A State-of-the-art Integrated Transportation Simulation Platform

Nowadays, universities and companies have a huge need for simulation and modelling methodologies. In the particular case of traffic and transportation, making physical modifications to the real traffic networks could be highly expensive, dependent on political decisions and could be highly disruptive to the environment. However, while studying a specific domain or problem, analysing a problem through simulation may not be trivial and may need several simulation tools, hence raising interoperability issues. To overcome these problems, we propose an agent-directed transportation simulation platform, through the cloud, by means of services. We intend to use the IEEE standard HLA (High Level Architecture) for simulators interoperability and agents for controlling and coordination. Our motivations are to allow multiresolution analysis of complex domains, to allow experts to collaborate on the analysis of a common problem and to allow co-simulation and synergy of different application domains. This paper will start by presenting some preliminary background concepts to help better understand the scope of this work. After that, the results of a literature review is shown. Finally, the general architecture of a transportation simulation platform is proposed

Delay Tolerant Networking over the Metropolitan Public Transportation

We discuss MDTN: a delay tolerant application platform built on top of the Public Transportation System (PTS) and able to provide service access while exploiting opportunistic connectivity. Our solution adopts a carrier-based approach where buses act as data collectors for user requests requiring Internet access. Simulations based on real maps and PTS routes with state-of-the-art routing protocols demonstrate that MDTN represents a viable solution for elastic nonreal-time service delivery. Nevertheless, performance indexes of the considered routing policies show that there is no golden rule for optimal performance and a tailored routing strategy is required for each specific case

A requirements engineering framework for integrated systems development for the construction industry

Computer Integrated Construction (CIC) systems are computer environments through which collaborative working can be undertaken. Although many CIC systems have been developed to demonstrate the communication and collaboration within the construction projects, the uptake of CICs by the industry is still inadequate. This is mainly due to the fact that research methodologies of the CIC development projects are incomplete to bridge the technology transfer gap. Therefore, defining comprehensive methodologies for the development of these systems and their effective implementation on real construction projects is vital. Requirements Engineering (RE) can contribute to the effective uptake of these systems because it drives the systems development for the targeted audience. This paper proposes a requirements engineering approach for industry driven CIC systems development. While some CIC systems are investigated to build a broad and deep contextual knowledge in the area, the EU funded research project, DIVERCITY (Distributed Virtual Workspace for Enhancing Communication within the Construction Industry), is analysed as the main case study project because its requirements engineering approach has the potential to determine a framework for the adaptation of requirements engineering in order to contribute towards the uptake of CIC systems

Future Perspectives of Co-Simulation in the Smart Grid Domain

The recent attention towards research and development in cyber-physical energy systems has introduced the necessity of emerging multi-domain co-simulation tools. Different educational, research and industrial efforts have been set to tackle the co-simulation topic from several perspectives. The majority of previous works has addressed the standardization of models and interfaces for data exchange, automation of simulation, as well as improving performance and accuracy of co-simulation setups. Furthermore, the domains of interest so far have involved communication, control, markets and the environment in addition to physical energy systems. However, the current characteristics and state of co-simulation testbeds need to be re-evaluated for future research demands. These demands vary from new domains of interest, such as human and social behavior models, to new applications of co-simulation, such as holistic prognosis and system planning. This paper aims to formulate these research demands that can then be used as a road map and guideline for future development of co-simulation in cyber-physical energy systems

RFCs, MOOs, LMSs: Assorted Educational Devices\ud

This paper discusses implicit social consequences of four basic internet protocols. The results are then related to the field of computer-assisted teaching. An educational on-line community is described and compared to the emerging standard of web-based learning management.\u

Taxonomy of Digital Platforms: A Business Model Perspective

Digital platforms (DPs) – technical core artifacts augmented by peripheral third-party complementary resources – facilitate the interaction and collaboration of different actors through highly-efficient resource matching. As DPs differ significantly in their configurations and applications, it is important from both a descriptive and a design perspective to define classes of DPs. As an intentionally designed artifact, every classification pursues a certain purpose. In this research, the purpose is to classify DPs from a business model perspective, i.e. to identify DP clusters that each share a similar business model type. We follow Nickerson et al.’s (2013) method for taxonomy development. By validating the conceptually derived design dimensions with ten DP cases, we identify platform structure and platform participants as the major clustering constituent characteristics. Building on the proposed taxonomy, we derive four DP archetypes that follow distinct design configurations, namely business innovation platforms, consumer innovation platforms, business exchange platforms and consumer exchange platforms

Enabling High-Level Application Development for the Internet of Things

Application development in the Internet of Things (IoT) is challenging because it involves dealing with a wide range of related issues such as lack of separation of concerns, and lack of high-level of abstractions to address both the large scale and heterogeneity. Moreover, stakeholders involved in the application development have to address issues that can be attributed to different life-cycles phases. when developing applications. First, the application logic has to be analyzed and then separated into a set of distributed tasks for an underlying network. Then, the tasks have to be implemented for the specific hardware. Apart from handling these issues, they have to deal with other aspects of life-cycle such as changes in application requirements and deployed devices. Several approaches have been proposed in the closely related fields of wireless sensor network, ubiquitous and pervasive computing, and software engineering in general to address the above challenges. However, existing approaches only cover limited subsets of the above mentioned challenges when applied to the IoT. This paper proposes an integrated approach for addressing the above mentioned challenges. The main contributions of this paper are: (1) a development methodology that separates IoT application development into different concerns and provides a conceptual framework to develop an application, (2) a development framework that implements the development methodology to support actions of stakeholders. The development framework provides a set of modeling languages to specify each development concern and abstracts the scale and heterogeneity related complexity. It integrates code generation, task-mapping, and linking techniques to provide automation. Code generation supports the application development phase by producing a programming framework that allows stakeholders to focus on the application logic, while our mapping and linking techniques together support the deployment phase by producing device-specific code to result in a distributed system collaboratively hosted by individual devices. Our evaluation based on two realistic scenarios shows that the use of our approach improves the productivity of stakeholders involved in the application development