Melisa Acosta-Coll

Scrum methodology is the most useful and adopted part of the agile methodology. Many organizations are adopting Scrum for the last decade to meet their software requirements. It is facilitating the software industries to develop software applications according to the user's requirements. Objective Scrum helps to fulfill the customer's requirements by interacting with the client and developer. Instead of this, scrum still has some challenges that influence the cost of a scrum. These challenging factors include coordination, team size, change request, complexity, and issues in daily meeting sessions. Due to these factors mostly the cost and time exceed scrum-based projects. To overcome these issues from the accurate and precise estimation in the scrum project we have developed a web-based software system to estimate the effort of a user story as well as the budget. Methodology There are some sophisticated cost estimation techniques for scrum-based projects. But all estimation techniques have some limitations that make them less useful for estimation and overcoming the effects of these factors in the scrum. We have surveyed the multiple software industries to get the static findings of the survey. We have designed the 30 hypotheses that main aim to reveal how much the proposed estimation technique is valuable for the accuracy of estimation. For the inclusion of participants, we have set the age criteria to get the opinions of the most experienced programmers. Results The main aim of this paper is to provide knowledge about key challenging factors in Scrum that cause exceed in cost and time, and also briefly explain why existing scrum cost estimation techniques are not pertinent for projects. In the last, we propose a framework as a solution to manage these factors and control cost and time from exceeding. We also adopted this estimation technique in different case studies in software industries for findings and results. The technique calculates the efforts autonomously. We design a software-based estimation technique that collects inputs from team/s and estimates the cost and time of a project. Conclusion In outcomes, we found that our cost estimation approach reduced the issues from scrum software project development and make it more proficient for estimation of projects. Our proposed estimation technique introduced the new concept of estimation that facilitate the client, software industry, and developers as well to meet the requirements of the client, fulfill the changes during the sprints/s development and deliver the project within the time and cost.

During extreme events such as tropical cyclones, the precision of sensors used to sample the meteorological data is vital to feed weather and climate models for storm path forecasting, quantitative precipitation estimation, and other atmospheric parameters. For this reason, periodic data comparison between several sensors used to monitor these phenomena such as ground-based and satellite instruments, must maintain a high degree of correlation in order to issue alerts with an accuracy that allows for timely decision making. This study presents a cross-evaluation of the radar reflectivity from the dual-frequency precipitation radar (DPR) onboard the Global Precipitation Measurement Mission (GPM) and the U.S. National Weather Service (NWS) Next-Generation Radar (NEXRAD) ground-based instrument located in the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico, USA, to determine the correlation degree between these two sensors’ measurements during extreme weather events and normal precipitation events duri...

During extreme events such as tropical cyclones, the precision of sensors used to sample the meteorological data is vital to feed weather and climate models for storm path forecasting, quantitative precipitation estimation, and other atmospheric parameters. For this reason, periodic data comparison between several sensors used to monitor these phenomena such as ground-based and satellite instruments, must maintain a high degree of correlation in order to issue alerts with an accuracy that allows for timely decision making. This study presents a cross-evaluation of the radar reflectivity from the dual-frequency precipitation radar (DPR) onboard the Global Precipitation Measurement Mission (GPM) and the U.S. National Weather Service (NWS) Next-Generation Radar (NEXRAD) ground-based instrument located in the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico, USA, to determine the correlation degree between these two sensors’ measurements during extreme weather events and normal precipitation events during 2015–2019. GPM at Ku-band and Ka-band and NEXRAD at S-band overlapping scanning regions data of normal precipitation events during 2015–2019, and the spiral rain bands of four extreme weather events, Irma (Category 5 Hurricane), Beryl (Tropical Storm), Dorian (Category 1 hurricane), and Karen (Tropical Storm), were processed using the GPM Ground Validation System (GVS). In both cases, data were classified and analyzed statistically, paying particular attention to variables such as elevation angle mode and precipitation type (stratiform and convective). Given that ground-based radar (GR) has better spatial and temporal resolution, the NEXRAD was used as ground-truth. The results revealed that the correlation coefficient between the data of both instruments during the analyzed extreme weather events was moderate to low; for normal precipitation events, the correlation is lower than that of studies that compared GPM and NEXRAD reflectivity located in other regions of the USA. Only Tropical Storm Karen obtained similar results to other comparative studies in terms of the correlation coefficient. Furthermore, the GR elevation angle and precipitation type have a substantial impact on how well the rain reflectivity correlates between the two sensors. It was found that the Ku-band channel possesses the least bias and variability when compared to the NEXRAD instrument’s reflectivity and should therefore be considered more reliable for future tropical storm tracking and tropical region precipitation estimates in regions with no NEXRAD coverage.

Fluvial flooding occurs when a river overspills its banks due to excessive rainfall, and it is the most common flood event. In urban areas, the increment of urbanization makes communities more susceptible to fluvial flooding since the excess of impervious surfaces reduced the natural permeable areas. As flood prevention strategies, early warning systems (EWS) are used to reduce damage and protect people, but key elements need to be selected. This manuscript proposes the monitoring instruments, communication protocols, and media to forecast and disseminate EWS alerts efficiently during fluvial floods in urban areas. First, we conducted a systematic review of different EWS architectures for fluvial floods in urban areas and identified that not all projects monitor the most important variables related to the formation of fluvial floods and most use communication protocols with high-energy consumption. ZigBee and LoRaWAN are the communication protocols with lower power consumption from ...

Plants microbial fuel cells (PMFC) is novel sytem that generates renewable, clean, and sustainable electricity with minimal environmental impact. However, PMFC has limitations in power generation and current density, since its production values is lower than other renewable technologies. Different studies show that the highest limitation for energy generation through MFC is the high resistivity of the cathode, and the solution is to replace the metallic electrodes with non-metallic materials to obtain a better performance, however, the application of these materials requires complex interdisciplinary work. This study conducted three experimental tests using metallic electrodes for the extraction of electrons and combined a black earth substrate with different natural materials, types of plants, and water to determine their influence in the increment of the electric power output.

Los algoritmos de reconocimiento de voz son utilizados en aplicaciones de control inteligente especialmente en el área de la medicina. Una de las aplicaciones es el control de equipos de asistencia motora como las sillas de ruedas para pacientes con discapacidad motora total de sus extremidades inferiores y superiores. Las personas en esta condición tienen dificultad para trasladarse de un lugar a otro, dependiendo siempre de ayuda externa. El presente artículo describe el desarrollo de un algoritmo de reconocimiento de comandos de voz aplicando técnicas no lineales para la identificación de instrucciones de control en el desplazamiento de equipos de asistencia motora, con el fin de proporcionar un desplazamiento autónomo a personas con discapacidad motora total que pueden oír, ver y hablar. Las muestras de voz fueron recolectadas en un ambiente sin ruido y con ruido, aplicando un filtro digital para la eliminación del mismo. El procesamiento de la información filtrada se realizó me...

Currently, people want to take control of what they consume as well as the local authorities pursue to implement measures to improve sustainability, food security, and living standards. Indoor urban farming initiatives provide an opportunity to grow their own and obtain fresher food with fewer transportation emissions, likewise, it is a strategy to lift people out of food poverty, reduce environmental impact since the use of herbicides and pesticides is minimal and helps to reduce food waste. However, factors such as the time dedicated to the cultivation of plants, and the adequate space inside their houses prevents them from carrying out this activity. This project presents the design of a low cost smart indoor greenhouse design to cultivate herbs and vegetables with minimum human intervention monitored by a web application. The prototype has three systems to control and monitor the main variables involved in the plant's growth such as soil moisture, temperature, and solar light intensity. Likewise, it is suitable for a home with little space and it is easily installable, has low energy consumption, and is costefficient.

Plants Microbial Fuel Cells (PMFC) is a new technology that generates electricity in a renewable, clean and sustainable way. In spite of these advantages, it still faces limitations in power generation and current density, reaching lower production values than other renewable technologies. Different studies maintain that the high resistivity of the cathode is the main limitation in the generation of energy; therefore, non-metallic materials to obtain a better performance are replacing the metallic electrodes. The implementation of these materials applied to PMFC requires a complex interdisciplinary work. Through three experimental tests using metallic electrodes for the extraction of electrons, this research study shows that the treatment of the substrate with natural materials, the volume plant roots, and substrate temperature and humidity control have a significant influence in the increase of the electric potential and the generated current.

Pluvial flash floods in urban areas are becoming increasingly frequent due to climate change and human actions, negatively impacting the life, work, production and infrastructure of a population. Pluvial flooding occurs when intense rainfall overflows the limits of urban drainage and water accumulation causes hazardous flash floods. Although flash floods are hard to predict given their rapid formation, Early Warning Systems (EWS) are used to minimize casualties. We performed a systematic review to define the basic structure of an EWS for rain flash floods. The structure of the review is as follows: first, Section 2 describes the most important factors that affect the intensity of pluvial flash floods during rainfall events. Section 3 defines the key elements and actors involved in an effective EWS. Section 4 reviews different EWS architectures for pluvial flash floods implemented worldwide. It was identified that the reviewed projects did not follow guidelines to design early warnin...

Scrum methodology is the most useful and adopted part of the agile methodology. Many organizations are adopting Scrum for the last decade to meet their software requirements. It is facilitating the software industries to develop software applications according to the user's requirements.

Objective
Scrum helps to fulfill the customer's requirements by interacting with the client and developer. Instead of this, scrum still has some challenges that influence the cost of a scrum. These challenging factors include coordination, team size, change request, complexity, and issues in daily meeting sessions. Due to these factors mostly the cost and time exceed scrum-based projects. To overcome these issues from the accurate and precise estimation in the scrum project we have developed a web-based software system to estimate the effort of a user story as well as the budget.

Methodology
There are some sophisticated cost estimation techniques for scrum-based projects. But all estimation techniques have some limitations that make them less useful for estimation and overcoming the effects of these factors in the scrum. We have surveyed the multiple software industries to get the static findings of the survey. We have designed the 30 hypotheses that main aim to reveal how much the proposed estimation technique is valuable for the accuracy of estimation. For the inclusion of participants, we have set the age criteria to get the opinions of the most experienced programmers.

Results
The main aim of this paper is to provide knowledge about key challenging factors in Scrum that cause exceed in cost and time, and also briefly explain why existing scrum cost estimation techniques are not pertinent for projects. In the last, we propose a framework as a solution to manage these factors and control cost and time from exceeding. We also adopted this estimation technique in different case studies in software industries for findings and results. The technique calculates the efforts autonomously. We design a software-based estimation technique that collects inputs from team/s and estimates the cost and time of a project.

Conclusion
In outcomes, we found that our cost estimation approach reduced the issues from scrum software project development and make it more proficient for estimation of projects. Our proposed estimation technique introduced the new concept of estimation that facilitate the client, software industry, and developers as well to meet the requirements of the client, fulfill the changes during the sprints/s development and deliver the project within the time and cost.

Las lluvias de corto plazo se caracterizan por ser de alta intensidad y corta duracion. En zonas urbanas, este tipo de precipitacion produce inundaciones repentinas debido a que la cantidad de agua precipitada satura la capacidad del sistema de drenaje pluvial generando escorrentias peligrosas. Predecir la ocurrencia de las lluvias a corto plazo con precision es uno de los retos dentro del campo de la meteorologia, y es critico para el desarrollo de sistemas de alertas que ayuden a la toma de decisiones oportunas en la comunidad. La ciudad de Barranquilla, Colombia, ubicada en la region caribe posee un clima tropical con regimen bimodal, y durante el periodo de lluvias dentro de la ciudad se generan escorrentias peligrosas llamadas arroyos que causan perdidas materiales y muertes por arrastre o ahogamiento. Actualmente la ciudad no cuenta con un sistema de alerta temprano propio que informe a la comunidad sobre la probabilidad de formacion de lluvias a corto plazo y le permita tomar decisiones antes de presentarse la lluvia. Este articulo muestra un analisis de las mediciones de los ultimos cinco anos de las variables meteorologicas realizados por el Instituto de Hidrologia, Meteorologia y Estudios Ambientales de Colombia (IDEAM) en la ciudad de Barranquilla, Colombia, con el fin de determinar cuales son las variables que influyen en la formacion de lluvias de corto plazo que generan inundaciones en la ciudad y su variacion temporal durante el ano.

It is well documented in the literature that there is an under-sampling limitation of the lower atmosphere from long-range weather radars when observing at distant regions from the instrument's location [NRC, 1995, NRC, 2002, Westrick, 1999]. This problem is evident in the west part of Puerto Rico where the earth curvature and other NOAA radar operational specifications do not allow observations in the lower tropo-sphere below 10,000 feet, and this is exactly where dangerous weather occurs. See Figure 1. This radar gap in the lower atmosphere cannot be properly sampled by the NexRAD radar which is located in Cayey, ap-proximately 70 miles east from Mayagüez (western part of PR). For this reason, many events, such as the water spout de-picted in the photo below (Figure 2), which occurred in Sep-tember 2005 in the Mayagüez bay, are completely invisible to the NexRAD radar which is used by the NWS Office in San Juan, PR. One option to overcome this problem is to create a network of...

Plants microbial fuel cells (PMFC) is novel system that generates renewable, clean, and sustainable electricity with minimal environmental impact. However, PMFC has limitations in power generation and current density, since its production values is lower than other renewable technologies. Different studies show that the highest limitation for energy generation through MFC is the high resistivity of the cathode, and the solution is to replace the metallic electrodes with non-metallic materials to obtain a better performance, however, the application of these materials requires complex interdisciplinary work. This study conducted three experimental tests using metallic electrodes for the extraction of electrons and combined a black earth substrate with different natural materials, types of plants, and water to determine their influence in the increment of the electric power output.

Currently, people want to take control of what they consume as well as the local authorities pursue to implement measures to improve sustainability, food security, and living standards. Indoor urban farming initiatives provide an opportunity to grow their own and obtain fresher food with fewer transportation emissions, likewise, it is a strategy to lift people out of food poverty, reduce environmental impact since the use of herbicides and pesticides is minimal and helps to reduce food waste. However, factors such as the time dedicated to the cultivation of plants, and the adequate space inside their houses prevents them from carrying out this activity. This project presents the design of a low cost smart indoor greenhouse design to cultivate herbs and vegetables with minimum human intervention monitored by a web application. The prototype has three systems to control and monitor the main variables involved in the plant's growth such as soil moisture, temperature, and solar light intensity. Likewise, it is suitable for a home with little space and it is easily installable, has low energy consumption, and is costefficient.

Fluvial flooding occurs when a river overspills its banks due to excessive rainfall, and it is the most common flood event. In urban areas, the increment of urbanization makes communities more susceptible to fluvial flooding since the excess of impervious surfaces reduced the natural permeable areas. As flood prevention strategies, early warning systems (EWS) are used to reduce damage and protect people, but key elements need to be selected. This manuscript proposes the monitoring instruments, communication protocols, and media to forecast and disseminate EWS alerts efficiently during fluvial floods in urban areas. First, we conducted a systematic review of different EWS architectures for fluvial floods in urban areas and identified that not all projects monitor the most important variables related to the formation of fluvial floods and most use communication protocols with high-energy consumption. ZigBee and LoRaWAN are the communication protocols with lower power consumption from the review, and to determine which technology has better performance in urban areas, two wireless sensor networks were deployed and simulated in two urban areas susceptible to fluvial floods using Radio Mobile software. The results showed that although Zigbee technology has better-received signal strength, the difference with LoRAWAN is lower than 2dBm, but LoRaWAN has a better signal-to-noise ratio, power consumption, coverage, and deployment cost.

Rainfall monitoring networks are key elements for the development of alerts and prediction models for communities at risk of flooding during high intensity rainfall events. Currently, most of these networks send the precipitation measurement to a data center in real-time using wireless communication protocols, avoiding travel to the measurement site. An Early Warning System (EWS) for pluvial flash floods developed in Barranquilla (Colombia), used the GPRS protocol to send rain gauge data in real-time to a web server for further processing; however, this protocol has a high consumption of energy and also high maintenance costs. This article carried out an evaluation in terms of link budget, link profile, energy consumption and devices costs of three low-power wireless communication protocols, Zigbee, LoRaWAN and Sigfox, to determine which one is the most suitable for the EWS of the city of Barranquilla. To perform the evaluation, a wireless sensor network was designed and characterized for Zigbee and LoRaWAN with Radio Mobile tool taking into account the measurement points implemented with GPRS network. The evaluation included the power consumption of Zigbee, LoRaWAN and Sigfox. From the results of simulations, LoRaWAN and Zigbee network has similar radio signal received and the LoRaWAN network obtains the least losses per path. As for power consumption, the LoRaWAN devices has the lowest energy consumption, as well as, the LoRaWAN network sensor nodes are cheaper. Finally, the protocol with the best general performance was LoRAWAN, since complies with the communication, consumption and cost requirements.

The inclusion of photovoltaic energy in the Colombian energy matrix has had several difficulties due to the lack of energy policies and regulations in renewable energy projects. The lack of government support with subsidies that extend the coverage of PV energy projects in residential areas has made the collection of funds more challenging. This paper presents a techno-economic analysis for the implementation of grid-connected photovoltaic projects on the roofs of residential areas, under the net metering policy framework. For the profitability analysis, the discounted cash flow (DCF) method was used. The revenues were obtained from the forecasts of the electrical power production of the PV system, based on the characteristics of the Colombian Caribbean Region. For this purpose, the meteorological data (2013-2017) of this region were used as an input for the calculation of the economic benefits that can be achieved with the implementation of PV systems. Based on the technical sizing and economic assumptions, it was proved that the DCF method allows to accurately determine the optimal debt ratio. After evaluating the three scenarios proposed, it was demonstrated that profitability and self-sustainability, with investment from creditors, is obtained from the implementation of PV systems of at least 3 kWp.

The speech recognition algorithms are used in
intelligent control applications especially in the field of
medicine. One application is the control of motor
assistance equipment such as wheelchairs for patients
with total motor disability of their upper and lower
extremities. People in this condition have difficulty
moving from one place to another, always depending on
external aid. This article describes the development of
an algorithm to recognize voice commands using
nonlinear techniques for identifying control instructions
for moving motor assistance equipment, in order to
provide an independent movement to people with full
motor disabilities who can hear, see and speak. The
speech samples were collected in an environment
without noise and noise by applying a digital filter for
elimination. The filtered information processing was
performed using fast Fourier analysis and Mel cepstral
coefficients, and finally neural networks were applied
for recognition by voice control commands.