Supporting Management lnteraction and Composition of Self-Managed Cells

Management in ubiquitous systems cannot rely on human intervention or centralised decision-making functions because systems are complex and devices are inherently mobile and cannot refer to centralised management applications for reconfiguration and adaptation directives. Management must be devolved, based on local decision-making and feedback control-loops embedded in autonomous components. Previous work has introduced a Self-Managed Cell (SMC) as an infrastructure for building ubiquitous applications. An SMC consists of a set of hardware and software components that implement a policy-driven feedback control-loop. This allows SMCs to adapt continually to changes in their environment or in their usage requirements. Typical applications include body-area networks for healthcare monitoring, and communities of unmanned autonomous vehicles (UAVs) for surveillance and reconnaissance operations. Ubiquitous applications are typically formed from multiple interacting autonomous components, which establish peer-to-peer collaborations, federate and compose into larger structures. Components must interact to distribute management tasks and to enforce communication strategies. This thesis presents an integrated framework which supports the design and the rapid establishment of policy-based SMC interactions by systematically composing simpler abstractions as building elements of a more complex collaboration. Policy-based interactions are realised – subject to an extensible set of security functions – through the exchanges of interfaces, policies and events, and our framework was designed to support the specification, instantiation and reuse of patterns of interaction that prescribe the manner in which these exchanges are achieved. We have defined a library of patterns that provide reusable abstractions for the structure, task-allocation and communication aspects of an interaction, which can be individually combined for building larger policy-based systems in a methodical manner. We have specified a formal model to ensure the rigorous verification of SMC interactions before policies are deployed in physical devices. A prototype has been implemented that demonstrates the practical feasibility of our framework in constrained resources

Regionally distributed architecture for dynamic e-learning environment (RDADeLE)

e-Learning is becoming an influential role as an economic method and a flexible mode of study in the institutions of higher education today which has a presence in an increasing number of college and university courses. e-Learning as system of systems is a dynamic and scalable environment. Within this environment, e-learning is still searching for a permanent, comfortable and serviceable position that is to be controlled, managed, flexible, accessible and continually up-to-date with the wider university structure. As most academic and business institutions and training centres around the world have adopted the e-learning concept and technology in order to create, deliver and manage their learning materials through the web, it has become the focus of investigation. However, management, monitoring and collaboration between these institutions and centres are limited. Existing technologies such as grid, web services and agents are promising better results. In this research a new architecture has been developed and adopted to make the e-learning environment more dynamic and scalable by dividing it into regional data grids which are managed and monitored by agents. Multi-agent technology has been applied to integrate each regional data grid with others in order to produce an architecture which is more scalable, reliable, and efficient. The result we refer to as Regionally Distributed Architecture for Dynamic e-Learning Environment (RDADeLE). Our RDADeLE architecture is an agent-based grid environment which is composed of components such as learners, staff, nodes, regional grids, grid services and Learning Objects (LOs). These components are built and organised as a multi-agent system (MAS) using the Java Agent Development (JADE) platform. The main role of the agents in our architecture is to control and monitor grid components in order to build an adaptable, extensible, and flexible grid-based e-learning system. Two techniques have been developed and adopted in the architecture to build LOs' information and grid services. The first technique is the XML-based Registries Technique (XRT). In this technique LOs' information is built using XML registries to be discovered by the learners. The registries are written in Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) format. The second technique is the Registered-based Services Technique (RST). In this technique the services are grid services which are built using agents. The services are registered with the Directory Facilitator (DF) of a JADE platform in order to be discovered by all other components. All components of the RDADeLE system, including grid service, are built as a multi-agent system (MAS). Each regional grid in the first technique has only its own registry, whereas in the second technique the grid services of all regional grids have to be registered with the DF. We have evaluated the RDADeLE system guided by both techniques by building a simulation of the prototype. The prototype has a main interface which consists of the name of the system (RDADeLE) and a specification table which includes Number of Regional Grids, Number of Nodes, Maximum Number of Learners connected to each node, and Number of Grid Services to be filled by the administrator of the RDADeLE system in order to create the prototype. Using the RST technique shows that the RDADeLE system can be built with more regional grids with less memory consumption. Moreover, using the RST technique shows that more grid services can be registered in the RDADeLE system with a lower average search time and the search performance is increased compared with the XRT technique. Finally, using one or both techniques, the XRT or the RST, in the prototype does not affect the reliability of the RDADeLE system.Royal Commission for Jubail and Yanbu - Directorate General For Jubail Project Kingdom of Saudi Arabi

Combining ontological and temporal formalisms for composite activity modelling and recognition in smart homes

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.Activity recognition is essential in providing activity assistance for users in smart homes. While significant progress has been made for single-user single-activity recognition, it still remains a challenge to carry out real-time progressive composite activity recognition. This paper introduces a hybrid ontological and temporal approach to composite activity modelling and recognition by extending existing ontology-based knowledge-driven approach. The compelling feature of the approach is that it combines ontological and temporal knowledge representation formalisms to provide powerful representation capabilities for activity modelling. The paper describes in detail ontological activity modelling which establishes relationships between activities and their involved entities, and temporal activity modelling which defines relationships between constituent activities of a composite activity. As an essential part of the model, the paper also presents methods for developing temporal entailment rules to support the interpretation and inference of composite activities. In addition, this paper outlines an integrated architecture for composite activity recognition and elaborated a unified activity recognition algorithm which can support the recognition of simple and composite activities. The approach has been implemented in a feature-rich prototype system upon which testing and evaluation have been conducted. Initial experimental results have shown average recognition accuracy of 100% and 88.26% for simple and composite activities, respectively

Automated Bidding in Computing Service Markets. Strategies, Architectures, Protocols

This dissertation contributes to the research on Computational Mechanism Design by providing novel theoretical and software models - a novel bidding strategy called Q-Strategy, which automates bidding processes in imperfect information markets, a software framework for realizing agents and bidding strategies called BidGenerator and a communication protocol called MX/CS, for expressing and exchanging economic and technical information in a market-based scheduling system

Älykäs tunnistauminen ja käyttöoikeuksien hallinta monimuotoisessa verkotetussa maailmassa

Our living environments are full of various connected computing devices. These environments in homes, offices, public spaces, transportation etc. are gaining abilities to acquire and apply knowledge about the environment and its users in order to improve users' experience in that environment. However, before smart adaptive solutions can be deployed in critical applications, authentication and authorization mechanisms are needed to provide protection against various security threats. These mechanisms must be able to interoperate and share information with different devices. The thesis focuses to questions on how to facilitate the interoperability of authentication and authorization solutions and how to enable adaptability and smartness of these solutions. To address questions, this thesis explores existing authentication and authorizations solutions. Then the thesis builds new reusable, interoperable, and adaptive security solutions. The smart space concept, based on semantic web technologies and publish-and-subscribe architecture, is recognized as a prominent approach for interoperability. We contribute by proposing solutions, which facilitate implementation of smart access control applications. An essential enabler for smart spaces is a secure platform for information sharing. This platform can be based on various security protocols and frameworks, providing diverse security levels. We survey security-levels and feasibility of some key establishment protocols and solutions for authentication and authorization. We also study ecosystem and adaptation issues as well as design and implement a fine-grained and context-based reusable security model, which enables development of self-configuring and adaptive authorization solutions.Ympäristöt, joissa elämme, ovat täynnä erilaisia verkkolaitteita. Nämä koteihin, toimistoihin, julkisiin tiloihin ja ajoneuvoihin muodostuvat ympäristöt ovat oppimassa hyödyntämään ympäriltä saatavilla olevaa tietoa ja sopeuttamaan toimintaansa parantaakseen käyttäjän kokemusta näistä ympäristössä. Älykkäiden ja sopeutuvien tilojen käyttöönotto kriittisissä sovelluksissa vaatii kuitenkin tunnistautumis- ja käyttöoikeuksien hallintamenetelmiä tietoturvauhkien torjumiseksi. Näiden menetelmien pitää pystyä yhteistoimintaan ja mahdollistaa tiedonvaihto erilaisten laitteiden kanssa. Tämä lisensiaatin tutkimus keskittyy kysymyksiin, kuinka helpottaa tunnistautumis- ja käyttöoikeusratkaisujen yhteensopivuutta ja kuinka mahdollistaa näiden ratkaisujen sopeutumiskyky ja älykäs toiminta. Tutkimuksessa tarkastellaan olemassa olevia menetelmiä. Tämän jälkeen kuvataan toteutuksia uusista tietoturvaratkaisuista, jotka ovat uudelleenkäytettäviä, eri laitteiden kanssa yhteensopivia ja eri vaatimuksiin mukautuvia. Älytilat, jotka perustuvat semanttisten web teknologioiden ja julkaise-ja-tilaa arkkitehtuurin hyödyntämiseen, tunnistetaan työssä lupaavaksi yhteensopivuuden tuovaksi ratkaisuksi. Tutkimus esittää ratkaisuja, jotka helpottavat älykkäiden tunnistautumis- ja käyttöoikeuksien hallintaratkaisujen kehitystä. Oleellinen yhteensopivuuden mahdollistaja on tietoturvallinen yhteensopivuusalusta. Tämä alusta voi perustua erilaisiin avaintenhallinta ja tunnistautumisprotokolliin sekä käyttöoikeuksien hallintakehyksiin. Tutkimuksessa arvioidaan joidenkin olemassa olevien ratkaisujen käytettävyyttä ja tietoturvatasoa. Tutkimuksessa myös tutkitaan ekosysteemi- ja sopeutumiskysymyksiä sekä toteutetaan hienojakoinen ja kontekstiin perustuva uudelleen käytettävä tietoturvamalli, joka mahdollistaa itsesääntyvien ja mukautuvien käyttöoikeuksien hallinta sovellusten toteuttamisen

A multi-agent system for administering the prescription of anti-retroviral and anti-TB drugs

Thesis (M. Tech.) -- Central University of Technology, Free State, 2007Multi-agent systems (MAS) consist of a number of autonomous agents that communicate among themselves to coordinate their activities in order to solve collectively a complex problem that cannot be tackled by any agent individually. These kinds of systems are appropriate in many domains where problems that are complex, distributed and heterogeneous require communication and coordination between separate autonomous agents, which may be running on different machines distributed over the Internet and are located in many different places. In the health care domain, MAS have been used for distributed patient scheduling, organ and tissue transplant management, community care, decision support, training and so on. One other promising area of application is in the prescription of antiretroviral and antiTB drugs. The drugs used to treat the two diseases have many and similar side effects that complicate the prescription process. These factors have to be considered when prescribing medication to a person coinfected with HIV and tuberculosis. This is usually done manually using drug recommendation tables, which are complicated to use and require a great deal of decisionmaking. The design and implementation of a multiagent system that assists health care staff in carrying out the complex task of combining antiretroviral and antiTB drugs in an efficient way is described. The system consists of a number of collaborating agents requiring the communication of complex and diverse forms of information between a variety of clinical and other settings, as well as the coordination between groups of health care professionals (doctors, nurses, counsellors, etcetera.) with very different skills and roles. The agents in the system include: patient agents, nurse agents, lab agents, medication agents and physician agents. The agents may be hosted on different machines, located in many different places distributed over the Internet. The system saves time, minimises decision errors and increases the standard of health care provided to patients

JURI SAYS:An Automatic Judgement Prediction System for the European Court of Human Rights

In this paper we present the web platform JURI SAYS that automatically predicts decisions of the European Court of Human Rights based on communicated cases, which are published by the court early in the proceedings and are often available many years before the final decision is made. Our system therefore predicts future judgements of the court. The platform is available at jurisays.com and shows the predictions compared to the actual decisions of the court. It is automatically updated every month by including the prediction for the new cases. Additionally, the system highlights the sentences and paragraphs that are most important for the prediction (i.e. violation vs. no violation of human rights)