SMART LIGHTING CONTROLS FOR ENERGY EFFICIENCY AND VISUAL COMFORT

Daylight-linked control systems (DLCSs) are automated control systems aiming at optimizing the integration between daylight and electric light. They are based on the use of photosensors detecting available light. Photosensor signals are received by controllers, that in turn regulate the luminous flux emitted by luminaires. Despite the benefits in terms of both energy savings (the use of daylight allows to reduce both the luminaires emitted flux and the number of lighting systems operating hours) and comfort improvement (the use of daylight affects both visual and non-visual comfort), such systems are not so spread as expected for different reasons: their functioning is affected by a big amounts of factors (daylight availability, lighting systems components -above all photosensors-, commissioning), but it is not completely clear what is the specific incidence of each one of them on DLCSs global functioning; calculation models implemented in the available software useful to model and simulate DLCSs functioning are not reliable, so it is difficult for designers to estimate the actual benefits connected to DLCSs installation and estimate both achievable energy savings and economic advantage; finally, currently shared parameters useful to evaluate DLCSs do not exist and these systems are evaluated exclusively considering energy savings they allow to achieve. Given these premises the goal of the thesis is to propose a research methodology useful to analyse DLCSs and evaluate their performances both during preliminary design stages and during commissioning. At this purpose the research is organized in the following phases: state-of-the-art analysis aiming at understanding what are the parameters mostly influencing DLCSs performances; proposal of new performance parameters able to evaluate the capability of DLCSs in integrating daylight (Daylight Integration Adequacy -DIA-, Percentage Intrinsic Light Excess -ILE%-, Percentage Light Waste -LW%-, Percentage Light Deficit LD%); development of a simulation tool (called DET- Daylight-linked control systems Evaluation Tool) useful to simulate DLCSs functioning, overcoming the limits of the available software, and to calculate the above-mentioned parameters; setting up of an experimental test-room, where daylight measurements were performed; use of the measured data to simulate the functioning of different control systems by using DET and to evaluate how they would operate, once installed in the test-room and what would be the parameters influencing their performances

Towards guidelines for building a business case and gathering evidence of software reference architectures in industry

Background: Software reference architectures are becoming widely adopted by organizations that need to support the design and maintenance of software applications of a shared domain. For organizations that plan to adopt this architecture-centric approach, it becomes fundamental to know the return on investment and to understand how software reference architectures are designed, maintained, and used. Unfortunately, there is little evidence-based support to help organizations with these challenges. Methods: We have conducted action research in an industry-academia collaboration between the GESSI research group and everis, a multinational IT consulting firm based in Spain. Results: The results from such collaboration are being packaged in order to create guidelines that could be used in similar contexts as the one of everis. The main result of this paper is the construction of empirically-grounded guidelines that support organizations to decide on the adoption of software reference architectures and to gather evidence to improve RA-related practices. Conclusions: The created guidelines could be used by other organizations outside of our industry-academia collaboration. With this goal in mind, we describe the guidelines in detail for their use.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Towards an Expert Network in Open Standards and Open Source Software: Research, Expertise and Synergy for Open and Libres Standards and Software (RESOLL) - Version 2.0

CIRANO and its partners are proposing the creation of an Expert Network in Open Standards and Open Source Software (Research, Expertise and Synergy for Open and Libres Standards and Software-RESOLL), which would be a partnership between information technology research centres, government and private user organizations, and businesses working in the field. The network will conduct studies and pilot projects that integrate computer solutions based on open standards and open source software, mainly in e-government fields such as health, education, and scientific research, as well as municipal and quasi-public services and business processes for SMEs. The knowledge, expertise and tools thus developed will be disseminated in a number of ways in order to Quebec and Canadian expertise in the field. RESOLL will also have economic and strategic benefits in that it will put the new economic model to the test in terms of open standards and open source software as well as the reuse of software components by organizations. Background The development of on-line government services and e-business is a priority for governments and businesses of all sizes. It requires considerable spending and significant strategic and organizational changes. Of the many information technology solutions available, the use of open standards and open source software is often brought up by those in the know. Although the Internet and many world-renowned software programs were developed largely from open standards and open source software, there is still a need to study, and above all prove the advantages of this approach for public and quasi-public organizations as well as small to medium-sized businesses. It is essential to identify the needs of these organizations, document best practices, experiment with open source software solutions, evaluate the performance of the software and share the knowledge and know-how of Quebec and Canadian research centres and businesses. RESOLL Goals he main goal of the Expert Network on Open Standards and Open Source Software (RESOLL) is to give people an understanding of the benefits of open standards and open source software and suggest an intelligent and advantageous use of them for public and quasi-public organizations and SMEs. More specifically, the goals are as follows: Document and share government and industry policies, strategies, and practices with respect to the use and development of adaptive software and open source software, defining open standards, open source software, adaptive software, and proprietary software; Adapt these practices and share the different methods with partners and the IT management and development communities in government and business; Establish innovative prototypes and pilot projects in order to test and demonstrate the advantages and features of this approach; Develop the expertise of Quebec and Canadian organizations in the field and create synergy between them and their users; P ublish and share the findings of the work, contribute to the enrichment of a collective software asset base available to public and quasi-public organizations and SMEs while explaining the legal issues involved in the various types of licences and electronic services. Process ESOLL is a multilateral partnership founded on the excellence of partners in their respective field. The RESOLL process will be based on the needs of its partners and users. Once these needs have been identified, research will be conducted to identify available solutions, adapt them through an integration process and alpha test them. This would be followed by a pilot project as required by the organizations and businesses. The pilot project will be implemented and evaluated in order to learn from it and ensure that necessary adjustments are made. Solutions thus obtained will be implemented as electronic services either by the client organization’s IT department or by a business partner. It is up to each organization to select their service provider. RESOLL will encourage the transfer of developed tools and services to partners for complete autonomy. Each project will have its own budget, funded by client partners. RESOLL will use part of its operating budget to start projects and develop a start-up asset base for its activities. Expectations and Deliverables The expectations of RESOLL partners and the team can be expressed by the achievement of their goals. RESOLL’s actions will quickly lead to concrete results. The deliverables will be: Policy and position papers to help partners make clear and informed decisions; Needs analyses and suggested solutions; Software solutions based on open standards and open source software integrated into experimental electronic services; Pilot project experiments that combine strategies, plans, software solutions, project support, evaluation and recommendations; Studies and interpretation documents for different types of licences and software; Collaborative Web site for sharing documents and open source software developed in the context of RESOLL projects or available on the Internet, with comments and explanations; Information and knowledge sharing activities for RESOLL and its partners (conferences, workshops, training, etc.). Partners RESOLL is a multilateral partnership. The partners that have been asked to become involved are: CIRANO, CRIM, RISQ, the governments of Quebec and Canada, Industry Canada, university researchers, Canadian and Quebec software and information technology companies, and not-for-profit user organizations from the software and information technology fields. Budget ESOLL’s master infrastructure budget will make it possible to establish a small coordination team involving part-time resources seconded from their parent organizations. We plan to obtain general financing from government and the businesses involved. The individual projects will provide their own financing. Other Benefits RESOLL will contribute to Quebec’s and Canada’s world leadership by sharing the results of its work. It will contribute to the eventual creation of resources that will enable partner companies to commercialize services based on open source software.Open standard, free software, open software, FOSS, e-government, business process, small and medium enterprises,

Evaluating Software Architectures: Development Stability and Evolution

We survey seminal work on software architecture evaluationmethods. We then look at an emerging class of methodsthat explicates evaluating software architectures forstability and evolution. We define architectural stabilityand formulate the problem of evaluating software architecturesfor stability and evolution. We draw the attention onthe use of Architectures Description Languages (ADLs) forsupporting the evaluation of software architectures in generaland for architectural stability in specific

Towards an evaluation framework for medical web applications

Copyright @ 2013 EMCIS.The main aim of this study is to review and analyse various evaluation frameworks used to assess the operational effectiveness of various Information Technology (IT) processes/applications and identify their strengths in order to form a new holistic framework for economic evaluation of web applications. This research aims to address the need for a new holistic evaluation framework for the purpose of the evaluation of the medical web applications. Over the last decade more and more, companies used accountancy techniques such as the frameworks analysed in this research. This new holistic framework that was developed will include also steps regarding the indirect and intangible costs and benefits identification and their incorporation in the evaluation process. Moreover the new emerging market of the medical websites and the embedded on them web applications requires also a new evaluation framework that will provide accurate results in the estimation of the efficiency of an investment on them. The paper first presents an introduction about why economic evaluation is important when evaluating the Information Technology in organizations. Various studies are reviewed, which highlight the ever increasing importance of integrating economic evaluation processes, such as Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA) and Return on Investment (ROI), into systems and processes of organizations and economic organizations, and analyse the factors that govern their role. Finally, the evaluation frameworks and methods that are found in these studies should be used as a part of a proactive systematic action plan that the organizations could use to avoid budget reduction due to incorrect planning. The next part of this study includes a comprehensive presentation and review of past frameworks used to evaluate Information Technology. The frameworks that are reviewed are the Framework for evaluation of information systems, the Information Technology Adoption Model (ITAM), the Total Evaluation and Acceptance Methodology (TEAM) framework, the ROI Process Model and HOT-fit evaluation framework for Health Information Systems

An Assessment of PIER Electric Grid Research 2003-2014 White Paper

This white paper describes the circumstances in California around the turn of the 21st century that led the California Energy Commission (CEC) to direct additional Public Interest Energy Research funds to address critical electric grid issues, especially those arising from integrating high penetrations of variable renewable generation with the electric grid. It contains an assessment of the beneficial science and technology advances of the resultant portfolio of electric grid research projects administered under the direction of the CEC by a competitively selected contractor, the University of California’s California Institute for Energy and the Environment, from 2003-2014

A Case Study on Artefact-based RE Improvement in Practice

Most requirements engineering (RE) process improvement approaches are solution-driven and activity-based. They focus on the assessment of the RE of a company against an external norm of best practices. A consequence is that practitioners often have to rely on an improvement approach that skips a profound problem analysis and that results in an RE approach that might be alien to the organisational needs. In recent years, we have developed an RE improvement approach (called \emph{ArtREPI}) that guides a holistic RE improvement against individual goals of a company putting primary attention to the quality of the artefacts. In this paper, we aim at exploring ArtREPI's benefits and limitations. We contribute an industrial evaluation of ArtREPI by relying on a case study research. Our results suggest that ArtREPI is well-suited for the establishment of an RE that reflects a specific organisational culture but to some extent at the cost of efficiency resulting from intensive discussions on a terminology that suits all involved stakeholders. Our results reveal first benefits and limitations, but we can also conclude the need of longitudinal and independent investigations for which we herewith lay the foundation

Cost-Benefit Analysis of the Large Hadron Collider to 2025 and beyond

Social cost-benefit analysis (CBA) of projects has been successfully applied in different fields such as transport, energy, health, education, and environment, including climate change. It is often argued that it is impossible to extend the CBA approach to the evaluation of the social impact of research infrastructures, because the final benefit to society of scientific discovery is generally unpredictable. Here, we propose a quantitative approach to this problem, we use it to design an empirically testable CBA model, and we apply it to the the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the highest-energy accelerator in the world, currently operating at CERN. We show that the evaluation of benefits can be made quantitative by determining their value to users (scientists, early-stage researchers, firms, visitors) and non-users (the general public). Four classes of contributions to users are identified: knowledge output, human capital development, technological spillovers, and cultural effects. Benefits for non-users can be estimated, in analogy to public goods with no practical use (such as environment preservation), using willingness to pay. We determine the probability distribution of cost and benefits for the LHC since 1993 until planned decommissioning in 2025, and we find there is a 92% probability that benefits exceed its costs, with an expected net present value of about 3 billion euro, not including the unpredictable economic value of discovery of any new physics. We argue that the evaluation approach proposed here can be replicated for any large-scale research infrastructure, thus helping the decision-making on competing projects, with a socio-economic appraisal complementary to other evaluation criteria.Comment: 17 pages, 7 figure

EUROMOD: the European Union tax-benefit microsimulation model

This paper aims to provide an introduction to the current state of the art of EUROMOD, the European Union tax-benefit microsimulation model. It explains the original motivations for building a multi-country EU-wide model and summarises its current organisation. It provides an overview of EUROMOD components, covering its policy scope, the input data, the validation process and some technical aspects such as the tax-benefit programming language and the user interface. The paper also reviews some recent applications of EUROMOD and, finally, considers future developments

Business models and information systems for sustainable development

Businesses are expected to explore market opportunities in the area of sustainable development, thus contributing to finding solutions aiming at sustainable quality of life. This will require adaptation and innovation of business models and information systems, with challenges of particular interest to the business modeling and software design community. This paper briefly discusses two relevant topics in this respect, namely (i) goal and value modeling, and (ii) model-driven development. We mention existing work that can be taken as a starting point for addressing sustainability issues, and we make some observations that may be taken into account when extending existing work