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Maintaining and protecting employee well-being and health is of paramount importance for organizations in order to prevent financial losses due to illness, absenteeism, and fluctuation. This chapter discusses the role of team meetings for employee well-being. As the contemporary workplace is shaped by team work, team meetings increasingly shape employees’ experiences at work. As such, team meetings may also have a major influence on employee well-being as they consume large amounts of time and thus strongly influence workers’ schedules. While previous research has predominantly focused on negative aspects of meetings and mainly considered them as a workplace stressor, this chapter advances a positive perspective on meetings as opportunities for boosting rather than impairing employee well-being. Upon reviewing the extant evidence about linkages between workplace meetings and well-being, the authors highlight the role of team dynamics during meetings for individual well-being and suggest new perspectives for future research. The authors also discuss actionable implications for structuring and facilitating meetings in order to avoid negative and increase positive effects of team meeting interactions on employee well-being.

The purpose of this paper is to identify how employees feel about having more meetings and what can be done to improve employees' feelings about their work meetings.

Data were obtained from three samples of working adults. The first was a convenience sample recruited by undergraduate students (n=120), the second was a stratified random sample from a metropolitan area in the southern USA (n=126), and the third was an internet‐based panel sample (n=402). Constant comparative analysis of responses to open‐ended questions was used to investigate the overarching research questions.

It is found that employees enjoy meetings when they have a clear objective, and when important relevant information is shared. Consistent with conservation of resources theory, most employees are unhappy with meetings when they reduce their work‐related resources (e.g. meetings constrain their time, lack structure and are unproductive).

The data suggest that meetings appear to be both resource‐draining and resource‐supplying activities in the workplace. Researchers and managers should consider overtly asking about how people feel about meetings, as a means of identifying areas for future research inquiry and targets for improvement in the workplace generally.

The paper describes one of the few studies on meetings that ask the participants overtly what their feelings are regarding their workplace meetings. Additionally, the paper illustrates the usefulness of qualitative data analysis as a means for further understanding workplace activities viewing respondents as informants.

Taking its cue from the UK government's declaration that every new home should be ‘zero-carbon’ by 2016, this paper explores how close a flexible, prototype-housing model might come to meeting this target (accepting that there is currently some ambiguity between the respective official ‘zero-carbon’ definitions regarding off-site renewable supply). The prime aim is to design economically (affordable by housing associations) to the European ‘passive house’ standard of no more than 15 kWh/m2 for space heating and a maximum total consumption of 70 kWh/m2 adding in hot water and electricity. The model also prioritizes generous access to sunlight and daylight, as well as realistic levels of air change in a low-volume, intensively occupied scenario. Associated aims are: a) to meet thermal loads without use of fossil fuels such as gas or oil; and b) to employ architecturally integrated active solar thermal and electrical arrays to respectively meet at least one third of the water heating and electrical loads. Micro-wind generation is excluded from the study as too site-dependent. A subsidiary agenda is to achieve a flexible plan in terms of orientation and access, and to provide utility facilities that support the environmental strategy (e.g. drying clothes without compromising energy use or air quality). The paper goes on to address equivalent prospects for retrofit, briefly discusses institutional and other barriers to achievement, and muses on how much of the balance of the electrical demand can be met renewably in Scotland in the near future.

The purpose of this paper is to show the effect of randomness of wind speed on the capacity value estimation of wind power. Three methods that incorporate hourly wind speed have been evaluated.

Wind speed is simulated using autoregressive moving average method and is included in the calculation of reliability index as a negative load on an hourly basis. The reliability index is calculated before and after the addition of wind capacity. Increment of load or alteration of conventional capacity will lead to capacity estimation.

Among the aforementioned three methods, the former two exclude the availability rate and give the exact value for wind capacity addition. The third method is based on the availability rate and provides a little higher capacity value, indicating a clear correlation between availability and capacity value.

The methods that exclude the availability rate show consistent results. By including the availability rate, the third method predicts the inverse relation between the availability rate and the capacity value.

The researchers and policy makers worldwide have proposed many ideas for smart cities and homes in urban areas. The extensive work done for urban smart homes neglects the unique constraints of homes at remote mountain tops and deserts and rural village homes. The purpose of this paper is to propose a smart energy management system for a self-sustained home of any type situated in any geographical location with the availability of renewable energy sources like solar, etc. The purpose is mainly to highlight the importance and advantages of direct current (DC) homes with DC loads rather than a conventional alternating current (AC) home with both AC and DC loads. An attempt has been made to evolve a multi-agent coordinated control for the low voltage direct current (LVDC) smart home system.

LVDC supply systems with in situ power generation are providing an efficient solution for the energy needs of a DC smart home. The individual sub-systems of the LVDC system have their unique functions and priorities and hence require both coordinated and independent control. The entire DC smart home system is modeled in the Matlab and codes are implemented for each agent of the home. LVDC grid is operating either in battery connected mode or utility grid-connected mode, and the DC link voltage is held constant in both the cases. Energy imported from the utility grid is minimized by load shedding during the rectifier mode of the bidirectional converter. In addition, load shedding is also done when the battery is discharging to increase the discharge time of the battery. Load shedding is done on the basis of a fixed priority of loads. A 48 s simulation is performed on the Matlab model to bring out the 24-hour operation of the proposed system. Various modes are simulated and the corresponding actions of the agents are tested.

A new control strategy with agents for each sub-system of the LVDC system is presented. Each individual agent works in tandem with other agents and meets its own control imperatives without compromising the requirements of the overall system. Unlike the centralized control system, the proposed control strategy is a distributed control system. The control algorithm for each of the agents is developed, and the pseudo code is presented. The results of the simulation of the proposed scheme are presented to confirm the usefulness of the new control approach.

The multi-agent concept for an energy management system is less addressed and thus its potential for efficient home energy management is presented. The proposed multi-agent strategy for a complete DC smart home with exclusive DC loads is not done earlier and is reported for the first time. The success of this strategy can be extended to other DC micro-grid systems like telecom power systems, ships, aircraft, datacentres, server rooms, residential complexes and commercial malls.

Currently heating and cooling in buildings is responsible for over 30% of the primary energy consumption in the United Kingdom with a similar amount in China. We analyze heat pumps and district thermal energy network for efficient buildings. Their advantages are examined (i.e., flexibility in choosing heat sources, reduction of fuel consumption and increased environmental quality, enhanced community energy management, reduced costs for end users) together with their drawbacks, when they are intended as means for efficient building heating and cooling.

A literature review observed a range of operating conditions and challenges associated with the efficient operation of district heating and cooling networks, comparing primarily the UK’s and China’s experiences, but also acknowledging the areas of expertise of European, the United States, and Japan. It was noted that the efficiency of cooling networks is still in its infancy but heating networks could benefit from lower distribution temperatures to reduce thermal losses. Such temperatures are suitable for space heating methods provided by, for example, underfloor heating, enhanced area hydronic radiators, or fan-assisted hydronic radiators. However, to use existing higher temperature hydronic radiator systems (typically at a temperatures of >70°C) a modified heat pump was proposed, tested, and evaluated in an administrative building. The results appears to be very successful.

District heating is a proven energy-efficient mechanism for delivering space heating. They can also be adaptable for space cooling applications with either parallel heating and cooling circuits or in regions of well-defined seasons, on flow and return circuit with a defined change-over period from heating to cooling. Renewable energy sources can provide either heating or cooling through, for example, biomass boilers, photovoltaics, solar thermal, etc. However, for lower loss district heating systems, lower distribution temperatures are required. Advanced heat pumps can efficiently bridge the gap between lower temperature distribution systems and buildings with higher temperature hydronic heating systems

This chapter presents a case for district heating (and cooling). It demonstrates the benefits of reduced temperatures in district heating networks to reduce losses but also illustrates the need for temperature upgrading where building heating systems require higher temperatures. Thus, a novel heat pump was developed and successfully tested.

Almost overnight the political risk map for the decade has been redrafted. This annual forecast of key risk factors keeps score for some 85 countries.

The purpose of this paper is to present a wall-climbing robot platform for heavy-load with negative pressure adsorption, which could be equipped with a six-degree of freedom (DOF) collaborative robot (Cobot) and detection device for inspecting the overwater part of concrete bridge towers/piers for large bridges.

By analyzing the shortcomings of existing wall-climbing robots in detecting concrete structures, a wall-climbing mobile manipulator (WCMM), which could be compatible with various detection devices, is proposed for detecting the concrete towers/piers of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge. The factors affecting the load capacity are obtained by analyzing the antislip and antioverturning conditions of the wall-climbing robot platform on the wall surface. Design strategies for each part of the structure of the wall-climbing robot are provided based on the influencing factors. By deriving the equivalent adsorption force equation, analyzed the influencing factors of equivalent adsorption force and provided schemes that could enhance the load capacity of the wall-climbing robot.

The adsorption test verifies the maximum negative pressure that the fan module could provide to the adsorption chamber. The load capacity test verifies it is feasible to achieve the expected bearing requirements of the wall-climbing robot. The motion tests prove that the developed climbing robot vehicle could move freely on the surface of the concrete structure after being equipped with a six-DOF Cobot.

The development of the heavy-load wall-climbing robot enables the Cobot to be installed and equipped on the wall-climbing robot, forming the WCMM, making them compatible with carrying various devices and expanding the application of the wall-climbing robot.

A heavy-load wall-climbing robot using negative pressure adsorption has been developed. The wall-climbing robot platform could carry a six-DOF Cobot, making it compatible with various detection devices for the inspection of concrete structures of large bridges. The WCMM could be expanded to detect the concretes with similar structures. The research and development process of the heavy-load wall-climbing robot could inspire the design of other negative-pressure wall-climbing robots.

THE following paper was written early in 1946 when the writer was a member of the Sperry Gyroscope Company. It discusses in general terms a particular form of powered control system for aircraft, in which precautions are taken against certain types of failure of the system.

Generation scheduling (GS) is the most prominent and hard-hitting problem in the electrical power industry especially in an integrated power system. Countless techniques have been used so far to solve this GS problem for proper functioning of the units in the power system to dispatch the load economically to consumers at once. Therefore, this work aims to study for the best possible function of integrated power plants to obtain the most favourable solution to the GS problem.

An appropriate method works in a proper way and assures to give the best solution to the GS problem. The finest function of incorporated power plants should be mathematically devised as a problem and via that the aim of the GS problem to minimize the total fuel cost subject to different constraints will be achieved. In this research work, the latest meta-heuristic and swarm intelligence-based technique called grey wolf optimization (GWO) technique is used as an optimization tool that will work along with the formulated problem for correct scheduling of generating units and thus achieve the objective function.

The recommended GWO technique provides the best feasible solution which is optimal in its performance for different test cases in the GS problem of integrated power plant. It is further found that the obtained solutions using GWO method are better than the former reports of other traditional methods in terms of solution excellence. The GWO method is found to be unique in its performance and having superior computational efficiency.

Decision making is significant for effective operation of integrated power plants in an electrical power system. The recommended tactic implements a modern meta-heuristic procedure that is applied to diverse test systems. The method that is proposed is efficient in providing the best solutions of solving GS problems. The suggested method surpasses the early techniques by offering the most excellent feasible solutions. Thus, it is obvious that the proposed method may be the appropriate substitute to attain the optimal operation of GS problem.

Renewable energy sources are discontinuous and infrequent in nature, and it is tough to predict them in general. Further, integrating renewable energy source-based plants with the conventional plant is extremely difficult to operate and maintain. Operation of integrated power system is full of challenges and complications. To handle those complications and challenges, the GWO algorithm is suggested for solving the GS problem and thus obtain the optimal solution in integrated power systems by considering the reserve requirement, load balance, equality and inequality constraints.

The proposed system should be further tested on diverse test systems to evaluate its performance in solving a GS problem and the results should be compared. Computation results reveal that the proposed GWO method is efficient in attaining best solution in GS problem. Further, its performance is effectively established by comparing the result obtained by GWO with other traditional methods.