Hubristic Hydraulics: Water, Dictatorship, and Modernity in the Dominican Republic

In this article, I focus on how water operated as symbolic capital during the notoriously repressive dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo (1930–61) in the Dominican Republic. Under his regime, alongside an apex of territorial control and modern aesthetics came a nadir of political freedoms. During Trujillo's tenure, water took on important symbolic and material dimensions as a conduit for authoritarianism: it served as a tool to bind together dictatorial power and spatial order through a mode of territorial and urban design rooted in hubristic hydraulics. With hubristic hydraulics I refer to the strategic ways that water flow was harnessed through infrastructure and choreographed through landscape and monumental architecture to embody and lionize the dictator's power. Channeled into reflecting pools, nationwide irrigation works, and monumental fountains, water functioned at the juncture of aesthetics and politics as an important tool in the modernization of urban space and the territory at large. Water was a strategic resource that enabled Trujillo to be cast as the “arquitecto de la patria nueva” (the architect of a new fatherland), and the ways it was made to flow through modern architecture and infrastructure offer an illuminating means to expose the entanglement of territorial control, urban modernity, and authoritarian politics

Design and Implementation of a Method Base Management System for a Situational CASE Environment

Situational method engineering focuses on configuration of system development methods (SDMs) tuned to the situation of a project at hand. Situational methods are assembled from parts of existing SDMs, so called method fragments, that are selected to match the project situation. The complex task of selecting appropriate method fragments and assembling them into a method requires effective automated support. The paper describes the architecture of a tool prototype offering such support. We present the structure of its central repository, a method base containing method fragments. The functions to store, select and assemble these method fragments are offered by a stratified method base management system tool component, which is described as wel

Emergent requirements for supporting introductory programming

The problems associated with learning and teaching first year University Computer Science (CS1) programming classes are summarized showing that various support tools and techniques have been developed and evaluated. From this review of applicable support the paper derives ten requirements that a support tool should have in order to improve CS1 student success rate with respect to learning and understanding

ADO-Tutor: Intelligent Tutoring System for leaning ADO.NET

This paper describes an Intelligent Tutoring System for helping users with ADO.NET called ADO-Tutor. The Intelligent Tutoring System was designed and developed using (ITSB) authoring tool for building intelligent educational systems. The user learns through the intelligent tutoring system ADO.NET, the technology used by Microsoft.NET to connect to databases. The material includes lessons, examples, and questions. Through the feedback provided by the intelligent tutoring system, the user's understanding of the material is assessed, and accordingly can be guided to different difficulty level of exercises and/or the lessons. The Intelligent Tutoring System was evaluated by a group of users and the results were more than satisfactory in terms of the quality of the material and the design of the system

Building information modelling and integrated project delivery (BIM/IPD)- Key building design/construction concepts for sustainability and lean project delivery

Digital technologies are changing the way we live, think, learn, and conduct businesses across the world. In fact, information and communication technologies have completely changed the way architects practice their profession. Building Information Modelling (BIM) came as a technology solution for the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry for improved communication and performance. The paper chronicled the history of design communication from the pre-renaissance period to the twenty first century and the need for improvement due to project complexities which has necessitated the advent of BIM. The paper elucidated the content of a BIM model and the key features of the BIM process, it also discusses its benefits as a tool for collaborative practice in the AEC industry. It further presents the demands of compressed project schedules which encouraged integrated practices in the industry leading to the emergence of Integrated Project Delivery (IPD). The paper presents a brief overview of IPD, how IPD stems from current challenges facing the building industry, and reflects on the perspectives of three key members of an integrated project team: owner, architect/engineer, and contractor. The paper concludes by identifying ways that technology—particularly technology that supports the BIM process—will catalyze significant changes in the way the building industry works. It also highlights the impact IPD is likely to have on the practice of architecture professio

Semi-Markov adjunction to the Computer-Aided Markov Evaluator (CAME)

The rule-based Computer-Aided Markov Evaluator (CAME) program was expanded in its ability to incorporate the effect of fault-handling processes into the construction of a reliability model. The fault-handling processes are modeled as semi-Markov events and CAME constructs and appropriate semi-Markov model. To solve the model, the program outputs it in a form which can be directly solved with the Semi-Markov Unreliability Range Evaluator (SURE) program. As a means of evaluating the alterations made to the CAME program, the program is used to model the reliability of portions of the Integrated Airframe/Propulsion Control System Architecture (IAPSA 2) reference configuration. The reliability predictions are compared with a previous analysis. The results bear out the feasibility of utilizing CAME to generate appropriate semi-Markov models to model fault-handling processes

From Method Fragments to Method Services

In Method Engineering (ME) science, the key issue is the consideration of information system development methods as fragments. Numerous ME approaches have produced several definitions of method parts. Different in nature, these fragments have nevertheless some common disadvantages: lack of implementation tools, insufficient standardization effort, and so on. On the whole, the observed drawbacks are related to the shortage of usage orientation. We have proceeded to an in-depth analysis of existing method fragments within a comparison framework in order to identify their drawbacks. We suggest overcoming them by an improvement of the ?method service? concept. In this paper, the method service is defined through the service paradigm applied to a specific method fragment ? chunk. A discussion on the possibility to develop a unique representation of method fragment completes our contribution