307,029 research outputs found

    A Generic Network and System Management Framework

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    Networks and distributed systems have formed the basis of an ongoing communications revolution that has led to the genesis of a wide variety of services. The constantly increasing size and complexity of these systems does not come without problems. In some organisations, the deployment of Information Technology has reached a state where the benefits from downsizing and rightsizing by adding new services are undermined by the effort required to keep the system running. Management of networks and distributed systems in general has a straightforward goal: to provide a productive environment in which work can be performed effectively. The work required for management should be a small fraction of the total effort. Most IT systems are still managed in an ad hoc style without any carefully elaborated plan. In such an environment the success of management decisions depends totally on the qualification and knowledge of the administrator. The thesis provides an analysis of the state of the art in the area of Network and System Management and identifies the key requirements that must be addressed for the provisioning of Integrated Management Services. These include the integration of the different management related aspects (i.e. integration of heterogeneous Network, System and Service Management). The thesis then proposes a new framework, INSMware, for the provision of Management Services. It provides a fundamental basis for the realisation of a new approach to Network and System Management. It is argued that Management Systems can be derived from a set of pre-fabricated and reusable Building Blocks that break up the required functionality into a number of separate entities rather than being developed from scratch. It proposes a high-level logical model in order to accommodate the range of requirements and environments applicable to Integrated Network and System Management that can be used as a reference model. A development methodology is introduced that reflects principles of the proposed approach, and provides guidelines to structure the analysis, design and implementation phases of a management system. The INSMware approach can further be combined with the componentware paradigm for the implementation of the management system. Based on these principles, a prototype for the management of SNMP systems has been implemented using industry standard middleware technologies. It is argued that development of a management system based on Componentware principles can offer a number of benefits. INSMware Components may be re-used and system solutions will become more modular and thereby easier to construct and maintain

    Participatory Modelling and Decision Support for Natural Resources Management in Climate Change Research

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    The ever greater role given to public participation by laws and regulations, in particular in the field of environmental management calls for new operational methods and tools for managers and practitioners. This paper analyses the potentials and the critical limitations of current approaches in the fields of simulation modelling (SM), public participation (PP) and decision analysis (DA), for natural resources management within the context of climate change research. The potential synergies of combining SM, PP and DA into an integrated methodological framework are identified and a methodological proposal is presented, called NetSyMoD (Network Analysis – Creative System Modelling – Decision Support), which aims at facilitating the involvement of stakeholders or experts in policy - or decision-making processes (P/DMP). A generic P/DMP is formalised in NetSyMoD as a sequence of six main phases: (i) Actors analysis; (ii) Problem analysis; (iii) Creative System Modelling; (iv) DSS design; (v) Analysis of Options; and (vi) Action taking and monitoring. Several variants of the NetSyMoD approach have been adapted to different contexts such as integrated water resources management and coastal management, and, recently it has been applied in climate change research projects. Experience has shown that NetSyMoD may be a useful framework for skilled professionals, for guiding the P/DMP, and providing practical solutions to problems encountered in the different phases of the decision/policy making process, in particular when future scenarios or projections have to be considered, such as in the case of developing and selecting adaptation policies. The various applications of NetSyMoD share the same approach for problem analysis and communication within the group of selected actors, based upon the use of creative thinking techniques, the formalisation of human-environment relationships through the DPSIR framework, and the use of multi-criteria analysis through a Decision Support System (DSS) software.Modelling, Public Participation, Natural Resource Management, Policy, Decision-Making, Governance, DSS

    Generic, Extensible, Configurable Push-Pull Framework for Large-Scale Science Missions

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    The push-pull framework was developed in hopes that an infrastructure would be created that could literally connect to any given remote site, and (given a set of restrictions) download files from that remote site based on those restrictions. The Cataloging and Archiving Service (CAS) has recently been re-architected and re-factored in its canonical services, including file management, workflow management, and resource management. Additionally, a generic CAS Crawling Framework was built based on motivation from Apache s open-source search engine project called Nutch. Nutch is an Apache effort to provide search engine services (akin to Google), including crawling, parsing, content analysis, and indexing. It has produced several stable software releases, and is currently used in production services at companies such as Yahoo, and at NASA's Planetary Data System. The CAS Crawling Framework supports many of the Nutch Crawler's generic services, including metadata extraction, crawling, and ingestion. However, one service that was not ported over from Nutch is a generic protocol layer service that allows the Nutch crawler to obtain content using protocol plug-ins that download content using implementations of remote protocols, such as HTTP, FTP, WinNT file system, HTTPS, etc. Such a generic protocol layer would greatly aid in the CAS Crawling Framework, as the layer would allow the framework to generically obtain content (i.e., data products) from remote sites using protocols such as FTP and others. Augmented with this capability, the Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) and NPP (NPOESS Preparatory Project) Sounder PEATE (Product Evaluation and Analysis Tools Elements) would be provided with an infrastructure to support generic FTP-based pull access to remote data products, obviating the need for any specialized software outside of the context of their existing process control systems. This extensible configurable framework was created in Java, and allows the use of different underlying communication middleware (at present, both XMLRPC, and RMI). In addition, the framework is entirely suitable in a multi-mission environment and is supporting both NPP Sounder PEATE and the OCO Mission. Both systems involve tasks such as high-throughput job processing, terabyte-scale data management, and science computing facilities. NPP Sounder PEATE is already using the push-pull framework to accept hundreds of gigabytes of IASI (infrared atmospheric sounding interferometer) data, and is in preparation to accept CRIMS (Cross-track Infrared Microwave Sounding Suite) data. OCO will leverage the framework to download MODIS, CloudSat, and other ancillary data products for use in the high-performance Level 2 Science Algorithm. The National Cancer Institute is also evaluating the framework for use in sharing and disseminating cancer research data through its Early Detection Research Network (EDRN)

    A GENERIC TRUST MANAGEMENT FRAMEWORK FOR HETEROGENEOUS SENSORS IN CYBER PHYSICAL SYSTEMS

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    Objective: Wireless Technology†is the magic word in today's era. In which, Cyber Physical Systems (CPS) is the booming world which binds the physical world and cyber world together. The CPS is also called as Safety Critical System because of the human life involvement. In this emerging technology, lots of heterogeneous sensors are involved and each sensor will play an important role. If something goes wrong with sensor or sensor data. It will definitely affect the human life involved in it.Methods: In this paper, we proposed a generic trust management framework for heterogeneous sensors which will detect the sensor data falsification (Data Integrity), faulty sensor reading, and packet dropping nodes (Selfish Nodes) through rules and rating concept.Results: The efficiency of the proposed framework is evaluated with the help of Network Simulator 2 (NS-2.35). The maximum numbers of untrusted nodes are identified in point 0.40 than Multi-Level Trust Framework for Wireless Sensor Network (MTF-WSN) and Framework for Packet-Droppers Mitigation (FPDM). It is also evident that Trust Management Framework for Cyber Physical Systems (TRMF-CPS) identifies maximum number of untrusted nodes in the detection range of 0.35 and 0.45. Therefore, 0.35 and 0.45 are considered as maximum and minimum threshold points for effective untrusted nodes. Conclusion:The experimentation results and comparative study shows that, our trust management framework will easily detected sensors which misbehave.Â

    Mobile agent based distributed network management : modeling, methodologies and applications

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    The explosive growth of the Internet and the continued dramatic increase for all wireless services are fueling the demand for increased capacity, data rates, support of multimedia services, and support for different Quality of Services (QoS) requirements for different classes of services. Furthermore future communication networks will be strongly characterized by heterogeneity. In order to meet the objectives of instant adaptability to the users\u27 requirements and of interoperability and seamless operation within the heterogeneous networking environments, flexibility in terms of network and resource management will be a key design issue. The new emerging technology of mobile agent (MA) has arisen in the distributed programming field as a potential flexible way of managing resources of a distributed system, and is a challenging opportunity for delivering more flexible services and dealing with network programmability. This dissertation mainly focuses on: a) the design of models that provide a generic framework for the evaluation and analysis of the performance and tradeoffs of the mobile agent management paradigm; b) the development of MA based resource and network management applications. First, in order to demonstrate the use and benefits of the mobile agent based management paradigm in the network and resource management process, a commercial application of a multioperator network is introduced, and the use of agents to provide the underlying framework and structure for its implementation and deployment is investigated. Then, a general analytical model and framework for the evaluation of various network management paradigms is introduced and discussed. It is also illustrated how the developed analytical framework can be used to quantitatively evaluate the performances and tradeoffs in the various computing paradigms. Furthermore, the design tradeoffs for choosing the MA based management paradigm to develop a flexible resource management scheme in wireless networks is discussed and evaluated. The integration of an advanced bandwidth reservation mechanism with a bandwidth reconfiguration based call admission control strategy is also proposed. A framework based on the technology of mobile agents, is introduced for the efficient implementation of the proposed integrated resource and QoS management, while the achievable performance of the overall proposed management scheme is evaluated via modeling and simulation. Finally the use of a distributed cooperative scheme among the mobile agents that can be applied in the future wireless networks is proposed and demonstrated, to improve the energy consumption for the routine management processes of mobile terminals, by adopting the peer-to-peer communication concept of wireless ad-hoc networks. The performance evaluation process and the corresponding numerical results demonstrate the significant system energy savings, while several design issues and tradeoffs of the proposed scheme, such as the fairness of the mobile agents involved in the management activity, are discussed and evaluated

    Integration of e-business strategy for multi-lifecycle production systems

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    Internet use has grown exponentially on the last few years becoming a global communication and business resource. Internet-based business, or e-Business will truly affect every sector of the economy in ways that today we can only imagine. The manufacturing sector will be at the forefront of this change. This doctoral dissertation provides a scientific framework and a set of novel decision support tools for evaluating, modeling, and optimizing the overall performance of e-Business integrated multi-lifecycle production systems. The characteristics of this framework include environmental lifecycle study, environmental performance metrics, hyper-network model of integrated e-supply chain networks, fuzzy multi-objective optimization method, discrete-event simulation approach, and scalable enterprise environmental management system design. The dissertation research reveals that integration of e-Business strategy into production systems can alter current industry practices along a pathway towards sustainability, enhancing resource productivity, improving cost efficiencies and reducing lifecycle environmental impacts. The following research challenges and scholarly accomplishments have been addressed in this dissertation: Identification and analysis of environmental impacts of e-Business. A pioneering environmental lifecycle study on the impact of e-Business is conducted, and fuzzy decision theory is further applied to evaluate e-Business scenarios in order to overcome data uncertainty and information gaps; Understanding, evaluation, and development of environmental performance metrics. Major environmental performance metrics are compared and evaluated. A universal target-based performance metric, developed jointly with a team of industry and university researchers, is evaluated, implemented, and utilized in the methodology framework; Generic framework of integrated e-supply chain network. The framework is based on the most recent research on large complex supply chain network model, but extended to integrate demanufacturers, recyclers, and resellers as supply chain partners. Moreover, The e-Business information network is modeled as a overlaid hypernetwork layer for the supply chain; Fuzzy multi-objective optimization theory and discrete-event simulation methods. The solution methods deal with overall system parameter trade-offs, partner selections, and sustainable decision-making; Architecture design for scalable enterprise environmental management system. This novel system is designed and deployed using knowledge-based ontology theory, and XML techniques within an agent-based structure. The implementation model and system prototype are also provided. The new methodology and framework have the potential of being widely used in system analysis, design and implementation of e-Business enabled engineering systems

    A decision fusion based methodology for fault Prognostic and Health Management of complex systems

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    Prognostic and Health Management (PHM) represents an active field of research and a major scientific challenge in many domains. It usually focuses on the failure time or the Remaining Useful Life (RUL) prediction of a system. This paper presents a generic framework, based on a discrete Bayesian Network (BN), particularly tailored for decision fusion of heterogeneous prognostic methods. The BN parameters are computed according to the fixed prognostic objectives. The effectiveness of the proposed decision fusion based methodology for the prognostic is demonstrated through the RULs estimation of turbofan engines. The application highlights the ability of the approach to estimate RULs which overpasses the performance of most other published results in the literature

    DelosDLMS: From the DELOS vision to the implementation of a future digital library management system

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    DelosDLMS is a novel digital library management system (DLMS) that has been developed as an integration effort within the DELOS Network of Excellence, a European Commission initiative funded under its fifth and sixth framework programs. In this paper, we describe DelosDLMS that takes into account the recommendations of several activities that were initiated by DELOS including the DELOS vision for digital libraries (DLs). A key aspect of DelosDLMS is its novel generic infrastructure that allows the generation of digital library systems out of a set of basic system services and DL services in a modular and extensible way. DL services like feature extraction, visualization, intelligent browsing, media-type-specific indexing, support for multilinguality, relevance feedback and many others can easily be incorporated or replaced. A further key aspect of DelosDLMS is its robustness against failures and its scalability for large collections and many parallel user requests. We discuss the current status of an effort to build DelosDLMS, a Digital Library Management System that integrates in various ways several components developed by DELOS members and showcases a great variety of functionality that is outlined as part of the DELOS visio

    Multi-level automated sub-zoning of water distribution systems

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    Water distribution systems (WDS) are complex pipe networks with looped and branching topologies that often comprise of thousands of links and nodes. This work presents a generic framework for improved analysis and management of WDS by partitioning the system into smaller (almost) independent sub-systems with balanced loads and minimal number of interconnections. This paper compares the performance of three classes of unsupervised learning algorithms from graph theory for practical sub-zoning of WDS: (1) Graph clustering – a bottom-up algorithm for clustering n objects with respect to a similarity function, (2) Community structure – a bottom-up algorithm based on network modularity property, which is a measure of the quality of network partition to clusters versus randomly generated graph with respect to the same nodal degree, and (3) Graph partitioning – a flat partitioning algorithm for dividing a network with n nodes into k clusters, such that the total weight of edges crossing between clusters is minimized and the loads of all the clusters are balanced. The algorithms are adapted to WDS to provide a decision support tool for water utilities. The proposed methods are applied and results are demonstrated for a large-scale water distribution system serving heavily populated areas in Singapore

    Towards an improved understanding of knowledge dynamics in integrated coastal zone management: a knowledge systems framework

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    Integrated coastal zone management (ICZM) is a complex undertaking that draws on a range of biophysical and social science disciplines, and involves a wide range of stakeholders operating through multiple processes, and crossing various levels  Conceptually, this means that ICZM represents a significant challenge in terms of improving the way in which different disciplinary ‘knowledges’ and different forms of knowledge (scientific, managerial, lay, and indigenous) inform decision making. Depending upon the circumstances, ICZM may be constrained by different knowledge deficits, including: uncertainty; science - policy gaps; and the ‘filtering’ of particular forms of knowledge relative to others. As a means for making sense of these knowledge dynamics, this paper considers the concept of knowledge systems and its potential for improving understanding of coastal management processes. The potential insights that can be gained from four analytical approaches (stakeholder, institutional, network, and discourse analysis) are then discussed, and used to develop an analytical framework for investigating coastal knowledge dynamics, which is based upon a generic coastal knowledge system and associated research questions. Finally, the utility of this framework is illustrated using a case study that examines the knowledge dynamics associated with debates about the establishment of marine protected areas in Victoria, Australia
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