Quantifying risk in financial terms in an e-transaction.

An outcome of Risk is the possible loss that could incur in an interaction. In a peer-to-peer financial interaction, the possible loss that could incur is usually the financial loss in the resources of the trusting agent that are involved in the interaction. Hence, a consideration for the trusting agent to analyze the Risk in interacting with any probable trusted agent in order to decide whether to interact with it or not, is to determine the potential loss in its resources that may occur. In this paper, we will propose a methodology by which the trusting agent can determine beforehand the possible loss that could be incurred to it as a result of interacting with a probable trusted agent

Quantifying risk in financial terms according to context and time for decision making

One of the characteristic of Risk is the possible loss that could be incurred in an interaction. In a peer-topeer financial interaction the loss incurred is usually the financial loss to the resources of the trusting peer that are involved in the interaction. Hence a way for the trusting peer to analyse the Risk in interacting with any trusted peer in order to decide wether to interact with it or not, is to determine the possible loss to its resources that are involved in the interaction. In this paper we will propose a methodology by which the trusting peer can determine the possible loss that could be incurred to it in interacting with a trusted peer

Building an approach for monitoring climate change impacts on tourism resources in developing countries

The tourism industry is important for many state economies. Tourism relies on resources that attract tourists and thus generate income. Ensuring these resources are sustainable through preservation, maintenance, and optimal utilisation is vital to the continuation and health of the tourism industry. Monitoring of resources is equally important for good management; changes and threats to tourism resources occur for many reasons, including anthropogenic activity or/and climate change, and monitoring enables efficient responses. The research described in this thesis focused on resources in developing countries, which are believed to be relatively vulnerable to climate change. Developing countries, including Arab countries, need more research about ways to sustain their tourism resources. This research aimed to build an approach that can be used by developing countries whose tourism resources are likely to be impacted by climate change. Two case studies were used in this research – one to develop the approach (Fujairah) and one to validate it (Turkey). Tourism resources in Fujairah were initially categorised into three groups: natural, cultural and built-up resources. These resources were input to a geodatabase using a Geographic Information System. The locations of those tourism resources and land use in Fujairah in general were mapped. Next, SimCLIM software was used to project climate change effects in the short term (to 2030) and long term (2070) using 1990 as the baseline. These projections incorporated changes in temperature, sea levels, precipitation and other climate variables. Based on the A1FI (fossil intensive) emission scenario with a high level of climate sensitivity results revealed, for example, that average air temperatures in Fujairah are predicted to increase by more than 5°C by 2070. In addition, the recurrent frequency of an average maximum daily temperature over a 7-day consecutive period of more than 45°C may increase seven-fold by 2030. These and other projected results were then used inside the Rapid Assessment Program to assess the potential impacts of those effects on the emirate’s tourism resources. The results show that climate change effects will threaten tourism resources in Fujairah in multiple ways. The predicted increase in temperature and the acidification of the ocean will impact tourism resources most severely. These impacts can be attributed to the fact that high temperatures are already problematic for tourism in the region, while coral reefs are vulnerable to ocean acidification. Next, an approach for monitoring the temporal changes occurring to the tourism resources in Fujairah was introduced. Because effects are sometimes minimal in the short term, relying on human observation is impractical; a Terrestrial Laser Scanning based technique was employed for micro change detection. All the methods described above were combined in a framework that can be used in a generic way by developing countries. The applicability of the approach was tested and validated using data from Turkey. The results of this research can be used by decision-making authorities in developing countries to monitor their tourism resources and develop adaptive and mitigation measures to maintain and sustain those resources in the face of climate change impacts

Model-based risk assessment

In this research effort, we focus on model-based risk assessment. Risk assessment is essential in any plan intended to manage software development or maintenance process. Subjective techniques are human intensive and error-prone. Risk assessment should be based on architectural attributes that we can quantitatively measure using architectural level metrics. Software architectures are emerging as an important concept in the study and practice of software engineering nowadays, due to their emphasis on large-scale composition of software product, and to their support for emerging software engineering paradigms, such as product line engineering, component based software engineering, and software evolution.;In this dissertation, we generalize our earlier work on reliability-based risk assessment. We introduce error propagation probability in the assessment methodology to account for the dependency among the system components. Also, we generalize the reliability-based risk assessment to account for inherent functional dependencies.;Furthermore, we develop a generic framework for maintainability-based risk assessment which can accommodate different types of software maintenance. First, we introduce and define maintainability-based risk assessment for software architecture. Within our assessment framework, we investigate the maintainability-based risk for the components of the system, and the effect of performing the maintenance tasks on these components. We propose a methodology for estimating the maintainability-based risk when considering different types of maintenance. As a proof of concept, we apply the proposed methodology on several case studies. Moreover, we automate the estimation of the maintainability-based risk assessment methodology

Novel approaches for solving large-scale optimization problems on graphs

This dissertation considers a class of closely related NP-hard otpimization problems on graphs that arise in many important applications, including network-based data mining, analysis of the stock market, social networks, coding theory, fault diagnosis, molecular biology, biochemistry and genomics. In particular, the problems of interest include the classical maximum independent set problem (MISP) and maximum clique problem (MCP), their vertex-weighted vesrions, as well as novel optimization models that can be viewed as practical relaxations of their classical counterparts. The concept of clique has been a popular instrument in analysis of networks, and is, essentially, an idealized model of a “closely connected group”, or a cluster. But, at the same time, the restrictive nature of the definition of clique makes the clique model impractical in many applications. This motivated the development of clique relaxation models that relax different properties of a clique. On the one hand, while still possessing some clique-like properties, clique relaxations are not as “perfect” as cliques; and on the other hand, they do not exhibit the disadvantages associated with a clique. Using clique relaxations allows one to compromise between perfectness and flexibility, between ideality and reality, which is a usual issue that an engineer deals with when applying theoretical knowledge to solve practical problems in industry. The clique relaxation models studied in this dissertation were first proposed in the literature on social network analysis, however they have not been well investigated from a mathematical programming perspective. This dissertation considers new techniques for solving the MWISP and clique relaxation problems and investigates their effectiveness from theoretical and computational perspectives. The main results obtained in this work include (i) developing a scale-reduction approach for MWISP based on the concept of critical set and comparing it theoretically with other approaches; (ii) obtaining theoretical complexity results for clique relaxation problems; (iii) developing algorithms for solving the clique relaxation problems exactly; (iv) carrying out computational experiments to demonstrate the performance of the proposed approaches, and, finally, (v) applying the obtained theoretical results to several real-life problems

Projeto de representação gráfica de um grupo de ícones para a criação de cenários de aprendizagem baseados no learning design aplicados ao ambiente virtual hypercal online

Como área de pesquisa e de conhecimento, o Learning Design se originou a partir de outra área ligada a educação denominada de Design Instrucional. Embora existam estudiosos preocupados em propor uma forma de representação das atividades educacionais, ainda permeia problemas de representações visuais entre programas de criação de cenários de aprendizagem como o Compendium LD e o LAMS. Esta pesquisa tem como objetivo, propor um grupo de ícones para representação gráfica para auxílio na criação de cenários de aprendizagem digitais, utilizando os preceitos do Learning Design, sendo aplicados no ambiente virtual HyperCal online. O objetivo foi alcançado, utilizando-se uma metodologia mista envolvendo etapas de metodologia de pesquisa e etapas de metodologia projetual. Inicialmente fez-se uma busca bibliográfica de autores acerca do tema learning design e design visual sendo proposto posteriormente um questionário para uma amostragem de 15 pessoas entre professores e educadores do Departamento de Design e Expressão Gráfica da Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul – (DEG) – UFRGS) com o objetivo de levantar informações relacionadas a percepção visual de 24 ícones escolhidos das ferramentas de learning design Compendium LD e LAMS. Estas informações serviram como alicerces para a criação do grupo de ícones, gerando preliminarmente as diretrizes de projeto com o apoio de uma metodologia projetual proposta por Santos (2006) conhecida como método aberto, que se divide em três fases: pré-conceitual, conceitual e pós-conceitual. As alternativas finalizadas de cada função/ícone foram escolhidas a partir de informações adquiridas de um questionário enviado para 10 professores e, também, através de um grupo focal feito com 3 dos desenvolvedores do ambiente virtual HyperCal online. Como resultado final, gerou-se no total 15 ícones e cada um foi subdividindo de acordo com os elementos principais de atividades de aprendizagem de Neumann; Oberhuemer; Derntl (2009) que consistem em: atividades de aprendizagem, suporte de aprendizagem e recursos de aprendizagem, adicionando-se mais um elemento a esta divisão sendo ele o de atores.As a research and knowledge area, Learning Design originated from another area linked to education called Instructional Design. Although there are scholars who are concerned with proposing a way of representing educational activities, there are still problems of visual representations between programs to create learning scenarios such as Compendium LD and LAMS. This research aims to propose a group of icons for graphic representation to aid in the creation of digital learning scenarios, using the concepts of Learning Design, being applied in the virtual environment HyperCal online. The objective was achieved by using a mixed methodology involving research methodology steps and design methodology steps. Initially, a bibliographic search of authors about the subject of learning design and visual design was proposed, and a questionnaire was later proposed for a sample of 15 people between professors and educators of the Department of Design and Graphic Expression of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul - (DEG ) - UFRGS) in order to gather information related to the visual perception of 24 icons chosen from the learning design tools Compendium LD and LAMS. This information served as a foundation for the creation of the group of icons, preliminarily generating the design guidelines with the support of a project methodology proposed by Santos (2006) known as the open method, which is divided into three phases: preconceptual, conceptual and post-conceptual. The finalized alternatives of each function / icon were chosen from information acquired from a questionnaire sent to 10 teachers and also through a focus group made with 3 of the developers of the virtual environment HyperCal online. As a final result, a total of 15 icons were generated and each was subdivided according to the main elements of learning activities of Neumann; Oberhuemer; Derntl (2009) which consist of: learning activities, learning support and learning resources, adding another element to this division being that of actors