Non-intrusive load monitoring (NILM) is the main method used to monitor the energy footprint of a residential building and disaggregate total electrical usage into appliance-related signals. The most common disaggregation algorithms are based on the Hidden Markov Model, while solutions based on deep neural networks have recently caught the attention of researchers. In this work we address the problem through the recognition of the state of activation of the appliances using a fully convolutional deep neural network, borrowing some techniques used in the semantic segmentation of images and multilabel classification. This approach has allowed obtaining high performances not only in the recognition of the activation state of the domestic appliances but also in the estimation of their consumptions, improving the state of the art for a reference dataset.

This paper discusses the relative performance of several climate models in providing reliable forcing for hydrological modeling in six representative catchments in the Mediterranean region. We consider 14 Regional Climate Models (RCMs), from the EU-FP6 ENSEMBLES project, run for the A1B emission scenario on a common 0.22° (about 24 km) rotated grid over Europe and the Mediterranean region. In the validation period (1951 to 2010) we consider daily precipitation and surface temperatures from the observed data fields (E-OBS) data set, available from the ENSEMBLES project and the data providers in the ECA&D project. Our primary objective is to rank the 14 RCMs for each catchment and select the four best-performing ones to use as common forcing for hydrological models in the six Mediterranean basins considered in the EU-FP7 CLIMB project. Using a common suite of four RCMs for all studied catchments reduces the (epistemic) uncertainty when evaluating trends and climate change impacts in the 21st century. We present and discuss the validation setting, as well as the obtained results and, in some detail, the difficulties we experienced when processing the data. In doing so we also provide useful information and advice for researchers not directly involved in climate modeling, but interested in the use of climate model outputs for hydrological modeling and, more generally, climate change impact studies in the Mediterranean region.

To improve the level skill of climate models (CMs) in reproducing the statistics of daily rainfall at a basin level, two types of statistical approaches have been suggested. One is statistical correction of CM rainfall outputs based on historical series of precipitation. The other, usually referred to as statistical rainfall downscaling, is the use of stochastic models to conditionally simulate rainfall series, based on large‐scale atmospheric forcing from CMs. While promising, the latter approach attracted reduced attention in recent years, since the developed downscaling schemes involved complex weather identification procedures, while demonstrating limited success in reproducing several statistical features of rainfall. In a recent effort, Langousis and Kaleris () developed a statistical framework for simulation of daily rainfall intensities conditional on upper‐air variables, which is simpler to implement and more accurately reproduces several statistical properties of actual rainfall records. Here we study the relative performance of: (a) direct statistical correction of CM rainfall outputs using nonparametric distribution mapping, and (b) the statistical downscaling scheme of Langousis and Kaleris (), in reproducing the historical rainfall statistics, including rainfall extremes, at a regional level. This is done for an intermediate‐sized catchment in Italy, i.e., the Flumendosa catchment, using rainfall and atmospheric data from four CMs of the ENSEMBLES project. The obtained results are promising, since the proposed downscaling scheme is more accurate and robust in reproducing a number of historical rainfall statistics, independent of the CM used and the characteristics of the calibration period. This is particularly the case for yearly rainfall maxima.