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At least 937 records · Page 52

2009 Interstate 95 Express Phase 1A Survey

# 2009 Interstate 95 Express Phase 1A Survey The 2009 Phase 1A Survey focused on commuters using Interstate 95 express lanes between downtown Miami and the Golden Glades Interchange in Florida. Survey participants answered questions about their trip's purpose, frequency, and mode as well as demographics such as their age, race/ethnicity, and income. It also asked if and why or why not they had used Interstate 95 before and/or after the installation of two high-occupancy toll lanes, if they were satisfied with the upgrade, and about their related perceptions of safety. ## Data Collection Agency The survey was conducted by and for the Florida Department of Transportation. ## Survey Methodology The survey was conducted online in May 2009. ## Survey Records, Data, and Documentation Survey records include 9,156 participants.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

Perceived Costs and Benefits of ICON Science and Foundational Documents associated with “Integrated, Coordinated, Open, and Networked (ICON) Science to Advance the Geosciences: Introduction and Synthesis of a Special Collection of Commentary Articles"

This data package is associated with the publication "Integrated, Coordinated, Open, and Networked (ICON) Science to Advance the Geosciences: Introduction and Synthesis of a Special Collection of Commentary Articles" in Earth and Space Science (Goldman et al. 2022; https://doi.org/10.1029/2021EA002099). The manuscript is an introductory article for a special collection of commentary articles across 19 geoscience disciplines that explore the challenges and opportunities associated with the use of ICON science principles. These principles focus on research intentionally designed to be Integrated, Coordinated, Open, and Networked (ICON) with the goal of maximizing mutual benefit (among stakeholders) and cross-system transferability of science outcomes. This data package contains data, figures, and R scripts associated with the cost/benefit analysis presented in the manuscript. The writing teams involved in the special collection placed each letter of ICON on a plot with perceived cost on one axis and perceived benefit on the other to summarize their perceptions of pursuing each principle of ICON science. These data were subsequently quantified and analyzed. Files are saved as .csv, .R, and .pdf. This data package also contains (1) the public foundational and instructional documents that enabled the crowdsourced creation of the special collection; (2) file-level metadata (flmd) that lists each file in the data package with a description; (3) data dictionary (dd) that defines column headers that appear in csv files. Files are saved as .pdf and .csv.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

PrEP: Probability of Encounter between Ports of Entry A case study of the US-Mexico border

PrEP aims to explore the field of psychophysics as it applies to the movement of adversaries across international borders. This test experiment uses the US-Mexico border as a case study – beginning with certain assumptions regarding the adversary, the model utilizes environmental and population data to estimate risk perception, and predict routes that a smuggler may take. Additionally, I analyze the impact that destination-based attractive forces may have on agent movement. I found that these attractive forces may improve the validity of the model if they carry less influence that the repulsive forces.

45 MILITARY TECHNOLOGY, WEAPONRY, AND NATIONAL DEF↗

Decision Trees for Analysis of Strategies to Deter Limited Nuclear Use in a Generic Scenario

We assert that analysis of a decision tree model can reveal key insights for deterring limited nuclear use in a conventional conflict. To illustrate the method, we develop a decision analysis model to explore the choices an attacker would make and how they can be influenced by his perceptions of the defender’s capabilities and potential responses. Sensitivity analysis with the model can provide insights into strategies and actions the defender might take in order to influence the choices the attacker would make. This methodology is widely applicable and could provide insight into a variety of scenarios.

45 MILITARY TECHNOLOGY, WEAPONRY, AND NATIONAL DEF↗

Enhancing Reliability of the Weapons Material Waste Disposition Process in the Assembly/Disassembly Operations Facility

High quality weapons material waste dispositioning at Y-12 is crucial to the overall public perception of meeting the CNS government missions. Weapons material waste disposition requirements are an after-thought as perceived by Production personnel. Building waste dispositioning activities in the production system at the point of generation will increase the reliability of meeting requirements daily. The ultimate goal is to build in easy to understand processes at the point of generation in the production work without negatively impacting schedules. Measurements to evaluate sustainability of production processes and ensure reliable information will be suggested. Ultimately, this project is an effort to protect the environment by creating highly reliable weapons material waste dispositioning processes at the point of generation. Defining the process at the point of generation ultimately decreases variation and increases reliability of correctly dispositioning waste. Utilization of an effective and improved weapons material waste dispositioning process will ensure decrease in defective product dispositioning, decrease incorrect disposition of waste, increase set-up times for disposition work, decrease cost of production due to less down time and increase the percentage of waste dispositioning jobs completed in a timely manner.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗

2018 Community Commitment Plan Report [Poster]

Addressing the Greatest Challenges in Our Communities: Sandia National Laboratories (Sandia) is committed to being an informed, compassionate and contributing neighbor in our local communities. This commitment has been demonstrated throughout Sandia's history and is an enduring part of our future. New Mexico faces many challenges, including the highest childhood poverty rate in the United States. According to a recent community perception survey, the biggest issue facing Albuquerque is crime, followed by unemployment, and concerns that the educational system is poor. Lack of affordable housing and insufficient educational achievement are issues in the Bay Area near our Livermore site. In 2018, National Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia contributed $1.4M to non-profits and organizations that provide critical resources and services to address the greatest challenges in Sandia's communities.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗

Enhancing Power Plant Safety through Coupling Plant Simulators to Cyber Digital Architecture

There are differences in how cyber-attack, sabotage, or discrete component failure mechanisms manifest within power plants and what these events would look like within the control room from an operator's perspective. This research focuses on understanding how a cyber event would affect the operation of the plant, how an operator would perceive the event, and if the operator's actions based on those perceptions will allow him/her to maintain plant safety. This research is funded as part of Sandia's Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) program to develop scenarios with cyber induced failure of plant systems coupled with a generic pressurized water reactor plant training simulator. The cyber scenario s w ere developed separately and injected into the simulator operational state to simulate an attack. These scenarios will determine if Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) operators can 1) recognize that the control room indicators were presenting incorrect or erroneous information and 2) take appropriate actions to keep the plant safe. This will also provide the opportunity to assess the operator cognitive workload during such events and identify where improvements might be made. This paper will review results of a pilot study run with NPP operators to investigate performance under various cyber scenarios. The discussion will provide an overview of the approach, scenario selection, metrics captured, resulting insights into operator actions and plant response to multiple scenarios of the NPP system.

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗

Distributed Wind Resource Assessment Framework: Functional Requirements and Metrics for Performance and Reliability Modeling

The focus of the distributed wind resource assessment (DWRA) performance framework is to first clarify the key parameters that define the wind resource for any distributed wind turbine project and then describe the loss and uncertainty factors associated with long-term performance of wind turbine projects. Next it will identify and define the key parameters required to analyze the operational performance of a project. This framework could then be the foundation for understanding the predictability of the power and revenue from a project. Improving the predictability and reliability of wind power generation and operations will reduce costs and potentially establish a framework to attract new capital to the distributed wind industry sector. This report is the first part of a research effort to investigate the impact that improved resource assessment and energy estimation for distributed wind can have on consumer confidence, cost of capital, cost of ownership and operations, perception of financial risk, and levelized cost of energy.

17 WIND ENERGY↗

Report for 2.2.1 Task 3: Develop and Document an Advanced Human System Interface for the Generic Pressurized Water Reactor Simulator

The report explains the development of four new Operator Work Displays (OWDs). The work is performed for Idaho National Laboratory (INL) by the Institute for Energy Technology (IFE). The OWDs are implemented, and initially tested at the Generic Pressurized Water Reactor (gPWR) simulator in HAlden Man Machine LABoratory (HAMMLAB). The OWDs are designed to bridge the gap between large overview displays and detailed operator workstation displays. The report presents their design rationale, which stem from: human factors findings, industrial standards and guidelines and research into visual perception for computer displays. The report presents initial experiences using the OWDs, and topics for further work.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

Securing Vehicle Charging Infrastructure APR

Cybersecurity is essential for interoperable power systems and transportation infrastructure in the US. As the US transitions to transportation electrification, cyber attacks on vehicle charging could impact nearly all US critical infrastructure. This is a growing area of concern as more charging stations communicate to a range of entities (grid operators, vehicles, OEM vendors, etc.), as shown in Figure I.1.1.1. The research challenges are extensive and complicated because there are many end users, stakeholders, and software and equipment vendors. Poorly implemented electric vehicle supply equipment (EVSE) cybersecurity is a major risk to electric vehicle (EV) adoption because the political, social, and financial impact of cyberattacks—or public perception of such—ripples across the industry and has lasting and devastating effects. Unfortunately, there is no comprehensive EVSE cybersecurity approach and limited best practices have been adopted by the EV/EVSE industry. For this reason, there is an incomplete industry understanding of the attack surface, interconnected assets, and unsecured interfaces. Thus, comprehensive cybersecurity recommendations founded on sound research are necessary to secure EV charging infrastructure. This project is providing the automotive industry with a strong technical basis for securing this infrastructure by developing threat models, prioritizing technology gaps, and developing effective countermeasures. Specifically, the team is creating a cybersecurity threat model and performing a technical risk assessment of EVSE assets, so that automotive, charging, and utility stakeholders can better protect customers, vehicles, and power systems in the face of new cyber threats.

33 ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS↗

Comparing wall performance predicted from hygrothermal simulations to wall performance measured from environmental chamber experiments

To effectively mitigate prevailing perceptions of potential moisture risks in high-R wall assemblies, a comprehensive moisture durability assessment that incorporates BA team field evaluations, lab tests and simulations has been completed over the last couple years. In FY18, three stick-built walls were succumbed to typical Chicago weather in ORNL’s Heat, Air and Moisture chamber. The measured temperature, relative humidity and moisture content within these walls were compared to WUFI hygrothermal simulation results. In FY19, similar experiments and comparison to WUFI results were completed with two walls, a Structural Insulated Panel (SIP) based wall and a Concrete Masonry Unit (CMU) based wall. The following tasks were completed for these two walls: 1. Measure air permeance of each individual wall using ASTM E283 Standard Test Method. 2.Test walls in diffusion scenario as only moisture transport mechanism and compare measured transient temperature and relative humidity of select wall components to WUFI model results. Chicago summer and weather will be investigated. 3. Test walls in wetting event scenario and compare measured transient temperature and relative humidity of select wall components with Chicago summer weather to WUFI model results. 4. Test walls in diffusion/advection scenario. In addition to controlling outdoor chamber to match real outdoor weather, a pressure differential across the wall will be varied. Measured transient temperature and relative humidity of select wall components will be compared to WUFI model results. 5. Test walls in diffusion/advection with solar heating of cladding. In addition to the variables above, IR lamps will be used to heat the cladding on a diurnal cycle. Measured transient OSB MC and temperature will be compared to WUFI model results. This report documents the experimental method, results and comparison of the measured experimental hygrothermal performance of the two walls to simulations results.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Smart technologies enable homes to be efficient and interactive with the grid

Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers compare two different approaches to test how advanced, energy-efficient building technologies such as smart thermostats, heat pump water heaters, and advanced heat pump HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) can be optimized within a home and connected at a neighborhood-scale load to a community microgrid in the Alabama Power Smart Neighborhood located in Hoover. Working with Southern Company and Alabama Power, ORNL researchers are pioneering that future where smart homes and smart neighborhoods can benefit both homeowners and utilities, by reducing energy consumption by 44% and peak demand by 34%.This project is one of two neighborhoods in the U.S Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Connected Neighborhood project, supported by Building Technologies Office , where ORNL researchers leverages DOE investment in micro-grids and responsive, flexible building loads research to improve grid reliability – a goal of DOE’s Grid-interactive Efficient Buildings (GEB) Initiative. Researchers control the neighborhood and microgrid to enable utilities achieve their desired load and cost profiles while ensuring the comfort of homeowners in the Smart Neighborhood. This transactive control approach maximizes the utilization of technical resources of the microgrid and controllable loads, while reducing costs for both the homeowners and Alabama Power. These tests partially seek to determine a more precise range of tolerance with respect to occupant comfort as researchers work to facilitate customer acceptance and perception of new building technologies that enable energy savings.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

Securing Vehicle Charging Infrastructure

As the US electrifies the transportation sector, cyber attacks targeting vehicle charging could bring consequences to electrical system infrastructure. This is a growing area of concern as charging stations increase power delivery and must communicate to a range of entities to authorize charging, sequence the charging process, and manage load (grid operators, vehicles, OEM vendors, charging network operators, etc.). The research challenges are numerous and are complicated because there are many end users, stakeholders, and software and equipment vendors interests involved. Poorly implemented electric vehicle supply equipment (EVSE), electric vehicle (EV), or grid communication system cybersecurity could be a significant risk to EV adoption because the political, social, and financial impact of cyberattacks - or public perception of such - ripples across the industry and has lasting and devastating effects. Unfortunately, there is no comprehensive EVSE cybersecurity approach and limited best practices have been adopted by the EV/EVSE industry. There is an incomplete industry understanding of the attack surface, interconnected assets, and unsecured interfaces. Thus, comprehensive cybersecurity recommendations founded on sound research are necessary to secure EV charging infrastructure. This project is providing the power, security, and automotive industry with a strong technical basis for securing this infrastructure by developing threat models, determining technology gaps, and identifying or developing effective countermeasures. Specifically, the team is creating a cybersecurity threat model and performing a technical risk assessment of EVSE assets, so that automotive, charging, and utility stakeholders can better protect customers, vehicles, and power systems in the face of new cyber threats.

33 ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS↗

Boosting Energy Efficiency of Heterogeneous Connected Automated Vehicle (CAV) Fleets via Anticipative and Cooperative Vehicle Guidance

In 2017, the Department of Energy funded a team at Clemson University and Argonne National Laboratory to develop collaborative perception and anticipative/predictive vehicle guidance schemes for Connected and Automated Vehicles (CAVs) and to quantify the energy saving potential of this technology in large scale traffic microsimulations at different levels of technology penetration and also experimentally. The project goal was demonstrating up to a 10% energy saving potential from different aspects of the implementation with a focus on reducing unnecessary braking events by anticipatory speed and lane selection. This project introduced novel anticipative car following and lane selection schemes for Connected and Automated Vehicles (CAVs). Our control schemes benefited from prediction of human driver behavior, information exchange between CAVs, and sometimes from collaboration to save energy, reduce braking events, and harmonize traffic. The energy savings was first demonstrated by traffic micro-simulations and then via a novel Vehicle-In-the-Loop (VIL) experimental testbed.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

Energy Storage Financing: Performance Impacts on Project Financing

Understanding performance is the key to risk management in energy storage project financing. Technical performance underlies both capital and operating costs, directly impacting the system's economic performance Since project development is an exercise in risk management, financing costs are the clearest view into how lenders' perceive a project's riskiness. Addressing this perception is the challenge facing the energy storage industry today. Growth in the early solar market was hindered until OEMs and project developers used verifiable performance to allay lenders' apprehension about the long-term viability of those projects. The energy storage industry is similarly laying the groundwork for sustained growth through better technical Standards and best practices. However, the storage industry remains far more complex than other markets, leading lenders to need better data, analytical tools, and performance metrics to invest not only to maximize returns, but also safely--through incorporating more precise performance metrics into the project's documents.

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗

Technical Issues in the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) Ratification Debate: A 20 Year Retrospective

Two decades after the U.S. Senate declined in 1999 to give its consent to ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), the treaty remains in legal and political limbo. Legally, the treaty cannot enter into force without U.S. ratification. However, the Senate’s rejection does not strip the treaty of its force as an element of customary international law or alter the will of other signatories to see it enter into force. Politically, the debate over the virtues and flaws of the treaty remains as strong as ever, with some CTBT advocates pushing energetically for U.S. re-review while some opponents seek ways to “un-sign” the treaty. Meanwhile, despite the Senate’s rejection of the treaty, the United States acts in a manner consistent with its main obligations by maintaining a moratorium on explosive nuclear testing and providing financial support (as well as technical expertise) to the CTBT Organization (CTBTO)—in particular the CTBTO’s International Monitoring System (IMS). The CTBT may well remain in such limbo for a long time to come, unless some catalytic event comes along to re-shape national perceptions and priorities, one way or the other. The treaty’s future, whatever it might be, will be determined in part by how much perspectives might have changed in light of interim developments. Our purpose is to shed light on some of those developments and to assess their relevance. The 1999 ratification debate addressed a large number of issues. Rejection was driven by various policy and technical judgments. The purpose of this paper is to re-examine those technical judgments in light of what has been learned over the following two decades. On some technical matters, there was explicit recognition of extant uncertainties, as well as a conviction and hope that time would dispel them. To be doubly clear, our purpose is not to recommend a way forward on CTBT ratification. The policy judgments of 1999 and 2020 are beyond the scope of this paper. This technical re-examination proceeds as follows. It begins with a short background section to introduce the key technical matters in discussion in the U.S. ratification process. Then it moves systematically through each of those topics with a review of relevant background information, a discussion of key points in debate, an analysis of subsequent experience, and a current assessment. The historical analysis draws on many sources including the primary documents of the Congressional debate, the official article-by-article interpretation by the Department of State, and the statements of key players in the process. We also relied on key technical reports and publications by subject matter experts that have addressed in more detail many of the issues in our focus. These sources include the 2002 and 2012 reports of the National Academy of Sciences as well as publications by senior technical staff of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) who were actively involved in the ratification debate, including then-Laboratory Director Bruce Tarter. We also conducted several interviews with government officials from the 1990s, past laboratory directors, and other members of the scientific community. But, except where individuals are specifically cited by name, the judgments offered here are our own and should not be attributed to any other individual or to LLNL as such.

98 NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT, SAFEGUARDS, AND PHYSICAL P↗

The Distribution of U.S. Electric Utility Revenue Decoupling Rate Impacts from 2005 to 2017

Investments in energy efficiency and distributed generation reduce electric utility retail sales. Since electric utilities have historically collected a large portion of revenues from volumetric energy rates (¢/kWh), such reductions in sales can impact the utility’s ability to sufficiently recover non-production costs. Regulatory mechanisms that “decouple” utility revenues from sales were implemented to help make the utility indifferent to energy efficiency and distributed generation by ensuring the utility is able to collect an allowed level of revenue each year regardless of its sales. However, noticeable and consistent surcharges over time may create the perception of an incorrectly designed or implemented decoupling mechanism. To date, there are limited quantitative analyses of the rate adjustments due to decoupling mechanisms implemented among U.S. electric utilities (see Morgan, 2013). Given the recent rapid increase in distributed energy resource (DER) adoption in some states and utility service territories, consumers may be facing more prevalent and ongoing decoupling surcharges. This, in turn, may undermine stakeholder support for implementation of decoupling mechanisms and the associated utility support for energy efficiency and DERs. To determine the size of retail rate adjustments associated with decoupling mechanisms and whether they have a tendency towards bill surcharges or credits, we analyzed a large dataset of historical annual decoupling rate adjustments for 21 electric utilities in 11 states between 2005 and 2017. We found that decoupling mechanisms adjusted rates, both up and down, between rate cases, and the majority of those adjustments (54 percent) are small (within a range of -1 to 1 percent). However, we also found that 64 percent of the rate adjustment observations in our sample showed a positive rate adjustment. Importantly, once a surcharge is applied there is an 86 percent chance that there will be a surcharge in the next year as well. While our analysis did not seek to understand the root causes for such results, some possible factors include the accuracy of revenue requirement forecasts, emerging structural changes in customer use and production of energy, misaligned financial motivation, and other factors that influence sales (e.g., economic recession).

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗

U.S. and Allied Cyber Security Cooperation in the Indo-Pacific (Workshop Summary)

On March 30, 31, and April 1, 2021, the Center for Global Security Research (CGSR) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) hosted a workshop titled "U.S. and allied Cyber Security Cooperation in the Indo-Pacific". This session brought together participants drawn across the policy, military, and private sector in the United States and among allied countries in Europe and the Indo-Pacific. The workshop evaluated threat perceptions, assessed cyber power in a regional context, and explored opportunities for building capacity and trust with allies, partners, and the private sector. The region's cyber threat landscape is marked by increasing malicious activity, with threats persistent and ever-growing. Grounded by this strategic reality, the workshop advocated for 1) a concerted push into the arena of norm setting from the bottom up, 2) an agreed metric by which to assess progress, and 3) the creation of future lines of collaborative effort for the United States and its allies to ensure an open, interoperable, and secure internet.

45 MILITARY TECHNOLOGY, WEAPONRY, AND NATIONAL DEF↗