CITRIS researchers are developing engines that use 15 percent less fuel than gas engines and emit only 30 percent of the NOx of a typical diesel engine. Thus, they appear to combine the best of both engines. Except for one problem: temperature variations.
Shawn Newsam is developing a network of several dozen cameras that can
collect data and possibly analyze air particulates around the Central
Valley. The project could provide a quick, easily accessible way to
evaluate local air quality in real time.
Dissecting Sustainable
Development
Flexibility and optimization at all levels are the ultimate goals in service systems design and management. In designing a supply chain, firms are often faced with the competing demands of improved customer service and reduced cost. CITRIS researcher Max Shen has developed a model that incorporates supply chain-related costs while ensuring that certain service requirements are satisfied. His results suggest that significant service improvements can be achieved relative to the minimum cost solution at a relatively incremental cost.
Making a New Wireless Venue
An emerging class of digital video cameras provides unprecedented ability to zoom in and capture high-resolution video images. This capability is desirable in many applications from security to public relations.
It has been estimated that malicious code (viruses, worms, and Trojan horses) have caused over $75 billion in economic losses in the U.S. through 2007. As a result, continuous traffic monitoring and accurate detection of traffic anomalies and attacks are extremely critical for large network operators, as well as for enterprise networks that provide important services such as banking, law enforcement, and healthcare.
As part of its effort to achieve efficiency in is central plant and building operation, UC Merced Facilities Management administers an extensive control and monitoring system. This system deploys tens of thousands of control algorithms to continuously satisfy heating ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) requirements across campus with a minimum of energy consumption. Monitoring data from this system is the primary mechanism through which operational and energy performance goals are achieved and verified at the zone, equipment, building, or plant level.
A little-known problem threatens systems that deliver electric power to residential and commercial customers: the underground distribution cables that operate at 12,000 volts or higher will perform well for a few decades and then suddenly fail with a dramatic one-nanosecond arc.
Blast Protection of Bridges is a CITRIS project aimed at determining the response of long-span bridges and elevated freeways to blasts that occur on the roadway. Led by Professor Abolhassan Astaneh-Asl and funded by the NSF as well, researchers will establish how bridge responds to blast and how much damage can occur due to certain size explosives. Once that is understood, the engineers will develop technologies that can be used to minimize such damage and, more importantly, to prevent progressive and catastrophic collapse of the bridges.
Whenever a major earthquake occurs, there are inevitably buildings that collapse, often trapping people inside. A natural impulse is to rescue them, yet worldwide statistics indicate that for every person rescued from a collapsed structure, a rescuer dies in the attempt. Ideally, collapsed structure rescue training should be given to a broad range of emergency response personnel, in addition to the search-and-rescue robots being developing through CITRIS and other organizations.
Helping out those who help us
A UC Berkeley project known as FIRE—the Fire Information and Rescue Equipment technology system—will help increase the safety and efficiency of firefighting and other emergency first response activities. Fire accounts for more deaths in the United States than all other natural disasters combined and destroys more than $10 billion worth of property each year. Improved search and rescue and communication methods are a national priority.
Life-Saving Robots
The goal of this project is to develop field-suitable robotic technologies to assist first-responders in the aftermath of natural and/or man-made disasters. After an earthquake, for example, robots can provide a great deal of help to minimize the operational risks for rescuers, while at the same time increasing the chances to locate survivors quickly and save human lives.
The
Consumnes
River
is the last river without major dams on the western slope of the
Sierra Nevada
CITRIS researchers at UC Berkeley are exploring new ways to use sensors to monitor our infrastructure—including water and traffic. The Lagrangian Sensor project, led by Professor Alexandre Bayen, is developing new technologies for managing estuarial water systems like the Sacramento/San Joaquin Delta of
Northern California
Two-thirds of the
Sierra Nevada
precipitation is snow, much of which falls when the temperature is just below 0°C. Therefore, a few degrees increase in temperature will turn this snow into rain and also cause an earlier snowmelt. UC Merced professor Roger Bales using blended satellite and ground-based data to estimate the amount of mountain snow and thus, accurately predict the availability of water.
Managing
California
’s Water
Message from Acting Director Paul Wright
An interview with Professor of Engineering Roger Bales on measuring snowpack in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
CITRIS researchers are among those searching for the next big computing substrate.
With electronic identity theft on the rise, TRUST researchers are
fighting back with a growing arsenal of software and legal defenses.
Imagine an Internet connection that's 10,000 times faster. A group of
CITRIS researchers are developing the technology that will make that
goal a reality.
Construction is underway on CITRIS's new headquarters. Its Nanolab
Center is part of a coordinated investment in the nanotech
infrastructure of tomorrow.
From providing border surveillance to helping the elderly, how "smart dust" is going to revolutionize the future.
A new day is DAWNing for communications in rapidly changing environments like battlefields and emergency situations.
CITRIS’s Katrina Recovery Task Force (KRTF) is already playing an
important role in the efforts to rebuild areas devastated by the
hurricane.
New designs for CITRIS’s future headquarters make it more efficient,
affordable, and flexible--and the new nanofabrication facilities aren’t
too shabby, either.
A new manufacturing process developed by a CITRIS-affiliated researcher
is making an old but revolutionary technology affordable just in the
nick of time.
