Adaptive development and maintenance of user-centric software systems

A software system cannot be developed without considering the various facets of its environment. Stakeholders – including the users that play a central role – have their needs, expectations, and perceptions of a system. Organisational and technical aspects of the environment are constantly changing. The ability to adapt a software system and its requirements to its environment throughout its full lifecycle is of paramount importance in a constantly changing environment. The continuous involvement of users is as important as the constant evaluation of the system and the observation of evolving environments. We present a methodology for adaptive software systems development and maintenance. We draw upon a diverse range of accepted methods including participatory design, software architecture, and evolutionary design. Our focus is on user-centred software systems

VANET Applications: Hot Use Cases

Current challenges of car manufacturers are to make roads safe, to achieve free flowing traffic with few congestions, and to reduce pollution by an effective fuel use. To reach these goals, many improvements are performed in-car, but more and more approaches rely on connected cars with communication capabilities between cars, with an infrastructure, or with IoT devices. Monitoring and coordinating vehicles allow then to compute intelligent ways of transportation. Connected cars have introduced a new way of thinking cars - not only as a mean for a driver to go from A to B, but as smart cars - a user extension like the smartphone today. In this report, we introduce concepts and specific vocabulary in order to classify current innovations or ideas on the emerging topic of smart car. We present a graphical categorization showing this evolution in function of the societal evolution. Different perspectives are adopted: a vehicle-centric view, a vehicle-network view, and a user-centric view; described by simple and complex use-cases and illustrated by a list of emerging and current projects from the academic and industrial worlds. We identified an empty space in innovation between the user and his car: paradoxically even if they are both in interaction, they are separated through different application uses. Future challenge is to interlace social concerns of the user within an intelligent and efficient driving

Biology of Applied Digital Ecosystems

A primary motivation for our research in Digital Ecosystems is the desire to exploit the self-organising properties of biological ecosystems. Ecosystems are thought to be robust, scalable architectures that can automatically solve complex, dynamic problems. However, the biological processes that contribute to these properties have not been made explicit in Digital Ecosystems research. Here, we discuss how biological properties contribute to the self-organising features of biological ecosystems, including population dynamics, evolution, a complex dynamic environment, and spatial distributions for generating local interactions. The potential for exploiting these properties in artificial systems is then considered. We suggest that several key features of biological ecosystems have not been fully explored in existing digital ecosystems, and discuss how mimicking these features may assist in developing robust, scalable self-organising architectures. An example architecture, the Digital Ecosystem, is considered in detail. The Digital Ecosystem is then measured experimentally through simulations, with measures originating from theoretical ecology, to confirm its likeness to a biological ecosystem. Including the responsiveness to requests for applications from the user base, as a measure of the 'ecological succession' (development).Comment: 9 pages, 4 figure, conferenc

Improving sustainability through intelligent cargo and adaptive decision making

In the current society, logistics is faced with the challenge to meet more stringent sustainability goals. Shippers and transport service providers both aim to reduce the carbon footprint of their logistic operations. To do so, optimal use of logistics resources and physical infrastructure should be aimed for. An adaptive decision making process for the selection of a specific transport modality, transport provider and timeslot (aimed at minimisation of the carbon footprint) enables shippers to achieve this. This requires shippers to have access to up-to-date capacity information from transport providers (e.g. current and scheduled loading status of the various transport means and information on carbon footprint) and traffic information (e.g. city logistics and current traffic information). A prerequisite is an adequate infrastructure for collaboration and open exchange of information between the various stakeholders in the logistics value chain to obtain the up-to-date information. This paper gives a view on how such an advanced information infrastructure can be realised, currently being developed within the EU iCargo project. The paper describes a reference logistics value chain, including business benefits for each of the roles in the logistics value chain of aiming for sustainability. A case analysis is presented that reflects a practical situation in which the various roles collaborate and exchange information for realizing sustainability goals, using adaptive decision making for selecting a transport modality, transport provider, and timeslot. A high-level overview is provided of the requirements on and technical implementation of the supporting advanced infrastructure for collaboration and open information exchange.In the current society, logistics is faced with the challenge to meet more stringent sustainability goals. Shippers and transport service providers both aim to reduce the carbon footprint of their logistic operations. To do so, optimal use of logistics resources and physical infrastructure should be aimed for. An adaptive decision making process for the selection of a specific transport modality, transport provider and timeslot (aimed at minimisation of the carbon footprint) enables shippers to achieve this. This requires shippers to have access to up-to-date capacity information from transport providers (e.g. current and scheduled loading status of the various transport means and information on carbon footprint) and traffic information (e.g. city logistics and current traffic information). A prerequisite is an adequate infrastructure for collaboration and open exchange of information between the various stakeholders in the logistics value chain to obtain the up-to-date information. This paper gives a view on how such an advanced information infrastructure can be realised, currently being developed within the EU iCargo project. The paper describes a reference logistics value chain, including business benefits for each of the roles in the logistics value chain of aiming for sustainability. A case analysis is presented that reflects a practical situation in which the various roles collaborate and exchange information for realizing sustainability goals, using adaptive decision making for selecting a transport modality, transport provider, and timeslot. A high-level overview is provided of the requirements on and technical implementation of the supporting advanced infrastructure for collaboration and open information exchange.In the current society, logistics is faced with the challenge to meet more stringent sustainability goals. Shippers and transport service providers both aim to reduce the carbon footprint of their logistic operations. To do so, optimal use of logistics resources and physical infrastructure should be aimed for. An adaptive decision making process for the selection of a specific transport modality, transport provider and timeslot (aimed at minimisation of the carbon footprint) enables shippers to achieve this. This requires shippers to have access to up-to-date capacity information from transport providers (e.g. current and scheduled loading status of the various transport means and information on carbon footprint) and traffic information (e.g. city logistics and current traffic information). A prerequisite is an adequate infrastructure for collaboration and open exchange of information between the various stakeholders in the logistics value chain to obtain the up-to-date information. This paper gives a view on how such an advanced information infrastructure can be realised, currently being developed within the EU iCargo project. The paper describes a reference logistics value chain, including business benefits for each of the roles in the logistics value chain of aiming for sustainability. A case analysis is presented that reflects a practical situation in which the various roles collaborate and exchange information for realizing sustainability goals, using adaptive decision making for selecting a transport modality, transport provider, and timeslot. A high-level overview is provided of the requirements on and technical implementation of the supporting advanced infrastructure for collaboration and open information exchange

Strategic Directions in Object-Oriented Programming

This paper has provided an overview of the field of object-oriented programming. After presenting a historical perspective and some major achievements in the field, four research directions were introduced: technologies integration, software components, distributed programming, and new paradigms. In general there is a need to continue research in traditional areas:\ud (1) as computer systems become more and more complex, there is a need to further develop the work on architecture and design; \ud (2) to support the development of complex systems, there is a need for better languages, environments, and tools; \ud (3) foundations in the form of the conceptual framework and other theories must be extended to enhance the means for modeling and formal analysis, as well as for understanding future computer systems

The future of social is personal: the potential of the personal data store

This chapter argues that technical architectures that facilitate the longitudinal, decentralised and individual-centric personal collection and curation of data will be an important, but partial, response to the pressing problem of the autonomy of the data subject, and the asymmetry of power between the subject and large scale service providers/data consumers. Towards framing the scope and role of such Personal Data Stores (PDSes), the legalistic notion of personal data is examined, and it is argued that a more inclusive, intuitive notion expresses more accurately what individuals require in order to preserve their autonomy in a data-driven world of large aggregators. Six challenges towards realising the PDS vision are set out: the requirement to store data for long periods; the difficulties of managing data for individuals; the need to reconsider the regulatory basis for third-party access to data; the need to comply with international data handling standards; the need to integrate privacy-enhancing technologies; and the need to future-proof data gathering against the evolution of social norms. The open experimental PDS platform INDX is introduced and described, as a means of beginning to address at least some of these six challenges

Fronthaul-Constrained Cloud Radio Access Networks: Insights and Challenges

As a promising paradigm for fifth generation (5G) wireless communication systems, cloud radio access networks (C-RANs) have been shown to reduce both capital and operating expenditures, as well as to provide high spectral efficiency (SE) and energy efficiency (EE). The fronthaul in such networks, defined as the transmission link between a baseband unit (BBU) and a remote radio head (RRH), requires high capacity, but is often constrained. This article comprehensively surveys recent advances in fronthaul-constrained C-RANs, including system architectures and key techniques. In particular, key techniques for alleviating the impact of constrained fronthaul on SE/EE and quality of service for users, including compression and quantization, large-scale coordinated processing and clustering, and resource allocation optimization, are discussed. Open issues in terms of software-defined networking, network function virtualization, and partial centralization are also identified.Comment: 5 Figures, accepted by IEEE Wireless Communications. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1407.3855 by other author