Web-based Risk Assessment Technique for Time and Cost Overrun (WRATTCO) – A Framework

AbstractControlling time and cost overrun of construction projects is very crucial in achieving successful completion of any projects. Unfortunately, construction industry today is facing a major risk in achieving completion of project within estimated time and cost. This risk is caused by various factors. Aiming to treat this problem, this study presents a framework for web-based expert and decision support system in order to assess the risk level of causative factors of time and cost overrun on project success throughout the lifecycle of construction process. It will be integrated with project schedule to estimate the consequences of these factors and forecast the loss of time and cost if the risk factors are not controlled. This will be achieving by implanting the technique of neural network. The program will also be able to suggest the corrective actions in order to control the identified risk factors. Finally, various reports can be generated in presenting the associated problems of the factors and their relative impact of project performance

Assessment and training in home-based telerehabilitation of arm mobility impairment

In an era where rehabilitation services are diminishing under the weight of the growing demands and fewer therapists, home-based telerehabilitation offers a way of increasing duration and intensity of post-stroke training. Novel systems that guide the therapist and patient in planning, executing, and assessing the training can reduce the burden on the healthcare system while maintaining or improving the quality of care. To achieve this effectively, a unified approach is needed that can address the diverse needs of the users and adequately assess the level of mobility deficits remotely. This document presents a methodology and prototype system for assessment and training adaptation within a telerehabilitation framework targeting home-based rehabilitation of the upper limbs after stroke. The framework uses 4 games for assessment of motor performance based on measures of range and control of movement. Assessment games include range of motion, range of force, control of motion, and control of force. The initial assessment games are used to tune the deficit-specific parameters in each successive game for assessment and training. Games are administered over the web-based TeleREHA platform through a novel arm rehabilitation device called the ArmAssist. An overview of the developments in each project is presented including the basic assessment parameters and a methodology for making patient-specific adaptation to game levels. Preliminary feedback from an ongoing usability evaluation is also presented and discussed

A visualisation and simulation framework for local and remote HRI experimentation

In this text, we will present work on the design and development of a ROS-based (Robot Operating System) remote 3D visualisation, control and simulation framework. This architecture has the purpose of extending the usability of a system devised in previous work by this research team during the CASIR (Coordinated Attention for Social Interaction with Robots) project. The proposed solution was implemented using ROS, and designed to attend the needs of two user groups – local and remote users and developers. The framework consists of: (1) a fully functional simulator integrated with the ROS environment, including a faithful representation of a robotic platform, a human model with animation capabilities and enough features for enacting human robot interaction scenarios, and a virtual experimental setup with similar features as the real laboratory workspace; (2) a fully functional and intuitive user interface for monitoring and development; (3) a remote robotic laboratory that can connect remote users to the framework via a web browser. The proposed solution was thoroughly and systematically tested under operational conditions, so as to assess its qualities in terms of features, ease-of-use and performance. Finally, conclusions concerning the success and potential of this research and development effort are drawn, and the foundations for future work will be proposed

Comparison of PHP Programming Language with Codeigniter Framework in Project CRUD

Programming Language is a certain code that is designed to create an application program design. The number of programming languages currently circulating, it is necessary to test the level of reliability of a programming language. The purpose of this research is to compare the programming language PHP and Codeigniter Framework, both of these programming languages are back end languages so that they have close specifications in processing data from the database. Implementation developed with CRUD-based Codelgniter Framework. CodeIgniter is an open source web application network that is used to build dynamic PHP applications on the Project CRUD (Create Read Update Delete) model. In general, the two programming languages aim to manage the database so that it can be displayed and managed by the application. The research method used is literature study and practicum in lectures with students. The basic difference in this study is that the PHP language does not require special Driver Connection Tools so that in connecting the database to the application, it is enough to create a connection script, while the Codeigniter Framework is required to use Driver Connections when connecting to the database. The final result of this research is based on System Testing at PHP Performance Level 85% and Framework 75%, PHP Information 73% and Framework 85%, PHP Control 74% and Framework 87%, PHP 75% Efficiency Framework 82%, Service on PHP 73 % and Framework 82%

The Effect of a Web-based Training on Suicide Knowledge, Attitudes, and Health Access Behaviors of Behavioral Health Nurses Regarding Suicide Prevention

Background: Nurses, critical to the health care delivery system, experience a variety of psychological stressors that predispose them to suicide risk. Recent studies have verified elevated suicide risks in nurses when compared to the general population. There is limited understanding regarding the effectiveness of various strategies to reduce risk factors and increase protective factors for suicide among nurses. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to evaluate if a web-based education module can improve the knowledge, attitudes, and ratings of willingness to access help related to suicide prevention in behavioral health nurses. Conceptual Framework: Ajzen’s theory of planned behavior was used to guide this project. The theory of planned behavior suggests that attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control predicts the intention to engage in a behavior, influencing the actual performance of the behavior. Methodology: This study employed a quasi-experimental one-group pretest-posttest design. One hundred and one registered nurses from an academic medical center inpatient psychiatric unit, a state psychiatric hospital, and a personal care home were invited to participate. Baseline knowledge of suicide risk and prevention, attitudes towards seeking help, subjective norms towards seeking help, perceived behavioral control towards seeking help, and intent to seek help upon experiencing suicidal ideations were obtained prior to and after administering a 25-minute web-based training. Results: A total of 29 participants completed the pre-survey, web-based education module, and post-survey. There was a statistically significant increase in knowledge, attitude, subjective norms, and intention related to help-seeking behaviors for nurse suicide prevention. Perceived behavioral control median scores increased, but not at a statistically significant level. Discussion: A web-based educational intervention can be effective in increasing knowledge and intention to seek behavioral health services. Further exploration is needed to determine if other non-web-based strategies, focused on the reduction of nurse suicide, could offer benefits. Conclusion: Understanding the effectiveness of strategies to reduce nurse suicide can provide insights into building better nurse suicide prevention programs

Deploying and Optimizing Embodied Simulations of Large-Scale Spiking Neural Networks on HPC Infrastructure

Simulating the brain-body-environment trinity in closed loop is an attractive proposal to investigate how perception, motor activity and interactions with the environment shape brain activity, and vice versa. The relevance of this embodied approach, however, hinges entirely on the modeled complexity of the various simulated phenomena. In this article, we introduce a software framework that is capable of simulating large-scale, biologically realistic networks of spiking neurons embodied in a biomechanically accurate musculoskeletal system that interacts with a physically realistic virtual environment. We deploy this framework on the high performance computing resources of the EBRAINS research infrastructure and we investigate the scaling performance by distributing computation across an increasing number of interconnected compute nodes. Our architecture is based on requested compute nodes as well as persistent virtualmachines; this provides a high-performance simulation environment that is accessible to multidomain users without expert knowledge, with a view to enable users to instantiate and control simulations at custom scale via a web-based graphical user interface. Our simulation environment, entirely open source, is based on the Neurorobotics Platform developed in the context of the Human Brain Project, and the NEST simulator. We characterize the capabilities of our parallelized architecture for large-scale embodied brain simulations through two benchmark experiments, by investigating the effects of scaling compute resources on performance defined in terms of experiment runtime, brain instantiation and simulation time. The first benchmark is based on a largescale balanced network, while the second one is a multi-region embodied brain simulation consisting of more than a million neurons and a billion synapses. Both benchmarks clearly show how scaling compute resources improves the aforementioned performance metrics in a near-linear fashion. The second benchmark in particular is indicative of both the potential and limitations of a highly distributed simulation in terms of a trade-off between computation speed and resource cost. Our simulation architecture is being prepared to be accessible for everyone as an EBRAINS service, thereby offering a community-wide tool with a unique workflow that should provide momentum to the investigation of closed-loop embodiment within the computational neuroscience community.European Union’s Horizon 2020 Framework Programme 785907 945539European Union’s Horizon 2020 800858MEXT (hp200139, hp210169) MEXT KAKENHI grant no. 17H06310

An Open Management and Administration Platform for IEEE 802.11 Networks

The deployment of Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) has greatly increased in past years. Due to the large deployment of the WLAN, the immediate need of management platforms has been recognized, which has a significant impact on the performance of a WLAN. Although there are various vendor-specific and proprietary solutions available in the market to cope with the management of wireless LAN, they have problems in interoperability and compatibility. To address this issues, IETF has come up with the interoperability standard of management of WLANs devices, Control And Provisioning of Wireless Access Points (CAPWAP) protocol, which is still in the draft phase. Commercial implementation of this draft protocol from WLAN equipment vendors is rather expensive. Open source community, therefore, tried to provide free management solutions. An open source project called openCAPWAP was initiated. However, it lacks a graphic user interface that makes it hard to implement for novice network administrators or regular customers. Therefore, the researcher designed and developed a web interface framework that encapsulates openCAPWAP at the bottom to provide user-friendly management experience. This application platform was designed to work with any remote web server in the public domain through which it can connect to access points or access controllers through a secure shell to configure them. This open platform is purely open source-based. It is operating system independent: it can be implemented on any open source environment such as regular Linux operating system or embedded operation system small form factor single board computers. The platform was designed and tested in a laboratory environment and a remote system. This development contributes to network administration in both network planning and operational management of the WLAN networks

CPDICENTER : Web-based virtual construction project document information center in support of claims preparation

Construction projects' information, in the most part, is document-based. This information documents progress and performance, also supports daily activities. The industry has not paid enough attention to establishing a framework for capturing and storing project's document-based information, which is necessary for substantiating claims' facts. Eventually high "post-construction" dispute resolution costs became the norm, especially in complex construction projects. Understanding the history of such undertakings--without documents--is an enormous one, because to understand the actual history of a project, all-relevant documents have to be available. The outcome and resolution of construction performance-related disputes rely, almost exclusively, on relevant contemporaneous documents from the periods concerned. However, documents sprawling to various project locations without discernable directory structures complicate maintenance functions for backing up and archiving files. Construction projects are temporary organizations that rely heavily on contemporaneous documents to exchange and disseminate information, and to prove claims' causes and damages. Hence, difficulties in locating and accessing critical documents have to be minimized. Registering and cross-referencing every document that is issued by any group in the project achieves that. Currently, the industry is not unanimous on how to solve this problem and with slimming contractor profits (due to severe competition and increased modern projects' complexity) the construction industry has not invested sufficiently to develop data schemas to represent project documents' contents, or context. Modeling such information is necessary for mapping the knowledge contents into databases. This research identified the aforementioned discords and proposes a Web-Based solution; entitled the Construction Project Document Information Center ( CPDICenter ). The CPDICenter is a web-based system with communication architecture to tackle technical constraints like geographical dispersion of operations, multiplicity of project groups, and document workflows. It also allows groups to register, store, access, and search online for any documents in the project via a web browser. The CPDICenter is a project-wide document control system to capture documents from all project groups/participants. This research presents the CPDICenter's web-based workflow system for digital document capture, classification, indexing, and storage, in order to expedite finding and retrieving documents for claim preparation processes. The CPDICenter works with any project organization encompassing any number of groups. The payback will be reduced times for retrieving documents, reduced costs of printing and scanning, and consequently claims' preparation costs. This system intends to capture--in concert with contemporaneous documents--other information about project events' context, documentation rationale and process data. Accurate accounts of project events are essential for a successful and equitable claim analysis and resolution. Such information is a requisite for reconstructing any project's history and finding the causes of disruptions and/or changes to any construction program baselines especially when the people who worked in the project have left to other jobs or their memories have faded

Understanding and managing iterative error and change cycles in large-scale concurrent design and construction projects

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, 2006.Vita.Includes bibliographical references (v. 1, leaves 174-180).Construction projects are uncertain and complex in nature. One of the major driving forces that may account for these characteristics is iterative cycles caused by errors and changes. Errors and changes worsen project performance and consequently, cause schedule and cost overruns to be prevalent. In particular, these iterative cycles are more detrimental when large-scale concurrent design and construction is applied. In an effort to address these issues, this research proposes Dynamic Planning and control Methodology (DPM) as a robust design and construction planning methodology for large-scale concurrent design and construction. The proposed DPM is composed of: 1) an error and change management framework that enables understanding of the construction processes associated with errors and changes and how they affect construction performance; 2) a proactive buffering strategy for reducing sensitivity to iterative error and changes cycles; 3) a System Dynamics-based construction project model which provides policy guidelines for the planning and control of projects; and(cont.) 4) a web-based error and change management system, which supports coordination of errors and changes among contractors and design professionals without hardware and software compatibility issues. Applying all research components into a couple of real world case projects, this research concludes that a concurrently developed project can benefit by: 1) adding realism to planning taking into account iterative error and change cycles; 2) implementing a proactive mechanism to look and act ahead against uncertainties; 3) making appropriate policies with the help of the system dynamics-based simulation model; and 4) facilitating coordination from the IT-supported management system; even if the time frame of a project is shortened. Also, future research opportunities are discussed extending the findings from this research.by SangHyun Lee.Ph.D

Deploying and Optimizing Embodied Simulations of Large-Scale Spiking Neural Networks on HPC Infrastructure

Simulating the brain-body-environment trinity in closed loop is an attractive proposal to investigate how perception, motor activity and interactions with the environment shape brain activity, and vice versa. The relevance of this embodied approach, however, hinges entirely on the modeled complexity of the various simulated phenomena. In this article, we introduce a software framework that is capable of simulating large-scale, biologically realistic networks of spiking neurons embodied in a biomechanically accurate musculoskeletal system that interacts with a physically realistic virtual environment. We deploy this framework on the high performance computing resources of the EBRAINS research infrastructure and we investigate the scaling performance by distributing computation across an increasing number of interconnected compute nodes. Our architecture is based on requested compute nodes as well as persistent virtual machines; this provides a high-performance simulation environment that is accessible to multi-domain users without expert knowledge, with a view to enable users to instantiate and control simulations at custom scale via a web-based graphical user interface. Our simulation environment, entirely open source, is based on the Neurorobotics Platform developed in the context of the Human Brain Project, and the NEST simulator. We characterize the capabilities of our parallelized architecture for large-scale embodied brain simulations through two benchmark experiments, by investigating the effects of scaling compute resources on performance defined in terms of experiment runtime, brain instantiation and simulation time. The first benchmark is based on a large-scale balanced network, while the second one is a multi-region embodied brain simulation consisting of more than a million neurons and a billion synapses. Both benchmarks clearly show how scaling compute resources improves the aforementioned performance metrics in a near-linear fashion. The second benchmark in particular is indicative of both the potential and limitations of a highly distributed simulation in terms of a trade-off between computation speed and resource cost. Our simulation architecture is being prepared to be accessible for everyone as an EBRAINS service, thereby offering a community-wide tool with a unique workflow that should provide momentum to the investigation of closed-loop embodiment within the computational neuroscience community.journal articl