Ubiquitous Integration and Temporal Synchronisation (UbilTS) framework : a solution for building complex multimodal data capture and interactive systems

Contemporary Data Capture and Interactive Systems (DCIS) systems are tied in with various technical complexities such as multimodal data types, diverse hardware and software components, time synchronisation issues and distributed deployment configurations. Building these systems is inherently difficult and requires addressing of these complexities before the intended and purposeful functionalities can be attained. The technical issues are often common and similar among diverse applications. This thesis presents the Ubiquitous Integration and Temporal Synchronisation (UbiITS) framework, a generic solution to address the technical complexities in building DCISs. The proposed solution is an abstract software framework that can be extended and customised to any application requirements. UbiITS includes all fundamental software components, techniques, system level layer abstractions and reference architecture as a collection to enable the systematic construction of complex DCISs. This work details four case studies to showcase the versatility and extensibility of UbiITS framework’s functionalities and demonstrate how it was employed to successfully solve a range of technical requirements. In each case UbiITS operated as the core element of each application. Additionally, these case studies are novel systems by themselves in each of their domains. Longstanding technical issues such as flexibly integrating and interoperating multimodal tools, precise time synchronisation, etc., were resolved in each application by employing UbiITS. The framework enabled establishing a functional system infrastructure in these cases, essentially opening up new lines of research in each discipline where these research approaches would not have been possible without the infrastructure provided by the framework. The thesis further presents a sample implementation of the framework on a device firmware exhibiting its capability to be directly implemented on a hardware platform. Summary metrics are also produced to establish the complexity, reusability, extendibility, implementation and maintainability characteristics of the framework.Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) grants - EP/F02553X/1, 114433 and 11394

MDSSF: a federated architecture for product procurement

In the AEC (Architecture / Engineering / Construction) industry, large construction projects are tackled by consortia of companies and individuals, who work collaboratively for the duration of the project. The consortia include design teams, product suppliers, contractors and inspection teams who must collaborate and conform to predefined scheduling constraints and standards. These projects are unique, complex and involve many participants from a number of organisations. Construction projects require consortia to procure supplies such as building materials and furniture from product suppliers. In large AEC projects, procurement of products, services and construction materials is an important and time consuming activity. Materials are sourced on a global basis from a large number of suppliers. The scale of the purchases made in large projects show that their procurement is a non-trivial exercise. Therefore, consortia members or the contractors require access to a large body of information about products or material information to aid procurement decision making. Web based communication and network technologies play an increasingly important role in supporting collaboration in AEC projects. However collaborative working in the construction industry is still restricted by the current limitations of network and communication technologies and their system architectures which are usually client/server based. The construction industry has been examining how the advancements in distributed computing technologies such as the Grid computing can remove some of the existing limitations and enhance collaboration. This research investigated how the procurement challenges such as accessing up-to-date product information available from a large number of products suppliers in an integrated manner using standard means could be addressed. A novel solution to the procurement challenges in the form of a distributed information sharing architecture is presented. The architecture uses the concepts of federated databases such as distribution of data and autonomy of databases and couples it with Grid computing to facilitate information exchange in a collaborative, coherent and integrated way to address the product procurement challenges