Finding event correlations in federated wireless sensor networks

Due to copyright restrictions, the access to the full text of this article is only available via subscription.Event correlation engines help us find events of interest inside raw sensor data streams and help reduce the data volume, simultaneously. This paper discusses some of the challenges faced in finding event correlations over federated wireless sensor networks (WSNs) including high data volumes, uncertain or missing data, application-specific dependencies and widely varying data ranges and sampling frequencies. Analysisover real geo-tracking data of moving objects confirms some of these challenges. Federation at the data layer above the WSNs is presented as a feasible alternative.TÜBİTAK ; IBM Shared University Research program ; European Commissio

A model-driven engineering process for autonomic sensor-actuator networks

Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) are the next generation of embedded ICT systems designed to be aware of the physical environment by using sensor-actuator networks to provide users with a wide range of smart applications and services. Many of these smart applications are possible due to the incorporation of autonomic control loops that implement advanced processing and analysis of historical and real-time data measured by sensors; plan actions according to a set of goals or policies; and execute plans through actuators. The complexity of this kind of systems requires mechanisms that can assist the system?s design and development. This paper presents a solution for assisting the design and development of CPS based on Model-Driven Development: MindCPS (doMaIN moDel for CPS) solution. MindCPS solution is based on a model that provides modelling primitives for explicitly specifying the autonomic behaviour of CPS and model transformations for automatically generating part of the CPS code. In addition to the automatic code generation, the MindCPS solution offers the possibility of rapidly configuring and developing the core behaviour of a CPS, even for nonsoftware engineers. The MindCPS solution has been put into practice to deploy a smart metering system in a demonstrator located at the Technical University of Madrid

Intelligent IoT and Dynamic Network Semantic Maps for more Trustworthy Systems

As technology evolves, the Internet of Things (IoT) concept is gaining importance for constituting a foundation to reach optimum connectivity between people and things. For this to happen and to allow easier integration of sensors and other devices in these technologic environments (or networks), the configuration is a key process, promoting interoperability between heterogeneous devices and providing strategies and processes to enhance the network capabilities. The optimization of this important process of creating a truly dynamic network must be based on models that provide a standardization of communication patterns, protocols and technologies between the sensors. Despite standing as a major tendency today, many obstacles still arise when implementing an intelligent dynamic network. Existing models are not as widely adopted as expected and semantics are often not properly represented, hence resulting in complex and unsuitable configuration time. Thus, this work aims to understand the ideal models and ontologies to achieve proper architectures and semantic maps, which allow management and redundancy based on the information of the whole network, without compromising performance, and to develop a competent configuration of sensors to integrate in a contemporary industrial typical dynamic network

Online failure prediction in air traffic control systems

This thesis introduces a novel approach to online failure prediction for mission critical distributed systems that has the distinctive features to be black-box, non-intrusive and online. The approach combines Complex Event Processing (CEP) and Hidden Markov Models (HMM) so as to analyze symptoms of failures that might occur in the form of anomalous conditions of performance metrics identified for such purpose. The thesis presents an architecture named CASPER, based on CEP and HMM, that relies on sniffed information from the communication network of a mission critical system, only, for predicting anomalies that can lead to software failures. An instance of Casper has been implemented, trained and tuned to monitor a real Air Traffic Control (ATC) system developed by Selex ES, a Finmeccanica Company. An extensive experimental evaluation of CASPER is presented. The obtained results show (i) a very low percentage of false positives over both normal and under stress conditions, and (ii) a sufficiently high failure prediction time that allows the system to apply appropriate recovery procedures

Third CLIPS Conference Proceedings, volume 1

Expert systems are computed programs which emulate human expertise in well defined problem domains. The potential payoff from expert systems is high: valuable expertise can be captured and preserved, repetitive and/or mundane tasks requiring human expertise can be automated, and uniformity can be applied in decision making processes. The C Language Integrated Production Systems (CLIPS) is an expert system building tool, developed at the Johnson Space Center, which provides a complete environment for the development and delivery of rule and/or object based expert systems. CLIPS was specifically designed to provide a low cost option for developing and deploying expert system applications across a wide range of hardware platforms. The development of CLIPS has helped to improve the ability to deliver expert systems technology throughout the public and private sectors for a wide range of applications and diverse computing environments

Online failure prediction in air traffic control systems

This thesis introduces a novel approach to online failure prediction for mission critical distributed systems that has the distinctive features to be black-box, non-intrusive and online. The approach combines Complex Event Processing (CEP) and Hidden Markov Models (HMM) so as to analyze symptoms of failures that might occur in the form of anomalous conditions of performance metrics identified for such purpose. The thesis presents an architecture named CASPER, based on CEP and HMM, that relies on sniffed information from the communication network of a mission critical system, only, for predicting anomalies that can lead to software failures. An instance of Casper has been implemented, trained and tuned to monitor a real Air Traffic Control (ATC) system developed by Selex ES, a Finmeccanica Company. An extensive experimental evaluation of CASPER is presented. The obtained results show (i) a very low percentage of false positives over both normal and under stress conditions, and (ii) a sufficiently high failure prediction time that allows the system to apply appropriate recovery procedures

Facebook and Twitter in the context of customer-based brand equity : analyzing Liverpool FC's posts and comparing the perceptions of UK and Greek fan clubs

The growth and penetration of social media provide professional sport clubs with a powerful tool to communicate their brand to a worldwide fan base. This study aimed to provide an understanding of how Liverpool FC uses Facebook and Twitter in terms of communication tools and brand attributes and how its fan base engages to this usage in terms of key responding features of Facebook and Twitter. In addition, it aimed to analyze and compare UK and Greek fan clubs in terms of engagement, perceived brand benefits and effects in their consumption behavior. A mixed method case study design has been applied using content analysis, online questionnaires as well as focus group and one to one interviews. The research confirms the literature models of sports brand image in terms of identified product and non-product related brand attributes and brand benefits and enhances the literature on customer-based brand equity of sport clubs by taking a combined view of the usage of Facebook and Twitter by a professional football club as well as its fans in this context. From a practical standpoint, the study offers an evaluation of the clubs’ social media presence by its fans, providing valuable insights as far as the design of the most appropriate marketing strategy is concerned. In addition, the study confirms the existence of a positive relationship between social media usage and professional football club revenues either through the impact of brand attributes on sport consumer buying behavior or through increased sponsorship value

A microservice architecture for real-time IoT data processing: A reusable Web of things approach for smart ports

Major advances in telecommunications and the Internet of Things have given rise to numerous smart city scenarios in which smart services are provided. What was once a dream for the future has now become reality. However, the need to provide these smart services quickly, efficiently, in an interoperable manner and in real time is a cutting-edge technological challenge. Although some software architectures offer solutions in this area, these are often limited in terms of reusability and maintenance by independent modules —involving the need for system downtime when maintaining or evolving, as well as by a lack of standards in terms of the interoperability of their interface. In this paper, we propose a fully reusable microservice architecture, standardized through the use of the Web of things paradigm, and with high efficiency in real-time data processing, supported by complex event processing techniques. To illustrate the proposal, we present a fully reusable implementation of the microservices necessary for the deployment of the architecture in the field of air quality monitoring and alerting in smart ports. The performance evaluation of this architecture shows excellent results

Understanding the Nature and Impact of Early Pregnancy Loss Through Women\u27s Stories

Guided by Harter’s narrative framework for health communication this thematic narrative analysis sought to understand women’s experiences of early pregnancy loss with focus on sense making and communication by gathering stories from women who lost a wanted or accepted pregnancy at or prior to at twenty weeks in utero. Ten women ranging in age from twenty-six to seventy years old participated. Time since loss experience ranged from two months to forty years prior to the interview. Ellingson’s crystallization technique was employed with focus given to creating two related texts. Analysis of both individual core narratives at the time of loss and sub-stories located across the entire interview data strengthened early pregnancy loss understanding. Three core narrative summaries provide commonalities of experience within the following convergent core narratives: (a) conceptualization (what was lost?) (b) secret motherhood (disenfranchised grief), and (c) anchoring emotions (talking helps). Two sub-stories occur throughout the data, lost at sea and processing EPL. Lost at sea consists of three themes: (a) blindsided by the unexpected, (b) lack of acknowledgment within interpersonal interactions, and (c) EPL as marginalized by society. Processing EPL consists of: (d) cause of EPL, (e) emotional anchors, and (f) “time heals…it doesn’t erase.” The six themes indicate participants’ shared reactions from the first moments of experiencing loss to current understandings of the EPL experience. The three core narratives symbiotically interact with the six themes to provide a coherent picture of the participants’ early pregnancy loss experiences. Stories gathered provide a depth of understanding early pregnancy loss experiences and communication surrounding the topic both closer to the time of incident and how women understand the experience at the time of interview. Results contribute support for and extension of existing knowledge of disenfranchised grief and the power of the story in the context of early pregnancy loss. Results suggest that in situations of disenfranchised grief of early pregnancy loss, the first step in moving toward working with and/or living in one’s new normal is the ability to speak of the early pregnancy loss. The results provide a deep understanding of the emotional turmoil women experience at time of early pregnancy loss and how the emotions may resurface many years after the event. The new normal exists on a continuum. Women often continue to understand, live into, and with the unexpected early pregnancy loss years beyond the occurrence. As demonstrated through participant’s stories, even though the pain remains the ability to create an alternative option to the original family plan exists. As the data demonstrates, women experience communicative interactions that fail to acknowledge EPL and that acknowledge EPL. Often communication regarding early pregnancy loss is described as societally and interpersonally disenfranchised, silenced, dismissed, and not talked about. Apparent in the stories, the inability to acknowledge and talk about EPL within interpersonal and societal contexts detracts from a woman’s ability to work through the emotions that accompany such a blindsiding event. However, when interactions involve the acknowledgment of EPL, communication is described as anchoring, supportive, and assisting with coping with the pain of loss. Particularly salient to participants’ adjustment to the situation, or new normal, were the memorable moments where practitioners said or did things that positively impacted the participants’ EPL experience. Participants’ stories indicate women benefit from telling stories of early pregnancy loss. The stories remain present long beyond the loss occurrence, highlighting the potential need for more discussions to occur both with women recently experiencing early pregnancy loss and women carrying the secret motherhood story years beyond the occurrence. Understanding “time heals…it doesn’t erase” may warrant further investigation of stories from women experiencing early pregnancy loss and the need to provide discussion with an avid, empathic listener. Women may benefit from anchoring conversations whether the loss occurred recently or long ago

Two Steps Towards Kairos-Awareness

This thesis describes a research inspired by a concept of the classical discipline of rhetoric: kairos, the right moment to deliver a message in order to maximize its effect. The research followed two threads that, ultimately, lead to the same ending: the maximization of the potential of technology to deliver the right interaction at the right time. The first research thread is an operationalization of the concept of kairos. It entailed the development of EveWorks and EveXL, a framework for capturing daily life events in mobile devices and a domain-specific language to express them, respectively. The largely extended use of mobile devices and their proximity with their owners offers exceptional potential for capturing opportunity for interaction. Leveraging on this potential, the EveWorks-EveXL dyad was developed to allow mobile application programmers to specify the precise delivery circumstances of an interaction in order to maximize its potential, i.e., to specify its kairos. Contrasting to most event processing engines found in the literature that implement data-based event models, the EveWorks-EveXL dyad proposes a model based on temporality, through the articulation of intervals of time. This is a more natural way of representing a concept as broad as “daily life events” since, across cultures, temporal concepts like duration and time intervals are fundamental to the way people make sense of their experience. The results of the present work demonstrate that the EveWorks-EveXL dyad makes for an adequate and interesting way to express contextual events, in a way that is “closer” to our everyday understanding of daily life. Ultimately, in user centered applications, kairos can be influenced by the user’s emotional state, thereby making emotion assessment relevant. Addressing this, as well as the growing interest in the topic of emotions by the scientific community, the second research thread of the present thesis led to the development of the CAAT, a widget designed to perform quick and reliable assessments of affective states – a paramount task in a variety of scientific fields, including HCI. While there are already a number of tools for this purpose, in psychology, emotion assessments are largely conducted through the use of pen-and-paper questionnaires applied after the affective experience has occurred. As emotional states vary significantly over time, this entails the loss of important details, warranting the need for immediate, in situ, measurements of affect. In line with this requirement, the CAAT enables quick emotion assessment in a reliable fashion, as attested by the results of then validation studies conducted in order to assess its overall viability along relevant dimensions of usability and psychometrics. As such, aside from being a good fit for longitudinal studies and applications whenever the quick assessment of emotions is required, the CAAT has the potential to be integrated as one of EveWorks’ sensors to enhance its ability to find that sometimes elusive opportunity for interaction, i.e., their kairos. In this way, it becomes apparent how the two threads of research of the current work may be intertwined into a consolidated contribution to the HCI field