civil society.

Quality Management in Reverse Logistics intends to develop, collect, examine and evaluate a number of quality management (QM) tools and techniques, which can be applied in practice in order to understand, review and improve any closed-loop supply chain process. In other words, the book aims to examine the existing relationship between various well-developed and thoroughly studied quality issues, such as QM, quality assurance, standardization of processes and statistical quality control and the emerging research area of reverse logistics. Quality Management in Reverse Logistics contains modeling and quantitative methods that could be used by practitioners and academics in the reverse logistics industry, as well as a thorough description of QM tools and techniques. The book leads the potential reader to broaden their scope of thinking and acting in the new, promising area of reverse logistics, where QM can be applied.

E-maintenance is the synthesis of two major trends in today's society: the growing importance of maintenance as a key technology and the rapid development of information and communication technology. E-maintenance gives the reader an overview of the possibilities offered by new and advanced information and communication technology to achieve efficient maintenance solutions in industry, energy production and transportation, thereby supporting sustainable development in society. Sixteen chapters cover a range of different technologies, such as: new micro sensors, on-line lubrication sensors, smart tags for condition monitoring, wireless communication and smart personal digital assistants. E-maintenance also discusses semantic data-structuring solutions; ontology structured communications; implementation of diagnostics and prognostics; and maintenance decision support by economic optimisation. It includes four industrial cases that are both described and analysed in detail, with an outline of a global application solution. E-maintenance is a useful tool for engineers and technicians who wish to develop e-maintenance in industrial sites. It is also a source of new and stimulating ideas for researchers looking to make the next step towards sustainable development.

"Designing for Network and Service Continuity in Wireless Mesh Networks" describes performance predictability of the new wireless mesh network paradigm, and describes considerations in designing networks from the perspective of survivability and service continuity metrics. The work provides design insights for network design researchers and industry professionals. It includes designs for new mesh networks and extensions of existing networks with predictable performance.