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Reducing the environmental impact of porcelain tile production while maintaining cost-effectiveness is challenging. This work introduced a novel modeling approach for optimizing a standard composition range comprising kaolinite (15-38 wt.%), illite (0-20 wt.%), quartz (20-40 wt.%), and feldspar (20-45 wt.%) to establish a robust composition interval for porcelain stoneware tiles. The proposed study considers several factors, such as composition impact on the manufacturing sequence, production costs, and CO2 emission.Aflowsheet simulation databasewas generated by coupling the Dyssol framework with MATLAB. This study investigated the influence of rawmaterial compositionwithin the process sequence, the total CO2 emissions, and production costs within the contexts of Spain and Brazil, two of the top five global producers. Granules with a higher proportion of talc and illite exhibit reduced moisture content after spray drying, and these combinations have lower green body porosity after compaction. The addition of talc allowed for decreased porosity content after compaction reduced firing temperature, and lowered costs and CO2 emissions despite the higher prices associated with talc. The proposed simulation methodology offers a powerful decision-making tool for optimizing raw material composition tominimize cost and CO2 emissions in the porcelain tile production. This methodology represents an early stride toward integrating digital twin methodologies within the ceramic tile sector, facilitating improved process regulation, and promoting the adoption of digital technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growing importance of Territorial Digital Twins (TDT) in the built environment is becoming increasingly apparent. The TDT can play a crucial role in helping governments make informed decisions based on a thorough understanding and interpretation of the evolution of both the physical territory and its urban, social, and economic development. This study develops the Territorial Digital Twin of Guadalajara (Spain), within the knowledge domain of urban planning and architectural and natural heritage. It allows the analysis of the evolution of the city, using the variable time, taking as origin an unpublished flight of Guadalajara from 1934. To be able to count on the widest possible time span, it is essential to recover the unpublished documentation that remains in historical archives. In this sense, aerial images have proved to be invaluable source for the recovery of historical heritage and territorial analysis. During the study, different techniques of image georectification have been combined, and a historical vector graphic base with topology has been created, plus an associated database accompanied by files with town planning and heritage information. As a result, the changes produced in the urban planning of the city are analysed and shown on the open-source website developed for the consultation of Territorial Digital Twin by all the stakeholders (collectivity, public bodies, university, investigation bodies, etc). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the H2020 European project ASHVIN "Assistants for Healthy, Safe, and Productive Virtual Construction Design, Operation & Maintenance using a Digital Twin", a set of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and Performance Indicators (PIs) to plan and control productive, resource efficient, and safe maintenance are being developed for transport infrastructure. This paper is presenting PIs and KPIs for the assessment and monitoring of the following aspects: Productivity, Resource Efficiency, Cost, Health & Safety during the operational life cycle stage, which is mainly focusing on the inspection and maintenance planning. Quantifiable and measurable PIs and KPIs are proposed and applied on two demonstration projects, highway bridge in Spain and airport runway in Croatia, as part of transportation infrastructure. Proposed PIs and KPIs are integrated into digital twins of the analyzed assets and into decision making tools for risk based maintenance planning. This paper presents the overview of the proposed digital PIs and KPIs applied on two demonstration projects and the integration into decision support tools for efficient and sustainable maintenance planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Featured Application: this work offers methods for the quantification of the deformation in Archaeoseismological scenarios using drone-based high-resolution 3D models. This study deals with the morphometric characterization and quantification of earthquake damage in the ancient Roman city of Baelo Claudia in South Spain (Gibraltar Arc) by means of the use of 3D modelling from drone imagery. Baelo Claudia is a world-renowned archaeological site recording recurrent earthquake destruction during the first and third centuries AD. The first earthquake destroyed the lower littoral zone of the city, allowing its reconstruction from the year c. 60–70 CE, but the second earthquake in 365–390 CE led to the complete destruction of the renewed city and its eventual abandonment. This second earthquake imprinted important deformations in the main monumental zone of the city, including the basilica temples, macellum, city walls, aqueducts and funerary monuments, as well as in the main paved zones of the city. This is the case for the Forum, Decumanus and Cardos, which show a variety of folds, pop-up structures, conjugate fractures and impact marks susceptible to be measured in a 3D format. The current study presents detailed (up to 3 mm/pixel) surface models of iconic monuments within the city. The 3D models were obtained by means of serial orthophotos taken with a UAV Mavic Pro 2 (DJI) Drone device equipped with a 20 mpx camera and a 1" CMOS sensor. Each individual image was captured in a geo-referenced jpg format and processed with the Agisoft Metashape Professional software®. Depending on the measured monument, the final images consisted of 250 to 700 photographs clustered by 50,000 to 150,000 tie points. In all studied items (Decumanus, city walls and bath dish), we follow the same workflow of analysis: (1) alignment of photos with support points; (2) building a dense cloud of points; (3) creation of the surface texture; (4) creation of the Digital Elevation Model (DEM); (5) creation of the orthomosaic; and finally, (6) the building of the high-quality 3D tiled surface models. The obtained models allow the geometric quantification of earthquake deformations (displacements, amplitudes, orientation, etc.) in a GIS-based 3D environment suitable to quantify oriented damage of seismic origin. In a complementary way, these 3D models deserve to be considered for their potential role as digital seismoscopes of ancient archaeological sites and/or heritage buildings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mathematical modeling has been fundamental to achieving near real-time accurate forecasts of the spread of COVID-19. Similarly, the design of non-pharmaceutical interventions has played a key role in the application of policies to contain the spread. However, there is less work done regarding quantitative approaches to characterize the impact of each intervention, which can greatly vary depending on the culture, region, and specific circumstances of the population under consideration. In this work, we develop a high-resolution, data-driven agent-based model of the spread of COVID-19 among the population in five Spanish cities. These populations synthesize multiple data sources that summarize the main interaction environments leading to potential contacts. We simulate the spreading of COVID-19 in these cities and study the effect of several non-pharmaceutical interventions. We illustrate the potential of our approach through a case study and derive the impact of the most relevant interventions through scenarios where they are suppressed. Our framework constitutes a first tool to simulate different intervention scenarios for decision-making., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2023 Rodríguez, Aleta and Moreno.)