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Overview: There is a growing need to develop age-friendly communities to meet the challenges seniors face as they age (Cerda and Bernier, 2013). By the year 2050, the population will be comprised of a greater proportion of older people (aged 60 and over) than children (aged 0 to 14) for the first time in human history (Plouffe and Kalache, 2010). The World Health Organization (WHO) is trying to encourage cities to become more age-friendly and has identified eight key themes, relating to a city’s structures, environment, services and policies, which are conducive to a community that promotes active aging (WHO, 2007a). Although active aging is a complex concept and extends beyond solely ensuring that seniors remain physically active, designing neighbourhoods that promote mobility is critical since many seniors want to “age in place” (Smith, 2009). Seniors that experience fewer limitations on their mobility maintain a stronger sense of independence and control over their lives (Hodge, 2008). Since 2012, the City of Kingston has been engaged in the process of becoming classified as an age-friendly city (City of Kingston, 2012). The City’s commitment to this initiative provided the rationale for conducting age-friendly research in Kingston. Specifically, this research sought to examine the age-friendly cities concept, with an explicit focus on those age-friendly features that influence mobility. According to Hodge (2008) the primary factor influencing mobility for seniors is the availability and accessibility of transportation, whether by foot, public transit, a personal vehicle or another mode of transportation. From the eight themes identified by the WHO, the topics of “Outdoor spaces and buildings” and “Transportation” are two topics closely linked to this idea that the physical environment influences an individual’s ease of mobility (WHO, 2007a). Report Objective: The objective of this report was to investigate how two suburban developments in Kingston, Ontario promote mobility for seniors by assessing and comparing the age-friendliness of the pedestrian environment and existing public transportation infrastructure and services. The two suburban developments selected were the recently developed Walnut Grove, an ‘adult-lifestyle community’, and Bayridge West, an older suburban development. These developments share the commonality of possessing a high proportion of older adults (aged 55+) compared to other areas in the City, and differ in terms of their built form. In addition to comparing the age-friendliness of these two suburban developments, this report also examined whether the weaknesses uncovered through the analyses of these sites were city-wide problems, or site-specific. Methods: This report used the comparative case study approach (Yin, 2014) to compare the age-friendliness of these two sites. The primary method of data collection involved conducting field observations using a comprehensive evaluation tool to assess different age-friendly attributes of the pedestrian environment and public transportation infrastructure and services. Field observations were conducted over four data collection periods in order to consider time-of-day and seasonal variations. Two rounds of document reviews were also conducted. Round One examined whether the shortfalls observed within the two suburban developments were city-wide challenges or site-specific problems, while Round Two examined the current commitments of the City to plan for age-friendly communities with respect to the built environment and public transportation. Key Findings and Recommendations: Bayridge West scored considerably better than Walnut Grove in terms of the public transportation theme, whereas the difference was much smaller in terms of the pedestrian environment. The first document review revealed considerable correspondence between the results of the field analyses and the problems identified by focus group participants for the City of Kingston in general. The second document review found that the City has various action-based and policy-based commitments, along with strategies and visions, for creating a more age-friendly city. However, these current commitments do not address all of the shortfalls identified through this research. As such, four recommendations are proposed for helping the City of Kingston achieve its goal of creating age-friendly communities: 1. Conduct an accessibility survey to address the observation of insufficient sidewalk widths. 2. Install bus shelters with benches, route information and lighting. 3. Investigate the feasibility of installing audible traffic signals at existing intersections. 4. Conduct age-friendly evaluation surveys throughout the city.

Bidirectional DC-DC converters are widely used in different applications such as energy storage systems, Electric Vehicles (EVs), UPS, etc. In particular, future EVs require bidirectional power flow in order to integrate energy storage units into smart grids. These bidirectional power converters provide Grid to Vehicle (V2G)/ Vehicle to Grid (G2V) power flow capability for future EVs. Generally, there are two control loops used for bidirectional DC-DC converters: The inner current loop and The outer loop. The control of DAB converters used in EVs are proved to be challenging due to the wide range of operating conditions and non-linear behavior of the converter. In this thesis, the precise mathematical model of the converter is derived and non-linear control schemes are proposed for the control system of bidirectional DC-DC converters based on the derived model. The proposed inner current control technique is developed based on a novel Geometric-Sequence Control (GSC) approach. The proposed control technique offers significantly improved performance as compared to one for conventional control approaches. The proposed technique utilizes a simple control algorithm which saves on the computational resources. Therefore, it has higher reliability, which is essential in this application. Although, the proposed control technique is based on the mathematical model of the converter, its robustness against parameter uncertainties is proven. Three different control modes for charging the traction batteries in EVs are investigated in this thesis: the voltage mode control, the current mode control, and the power mode control. The outer loop control is determined by each of the three control modes. The structure of the outer control loop provides the current reference for the inner current loop. Comprehensive computer simulations have been conducted in order to evaluate the performance of the proposed control methods. In addition, the proposed control have been verified on a 3.3 kW experimental prototype. Simulation and experimental results show the superior performance of the proposed control techniques over the conventional ones.

We present the first synthesis of global peatland extent through the last glacial cycle (130 ka) based on >975 detailed stratigraphic descriptions from exposures, soil pits, and sediment cores. Buried peats are defined as organic-rich sediments overlain by mineral sediments. Also included are deposits rich in wetland macrofossils indicated a local peatland environment. The dataset includes location (lat/long), chronologic information (when available), a description of the buried peat sediment, overlying and underlying sediments, whether geochemical information is available, and the original references.

Instead of using a dedicated backup power source to fulfill the energy needs of buildings during contingencies, a reward mechanism for providing reliability-as-a-service (RaaS) via electric vehicles (EVs) is proposed in this study. The proposed positive reward mechanism comprises an upfront reward portion (paid upon registering) and a per-event reward portion (paid based on the amount of energy used). Similarly, a negative reward is applied to the registered EV owners not complying with their contracts. In addition, a score updating mechanism is proposed to incentivize EVs following their contracts and penalize the violating EVs. The score will be decisive during events when more EVs are available than the required energy. The use of EVs for providing RaaS is compared with two commonly used technologies for backup power, i.e., diesel generator and battery storage. Simulations have shown that the proposed scheme can significantly save the cost for building operators/owners while providing revenues for EV owners. The fairness in incentive allocation versus the amount of used energy is also demonstrated.

A comprehensive framework is presented for the integration of electrified transportation and renewable energy through repurposing batteries of plug-in electric vehicles towards a sustainable energy future. The framework considers future market penetration scenarios of plug-in electric vehicles, availability of batteries at their vehicular end of life, and the storage capacity required to generate base-load wind power in the region of study. The objective is to develop a model that can be used as a policy tool to investigate how different scenarios and pertinent parameters can effectively meet the challenges of sustainability in the energy and transportation sectors when the ultimate goal is to simultaneously displace fossil fuels with new generation of low-cost intermittent renewable energy. A sample case study is performed for Canada to investigate and verify the performance of the model. The analysis shows that the proposed approach can further improve the energy sustainability performance of Canada in 2050 by 1.65–4.11%, depending on the confidence level and in addition to electrification of transportation. In the framework, a statistical algorithm is developed to calculate the capacity of an energy storage system required for delivering base-load electricity for a wind farm in the future electric grids. The algorithm contributes towards the goal of utilizing low- cost intermittent wind energy to base-load power generation in the future electric grids. The introduced algorithm presents three methods to perform the sizing calculations each representing a scenario associated with the stages of the wind energy industry. The results of the studied case are applied to estimate the cost of wind energy to produce rated power at different confidence levels, which show cost-effectiveness and less intermittency on the power systems allowing for larger penetrations of renewables. Advanced statistical methods are used to more accurately characterize the operational wind power output versus manufacturer’s power curve. This is essential for effective integration of wind power into the power systems. Four parametric and nonparametric models are applied to estimate the power curve of wind turbines based on the available operational wind power data. The results of this study suggest that the penalized spline regression method presents a better performance over the other analyzed methods. Finally, an experimental testing is performed in laboratory to show the proof of concept of the capacity degradation of used batteries of plug-in electric vehicles in stationary applications using a 25 kWh repurposed energy storage system obtained from a taxi fleet in their “as-is” condition. The proposed comprehensive framework herein presents an approach leading to a sustainable transportation system by providing low-cost renewable energy, and can be used as a gold standard to compare other policies like hydrogen energy technologies.

The growth in bitumen and synthetic crude oil (SCO) production in the Canadian oil sands industry has superseded pipeline capacity growth in recent years, leading to the increased interest in the transport of crude oil by rail to desired markets. However, the specific techno-economic parameters that facilitate increased competitiveness of either transportation mode against the other is seldom addressed in the existing literature. This paper involves the development of a rail and pipeline techno-economic transport model, which is used to ascertain the transportation cost of both options for a market distance range of 1-3000 km and a production scale of 100,000-750,000 barrels per day (bpd). The transportation cost for either option is highly sensitive to the market distance, transportation scale and crude grade being transported; however, pipelines are generally more competitive for large transportation scales, while the cost-effectiveness of rail transport is realized particularly at smaller transportation scales. In general, pipelines are cost efficient for the transportation of crude oil in the majority of scenarios investigated. Rail can be more economical than pipeline under certain conditions. The use of insulated rail cars for the transport of raw bitumen is the area with greatest potential for cost competitiveness against pipelines.