In this paper, we proposed to use the Efficient Indoor Thermal Time Constant (EITTC) to characterize the indoor thermal response in old buildings. Accordingly, a low cost, energy-efficient, wide-applicable indoor thermal modeling solution is developed by combining Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) and Artificial Neural Network (ANN). Experiments on both prototype and building room showed consistent...

A hybrid Photovoltaic/Thermal (PV/T) solar system integrates photovoltaic and solar thermal technologies into one single solar energy device, with dual generation of electricity and heat energy. The aim of the present study is to evaluate the potential for introduction of the PV/T technology into Northern China. For this purpose, outdoor experiments were conducted on a prototype of a PV/T water...

The ‘wind-rain’ house has a courtyard with glazed roof, which allows more direct sunlight to come into indoor spaces during the winter. The glazed roof can be partially opened or closed and automatically controlled to provide natural ventilation in order to adjust for indoor thermal conditions and the roof area can be shaded by reflective insulation materials during the summer. Two field studie...

Infrared Thermography (IT) is an imaging technology aimed at the non-invasive measurement of the temperature distribution of the observed object. The capability to capture the temperature map of an object by an imaging device, makes IT an effective solution within Wind Tunnels systems, because it avoids the undesired drawbacks which are typically raised by intrusive diagnostics, like the altera...

With the process of urbanization, a large number of residential quarters, which is the main dwelling form in the urban area of Beijing, have been developed in last three decades to accommodate the rising population. In the context of intensification of urban heat island (UHI), the potential degradation of the thermal environment of residential quarters can give rise to a variety of problems aff...

Environmental matters are more complicated. Sustainability of environment requires an integrated approach to decisions making, planning, and management. Therefore, there is a need for a professional and systematic environmental management approach to reducing the consumption of resources. This approach is generally lacking in most universities, and therefore achievement of sustainability become...

Current character extraction systems for scene images are not robust for most real-world applications. In contrast, the system present here achieves robust performance by using morphological segmentation. This paper describes a new morphological segmentation algorithm { Di erential Top-hats (DTT). In addition, a complete system for extraction of characters from color scene images is presented. ...

296-220 Abstract In this paper we present a study of the comparison of the performance of content-based image retrieval systems based on structure [1] with those based on histogram and texture analysis methods, where retrieval is concerned with locating images containing manmade objects. The advantage of using structure in such queries is demonstrated by analyzing an image database containing m...