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MARCH 2016 ISSUE 53
The Evolution of Technology to Address the New Business Needs in the Payments Industry page 22
An Automated Procedure for Temperature Extraction from Medical Thermal Images
Results from the Questionnaire on Ethics in the Engineering Profession page 28
page 14
IMPORTANCE OF RETRO-FITTING page 08
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MARCH 2016 ISSUE 53
www.coe.org.mt
Contents 03 04 From the Editor
08
From the President
22
Importance of Retro-fitting
14
Cover Image
An Automated Procedure for Temperature Extraction from Medical Thermal Images
28
The Evolution of Technology to Address the New Business Needs in the Payments Industry
Results from the Questionnaire on Ethics in the Engineering Profession Thermal Imaging for Building Diagnostics
18
40
Malta Engineering Excellence Awards 2015
44
46
IEEE Malta Section Robot Wars 2015
AGM 2016: Elected Candidates Profile
Editor
Dr. Inġġ. Brian Azzopardi Eur. Ing.
An infrared camera can help you quickly see and find the sources of energy efficiencies, destructive water damage, and structural issues so you can help customers make informed decisions on needed repairs that can help them save energy and stay more comfortable.
IEEE Malta Section Student Branch in Science in the City 2015
48
The New CoE Council
Editorial Board
Inġ. Norman Zammit Eur. Ing. Inġġ. Pierre Ciantar Prof. Dr. Inġ. Robert Ghirlando
Chamber of Engineers, Professional Centre, Sliema Road,Gzira, GZR 1633, Malta
Email: info@coe.org.mt Web: www.coe.org.mt
© Chamber of Engineers 2014. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the Chamber of Engineers - Malta. Opinions expressed in Engineering Today are not necessarily those of the Chamber of Engineers - Malta. All care has been taken to ensure truth and accuracy, but the Editorial Board cannot be held responsible for errors or omissions in the articles, pictographs or illustrations. Design by: Printing: Print It Ltd. |
Distribution: Maltapost Plc.
MARCH 2016 ISSUE 53
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From the Editor Dear Readers, The Engineering Today Magazine is renowned for its semitechnical articles featuring on a vast range of engineering fields, applications and practices. This issue is certainly celebrating this mix and colourful engineering world in energy, biomedical, business, ethics and robots. We are constantly looking forward to receiving articles, book reviews and social articles. Our distribution is now over 1000 prints locally and in Europe. Firstly, I would like to invite you to read our President’s address in this issue for the latest Chamber of Engineers (CoE) council activities which clearly exhibit council commitment towards our engineering profession. In this issue, the first article exhibits the challenges and opportunities of retro-fitting for energy efficiency. It is based on an interesting energy utilisation study at St. Vincent De Paul Hospital which had a monitoring period of 9 months. Through simulation analysis of hybrid solutions, Inġ. Patrick Spiteri Staines estimates a 64% energy reduction within the whole hospital. The second article features a typical example of multidisciplinary collaboration in engineering for the good of our community. Entitled, “An Automated Procedure for Temperature Extraction from Medical Thermal Images” and led by Jean Gauci with his collaborators from the University of Malta Centre for Biomedical Cybernetics, Faculty of Health Sciences, Faculty of Medicine and Surgery and Faculty of Health Sciences in Staffordshire presents a method for the automatic segmentation and temperature extraction of a total of 44 regions from thermal images of the hands, feet and shins.
In the third article, by Inġ. David Muscat, the reinvented online payment solutions and the introduction of innovative companies addressing these new requirements are reviewed including an instant, secure and global method of performing peer-to-peer payments and a completely cash-less society. Our fourth article features the CoE Ethics committee work on a recent survey in the engineering profession. I encourage you to have a look at some of the possibly surprising results and also the qualitative feedback received. In this issue, the 2015 Malta Engineering Excellence Awards (MEEA) is covered. We offer a summary and photo collage of the event to refresh the memories of those who experienced it. I would personally like to congratulate all the awards recipients and well done to the organisers. In the Social section, we also have two columns by the IEEE Malta Section covering Science in the City 2015 and Robot Wars. As this is the first issue of this year, I want to express best wishes to the newly appointed Council, whose responsibilities are listed at the end of this issue together with bios of the newly elected candidates.
Dr Inġ. Brian Azzopardi Eur. Ing. The Editor, Engineering Today, Chamber of Engineers
From the President Dear Colleagues, Although this edition of our publication is being issued after the Annual General Meeting that is to be held on the 26th of February 2016 as required by the statute, due to the publishing requirements, I am preparing this address before the AGM. Nevertheless once again this year the number of nominations for Council was less than the required members to be elected and hence the candidates were uncontested and automatically confirmed on the Council. I want to personally thank Prof. Dr. Ing. Paul Micallef for his past service in the Chamber Council especially these last two years where he had occupied the post of Secretary for International Affairs. Paul brought a wealth of knowledge and experience from the International sphere but this year decided that he would not contest for re-election onto the Council. However, I am sure that Paul shall still be of support to the Chamber when needed and has confirmed his continued participation in the CPD committee of the Chamber. In this address I want to give an overview of the work carried out by the Chamber in this last year. Amendments to the Engineering Act Earlier in 2015 the European Commission issued an EU pilot (EU Pilot is a scheme designed to resolve compliance problems without having to resort to infringement proceedings) regarding alleged infringements arising from the Engineering Profession Act (Chap 321) and the Periti Act (Chap 390). The Chamber Council had various exchange of communications and meetings with the Engineering Board and with the Director from the Office of the Permanent Secretary - Policy Development Directorate within the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure. The main issues concerned the definition of ‘Partnership of warrant holders’ and the issue of the power given to the Hon. Minister set tariffs at his discretion. These were being considered, by the EU Commission, as infringements and therefore barriers to the concept of free trade with the EU. Following consultations with the Attorney General, the reply sent to the Commission made the point that the provisions concerning 'partnerships of warrant holders' are there not to in any way hinder other legal forms of practice (such as Engineering oriented Limited Liability Companies) but rather to enable individual professionals /warrant holders to act as one, sharing both responsibility, obligations and liability.
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The fact that the respective Engineering and Periti acts provide the partnership itself with a warrant obviously means that all partners have got to be warranted. Nevertheless, this does not mean that partnerships not composed of solely warranted professionals are not permitted. Indeed, the wording of the present acts may be better worded to make this clear. As a result the text in Article 12 of the Periti Act and Article 11 of the Engineering Act shall therefore include this and the wording of article 9 and 10 of the Periti Act and 8 and 9 of the Engineering Act is reworded. The amendments to the respective acts, now make it very clear that multidisciplinary groups, operating through any legal form permitted by law may provide these professional services, 'as long as the warrant holder or warranted partnership assuming liability in accordance with the Civil Code and in accordance with these Acts is clearly identified to the respective warranting Boards and provided that the body corporate or partnership is under the control and management of a warrant holder or warranted partnership, in so far as its business is related to the provision of services regulated by these acts.' Such amendments in our view strike a balance between the rights of professionals either solely or in some legal form to provide Services on the one hand and the obligation of the State to ensure that the quality of these professional services continues to be safeguarded by the liability exposure of these same warranted professionals, on the other. Hence the ‘Inginier’ has to be regarded as the guardian and promoter to the establishment of quality and safe work practices within Industry and Society at large. Chamber of Engineers - Guidelines for Public Events On the 4th December 2015, the Chamber was invited by Dr Mark Gauci of the OHSA for a meeting following the presentation of a draft policy for public events to the Hon. Prime Minister and the Minister Hon. Helena Dalli. Dr Gauci has been engaged in his personal capacity to draft a national policy related to Health and Safety for Public Events. The Chamber put forward several proposals during the meeting as extracted from the Chamber draft policy for public events that included the requirement for a risk assessment related to these activities which would be different in nature from a risk assessment carried out prior to commencing any type of work. From the discussion it also transpired that there is no single authority that has the ownership of Health and Safety issues for public events since the OHSA is mainly focused on occupational health & safety.
A document called ‘Saħħa u sigurtà waqt attivitajiet pubbliċ - Analiżi tal-qafas regolatorju, u suġġerimenti għal titjib fejn meħtieġ’ was published for public consultation. Engineering Degrees issued by University of Malta, MCAST and other Institutions The Chamber noticed with great concern that no interest was expressed for the tender issued in 2015, to select a competent reviewer for the planned review process for the Engineering degrees issued by the various Universities and Institutions. The Engineering Board issued once again the call through a direct invitation. This review process is fundamental to the profession where its outcome should be the setting up of a mechanism to ensure equivalence of degrees such that any student who graduates in an engineering degree shall have the possibility to apply for the engineering warrant. The principle to be followed is that all degrees are to be brought up to the same level without compromises and where some degrees lack in the level then bridging study opportunities should be given to all students to ensure a level playing field. We cannot accept a situation where a student would select one educational institution over another to follow an engineering degree just because there is either the perception or the actuality that the path offered is easier than that of other institutions. Furthermore these anomalies are creating the notion of 1st class and 2nd class graduates in engineering that is many times being exploited by industry in favour of lower wages awards. Skill Cards for the construction sector in Malta. In November, the Council met with the BICC where the main item on the agenda was the Consultation about The introduction of Skill Cards for the construction sector in Malta. The Chamber forwarded its views on the matter and stated that the regulated professions that are subject to the attainment of a warrant as in the case of an ‘Inginier’ or ‘Perit’, should not require to be issued a Skill Card. BICC Chairman, Perit Charles Buhagiar explained that in the case of the ‘Inginier’ or ‘Perit’, this shall be a professional card which would indicate that the person has undergone health and safety training and would in no way determine competence. This was agreed to in principle by the Chamber. Furthermore the Chamber stated that every Skill Card holder should have a basic Contractors’ All Risk insurance which would include third party liability. The BICC should hold a register of people who have attained the Skill Card in order to
encourage other people in applying. This register should be made public and promoted. There should also be a system for the logging of complaints so that if there is a Skill Card holder who is abusing, BICC would be notified and if the person is found to be in breach of the basic ethical requirements for any profession, then the BICC would be able to revoke his/her card and have him/her struck-off the register. This implies that the BICC needs also to issue basic guidelines to all Skill Card Holders to ensure they would have an understanding of what are the basic ethical requirements. The MALTA ENGINEERING EXCELLENCE AWARDS 2015 Last year, the MEEA were held on Tuesday 8th December 2015 at the Verdala Palace under the Distinguished Patronage of the President of Malta, H.E. Marie Louise Coleiro Preca. The awards were given in three categories: • The Maurice Debono Lifetime Achievement Award – Ing. Paul Cardona • Industrial Excellence Award – Enemalta plc • Start-up Entrepreneur Award – Prof Dr. Ing. Joseph Cilia This is the second year where the Chamber shall be giving the awards for the best projects from Final Year Engineering Students of the University of Malta during this ceremony. Ethics and the engineering profession Aware of such illicit practices and conscious of the fact that some engineers are refusing to comply with the Code of Ethics, the Ethics and Disciplinary Committee conducted a survey regarding ethics within the profession and consequently presented its findings to the Council. A seminar was organised on the 30th October at SmartCity Malta to discuss the findings of the survey and to give more information and guidance to our members on the interpretation of the Code. Upon recommendations from the Ethics Committee, the Chamber shall start to look into introducing a more ‘user friendly version’ of the code as well as address issues on the ‘modus operandi’ of certain Authorities and where necessary approach Government at all levels to promote better Governance in our areas of competence. This is even more important where the management of the Authority lies within the hands of warranted engineers who should seek to uphold the ethics and interest of the profession at all times. When a Civil Servant is also an engineer, our Code of Ethics should compel that Civil Servant to behave more responsibly. No engineer should ever be heard uttering the words ‘this is not my problem!’
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In parallel with the issues mentioned above, the Council shall continue to work to increase the presence of Engineers in relevant Authorities and to instil in people’s minds that having Engineers in key roles within Society is a guarantor of quality and integrity. Professional development of Engineers As stated on various occasions, the Chamber of Engineers is planning to issue a white paper in relation to the implementation and promotion of Continual Professional Development in our profession in line with the initial guidance document issued by the Federation of Professional Associations following the introduction of the Services Directive by the EU. This white paper will set up the framework to be implemented by the Chamber as regards CPD for its members. A subcommittee within the Council has been setup with Ing. Helga Pizzuto as the Chairperson and the members being Ing. Joe Camilleri (Chairman – MGPEI), Dr. Ing. Daniel Micallef and Prof Dr. Ing. Paul Micallef from the Chamber Council whilst Prof Jean-Paul De Lucca was to be approached by Ing. Pizzuto to sit on the committee due to his academic experience in the field.
to the WFEO to commit to climate change action. The World Federation of Engineering Organisations (WFE0) held a Summit on Climate Change on December 8, 2015, where it committed to doing its part to implement the provisions of the upcoming climate agreement to the betterment of society in the developing and developed world. The Chamber is also participating in the Engineering Association of the Mediterranean Countries (E.A.M.C.) Conclusions Needless to say that the new Council has a tough task ahead of us during this administrative year and as a Council we are ready for the challenge and would like to thank all those members who have offered to contribute towards the Chamber’s operations for the benefit of our profession. We cannot do this as a Council alone and we will continue to seek the collaboration of all our members. Thank you.
We hope that the committee would achieve the target of completing the first draft of the white paper before the end of Q2 2016 since apart from being a requirement for engineers in the Engineering Profession Act Chap 321, CPD is also a fundamental requirement defined under the Services Directive issued within the European Union. The International Sphere During 2015 there were a number of international activities that the Chamber of Engineers was involved in with the most critical being the FEANI General Assembly that this year was held in Lisbon, Portugal in October 2015. The assembly continued to discuss on various matters of utmost importance to all the Engineering professionals within the EU. The Assembly was attended by the Vice-President, Ing. Saviour Baldacchino and our Secretary for International Affairs, Prof. Dr. Ing. Paul Micallef.
Yours Sincerely,
The most important item on the agenda was the introduction of a Common Training Framework and whether FEANI should go ahead on this, especially since the EU was keen that some organisations promote this idea further. Furthermore, on the 26th September 2015, our Secretary for International Affairs, Prof. Dr Ing. Paul Micallef attended the General Assembly Meeting of the European Council of Engineers Chambers (ECEC). We have also continued to follow the activities of the World Federation of Engineering Organisations (WFEO) of which we are associate members. In particular, the Chamber subscribed
Inġ. Norman Zammit B. Elec. Eng. (Hons.), M.Sc. (Brunel), Eur. Ing., CBIFM President, Chamber of Engineers
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Importance of Retro-fitting Patrick Spiteri Staines (Sustainable Energy) pstaines@T4Bservices.com
ABSTRACT In 2014 a study was initiated for a Energy and Resource Retro-Fitting of St Vincent De Paul Hospital Residence. This was done under Operational Programme I, Cohesion Policy 2007-2013, under the Ministry of Energy and Health. The project included 9 months of monitoring of the electrical consumption, water use, internal and external temperature and humidity. Modelling software was then used to extrapolate the results to a full year model and also to evaluate the energy saving effect of the proposed retrofits solutions. A combination of these most effective solutions was proposed as a hybrid solution for improving the Energy footprint and reduction of CO2. The result of the energy simulation indicate that full implementation of the hybrid solution proposed will result in a 64% reduction in energy use for the whole of the St Vincent De Paul Hospital Residence based on the actual fuel energy consumed in 2014. Keywords: Retro-fitting, Energy Efficiency, Hospital Residence
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1 WHAT IS RETRO-FITTING? Retrofitting is the process of modifying existing equipment or structures with additional or new components. For buildings, this means making changes to the systems inside the building and/or the building envelope itself after its initial construction and occupation. Typically this is done with the expectation of improving aspects of the building such as comfort or energy use. The development of new technologies mean that building retrofits can allow for significant reductions in energy and water usage without having to demolish and rebuild. 2.1 Why is it essential? When one considers buildings that are in constant use and perform a social service that is not easily shifted elsewhere the only way to improve the comfort, amenities and energy performance is by retrofitting. This allows for improvements to be made on all or parts of the building with minimal disruption to the functionality. Without the option of retrofitting the building will continue to function at lower than optimal conditions despite maintenance and servicing. This is due to the fact that wear and tear over prolonged use on the services and building itself lower the standard and efficiency. Systems have lifetimes and it is not always expedient to replace a system as soon as it nears its end of life. Sometimes these systems are kept functioning well beyond their normal lifespan and as a result continue to provide service albeit at a lower level and with much lower efficiency. This is especially true when systems are then compared to state of the art systems that are coming into the market with much higher efficiencies and higher standards of service. The older a building the higher the level of improvement that a retrofit can bring. This is very evident in hospitals and old people’s homes where constant use over many years means the building is performing well below the original optimal levels and even lower compared to newer buildings with latest high efficiency technologies. The retrofit option becomes essential in brining the building up to or close to current standards in terms of comfort and energy efficiency. Retrofitting older buildings especially those with historic importance requires sensitivity to the building and its fabric and this brings with it a whole set of problems. This is especially true when the building is a national heritage site and subject to special consideration due to its historic importance. In this instance the Superintendent of cultural heritage will have a say, as well as the national planning authority, of what can and cannot be done on the building both externally and also internally. This is evidently so for St Vincent De Paul Hospital Residence. 2 ST VINCENT DE PAUL HOSPITAL RESIDENCE The St Vincent De Paul Hospital Residence was ideated in 1862 by Sir Gasparre Le Merchant, the then Governor of the Malta. Florence Nightingale gave her approval of Thomas Henry Wyatt’s plans for the “Asylum for the Old and Infirm” and Governor Sir J. A. Linton Simmons eventually authorised the expenditure of some €140,000 and its foundation stone was laid in June 1886. Under E. Galizia’s direction, English
Figure 1:
Main Entrance to St Vincent de Paul Hospital Residence
architect Webster Paulson commenced the project, while under Giorgio Schinas, Andrea Vassallo completed it in 1892. The complex is the result of the development of a number of blocks and facilities over 120 years, the latest being in the John Paul II dementia block in 2009. The Rużar Briffa Complex (Ruzar BriffaC) was planned in 1889 but not completed until 1902. Originally conceived as a “Lepers’ Asylum”; it was subsequently used as an isolation hospital for Tuberculosis patients and at one time known as St. Bartholomew’s Hospital. In 1976 it became a old people’s home named after the Maltese poet Rużar Briffa, a dermatologist who specialised in leprosy. It is presently a permanent residence for elderly women. The site constitutes a large complex of buildings over a 1km campus footprint. The whole complex consists of twelve blocks in two main buildings, namely, the St. Vincent complex and the Rużar Briffa hospital building. Within this footprint there are over 1,200 elderly patients or residents in the hospital or residence buildings within the campus. St Vincent De Paul Hospital Residence provides work for 2,500 employees and operates round the clock seven days a week. 3 THE STUDY In 2014 a study was initiated for ‘Deep’ Energy and Resource Retro-Fitting of St Vincent De Paul Hospital Residence. This was done under Operational Programme I – Cohesion Policy 2007-2013, ‘Investing in Competitiveness for a Better Quality of Life’, under the Ministry of Energy and Health. The objective of the study was to show a holistic way forward, both from
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Importance of Retro-fitting Continued
the technical and financial aspect, of the technologies to be adopted with the aim of reducing the energetic and resource consumption of St Vincent De Paul Hospital Residence. As a result of this study technical solutions were proposed together with a Technical Cost Benefit and Feasibility Assessments of the proposed solutions. Apart from the solutions which were proposed specifically for St Vincent De Paul Hospital Residence, the study also aimed at creating general guidelines to the retro-fitting of public buildings, more specifically, hospital residences for the elderly. It should be pointed out that, whereas ‘minor’ and ‘moderate’ interventions are considered to deliver 0-30% and 30-60% savings respectively, ‘deep’ interventions are considered to deliver 60-90% energy and resource savings. 3 STATE OF PLAY An Operational Review was carried out by the Management Efficiency Unit (MEU) in second quarter 2013. The review found that using the 2012 management accounts as a benchmark, St Vincent De Paul Hospital Residence spends approximately €2 million per annum on water and electricity and another €1 million on fuel to provide hot water. This constitutes almost 10% of the annual cost of running the hospital residence. Compounding all this, St Vincent De Paul Hospital Residence does not have an energy and resource efficiency policy. 4 HOW WAS THE STUDY CARRIED OUT The study began in December 2014 and started with the monitoring of energy use and acquisition of historic consumption data. The study was focused on Ruzar Briffa buildings with the aim of using detailed data from Ruzar Briffa to be extrapolated to the whole of St Vincent De Paul Hospital Residence. After careful studies of the Electrical sources and supplies it was identified that the main areas and supplies were as follows – -- Main Essential Supply, this is feeding all services barring the air conditioning units -- Non-Essential Supply, feeding the air conditioning system It was decided to monitor these two areas with meters for the whole duration of the project. The logging system collected consumption data every 10 minutes along with information on Power Variation, Voltage fluctuations and Power Factor variation. In order to correlate the energy consumed by the air conditioning systems at Ruzar Briffa to the ambient conditions of the building it was decided to install a number of temperature/humidity sensors in the following locations – -- A typical Sleeping Room -- A corridor -- An Activity Area -- Outdoor Area
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Measurements
°C 3/6/2015 6:00:59 PM
Sp1
11.4
Sp2
13.4
Sp3
10.2
Sp4
11.5
Sp5
11.0
Sp6
11.0
Sp7
9.8
Sp8
10.6
Sp9
12.4
Sp10
11.7
Sp11
10.7
°C 14.3
3.7
Parameters Emissivity
0.95
Refl. temp.
20 °C
Geolocation Compass
SE
3/6/2015 6:00:59 PM
Figure 2: Thermograph image of part of façade.
The sensors recorded every hour and were maintained in place throughout the project with the data used as a basis for recommendations on energy saving technologies and methodologies for climate control. The outdoor data served also to correlate the information with the weather data brought in for the modelling software. This allowed to have a more precise model with data tuned to the site of the project. The data gathered over the period of the project was then extrapolated to simulate a whole year dataset. In order to determine the water consumption at Ruzar Briffa Complex a metering and logging system was placed at the supply logging at 1 minute intervals. This logging was kept until a stable picture of the demand was established. 5 MODELLING Using Design Builder a model of the energy performance of the Ruzar Briffa Complex was built which showed the existing conditions which were then correlated with the real-time data obtained from the monitoring process. Once established the model results were extrapolated to the St Vincent De Paul Hospital Residence Complex. The modelling process enabled the recommended improvements to be correctly modelled to establish the results of the project in terms of gains in energy efficiency. 6 THERMAL IMAGING Thermal imaging was carried out with the scope of gathering surface temperature distributions at various locations in Ruzar
Briffa. This enabled a more detailed energy analysis of these specified locations. Data gathered using point measurements of temperature and humidity was cross-correlated and validated with this information. In addition, possible thermal bridging was determined. Measurement locations were determined to ensure a good overall representation of the locations of interest. Day and night measurements were taken to observe thermal performance as a result of the building thermal mass. Three measurement campaigns were undertaken to cover as best as possible the entire year. One set was carried out in Winter, the second in Spring and the third in Summer. The thermographic images were then analysed and conclusions drawn. (see figure 2) 7 ANALYSIS OF RESULTS The results of all the monitoring was analysed and correlated were necessary to environmental or usage variables to be able to establish the correct demand profiles. This shaped the recommendations that were made to increase energy efficiency and approach the carbon neutral target. From the results of the analysis the Project Team drew up and studied in detail potential technologies and methodologies for energy efficiency and reduction of emissions. Each of these where assessed for potential benefit and a list of recommendations prioritised according to maximum potential return on investment was drawn up. 8 RESEARH ON APPLICABLE ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENTAL SOLUTIONS A research study was carried out on the different aspects of energy and resource technologies that were applicable for long-term care hospital residence and buildings of similar use with a focus on buildings in similar environmental conditions. The study investigated technologies being used successfully in Malta in the first instance and looked further afield for potentially interesting technologies that are relevant to Malta’s environment. 9 RETROFIT SOLUTIONS 9.1 Passive Solutions Roof Insulation: Roof insulation is absent or could not be verified present in all the buildings of St Vincent De Paul Hospital Residence and definitely absent in Ruzar Briffa. Wall Insulation: Wall insulation is necessary as a number of walls are single course and offer an opportunity to improve their insulation and this is clearly seen from the thermographic analysis. Conversely the thick double walls of the older buildings would not benefit from any such insulation and have therefore been omitted. Glazing: 95% of St Vincent De Paul Hospital Residence and indeed all Ruzar Briffa have single glazed windows and it could be observed that a good number of them do not seal well and this was clearly shown by the thermographic analysis. The option of double glazing and Argon-filled Triple glazing, with or without louvered shutters and insulated frames was analysed.
Action
Ruzar Briffa Complex
St Vincent De Paul Hospital Residence Energy Saved (kWh)
Energy Saved (kWh) Roof Insulation
42201
104389
Wall Insulation
33246
21304
Double Glazing + Shutters
50771
745216
Tripple Glazing + Argon
54490
1004843
Table 1:
Energy Saved by Passive Solutions
Action
Ruzar Briffa Complex
St Vincent De Paul Hospital Residence Energy Saved (kWh)
Energy Saved (kWh) Energy Saving Lighting & Controls
216380
2230521
Efficient HVAC and Controls
330436
2867325
Solar Thermal
35880
249883
Efficiency increase in Power
13506
309922
Energy Management System
46634
516536
Rain Water Harvesting
4890
38181
Flow Reducers
2745
9607
Sewage
4890
38181
Table 2:
Energy Saved by Active Solutions
9.2 Active Solutions -- The area of active solutions encompassed all the energy using activities which vary with ambient or demand changes. The areas addressed were: -- Lighting -- HVAC -- Domestic Hot Water -- Power including Appliances (mainly Refrigerators), TVs and the Lifts -- Energy Management -- Rain water harvesting -- Domestic Cold Water -- Sewage treatment Plant
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Importance of Retro-fitting Continued
For each of these activities the options were analysed and the best options evaluated economically through the cost benefit analysis. Only those technologies with a known application in the local environment or with a wide and known base of application elsewhere were considered. This was done to ensure that there was sufficient data to calculate the savings and also such that the applied technology would be reliable and not based on experimental or little used technology. 10 CONCLUSION For the hybrid simulation, all passive solutions were included along with active measures related to air-conditioning. These include using higher efficiency air conditioners, controlling of set points as well as moderating air conditioning use depending on usage by means of a BMS. The result of the energy simulation indicate that full implementation of the hybrid solution proposed will result in a 74% reduction in energy use for the Ruzar Briffa Complex alone while for the whole of the St Vincent De Paul Hospital Residence including Ruzar Briffa complex this is 64%. This figure is based on the actual fuel energy consumed in 2014. The saving is higher on Ruzar Briffa as the building and services are older while St Vincent De Paul Hospital Residence has had some modernization and service upgrades.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Ing Joseph Restall B.Mech.Eng.(Hons.), Ing Victor Bonello B.Elec. Eng.(Hons.), M.Sc. (Sustainable Energy), Perit Philip Grech B.E.&A.(Hons.), M.Sc.
InÄĄ. Patrick Spiteri Staines Eur Ing.
InÄĄ. Patrick Spiteri Staines Eur Ing. is an Electrical Engineer graduated from University of Malta in 1988 with Honours. He obtained his masters in Sustainable Energy from the Institute for Sustainable Energy which forms part of the University of Malta in 2013. He is Managing Director of T4B Services Ltd a subsidiary of the Attard & Co. Group. T4B Services Ltd. provides building materials, specialised logistic services as well as Industrial equipment and associated services with a focus on Energy Efficiency. He is a registered Energy Auditor with the Malta Resources Authority and a certified Building Energy Assessor with the Building Regulations Office.
An Automated Procedure for Temperature Extraction from Medical Thermal Images J. Gauci1, O. Falzon1, K.P. Camilleri1, C. Formosa2,4, A. Gatt2, C. Ellul2, S. Mizzi2, A. Mizzi2, K. Cassar3, N. Chockalingam2,4 1
Centre for Biomedical Cybernetics, University of Malta, Msida MSD2080, Malta. 2 Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Malta, Msida MSD2080, Malta. 3 Faculty of Medicine and Surgery, University of Malta, Msida MSD2080, Malta. 4 Faculty of Health Sciences, Staffordshire, Stoke-on-Trent ST4 2DF, UK.
jean.gauci@um.edu.mt, owen.falzon@um.edu.mt, kenneth.camilleri@um.edu.mt, cynthia.formosa@um.edu.mt, alfred.gatt@um.edu.mt. christian.ellul@um.edu.mt, stephen.mizzi@um.edu.mt, anabellemizzi@gmail.com, kevin.b.cassar@gov.mt, n.chockalingam@staffs.ac.uk
ABSTRACT Thermal imaging has long been used in medical applications for monitoring and diagnosis of illnesses and conditions. For an efficient and effective implementation of thermography in medical applications the segmentation and temperature extraction process of thermal images is essential in order to avoid highly timeconsuming and subjective manual procedures. In this paper we present a method for the automatic segmentation and temperature extraction of a total of 44 regions from thermal images of the hands, feet and shins. The implemented methods were tested on 83 thermal images and shown to provide reliable and accurate results. Keywords: Medical thermography, automatic segmentation, ROI selection
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1 INTRODUCTION Thermal imaging has been widely used for the monitoring and diagnosis of illnesses and medical conditions [1]. Humans are capable of keeping a constant body temperature of around 37°C and abnormal variations in temperature may be indicative of disease. For this reason, body temperature has for long been used as an indicator of health [2]. Thermal imaging systems are ideal to measure the surface temperature of the human skin given its high emissivity, 0.98 ± 0.01 [3]. The application of thermography in medicine is also favoured by the non-contact and non-intrusive nature of thermal imaging equipment. Therefore, thermography can be used to monitor patients for certain illnesses by monitoring specific body regions for possible abnormalities in surface temperature and by comparing the temperatures in the selected regions to normative data such as [4] [5]. However, in the majority of systems presented in literature the extraction of skin temperature from thermal images relies on a manual procedure, performed by the clinician who is tasked with interpreting the results. The clinician would typically select areas of interest on the thermal image using specialized thermal camera software tools. This manual process may be a lengthy and tedious task, especially if a large number of thermal images and areas of interest are required, and may also provide unreliable and non-repeatable readings. Therefore, an automated version of this process is preferred as it can provide standardised and repeatable measurements. In this work we present a method for automatic segmentation and temperature extraction from thermal images of human hands, feet and shins for the monitoring of peripheral vascular disease in diabetic patients. This work involves an automation of the manual extraction process of data from thermal images as presented in Gatt et al. [4]. Specifically, an automated image processing procedure was developed to select 44 regions of interest on the shins, volar surface of the hands and plantar surface of the feet, and to automatically extract temperature values from these regions. Figure 1 illustrates the location of these regions of interest on sample thermal images. Our aim is to develop a fully automated approach to select these regions on thermal images and to extract the temperature at each region for use in a medical system to monitor peripheral arterial diseased patients. The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. In section 2 the implemented methods are discussed. Test results are presented in Section 3, while Section 4 concludes the paper. 2 METHODS Thermal images were acquired using a FLIR SC7200 thermal camera, with spatial resolution of 320×256 and thermal sensitivity of 20mK. A corresponding visual image was acquired for each thermal image using a Canon EOS 1100D digital camera with spatial resolution of 4272×2848. The two cameras were mounted on different tripods, and positioned close to each other to obtain a similar view of the body regions from the two cameras. For better contrast between
Figure 1:
Regions of interest on thermal images of the hands (a, b), shins (c) and feet (d, e)
the body regions and the background a uniform black backdrop was placed behind the subjects in both thermal and visual images. Images of the patients’ hands, shins and feet were acquired with the body parts positioned as shown in Figure 1 and Figure 2. The steps involved in the segmentation and temperature extraction procedures are outlined in the diagram in Figure 3 and described in further detail in this section. All processing was carried out in MATLAB release 2013b. Thermal image data is processed in all cases, while visual images are used only to help in the segmentation of the feet from the background. 2.1 Segmentation of body parts from background The first step of the proposed algorithm involves a segmentation of the body regions of interest from the background in thermal images. This can be achieved by simple thresholding of the thermal image. In thermal images of the hand and shins, the difference in intensity between the body regions and the background is significant and the threshold is set to the mean value of pixel intensities. This achieves complete segmentation of the body regions from the background in the hands and shins but is not effective in the feet images. In thermal images of the feet the distinction between the body regions and the background is not as clear, especially at the edges, as typically the feet have a similar temperature to the background. For this reason, the corresponding visual images are used to help in the segmentation of the feet from the background.
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An Automated Procedure for Temperature Extraction from Medical Thermal Images Continued
Figure 4:
Registration of the visual image (b) to the thermal image (a). The registered visual image (c) and the segmented thermal image (d)
keeping its’ original aspect ratio, to a size similar to that of the thermal image. The algorithm then performs intensity based image registration, first by transforming the visual image using a similarity transform, which is then used as an initial condition to a final affine transformation. Matlab function imregister() was used with a maximum iterations value of 300. This value has been observed to provide a good speedaccuracy compromise.
Figure 2:
Sample thermal images and their corresponding visual images
The visual images offer a better contrast between the feet and the uniform black background and therefore can be segmented more precisely than the corresponding thermal images, using a simple thresholding scheme as for the thermal images of the hands and shins. By aligning the thermal and visual images through image registration it is possible to use the segmented visual image as a mask to reliably segment the feet from the background in the thermal images. Figure 4 shows the result of the registration process. The visual image is first resized, while
2.2 Sub-segmenting thermal images and seed extraction The next step in the algorithm is to sub-segment body parts which have been segmented from the background in order to localise the different areas of interest. For example, as shown in Figure 1 (a) and 1 (b), for the thermal images of the hands a distinction between the palm and the finger areas is required. Different procedures were adopted for the different body parts due to the different nature of the required body regions. On the thermal images of the hands a total of eight seed points were required as shown in Figure 1(a) and 1 (b). The five finger seed points can be extracted by using the Hough transformation for circles [5]. The Matlab function imfindcircles() was used to scan for circles of a radius between eight and ten pixels in the segmented thermal image. The function returns the centres of candidate circles which are then analysed. Any circle centres that fall on background regions are considered as false detections and are removed from the candidate circles. The remaining circle centres are then considered to be the seed points on the fingertips. This approach has been observed to be accurate in detecting the fingertips in thermal images of hands.
Figure 3: System Diagram
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introduced and the two points are placed at 25% and 75% of the width of the segmented foot.
Figure 5:
Segmented thermal image (a), selected columns (b), selected rows (c) and final selected palm region (d)
In order to detect the three palm region seed points, the palm area is first segmented from the finger regions. The process first detects the length in pixels of the hand in the image by fitting a bounding box around the segmented hand and taking its length. The process also finds the width in pixels of the forearm by looking at the first few columns of the image, which would typically contain the forearm. Next all the columns of the image are searched for a number of consecutive foreground pixels greater than the length of the forearm. The process is repeated for all rows with a number of consecutive foreground pixels greater than the length of the hand in the image. The palm area is considered to be made up of pixels where the column range and row range selected in the previous process overlap. This procedure accurately selects the palm region in the hand images, without selecting forearm and finger regions. Figure 5 shows the selected rows, columns and the final palm region in a test case. In the case of the shins, six points are to be extracted. A bounding box is first fit around the two segmented shins and the length in pixels of the shins is determined. Three seed points are placed at the top of the bounding box, middle point of the shin and at 75% of the length of the shin. The points are then centred, horizontally, on the two shins. To detect the 11 seed points on the thermal images of the feet, a similar procedure to the hands thermal images is implemented. The toes are detected by using the imfindcircles() function in Matlab once again. The function uses the Hough transformation to search for circles with a radius between 6 to 15 pixels in the segmented thermal image. Circle centres which fall on background pixels are assumed to be false detections are removed. The remaining centres are used as the initial seed points for the five toes. Next a bounding box is fit to the segmented foot as shown in Figure 4(d). The top and bottom edges are used to fit the remaining six seed points. A fixed offset is set from the two edges to place the bottom and top seed points. The offset from the top edge also caters for the toes by setting the offset from the bottom seed point detected in the toes. The selected rows are used for the bottom and top seed points by centring the seed points, horizontally, on the segmented foot. To place the remaining four points a further vertical offset is
2.3 Region growing procedure Finally, an area of interest is grown around each seed point. The temperatures are extracted by computing the mean temperature from all the pixels inside the selected area. The region growing process starts at the seed point and adds all its neighboring pixels to the region of interest given that the difference between the mean temperature of the current ROI and the neighboring pixel temperature does not exceed a pre-defined threshold. The process re-iterates for the next set of neighboring pixels until either all neighboring pixels cannot be added to the ROI due to their temperature difference exceeding the threshold or the number of included pixels exceeds a pre-defined number. This ensures that adequate size areas are selected. The thresholds have been set to 2°C for shins, 1.44°C for hands and 0.61°C for feet based on a related investigation on maximum temperature differences across body regions by Gatt et al. [4]. 3 RESULTS 20 subjects gave their informed consent to participate in this study approved by the University of Malta Research Ethics Committee. Table 1 summarizes the test results. The hands segmentation and seed point extraction algorithm was tested on 53 images while the shins algorithm was tested on 19 and the feet algorithm on 11. The varying number of images for the different body parts are due to some subjects having amputations. The hands segmentation and seed point extraction algorithm gave a rate of 96.3%. The segmentation of the hand form the background has been observed to provide very accurate results, perfectly segmenting the hand from the background in all subjects. The majority of the errors occurred due to inaccuracies in the segmentation of the palm from the fingers. These inaccuracies occurred due to bad positioning of the hand in some of the acquired images in which the width of the forearm cannot be computed accurately which leads to errors in the identification of the palm region. The shins segmentation and extraction algorithm has given a 100% success rate, extracting all the points in the test subjects. The algorithm has given standardised and repeatable results across all subjects.
Algorithm Hands
Test Images (Total no. of regions)
40 (320)
Success Rate 96.3%
Shins
19 (111)
100%
Feet
11 (121)
90.1%
Table 1: Test results
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An Automated Procedure for Temperature Extraction from Medical Thermal Images Continued
A success rate of 90.1% was achieved by the feet segmentation and extraction algorithm. The toe detection procedure has given good results with most errors occurring in the detection of the bottom six points. The main issue is the correct registration of visual and thermal images when a large difference in viewing angle is present. This results in a nonaccurate segmentation of the foot in the thermal image, which later leads to non-accurate extraction of the six seed points. In light of this problem, more complex image registration algorithms are being studied together with the possibility of implementing the algorithm on a dual visual-thermal camera which would significantly reduce the difference in viewing angle. 4 CONCLUSION In this work we have presented an automatic segmentation and temperature extraction algorithm for thermal images of the hands, shins and feet. The algorithm first automatically segments body parts from the background in thermal images, extracts seed points in 44 specific locations spread over the three body regions and finally extracts mean temperature values for the selected regions using a region growing procedure. The process is completely automatic and therefore no user input is required thereby reducing time-consuming manual data extraction as well as eliminating user subjectivity in region selection and temperature extraction. Test results have shown that the algorithm provides accurate and repeatable results in the extraction of temperatures values from regions of interest and can serve as an effective tool for automatically extracting temperature data from regions of interest in various medical applications. ACKNOWLEDGMENT This research project is financed by the Malta Council for Science and Technology through the National Research & Innovation Programme 2013. REFERENCES [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]
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B. B. Lahiri, T. Bagavathiappan, T. Jayakumar and J. Philip, “Medical application of infrared thermography: A review,” Infrared Physics and technology, vol. 55, no. 4, pp. 221-235, 2012. Y. Houdas and E. F. Ring, Human body temperature, New York: Springer \ Science & Business Media, 1982. J. Steketee, “Spectral emissivity of skin and pericardium,” Physics in medicine & biology, vol. 18, no. 5, p. 686, 1973. D. Dinsha and N. Manikandaprabu, “Breast Tumor Segmentation and Classification using SVM and Bayesian from Thermogram Images,” Unique Journal of Engineering and Advanced Sciences, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 147-151, 2014. J. J. van Netten, J. G. van Baal, C. Liu, F. van der Heijden and S. A. Bus, “Infrared Thermal Imaging for Automated Detection of Diabetic Foot Complications,” Journal of Diabetes Science and Technology, vol. 7, no. 5, 2013. A. Gatt, C. Formosa, K. Cassar, K. P. Camilleri, C. De Raffaele, A. Mizzi, C. Azzopardi, S. Mizzi , O. Falzon, S. Cristina and N. Chockalingam, “Thermographic patterns of the upper and lower limbs: baseline data,” International journal of vascular medicine, vol. 2015, 2015. D. H. Ballard, “Generalizing the Hough transform to detect arbitrary shapes,” Pattern Recognition, vol. 13, no. 2, pp. 111-122, 1980.
Mr Jean
Gauci
Mr Jean Gauci is a research support officer within the Centre for Biomedical Cybernetics at the University of Malta. He graduated with a B.Sc. (Hons.) in Computer Engineering in 2015 and is currently reading for an M.Sc. by research in Biomedical Engineering, from the University of Malta. His research interests include medical thermography, thermal image processing and image segmentation.
Inġ. Owen
Falzon
Inġ. Owen Falzon received his B.Eng. (Hons) degree in electrical engineering from the University of Malta in 2006, and completed his PhD studies on EEG signal processing applied to brain–computer interfaces at the same university in 2012. He is currently a lecturer with the Centre for Biomedical Cybernetics, University of Malta. His research interests include EEG signal analysis, brain-computer interfaces, and biomedical signal and image processing.
Prof. Dr Inġ. Kenneth
P. Camilleri
Prof. Dr Inġ. Kenneth P. Camilleri, graduated with a B.Elec.Eng.(Hons.) degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Malta and received the M.Sc. in Signal Processing and Machine Intelligence degree and Ph.D. in Image Processing and Pattern Recognition in 1994 and 1999 respectively, from the University of Surrey, Guildford, UK. He is currently the Head of the Department of Systems and Control Engineering and Director of the Centre for Biomedical Cybernetics at the University of Malta. Professor Camilleri’s research interests include machine vision, thermal image analysis, and biomedical engineering, in particular brain signal analysis applied to the diagnosis of brain diseases and to braincomputer interfacing.
Ms Cynthia
Formosa
Ms Cynthia Formosa is a Senior Lecturer and Head of Podiatry Department inside the Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Malta. She is currently a member of the International Federation of Podiatrists and a member of the Clinical Biomechanics and Human Performance Research Team at the Faculty of Health, Staffordshire University. She is also a founder member of the Diabetes Foot Research Group, University of Malta. She was also appointed as a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Sport, Health and Exercise Research, Faculty of Health, Staffordshire University. She is also a Fellow at the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow.
Mr Alfred
Gatt
Mr Alfred Gatt is a lecturer at the University of Malta, having obtained a PhD from Staffordshire University, UK. Special interests include clinical biomechanics, specifically gait analysis and the application of thermography to the diabetic foot.
Mr Anabelle
Mizzi
Ms Anabelle Mizzi is a clinician and a Visiting Senior Lecturer at the University of Malta, Faculty of Health Sciences. She is a member of the Diabetes Foot Research Group (Malta) and her main research interests are peripheral arterial disease, intermittent claudication and the diabetic foot. She is also a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow.
Prof. Kevin
Cassar
Prof Kevin Cassar is Consultant Vascular Surgeon at Mater Dei Hospital, Malta and Associate Professor of Surgery at the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery of the University of Malta. His main interest is lower limb revascularisation in diabetes and haemodialysis access. He is also Malta Foundation School Director. Previously he occupied the post of Consultant Vascular Surgeon at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, Scotland and Senior Lecturer at the University of Aberdeen.
Prof. Nachiappan Mr Christian
Ellul
Mr Christian Ellul is a podiatrist by profession. His undergraduate and postgraduate masters dissertations' were both focused on research on peripheral artery disease and its impact on the lower limb and foot. Christian is an active member of the Diabetes Foot Research Group, currently working on the TIPMID project at the University of Malta.
Mr Stephen
Chockalingam
Prof Nachiappan Chockalingam is the Professor of Clinical Biomechanics at the Faculty of Health Sciences, Staffordshire University. Nachi directs the Biomechanics Facility and leads the Biomechanics team. He is also an Affiliate Professor at the Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Malta and a Visiting Professor at Sri Ramachandra University, India. He is a Chartered Engineer, a Chartered Scientist and a member of various professional organisations, who have been elected to the executive board in some of these international societies.
Mizzi
Mr Stephen Mizzi is a lecturer at the University of Malta, Faculty of Health Sciences. with research interests focusing on diabetic foot biomechanics, tissue mechanics in diabetes and therapeutic footwear. Stephen is also a founder member of the Diabetic Foot Research Group (DFRG), launched in 2011, with the aim to identify, encourage and conduct research in order to provide knowledge to practitioners, scientists and patients alike.
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TRANS ACTION CTION
%
TRANS ACTION FROM
ACCOUNT COUNT OUNT NUMBER
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The Evolution of Technology to Address the New Business Needs in the Payments Industry (with special focus on the Corporate Sector) David Muscat, Ixaris Systems Ltd. david.muscat@ixaris.com
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1 INTRODUCTION Apple Pay, Android Pay and other 'Pay' products mark the evolution of payments for consumers – online payments are being completely reinvented. Such products offer an instant, secure and global method of performing peer-to-peer payments and are leading the way to a completely cash-less society. Besides the consumer realm, a whole new transformation is currently taking place in the corporate sector, whereby companies are increasingly looking at new payment methods to manage their financial and operational needs. This article looks into some of these payment solutions, as well as the advent of innovative companies that have been set up to specifically address these new requirements. 2 CURRENT LIMITATIONS Traditionally, banks were the main providers of payment programmes to corporate clients – however these have failed to keep up with the expectations of businesses and are therefore struggling to meet market demand. This gap has led to the inception of innovative payments technology and service companies offering the creation and management of new payment programmes. Such companies integrate their own platforms with the banks’ processing systems abstracting complexity and overcoming many of the limitations that come with these legacy banks. This is illustrated in Figure 1. Such companies – including TxVia (acquired by Google), Destra (acquired by ACI Worldwide), Compass Plus and Ixaris Systems Ltd. have built customizable and flexible software platforms, and this has in turn created a whole new ecosystem of payment programmes and services. In this regard, these smaller and niftier companies manage to customize their platforms in significantly less time and with less cost, mainly due to their highly customizable software, as well as, their optimized operation processes. EU Policies and Regulations continue to fuel further this revolution – specifically the Payment Services Directive [2] provides a legal foundation for the creation of a single market for payments within the European Union and opens up the payments market to non-banks. 3 TECHNOLOGY ADVANCEMENTS The new payments technology and services companies rely on superior technology to compete against the established banking order. An example is in-the-cloud hosting which enables companies to off-load much of the complexity that comes with managing in-house data centers while offering on-demand scalability. This also permits such companies to focus on the software development of their payment products and platforms. Banks have – at least until now – been reluctant to adopt a cloud-based approach which put them at a disadvantage. Technologically-savvy companies are creating and exploiting flexible and easy to customize front-end and back-end
Figure 1:
Payments Platform integrate with legacy banks and third party providers to offer a whole suite of services to corporate clients
software to develop highly-specialized applications that are accessible through the internet and available as a Software at a Service (SaaS). These new breed of payment products include a number of tools to customize and manage the different aspects of a payment product. Such tools typically facilitate the customization of user interface, data analytics, customization of the payment programme and integration with other systems. Security is the order of the day and new applications are only made viable with new and improved security technologies. New encryption technologies, revolutionary fraud prevention software involving rich signals and machine learning and more secure authentication methods are only a few of the new technologies that are evolving to support the payment industry. 4 PAYMENTS ADVANCEMENTS These advancements in technology are being complemented with new payment instruments that decisively open the possibilities of payment products, particularly open-loop prepaid cards. Being similar to the standard VISA or Master Card debit or credit card, they are only made functional if funds are pre-loaded before a purchase is done. Prepaid cards are becoming increasingly popular in European
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The Evolution of Technology to Address the New Business Needs in the Payments Industry Continued
countries such as Italy, Poland and the United Kingdom. They are also gaining more popularity in other settings such as in Africa and the Middle East. According to a sizing guide commissioned by MasterCard; ‘prepaid growth is expected at an annual rate of 22% through 2017’ [1]. The main advantage of a prepaid card is that the owner has total control of the funds. Furthermore, fees can be more advantageous when compared to other types of cards due to the less risk associated with this card. These factors make prepaid cards very attractive to the corporate sector where control and security are a must. In practice, there are various safeguards that can be put in place, for example, a prepaid card can be restricted to be used at a specific merchant during a pre-set time window. Another card-based innovation is the emergence of virtual cards, which are payment cards that are issued without the production of a plastic card – and consist only of the card data needed in an online transaction such as the card number and expiry date. Since such cards involve almost no cost to issue and deliver, it is possible for a new unique virtual card to be created for every single transaction. Such a payment instrument is being used to address shortcomings in the way payments are done that include difficulties in reconciliation, risk and fraud. One example is the online travel sector. Here, prepaid cards are being used by Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) for settling funds with their suppliers. The use of such cards permits the OTA to have complete control of the funds on the card and perform robust reconciliation. This new way of operating promises easier operations, as well as, more transparent and cost-effective financial management.
applications are developed and made available to the market. CONCLUSION In the coming five years, such advancements and innovations will surely propel the corporate sector to a new level totally revolutionizing the way payments are done, and further contributing to a cashless society. REFERENCES
[1] [2] [3]
MasterCard. “A Look at the Potential for Global Prepaid Growth by 2017”. [Online]. Available: https://www.partnersinprepaid. com/pdf/a-look-atthe-potential-for-global-prepaid-growth-by-2017.pdf?maincategory =TOPICS subcategory=RESEARCH. Retrieved on 2 July 2015 European Commission. “Directive on Payments Services (PSD)”. [Online]. Available: http://ec.euroa.eu/finance/payments/framework/index_en.htm. Retrieved on 2 July 2015 MSC R&D. “Ixaris awarded €2.5m EU grant for Open Payments Ecosystem project”. [Online]. Available: http://www.mscrnd.com /ixaris-awarded-e25m-eu-grant-for-open-payments-ecosyste m-project/. Retrieved on 1 July 2015
FURTHER READING More information on Ixaris Systems Ltd. can be found at https://www.ixaris.com/.
5 OPEN PAYMENTS Despite the innovations that are coming to the payments market, it is still a specialist field since payments infrastructure is not widely accessible to developers. Regulators – particularly in the EU – are keen to see wider participation in such innovation and through an initiative called “Third-party Provider Access” the EU is planning to give stronger rights to non-banks to access the banks’ secure systems. Recently Ixaris Systems Ltd. was awarded a €2.5M grant from the European Commission to develop a prototype of an open payments ecosystem [3]. The idea is to develop a platform that offers developers the necessary infrastructure and tools to develop new innovative payment applications – which is currently restricted by the lack of effective access to banking infrastructure. Imagine an application store where corporate clients can purchase payment applications developed by developers (similar to the Apple and Google App stores). This is a radical change when considering that till a couple of years such software was only developed by a select few specialised and established companies or banks.
Inġ. David
Muscat
The author is an Electrical Engineering graduate and warrant holder. His specialization is in computer engineering and he has been working with Ixaris Systems Ltd. for the past five years. He currently occupies the role of Product Manager.
In this respect, this concept will open up the way payment
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Results from the Questionnaire on Ethics in the Engineering Profession Victor Buttigieg, Alex Galea, Pierre Ciantar, Robert Ghirlando Ethics and Disciplinary Sub-committee, Chamber of Engineers victor.buttigieg@um.edu.mt, ag@techman.com.mt, cianpier@go.net.mt, robert.ghirlando@um.edu.mt
ABSTRACT The main results of a questionnaire on ethics in the engineering profession are presented. The re-sults show that a third of respondents have faced some kind of ethical dilemma in the course of their professional duties. A quarter of respondents think that engineers are adhering poorly to their code of ethics, with a third aware of engineers who infringe it. Self-employed engineers have a worse percep-tion, with more than half thinking that adherence is poor. A cause of concern is that almost two-thirds of self-employed engineers have stated that they are aware of engineers who infringe the code of ethics. The vast majority of respondents have indi-cated that steps should be taken against engineers who infringe the code of ethics. Two thirds of the respondents have indicated that the code of ethics needs updating but from these results it is clear that this only requires some fine-tuning. Keywords: code of ethics, professional misconduct, ethical awareness, liability at law
28
1 INTRODUCTION One of the stated objectives of the Chamber of Engineers is “to promote and maintain a code of Ethics for the Engineering Profession as well as voluntary Codes of Practice in Malta” [1]. Article 18 of The Engineering Profession Act [2] states that “such code of ethics shall regulate the professional behav-iour of warrant holders.” In order to better meet this objective, the Chamber’s statute was recently updated to include the setting up of an Ethics and Disciplinary Sub-Committee. In one of its earliest meetings, this newly setup sub-committee decided to take a snapshot of the engineers’ perception of ethics in the engineering profession. To this aim, an electronic questionnaire was circulated to all engi-neers on the Chamber’s records (both members and non-members of the Chamber) on 7th February 2015. Replies were accepted up till 30th May 2015. The questionnaire was circulated to a total of 730 engineers and had a response rate that varied between 16-21% depending on the question. The results were compiled and analysed in [3]. Although the results obtained through this question-naire give an indication of the problems perceived by engineers regarding professional ethics issues, one needs to keep in mind that engineers who have strong feelings regarding ethics (both positive or negative) might have had a higher inclination to reply to this questionnaire than others that were neutral. Therefore the results reported here may be somewhat biased. Unfortunately, it is not possible to estimate the extent of this bias. 2 MAIN RESULTS 2.1 Awareness of a written code of ethics The large majority of respondents (91.7%) are aware that there is a written code of ethics for the engineering profession. This percentage does not vary significantly with the age of the respondents. Similarly the variation in awareness between war-rant and non-warrant holders is marginal. It is rather worrisome that 8% of the respondents who have stated that they have the Engineering Warrant have declared that they are not aware of a written code of ethics. It has transpired that the code of ethics has not always been included with the Warrant certificate during the award ceremony. Steps have been taken to ensure that this omission will no longer be repeated in the future. 2.2 Reference to the code of ethics Slightly less than half of the respondents (43.6%) have indicated that they have never referred to the code of ethics or have last referred to it more than five years ago. This may either indicate that respondents did not feel the need to refer to the code of ethics, or else they could not care less. A complete breakdown of the last time respondents referred to the code of ethics is shown in Figure 1. Things improve significantly for the self-employed segment. In the case of respondents who are self-employed only 6.3% have stated that they have never referred to the code of ethics and only 12.5% have indicated that they have not referred
Figure 1:
The last time the code of ethics was re-ferred to by respondents.
Figure 2:
Type of ethical conflict reported
to it in the past 5 years. This seems to indicate that selfemployed engineers are more frequently faced with ethical issues compared to their employed colleagues. 2.3 Adherence to the code of ethics When asked if they have ever found themselves in a position where they had to decide between safeguarding the interests of their organisation or adhering to the code of ethics, 30.0% of the respondents have replied in the affirmative. This number goes down to 20.6% for the under 41, whereas it is correspondly larger for the over 40, where 40.4% have replied in the affirmative. In the case of the self-employed category 41.2% have indicated that they had to decide between safeguarding the interests of their organisation or adhering to the code of ethics at some point in their career. From these results it is clear that a very significant number of engineers, especially those who are self-employed, are faced by ethical dilemas. Figure 2 shows the type of ethical conflict reported. By far, the most prevalant is that relative to safety issues. The safety of people should always be at the top of an engineer’s considerations. The Chamber should be at the forefront to increase awareness with organisations who employ engineers that safety of people should be a red-line and that organisations should never put their engineers in a position where they feel themselves under pressure to compromise on safety in order for the organisation to be successful.
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Results from the Questionnaire on Ethics in the Engineering Profession Continued
Almost a third of respondents (32.8%) have indicated that their immediate superiors are not aware of an engineer’s obligations and constraints. It is rather worrying to note that 10.9% of respond-ents who have indicated that their immediate supe-riors are also engineers, have still indicated that their superiors are not aware of their professional obligations. When asked how faithfully they think the engi-neering community is adhering to the code of eth-ics, a quarter of all respondents (25.0%) think that engineers are doing poorly, as shown in Figure 3. This is not a very healthy number. This percentage goes down to 18% for the group of respondents under 41 years of age. The situation becomes rather worrying for the self-employed segment of respondents, where 52.9% think that the engineer-ing community is poorly adhering to the code of ethics. Slightly more than a third of respondents (33.6%) have indicated that they are aware of engineers who infringe the code of ethics. One has to be careful how to interpret this result. It is likely that those who are concerned with code of ethics infringements because they see it happening may have been spurred to reply to this questionnaire more than others that do not see this as a problem. However even if we look at these raw results these definitely are indicative of an underlying problem. The situation is not healthy at all if we just con-sider the selfemployed segment of respondents. Of these, almost twothirds (64.7%) have stated that they are aware of engineers who infringe the code of ethics. This of course does not necessarily imply that there is a large number of engineers who are infringing the code of ethics. It could very well be that there is just one who is erring. But it is obvi-ous that the Chamber needs to do more in order to increase awareness of the code of ethics, especially more so in the self-employed sector. 2.4 Action against code of ethics infringements When asked whether steps should be taken against engineers who break the code of ethics, the vast majority (93.1%) of respondents have replied in the affirmative.
Figure 3:
Perception of adherence to the code of ethics
It is important to analyse the results of the 8 re-spondents (6.9%) that have replied in the negative to this question. Half of these are in the 20-30 year old age bracket and all are below 50. Five of these are employed and one is unemployed. Five of these are also Warrant holders. Three of these have stated that they have found themselves in a posi-tion where they had to decide between safeguarding the interests of their organization and adhering to the code of ethics. Two of these are actually aware of engineers who infringe the code of ethics. Surprisingly, three of these eight are then prepared to report, in confidence, cases of infringements. One of these had this to say when prompted to give examples of infringement of the code of ethics: “Each case should be tackled on its own be-cause Engineers have a code of ethics to fol-low but politicians and managers and board of directors who are not Engineers may not have any ethics to follow or to abide with. So what does an Engineer do? Resign from his job and register with ETC because he is afraid that his subordinates get sick or because he is afraid of breaking the law? Sometimes I feel the chamber has the same role as a Un-ion. Just interesting in collecting the annual membership.” As a general comment, one of these eight has re-marked that: “It is better to be a corrupted political engineer than a good engineer.” Whereas another has remarked: “I feel the ethics safeguard the interest of established engineers and are not representa-tive of the entire engineering profession. They go against fair competition and contain communistic elements.” Encouragingly, 80% of the respondents are prepared to report, in confidence, cases of infringe-ments of the code of ethics. Of the 23 respondents who have replied in the negative, only one (4.3%) is self-employed. Fifteen of these (65.2%) have an engineer as their immediate superior. Analysing this further, 72.7% of respondents with an engineer as their immediate superior are still prepared to report, in confidence, cases of infringements. How-ever this is significantly less than the 86.7% who are willing to report but do not have an engineer as their immediate superior. This seems to indicate that engineers are somewhat reluctant to report their superior infringing the code of ethics. Nine of the 23 respondents (39.1%) who have indicated that they would not report cases of infringement are aware of engineers who infringe the code of ethics. Surprisingly 19 out of these 23 (82.6%) then feel that steps should be taken against engineers who break the code of ethics. This is another clear indication that these engineers are wary of reporting infringements because of possible consequences on themselves. This indi-cates a lack of trust in the institutions
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Results from the Questionnaire on Ethics in the Engineering Profession Continued
Figure 4:
Body to report to in the case of infringe-ments of the code of ethics
with keeping confidentiality. One of these had this final comment: “The setting up of an Ethics Board by the CoE is an extremely good idea!!” However, it is important that engineers realise that the Ethics and Disciplinary Sub-Committee on its own cannot ensure that engineers adhere to their code of ethics. Indeed this must be a concert-ed effort! Respondents are evenly split in their preference to report code of ethics infringements to the Engi-neering Board or the Chamber of Engineers, as is shown in Figure 4. One of the open-ended questions asked re-spondents to give examples of infringement of the code of ethics. Forty one respondents gave examples. These replies have been grouped into a num-ber of infringement categories and the results are shown in Figure 5. Note that some respondents have given more than one example. It is clear from these replies that the two main infringements men-tioned in reply to this questionnaire are “conflict of interest” and “false statements/certifications.” Both infringements may have dire consequences to society, and must be checked.
Figure 6:
Ease of following code of ethics
2.5 Updating of the code of ethics The vast majority of respondents (82%) think that the code of ethics is reasonably to very easy to follow, as shown in Figure 6. However, 57.8% think that it is only reasonably easy to follow, indicating that a certain level of fine tuning needs to be applied to the way how it is written. These numbers do not vary significantly with the various age groups or whether the engineer is self-employed or not. Two thirds (66.4%) of all respondents think that the code of ethics needs updating. This percentage is even higher if we consider just the group of re-spondents under 41 years of age (72.1%) or the group of respondents who are self-employed (76.5%). 2.6 Awareness of liabilities at law Slightly more than a quarter of all respondents (27.6%) have indicated that they are not aware of their liabilities at law. So there is definitely scope of an educational campaign with member engineers regarding this aspect. The percentage is only slight-ly lower (24%) in the case of warranted engineers. The problem seems to be even more pronounced with engineers under the age of 41 where 37.7% have indicated lack of awareness. Only 5.9% of the self-employed respondents have indicated lack of awareness of their liabilities at law.
Figure 5:
Examples of infringement of the Code of Ethics
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Results from the Questionnaire on Ethics in the Engineering Profession Continued
3 CONCLUSIONS From the results reported here it is clear that the code of ethics for Engineers does not need a major rewrite, but it needs updating in order to make it easier to read. The replies received also seem to indicate that a number of engineers are not adhering to their code of ethics. It is encouraging to note that the vast majority of the respondents think that these individuals need to be reported and action taken against them. The problem seems to be significant-ly more acute in the case of self-employed engineers. The questionnaire has also revealed that not all engineers are aware of their liabilities at law and therefore it is advisable for the Chamber to embark on an educational campaign with its members on ethical behaviour and legal issues. Also, managers who are immediate superiors of engineers should also be made aware of the legal and professional obligations of engineers. A third of the respondents have reported finding themselves in a position where they had to decide between safeguarding the interests of their organisation and adhering to the code of ethics. Almost half of these have reported safety issues as the type of conflict. On the other hand, the largest per-ceived type of infringement is that related to false statements and/ or certifications, which of course also may lead to safety issues. The updated code of ethics should put more emphasis on this and the Chamber of Engineers should strive so that the rel-evant authorities are made aware of these issues and that action should be taken at all levels such that non-ethical behaviour is curtailed. REFERENCES [1] [2] [3]
Chamber of Engineers, "Chamber of Engineers Statute," 2015. [Online]. Available: http://coe.org.mt/images/M_images/statute feb 2015.pdf. "Engineering Profession Act," Chapter 321, Laws of Malta, 1998. Ethics and Disciplinary Committee, Chamber of Engineers, "Questionnaire on Ethics in the Engineering Profession - Analysis of Results," July 2015.
Prof. Dr Inġ. Victor
Buttigieg
Prof Dr Ing Victor Buttigieg is an associate professor with the Department of Communications and Computer Engineering at the University of Malta, where he lectures in the fields of Digital Signal Processing, Telecommunications, Computer Networks and Coding Theory. He is also a consultant in Telecommunications Engineering.
Inġ. Alex
Galea
Inġ. Alex Galea graduated in Mechanical Engineering from the Royal University of Malta in 1971. Between 1972 and 1995 he worked for Stainless Steel Products Limited in Malta and in the Republic of Ireland. He occupied the posts of Shift Engineer (Malta), Chief Engineer (Eire), Design/ Development Engineer (Malta) and Works Manager (Malta).
Inġ. Pierre
Ciantar
Ing Pierre Ciantar is Engineering Manager at Tethys Oil Supplies and Services Ltd, a privately owned company active in North Africa in the oil and gas production sector. Prior to that Ing Ciantar held various other positions with private companies as well as running his own company specialising in data networks.
Prof. Dr Inġ. Robert
Ghirlando
Prof Robert Ghirlando graduated in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Malta in 1968. He furthered his studies at Liverpool University obtaining an MEng and PhD. He returned to Malta in 1974 and after a career in a number of industrial firms in Malta joined the University in 1987. He was Managing Director of Malta University Services Ltd for a number of years.
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Trading Online or Not? What’s in it for the investor? The world of investments and finance is in constant evolution. Although market principles remain steadfast, the sector readily responds to change and has a proven track record to be an early adopter of new technology. One of the important changes that opened up investment in shares of listed companies to the general public was the privatisation projects which enabled and encouraged ordinary people to invest in the stock market; which until then had been accessible only to the affluent. Notwithstanding these changes, until the recent past, there was only one way to trade or invest in the stock market, and that was through the physical interaction with a stockbroker. The increased use of the telephone, telex and fax machines made the communication process simpler but did not change the practice of having a middle man in order to gain access the market. The necessity of human intervention meant that transaction costs remained relatively high, particularly for the smaller investor. Brokerage firms therefore quickly embraced the proliferation of the internet and particularly the exponential growth in the use of mobile devices. They passed on control and the relative cost savings into the hands (and pockets) of the investor. Nowadays, individuals who know how to manage their own investments, no longer need to interact with a middle man. They can trade directly online. The greatest benefit of accessing the stock market via online trading is the drastic reduction in transaction costs. Advisors and stockbroking firms, through their physical set-up and years of experience offer a very effective way to access the markets. However it is also a costly option, particularly for smaller ticket investments. They charge brokerage fees, which are up-front charges with a relatively high minimum for their services, nominee fees when holding securities under custody and even take a percentage of any earnings on discretionary portfolios.
Undeniably, trading online for one’s self, without the assistance of a market expert, does bring with it greater risk both in way of selecting the right investment and also in the execution of the actual trades on the market. Therefore, the “middle man” does pay a vital role in the chain for the small or inexperienced investor by giving appropriate advice and selecting the most suitable investment. Selecting stock wisely, coupled with a timely entry and exit strategy, is the key to building wealth over time. The benefit of lower charges is quickly forgotten as capital is destroyed should a self-purchased speculative investment turns sour. Self-discipline is therefore very important and prospective users of such online trading platforms should make good use of the free trial periods which allows them to execute dummy trades without forking out any real cash. Trades are executed through the simple click of a mouse or the even simpler tapping of a finger. Hence, the more knowledgeable investors can really gain full control over their investment decisions. Furthermore, access to real-time data (usually at a small monthly cost) and the immediate routing of orders on the market is a benefit which is secondary to none. Online trading platforms are great tools intended for well-informed, frequent investors and definitely not merely an innovative cheap route to the markets for those aspiring to “get rich quickly”. In essence, it helps, for good or bad, take control of the market investment decisions from the brokers and puts it into the hands of investors. Bank of Valletta p.l.c. is a public limited company licensed to carry out the business of banking and investment services in terms of the Banking Act (Cap. 371 of the Laws of Malta) and the Investment Services Act (Cap. 370 of the Laws of Malta). Registered Office: 58, Triq San Zakkarija, Il-Belt Valletta VLT 1130-Malta Registration Number: C 2833
Online trading, on the other hand, is not free, but comparatively inexpensive and with significantly smaller minimum fees, making investments of a smaller size more viable. That said, online trading platforms do expect their users to trade frequently and in most instances fees are applied after periods of inactivity.
Bank of Valletta p.l.c. is a public limited company licensed to carry out the business of banking and investment services in terms of the Banking Act (Cap. 371 of the Laws of Malta) and the Investment Services Act (Cap. 370 of the Laws of Malta). Registered Office: 58, Triq San Zakkarija, Il-Belt Valletta VLT 1130-Malta Registration Number: C 2833
Malta Engineering Excellence Awards 2015 Enemalta plc, Professor Joseph Cilia and Ing. Paul L. Cardona were the winners of this year’s Malta Engineering Excellence Awards, the annual event held by the Chamber of Engineers. The awards were held under the Distinguished Patronage of the President of Malta, H.E Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca, who was also present.
Industrial Excellence Award
Engineering Entrepreneur Award
The Industrial Excellence Award was presented to Enemalta Chairman Ing. Fredrick Azzopardi, for Enemalta’s project “The Malta-Italy Electricity Interconnector”
Professor Joseph Cilia was awarded with the Engineering Entrepreneurship Award. Professor Joseph Cilia obtained his first degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Malta in 1989. He pursued his studies with a Masters and a Doctorate at the University of Nottingham. His doctoral work was presented in international conferences and was awarded the Derek Kirk Prize for the "Best Research Award" and two patents were also submitted on the innovation emerging from his work. In 1998 Professor Cilia returned as a full time lecturer at the University of Malta and a part time consultant for local industries and authorities where he could use his expertise in electrical drives and industrial power and control applications. In 2003 he was appointed as Research Director of Abertax Group and in 2010 the Chairman of Abertax executive board. Through his research input, together with a team of professional engineers the company managed to obtain 12 patents some of which have been turned into high quality products.
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Lifetime Achievement Award The Maurice Debono Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to Ing. Paul L. Cardona. Ing. Cardona commenced his career when he entered Malta Drydocks Corporation’s apprenticeship scheme in 1966 which later allowed him to read Mechanical Engineering and graduate in 1971. He then completed the Management Trainee programme then operated by the yard. Between 1972 and 1974, he continued with the yard as a Ship Repair Manager. Between 1974 and 1980, he joined Southern Steamships. In 1977 he was appointed Fleet Superintendent and was based in the company’s offices in London. In 1980, he returned to Malta and opened his Marine Survey and Consultancy Office which he still operates till today. Ing. Cardona has held and continues to hold appointments by various classification societies, local and overseas underwriters, various flag states and major shipping lines. He has also been involved on various significant marine and oil and gas related projects. Ing. Cardona is also recognised in the international super-yacht industry as a reference point regarding statutory regulation of super yachts. Ing. Cardona has also contributed significantly to the engineering profession, having been part of the Chamber to lobby for engineers to achieve a legally recognised professional status. He was later appointed to the Engineering Board.
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IEEE Malta Section
Student Branch in Science in the City 2015 Introduction On a yearly basis, the IEEE Student Branch at the University of Malta participates in the annual Science and Arts festival also known as Science in the City. This year, marking the fourth edition of the event, Science in the City was held in Valletta on Friday 25th September 2015 from 18:00 onwards. The IEEE Student Branch participated in this year’s edition with several engineering related challenges and demonstrations.
Figure 1:
Logo of the festival
1 Science in the City 2015 The festival, which is free of charge, is a collaborative effort between researchers, academics, artists, performers, and a number of student organisations such as the IEEE Malta Student Branch. It also includes NGOs, government agencies, and a number of participants from the private sector. The science and arts festival is part of the EU-wide celebration known as European Researchers’ Night. (see figure 1) 2 The IEEE Malta Student Branch at the University of Malta The IEEE Malta Student Branch at the University of Malta is mainly directed towards students at the faculties of Engineering and ICT, and is part of the international IEEE community, the largest non-profit organization of its kind worldwide. The organization seeks to bridge the gap between university life and a career in the respective area of study. This is achieved through the variety of activities that are organized, such as industrial visits and SPAC (Student Professional Awareness Conference). (see figure 2)
Figure 2:
Executive Committee 2015/2016
2.1 Participation in Science in the City This year, the student branch showed a robot warrior, Drobilka, which has participated in the last edition of Robot Wars held on 8th February 2015. (see figures 3 and 4) Along with Drobilka, we had two games on our stand, these being Towers of Hanoi and the wire-loop game. The Towers of Hanoi game is a good way of showing the recursion technique used regularly by programmers. The aim of the game is to move the rings (smaller ring on top) from the first pole at one end to the last pole at the other end in such a way that the smaller ring is always on top. The wire loop game tests the steadiness of the persons who dare try it. The buzzer went off every time the loop touched the puzzle (formed of wire), thus acting as a switch. (see figures 5 and 6) Another fun and interesting demo on our stand was the Nail Balance Challenge. A lot of nails were continuously balanced on one nail’s head using only the principle of balance and equal forces all around the nail’s head. (see figures 7 and 8)
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Figure 3:
Drobilka during the Robot Wars event
Andrea Mifsud
Vice Chair & Secretary
andrea.mifsud@ieee.org
Figure 4:
Drobilka during Science in the City
Figure 5:
Towers of Hanoi
Figure 7: Balancing of nails on a nail’s head
Figure 8: Trying the Nail Balance Challenge
Figure 6:
Wire-Loop game
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Student Branch in Science in the City 2015 Continued
Moreover, we also showed and explained to the audience the concept of how an electromagnet can be formed using a coil wound around an iron core. Another demonstration involved the setting up of a very basic DC motor whose principles were explained in layman terms for the mixed audience to understand. (see figure 9)
Figure 9: DC motor
Last but not least, two of last year’s final year students from the Faculty of ICT, Keith Cini and Josef Magri, joined us to exhibit their final year projects and discuss with all those interested the advances of technology particularly in the biomedical engineering sector. Keith’s research focused on the signal processing of Electromyography (EMG) signals, being captured from the muscles, and how these can be used to drive motors, all implemented on an FPGA. These motors can be part of exoskeletons and can thus be used to aid people with limited limb movement. On the other hand, Josef designed a biomedical potential acquisition system making sure that it consumed low power and keeps noise to a minimum. Furthermore, the system was made to be portable as it was powered through a small 2V battery. (see figure 10) 3 Conclusion It is the IEEE Student Branch’s plan to keep its participation in such festivals active. Every year we make sure to find innovative ways to explain engi-neering concepts in layman terms, showing that given the right tools and enough dedication, people of all ages can understand concepts usually deemed difficult to apprehend. It is our aim to continue improving our exhibits and demonstrations from one year to the next because through these we are showing that the fields of engineering and ICT are both fun and interesting, and are applied in various systems that we use or see everyday.
Figure 10: Final Year Projects
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IEEE Malta Section
Robot Wars 2015 Alison Baldacchino a.baldacchino@ieee.org
As the end of the year 2015 was approaching, the IEEE Student Branch, University of Malta was busy preparing for its ninth edition of Robot Wars, held on Sunday 6th December at the University of Malta. In this yearly event, students from the University of Malta, generally from the Faculties of Engineering and ICT, investigate the best ways of designing and building a robot, which must include an active weapon, so that it is strong enough to face its opponents on a one to one battle in the arena. As stated in the competition’s rules and regulations, each robot could have a maximum weight of 17kg and occupy a maximum area of 50cm by 50cm. For this edition, five very interesting robots competed, some with new weaponry which the event has never seen before, thus making the matches even more challenging and exciting.
Figure 1:
These weapons included a vertical crusher on GlaDOS, a fullbody spinner on Raphael, and a pusher on Gahan. All three unfamiliar weapons were implemented on newcomer robots. The other two robots were 3310 and Dicer which had a flipper and a drum respectively. In the morning the robots had the opportunity to get a feel of the arena during the maneuverability test and the tug-of-war. In this way all the teams got to check out the performance of their opponents These were respectively won by Gahan and GlaDOS. For the maneuverability test, each robot had to be driven along a winding path in the arena in the least possible time while also trying to avoid moving any of the markers along the path
The robots that competed in this year’s edition (from left to right: Gahan, GlaDOS, Raphael, Dicer, 3310)
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boundary. The meccano wheels that team Gahan opted to use for its drive have shown to be a good way to traverse this path in the shortest time possible and without touching any of the markers. This is because these were omni-wheels and so they could be driven in any direction without having the robot do any rotations itself. The motors and wheels that team GlaDOS used in their robot have shown that if something is well designed and properly chosen for the task for which these are to be used, then the robot will do its job properly! The actual fights were carried out in the afternoon using a round robin system where each robot fought against the other robots before moving on to the semi-final and final matches. In this way, each team will experience the potential of the robot that they had built and see how robust it is against the variety of tactics and weapons developed by the rest of the teams. (see figure 1) This year, some teams succeeded, for the first time, to make use of the pit and push their opponent into it; an interesting moment where all the crowd shouts with excitement! The ramp also proved to cause difficulties for robot Raphael as its self-righting mechanism was damaged after traveling from the ramp, back down to the smooth terrain. The robots with the most potential starting showing from the fights at the very beginning and in fact ended up against each other in the final. These two robots are 3310 and Gahan. The former is the previous Robot Wars’ champion and if it were not for the technical problem of having a fault in the hydraulic valve, there might have been a possibility of having stood a chance this year as well. Gahan was formidable from beginning to end with a team that have evidently shown a variety of tactics developed specifically for their robot’s characteristics, namely that it was invertible, could move in any direction due to its omni-directional wheels and its low height from the arena floor. Throughout most of the fight Gahan was continuously chasing 3310, trying to push its flipper underneath the beams surrounding the arena floor so as to make it immobile. However 3310 managed to avoid them at all times and even managed to counter its opponent’s continuous attempts of pushing it into the pit. The winner of the final was decided by the judges who were undeniably impressed by Gahan’s overall system and strategies.
Figure 2:
The winning team Gahan with their robot after they were declared champions of the ninth edition of Robot Wars.
Robot Wars has again proved to be a good platform of giving students at the University of Malta the opportunity to practice what they have done in class and beyond, exposing themselves to new challenges that designing a robust robot from scratch entails. All this would not have been possible without the voluntary commitment of the IEEE Malta Student Branch committee members, the support of the IEEE Malta Section and the sponsorship from the Malta Council of Science and Technology, Masco Security Services Limited, If you are a student at the University of Malta and are interested in joining the IEEE Malta Student Branch or participate in the next Robot Wars, kindly contact Andrea on andrea.mifsud@ieee.org
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AGM 2016: Elected Candidates Profile Inġ. Anthony Cachia graduated in 1983 from the UOM in the mechanical engineering field. The engineering profession is very much at heart to Anthony who over the past years focused on the improvement of the profession’s esteem level within the Maltese society. H e served on the Engineering Board for the past 17 years and for 9 years on the Council of the Chamber of Engineers in various roles including that of General
Secretary. Inġ. Cachia features as Head of Facilities & Estate Management, Projects and Administrative Services in the management structure of Air Malta plc.
Inġ. Michael D’Amato Eur. Ing. graduated in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Malta as BSc. Eng(Mech.) in 1976. He started his career as part of the Armed Forces of Malta and annexed to the Dept of Health as a hospital engineer. In 1977 he joined the Panta Lesco Group as a Services Engineer specialising in Water
Treatment, Services Maintenance and Environmental Engineering.
His contribution towards the profession is further sustained through his experience in a number of fields, namely aircraft development, airfield equipment, building services, facilities and estate management, project management and business services.
He pioneered the Desalination process via Reverse Osmosis at the Dolmen Hotel in 1981 together with Polymetrics of California USA, later to be followed by the well established SWRO plants on the Island built by the same company. Inġ. D’Amato resigned from this company
Inġ. Alex Galea graduated in Mechanical Engineering from the Royal University of Malta in 1971.
Ing. Galea was a founder member of the Chamber of Professional Engineers and served as Council Member for over 20 years, two years of which as President.
Between 1972 and 1995 he worked for Stainless Steel Products Limited in Malta and in the Republic of Ireland. He occupied the posts of Shift Engineer (Malta), Chief Engineer (Eire), Design/ Development Engineer (Malta) and Works Manager (Malta). In 1990 Inġ. Galea was appointed Technical Director of the Malta Plant and Director of Pland Stainless in Leeds U.K. In 1995 Ing. Galea set up his own Engineering Consultancy firm Techman Limited. Currently he holds the post of director within the firm.
In 1999 he was awarded the Maurice Debono Memorial Prize for a significant contribution to the engineering profession. During his tenure, the engineering profession was regularised through the Engineering Profession Act and the Chamber became a full member of FEANI. He was instrumental in putting the Chamber on a strong financial footing and in introducing the Annual Engineering Conference. As President he attended FEANI Business Meetings in Malta and abroad. He also occupied
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His objectives are for the engineering profession in Malta to keep evolving concurrent with industrial and economic developments while seeing the engineer spearheading important roles at national level.
only last year after a 38year lifetime career, now offering his consultancy services. Michael attended various specialised courses, wrote various articles, participated at lectures and seminars both locally and abroad. He was also a committee member of the Chamber at its early years.
the post of secretary to the local FEANI membership committee. Inġ. Galea was a member of the Engineering Board set up through the Engineering Profession Act, a post which he held for 11 years before retiring. Presently Inġ. Galea sits on the Chamber’s council and occupies the posts of Membership Secretary and Chairman, Ethics & Disciplinary Committee.
Prof. Dr Inġ. Robert Ghirlando graduated in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Malta in 1968. He furthered his studies at Liverpool University obtaining an MEng and PhD. He returned to Malta in 1974 and after a career in a number of industrial firms in Malta joined the University in 1987. He was Managing Director of Malta University Services Ltd
for a number of years. He has served as head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, of which he is still a member, and Dean of the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Malta. He has also served as Chairman of Enemalta. He is a founder member of the Chamber of Engineers and served on the first and many other Councils of the Chamber. In 1988, he assisted the then Minister of Education pilot the Engineering
Profession Act through Parliament. He has occupied all posts on the Council and participated actively in a number of FEANI meetings. He has served on the Editorial Board of Teknika and is currently on the Editorial Board of Engineering Today and a member of the Ethics sub-committee. At the last AGM he was appointed International Secretary.
Mr Stephane Role graduated from the University of Malta in Electrical and Electronics engineering in 2013. He continued his studies in the UK and graduated from Imperial college London in neurotechnology and biomedical engineering. During his time at the university of Malta Stephane held
the positions of treasurer and secretary general on the Univeristy Engineering Student Association executive board.
Currently, Mr Role is working as a full time lecturer teaching bio-engineering at MCAST.
Alex Tanti is a University of Malta student, currently reading for a bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering. He has had an active role in UESA (University Engineering Students' Association) for the past two years. During his first year in UESA, Alex was part of the Leisure sub-committee team, and as of May 2015, he was elected for the role of Industrial Officer for the UESA executive board 2015-2016.Being in the
Inġ. Norman Zammit has a first degree in electrical engineering (Honours) from the University of Malta (1992) and a Master of Science degree in Building Services Engineering from Brunel University in the UK (2002). Inġ. Zammit has been involved in several prestigious projects both locally and overseas. During the period 20002007, Inġ.. Zammit through his company was consultant of Skanska Malta J.V. on the Mater Dei Hospital project.
He would like to work on promoting the CoE, especially to younger generations of engineers, to increase participation in COE events.
leisure team taught him responsibility in the light of organising successful events, being both social and educative. Today, his current position as Industrial Officer has lead Alex to successfully organise regular industrial visit at various engineering-based companies, whilst constantly keeping in contact with these companies throughout the year. Apart from balancing UESA and his studies, Alex has managed to keep committed with his part-time job at Electrofix Ltd, another company based
Inġ. Zammit was also involved in hotel development projects in Sudan and Russia as well as Business development and Senior consulting Engineer for a Maltese company in Libya up till July 2011. Inġ. Zammit was also engaged in the operations of a major facilities management company in Malta. At present Inġ. Zammit holds the post of Facilities Manager at Smartcity Malta.
in the engineering sector. Alex has additionally obtained his private pilot license, and wishes to further his work in that sector. Through his team-working experience within UESA, and his work with other exterior companies, Alex would most definitely make the ideal student representative in the Chamber Of Engineers.
Membership Secretary and 3 years as General Secretary. During the same period he was elected by warrant holder as member of the Engineering Board. Furthermore, Inġ. Zammit is also the incumbent President of the CoE and has been so for the last two years.
Between 1999 and 2002 he was COE council member in the roles of
MARCH 2016 ISSUE 53
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The New CoE Council
Inġ. Norman Zammit Eur. Ing. President
Mr Stephan Role PRO
Mike D'Amato Activities Secretary
Dr Inġ. Daniel Micallef Secretary General
Inġ. Alex Galea Membership Secretary
Dr Inġ. Patrick Attard Member
Inġ. Saviour Baldacchino Vice President
Inġ. Anthony Cachia Assistant Membership Secretary
Alexander Tanti Student
Inġ. Johan Psaila Treasurer
Prof. Dr Inġ. Robert Ghirlando International Secretary
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