Assessing Traceability of Software Engineering Artifacts

The generation of traceability links or traceability matrices is vital to many software engineering activities. It is also person-power intensive, time-consuming, error-prone, and lacks tool support. The activities that require traceability information include, but are not limited to, risk analysis, impact analysis, criticality assessment, test coverage analysis, and verification and validation of software systems. Information Retrieval (IR) techniques have been shown to assist with the automated generation of traceability links by reducing the time it takes to generate the traceability mapping. Researchers have applied techniques such as Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI), vector space retrieval, and probabilistic IR and have enjoyed some success. This paper concentrates on examining issues not previously widely studied in the context of traceability: the importance of the vocabulary base used for tracing and the evaluation and assessment of traceability mappings and methods using secondary measures. We examine these areas and perform empirical studies to understand the importance of each to the traceability of software engineering artifacts

Preserving the impossible: conservation of soft-sediment hominin footprint sites and strategies for three-dimensional digital data capture.

Human footprints provide some of the most publically emotive and tangible evidence of our ancestors. To the scientific community they provide evidence of stature, presence, behaviour and in the case of early hominins potential evidence with respect to the evolution of gait. While rare in the geological record the number of footprint sites has increased in recent years along with the analytical tools available for their study. Many of these sites are at risk from rapid erosion, including the Ileret footprints in northern Kenya which are second only in age to those at Laetoli (Tanzania). Unlithified, soft-sediment footprint sites such these pose a significant geoconservation challenge. In the first part of this paper conservation and preservation options are explored leading to the conclusion that to 'record and digitally rescue' provides the only viable approach. Key to such strategies is the increasing availability of three-dimensional data capture either via optical laser scanning and/or digital photogrammetry. Within the discipline there is a developing schism between those that favour one approach over the other and a requirement from geoconservationists and the scientific community for some form of objective appraisal of these alternatives is necessary. Consequently in the second part of this paper we evaluate these alternative approaches and the role they can play in a 'record and digitally rescue' conservation strategy. Using modern footprint data, digital models created via optical laser scanning are compared to those generated by state-of-the-art photogrammetry. Both methods give comparable although subtly different results. This data is evaluated alongside a review of field deployment issues to provide guidance to the community with respect to the factors which need to be considered in digital conservation of human/hominin footprints

Wind Turbines in Ontario: An Examination of Perceptions and Potential Health Effects, and How They Relate To Policy and Decision-Making Processes

This thesis explores resistance to wind turbine development in Ontario: perceptions of wind turbines, the impact of policy and decision-making on perceptions, possible health effects and how they relate to perceptions, and how to improve policy and decision-making processes related to wind turbine development. The dissertation is comprised of four manuscripts. The first reviews the literature pertaining to perceptions of wind turbines, and planning practices used for wind turbine development. This paper suggests a connection between current planning and decision-making processes with resistance to wind turbines and reported health effects. The second manuscript focuses on the development of a survey, through a review of the literature, to assess perceptions of wind turbines and quality of life. Pilot testing of this survey is described in the manuscript and the survey was subsequently used for a cross-sectional study of eight communities with wind turbines. The third manuscript is an analysis of the survey results from the cross-sectional study, using factor analysis to extract key themes related to perceptions of wind turbines. The extracted factors were compared to health measures through logistic regression and a relationship between perceptions of wind turbines and health status was found. The fourth manuscript is a case study involving interviews with residents and politicians in communities with wind turbine developments. The study aimed to understand experiences with wind turbines in order to provide suggestions for policy and decision-making processes. A key finding was that perceived inequalities was a common source of opposition. This work concludes by emphasizing the results of the case study in understanding sources of opposition in Ontario: perceived inequalities appear to be a root cause of resistance to wind turbines. It is suggested that policies that support cooperative ownership would be an effective way to address resistance while reaching provincial-level goals for the implementation of wind turbines