This book collects 5 keynote and 15 topic lectures presented at the 2nd European Conference on Earthquake Engineering and Seismology (2ECEES), held in Istanbul, Turkey, from August 24 to 29, 2014. The conference was organized by the Turkish Earthquake Foundation - Earthquake Engineering Committee and Prime Ministry, Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency under the auspices of the European…
This short open access book investigates the role of renewable energy in East Africa to provide policy-relevant inputs for the achievement of a cost-effective electrification process in the region. For each country, the authors review the current situation in the domestic power sector, adopt a GIS-based approach to plot renewable energy resources potential, and review currently planned projects…
This book focuses on the global cycles of energy, water and carbon, which are not only the essentials of our main energy carriers, the fossil fuels, but are also the building blocks of life. The book offers an overview of the basic scientific facts and relationships that are needed to understand today’s energy generation and use, how they relate to global climate, the water cycle and other re…
The open access book covers a large class of nonlinear systems with many practical engineering applications. The approach is based on the extension of linear systems theory using the Volterra series. In contrast to the few existing treatments, our approach highlights the algebraic structure underlying such systems and is based on Schwartz’s distributions (rather than functions). The use of di…
This open access book directs attention to the safety implications of disruptive, sustainability-driven changes in sociotechnical systems resulting from climate-change considerations in high-risk industries. It addresses not only the dismantling of currently prevalent systems and structures and the achievement of a stable future state but also the management of processes for establishing new pr…
This open access book presents outstanding doctoral dissertations in Information Technology from the Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering, Politecnico di Milano, Italy. Information Technology has always been highly interdisciplinary, as many aspects have to be considered in IT systems. The doctoral studies program in IT at Politecnico di Milano emphasizes this interdiscipli…
This open access book addresses relationships that develop from the complex set of legislative, regulatory, and institutional arrangements that arise in the governance of high-hazard industries, especially those connected with safety. It analyses the difference in practices between high-hazard sectors such as nuclear power, chemical processing, and transport with those in the finance and health…
This open access book addresses the idea that there are two ways to go about achieving a safe working environment. The text challenges the prevailing notion that compliance with a rule system, imposed from the top of an organization and designed to anticipate possible hazards in system operation, is really incompatible with the idea that the professional expertise of front-line workers is what …
This open access book provides an analytical and critical outlook, by leading scholars, of the impact of various trends in the quality of collaboration and resulting safety outcomes that arise from the evolution of traditional integrated production within a single firm into a complex web of partnerships and supply chains. In the face of increasing fragmentation within industrial production and …
This open access book explores the role visual tools and graphical models play in safety management. It explains the importance of visualising safety, for teaching concepts, communicating ideas to peers, and raising awareness of potential threats through posters. Visualising Safety, an Exploration introduces graphical models which have been influential in promoting ideas of safety, and impac…