Defining and validating a multimodel approach for product architecture derivation and improvement

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-41533-3_24Software architectures are the key to achieving the non-functional requirements (NFRs) in any software project. In software product line (SPL) development, it is crucial to identify whether the NFRs for a specific product can be attained with the built-in architectural variation mechanisms of the product line architecture, or whether additional architectural transformations are required. This paper presents a multimodel approach for quality-driven product architecture derivation and improvement (QuaDAI). A controlled experiment is also presented with the objective of comparing the effectiveness, efficiency, perceived ease of use, intention to use and perceived usefulness with regard to participants using QuaDAI as opposed to the Architecture Tradeoff Analysis Method (ATAM). The results show that QuaDAI is more efficient and perceived as easier to use than ATAM, from the perspective of novice software architecture evaluators. However, the other variables were not found to be statistically significant. Further replications are needed to obtain more conclusive results.This research is supported by the MULTIPLE project (MICINN TIN2009-13838) and the Vali+D fellowship program (ACIF/2011/235).González Huerta, J.; Insfrán Pelozo, CE.; Abrahao Gonzales, SM. (2013). Defining and validating a multimodel approach for product architecture derivation and improvement. En Model-Driven Engineering Languages and Systems. Springer. 388-404. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-41533-3_24S388404Ali-Babar, M., Lago, P., Van Deursen, A.: Empirical research in software architecture: opportunities, challenges, and approaches. 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Validating a model-driven software architecture evaluation and improvement method: A family of experiments

Context: Software architectures should be evaluated during the early stages of software development in order to verify whether the non-functional requirements (NFRs) of the product can be fulfilled. This activity is even more crucial in software product line (SPL) development, since it is also necessary to identify whether the NFRs of a particular product can be achieved by exercising the variation mechanisms provided by the product line architecture or whether additional transformations are required. These issues have motivated us to propose QuaDAI, a method for the derivation, evaluation and improvement of software architectures in model-driven SPL development. Objective: We present in this paper the results of a family of four experiments carried out to empirically validate the evaluation and improvement strategy of QuaDAI. Method: The family of experiments was carried out by 92 participants: Computer Science Master s and undergraduate students from Spain and Italy. The goal was to compare the effectiveness, efficiency, perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness and intention to use with regard to participants using the evaluation and improvement strategy of QuaDAI as opposed to the Architecture Tradeoff Analysis Method (ATAM). Results: The main result was that the participants produced their best results when applying QuaDAI, signifying that the participants obtained architectures with better values for the NFRs faster, and that they found the method easier to use, more useful and more likely to be used. The results of the meta-analysis carried out to aggregate the results obtained in the individual experiments also confirmed these results. Conclusions: The results support the hypothesis that QuaDAI would achieve better results than ATAM in the experiments and that QuaDAI can be considered as a promising approach with which to perform architectural evaluations that occur after the product architecture derivation in model-driven SPL development processes when carried out by novice software evaluators.The authors would like to thank all the participants in the experiments for their selfless involvement in this research. This research is supported by the MULTIPLE Project (MICINN TIN2009-13838) and the ValI+D Program (ACIF/2011/235).González Huerta, J.; Insfrán Pelozo, CE.; Abrahao Gonzales, SM.; Scanniello, G. (2015). Validating a model-driven software architecture evaluation and improvement method: A family of experiments. Information and Software Technology. 57:405-429. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infsof.2014.05.018S4054295

Bayesian multimodel estimation of global terrestrial latent heat flux from eddy covariance, meteorological, and satellite observations

Accurate estimation of the satellite-based global terrestrial latent heat flux (LE) at high spatial and temporal scales remains a major challenge. In this study, we introduce a Bayesian model averaging (BMA) method to improve satellite-based global terrestrial LE estimation by merging five process-based algorithms. These are the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) LE product algorithm, the revised remote-sensing-based Penman-Monteith LE algorithm, the Priestley-Taylor-based LE algorithm, the modified satellite-based Priestley-Taylor LE algorithm, and the semi-empirical Penman LE algorithm. We validated the BMA method using data for 2000–2009 and by comparison with a simple model averaging (SA) method and five process-based algorithms. Validation data were collected for 240 globally distributed eddy covariance tower sites provided by FLUXNET projects. The validation results demonstrate that the five process-based algorithms used have variable uncertainty and the BMA method enhances the daily LE estimates, with smaller root mean square errors (RMSEs) than the SA method and the individual algorithms driven by tower-specific meteorology and Modern Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications (MERRA) meteorological data provided by the NASA Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO), respectively. The average RMSE for the BMA method driven by daily tower-specific meteorology decreased by more than 5 W/m2 for crop and grass sites, and by more than 6 W/m2 for forest, shrub, and savanna sites. The average coefficients of determination (R2) increased by approximately 0.05 for most sites. To test the BMA method for regional mapping, we applied it for MODIS data and GMAO-MERRA meteorology to map annual global terrestrial LE averaged over 2001–2004 for spatial resolution of 0.05°. The BMA method provides a basis for generating a long-term global terrestrial LE product for characterizing global energy, hydrological, and carbon cycles

Human-water interface in hydrological modeling: Current status and future directions

Over the last decades, the global population has been rapidly increasing and human activities have altered terrestrial water fluxes at an unprecedented scale. The phenomenal growth of the human footprint has significantly modified hydrological processes in various ways (e.g., irrigation, artificial dams, and water diversion) and at various scales (from a watershed to the globe). During the early 1990s, awareness of the potential water scarcity led to the first detailed global water resource assessments. Shortly thereafter, in order to analyse the human perturbation on terrestrial water resources, the first generation of large-scale hydrological models (LHMs) was produced. However, at this early stage few models considered the interaction between terrestrial water fluxes and human activities, including water use and reservoir regulation, and even fewer models distinguished water use from surface water and groundwater resources. Since the early 2000s, a growing number of LHMs are incorporating human impacts on hydrological cycle, yet human representations in hydrological models remain challenging. In this paper we provide a synthesis of progress in the development and application of human impact modeling in LHMs. We highlight a number of key challenges and discuss possible improvements in order to better represent the human-water interface in hydrological models

TreeWatch.net : a water and carbon monitoring and modeling network to assess instant tree hydraulics and carbon status

TreeWatch.net is an initiative that has been developed to watch trees grow and function in real-time. It is a water- and carbon-monitoring and modeling network, in which high quality measurements of sap flow and stem diameter variation are collected on individual trees. Automated data processing using a cloud service enables instant visualization of water movement and radial stem growth. This can be used to demonstrate the sensitivity of trees to changing weather conditions, such as drought, heat waves, or heavy rain showers. But TreeWatch.net's true innovation lies in its use of these high precision harmonized data to also parameterize process-based tree models in real-time, which makes displaying the much needed mechanisms underlying tree responses to climate change possible. Continuous simulation of turgor to describe growth processes and long-term time series of hydraulic resistance to assess drought-vulnerability in real-time are only a few of the opportunities our approach offers. TreeWatch.net has been developed with the view to be complementary to existing forest monitoring networks and with the aim to contribute to existing dynamic global vegetation models. It provides high-quality data and real-time simulations in order to advance research on the impact of climate change on the biological response of trees and forests. Besides its application in natural forests to answer climate-change related scientific and political questions, we also envision a broader societal application of TreeWatch.net by selecting trees in nature reserves, public areas, cities, university areas, schoolyards, and parks to teach youngsters and create public awareness on the effects of changing weather conditions on trees and forests in this era of climate change

Interoperability of Traffic Infrastructure Planning and Geospatial Information Systems

Building Information Modelling (BIM) as a Model-based design facilitates to investigate multiple solutions in the infrastructure planning process. The most important reason for implementing model-based design is to help designers and to increase communication between different design parties. It decentralizes and coordinates team collaboration and facilitates faster and lossless project data exchange and management across extended teams and external partners in project lifecycle. Infrastructure are fundamental facilities, services, and installations needed for the functioning of a community or society, such as transportation, roads, communication systems, water and power networks, as well as power plants. Geospatial Information Systems (GIS) as the digital representation of the world are systems for maintaining, managing, modelling, analyzing, and visualizing of the world data including infrastructure. High level infrastructure suits mostly facilitate to analyze the infrastructure design based on the international or user defined standards. Called regulation1-based design, this minimizes errors, reduces costly design conflicts, increases time savings and provides consistent project quality, yet mostly in standalone solutions. Tasks of infrastructure usually require both model based and regulation based design packages. Infrastructure tasks deal with cross-domain information. However, the corresponding data is split in several domain models. Besides infrastructure projects demand a lot of decision makings on governmental as well as on private level considering different data models. Therefore lossless flow of project data as well as documents like regulations across project team, stakeholders, governmental and private level is highly important. Yet infrastructure projects have largely been absent from product modelling discourses for a long time. Thus, as will be explained in chapter 2 interoperability is needed in infrastructure processes. Multimodel (MM) is one of the interoperability methods which enable heterogeneous data models from various domains get bundled together into a container keeping their original format. Existing interoperability methods including existing MM solutions can’t satisfactorily fulfill the typical demands of infrastructure information processes like dynamic data resources and a huge amount of inter model relations. Therefore chapter 3 concept of infrastructure information modelling investigates a method for loose and rule based coupling of exchangeable heterogeneous information spaces. This hypothesis is an extension for the existing MM to a rule-based Multimodel named extended Multimodel (eMM) with semantic rules – instead of static links. The semantic rules will be used to describe relations between data elements of various models dynamically in a link-database. Most of the confusion about geospatial data models arises from their diversity. In some of these data models spatial IDs are the basic identities of entities and in some other data models there are no IDs. That is why in the geospatial data, data structure is more important than data models. There are always spatial indexes that enable accessing to the geodata. The most important unification of data models involved in infrastructure projects is the spatiality. Explained in chapter 4 the method of infrastructure information modelling for interoperation in spatial domains generate interlinks through spatial identity of entities. Match finding through spatial links enables any kind of data models sharing spatial property get interlinked. Through such spatial links each entity receives the spatial information from other data models which is related to the target entity due to sharing equivalent spatial index. This information will be the virtual properties for the object. The thesis uses Nearest Neighborhood algorithm for spatial match finding and performs filtering and refining approaches. For the abstraction of the spatial matching results hierarchical filtering techniques are used for refining the virtual properties. These approaches focus on two main application areas which are product model and Level of Detail (LoD). For the eMM suggested in this thesis a rule based interoperability method between arbitrary data models of spatial domain has been developed. The implementation of this method enables transaction of data in spatial domains run loss less. The system architecture and the implementation which has been applied on the case study of this thesis namely infrastructure and geospatial data models are described in chapter 5. Achieving afore mentioned aims results in reducing the whole project lifecycle costs, increasing reliability of the comprehensive fundamental information, and consequently in independent, cost-effective, aesthetically pleasing, and environmentally sensitive infrastructure design.:ABSTRACT 4 KEYWORDS 7 TABLE OF CONTENT 8 LIST OF FIGURES 9 LIST OF TABLES 11 LIST OF ABBREVIATION 12 INTRODUCTION 13 1.1. A GENERAL VIEW 14 1.2. PROBLEM STATEMENT 15 1.3. OBJECTIVES 17 1.4. APPROACH 18 1.5. STRUCTURE OF THESIS 18 INTEROPERABILITY IN INFRASTRUCTURE ENGINEERING 20 2.1. STATE OF INTEROPERABILITY 21 2.1.1. Interoperability of GIS and BIM 23 2.1.2. Interoperability of GIS and Infrastructure 25 2.2. MAIN CHALLENGES AND RELATED WORK 27 2.3. INFRASTRUCTURE MODELING IN GEOSPATIAL CONTEXT 29 2.3.1. LamdXML: Infrastructure Data Standards 32 2.3.2. CityGML: Geospatial Data Standards 33 2.3.3. LandXML and CityGML 36 2.4. INTEROPERABILITY AND MULTIMODEL TECHNOLOGY 39 2.5. LIMITATIONS OF EXISTING APPROACHES 41 INFRASTRUCTURE INFORMATION MODELLING 44 3.1. MULTI MODEL FOR GEOSPATIAL AND INFRASTRUCTURE DATA MODELS 45 3.2. LINKING APPROACH, QUERYING AND FILTERING 48 3.2.1. Virtual Properties via Link Model 49 3.3. MULTI MODEL AS AN INTERDISCIPLINARY METHOD 52 3.4. USING LEVEL OF DETAIL (LOD) FOR FILTERING 53 SPATIAL MODELLING AND PROCESSING 58 4.1. SPATIAL IDENTIFIERS 59 4.1.1. Spatial Indexes 60 4.1.2. Tree-Based Spatial Indexes 61 4.2. NEAREST NEIGHBORHOOD AS A BASIC LINK METHOD 63 4.3. HIERARCHICAL FILTERING 70 4.4. OTHER FUNCTIONAL LINK METHODS 75 4.5. ADVANCES AND LIMITATIONS OF FUNCTIONAL LINK METHODS 76 IMPLEMENTATION OF THE PROPOSED IIM METHOD 77 5.1. IMPLEMENTATION 78 5.2. CASE STUDY 83 CONCLUSION 89 6.1. SUMMERY 90 6.2. DISCUSSION OF RESULTS 92 6.3. FUTURE WORK 93 BIBLIOGRAPHY 94 7.1. BOOKS AND PAPERS 95 7.2. WEBSITES 10

Human–water interface in hydrological modelling: current status and future directions

Over recent decades, the global population has been rapidly increasing and human activities have altered terrestrial water fluxes to an unprecedented extent. The phenomenal growth of the human footprint has significantly modified hydrological processes in various ways (e.g. irrigation, artificial dams, and water diversion) and at various scales (from a watershed to the globe). During the early 1990s, awareness of the potential for increased water scarcity led to the first detailed global water resource assessments. Shortly thereafter, in order to analyse the human perturbation on terrestrial water resources, the first generation of largescale hydrological models (LHMs) was produced. However, at this early stage few models considered the interaction between terrestrial water fluxes and human activities, including water use and reservoir regulation, and even fewer models distinguished water use from surface water and groundwater resources. Since the early 2000s, a growing number of LHMs have incorporated human impacts on the hydrological cycle, yet the representation of human activities in hydrological models remains challenging. In this paper we provide a synthesis of progress in the development and application of human impact modelling in LHMs. We highlight a number of key challenges and discuss possible improvements in order to better represent the human-water interface in hydrological models

Climate Change and Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar): Changes in Flow and Freshwater Habitat in the Burrishoole Catchment

Climate change is anticipated to impact the flow regime of riverine systems with resultant consequences for the freshwater habitat of Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) and the long-term sustainability of their population numbers. The Burrishoole catchment, a relatively small but productive salmon catchment (~90 km2) located on Ireland’s west coast, is used as a case study to investigate this. A series of high resolution climate scenarios were employed to examine potential changes in the climate and hydrology of this catchment. The climate scenarios used represent different combinations of greenhouse gas emission scenarios, driving GCMs and statistical/dynamical downscaling models; in addition, three different rainfall-runoff models (HBV, HYSIM and TOPMODEL) were employed – integrating across both structural and parameter uncertainty. By considering multiple model pathways this study attempts to sample across the uncertainties encountered at each stage in the process of translating prescribed anthropogenic forcings into local scale responses in the catchment system. The hydrological projections were examined in the context of the habitat and flow requirements of Atlantic salmon at key stages in their life-cycle (e.g. spawning, migration). Model projections suggest that the catchment is likely to become warmer, with wetter winters and drier summers occurring. The results of the hydrological modelling suggest that this will be accompanied by an increase in the seasonality of its flow regime - manifest in an increase in low (Q95) summer and high (Q05) winter flows. If realised, these changes are likely to impact salmon through a reduction in the availability of preferred habitat, a loss in connectivity across the catchment system and a disruption to the evolved synchrony between the occurrence of optimal in-stream conditions and the time at which certain life history events occur. Each of these factors is likely to impact the processes of migration, reproduction and recruitment - each of which is critical for the long-term viability of healthy, self-sustaining wild stocks in the catchment. Based on the projected flow data it is likely that the carrying capacity and productivity of the catchment may be reduced. In addition, by affecting those life stages which are already subject to significant mortality losses (e.g. fry emergence, smolt migration), changes in climate may result in population collapse - particularly if successive year-classes are affected. The results of the hydrological modelling highlight the sensitivity of smaller spatey catchments to changes in climate. Given that the Burrishoole system is typical of many catchment systems found along Ireland’s western seaboard, the results highlight a vulnerability to climate change which is present more generally across the region

Climate Change and Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar): Changes in Flow and Freshwater Habitat in the Burrishoole Catchment

Climate change is anticipated to impact the flow regime of riverine systems with resultant consequences for the freshwater habitat of Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) and the long-term sustainability of their population numbers. The Burrishoole catchment, a relatively small but productive salmon catchment (~90 km2) located on Ireland’s west coast, is used as a case study to investigate this. A series of high resolution climate scenarios were employed to examine potential changes in the climate and hydrology of this catchment. The climate scenarios used represent different combinations of greenhouse gas emission scenarios, driving GCMs and statistical/dynamical downscaling models; in addition, three different rainfall-runoff models (HBV, HYSIM and TOPMODEL) were employed – integrating across both structural and parameter uncertainty. By considering multiple model pathways this study attempts to sample across the uncertainties encountered at each stage in the process of translating prescribed anthropogenic forcings into local scale responses in the catchment system. The hydrological projections were examined in the context of the habitat and flow requirements of Atlantic salmon at key stages in their life-cycle (e.g. spawning, migration). Model projections suggest that the catchment is likely to become warmer, with wetter winters and drier summers occurring. The results of the hydrological modelling suggest that this will be accompanied by an increase in the seasonality of its flow regime - manifest in an increase in low (Q95) summer and high (Q05) winter flows. If realised, these changes are likely to impact salmon through a reduction in the availability of preferred habitat, a loss in connectivity across the catchment system and a disruption to the evolved synchrony between the occurrence of optimal in-stream conditions and the time at which certain life history events occur. Each of these factors is likely to impact the processes of migration, reproduction and recruitment - each of which is critical for the long-term viability of healthy, self-sustaining wild stocks in the catchment. Based on the projected flow data it is likely that the carrying capacity and productivity of the catchment may be reduced. In addition, by affecting those life stages which are already subject to significant mortality losses (e.g. fry emergence, smolt migration), changes in climate may result in population collapse - particularly if successive year-classes are affected. The results of the hydrological modelling highlight the sensitivity of smaller spatey catchments to changes in climate. Given that the Burrishoole system is typical of many catchment systems found along Ireland’s western seaboard, the results highlight a vulnerability to climate change which is present more generally across the region