Boosting cultural heritage in rural communities through an ICT platform: the Viv@vó project

Rural regions concentrate on themselves a very rich set of ancestral traditions. The perpetuation of such traditions has been achieved through transmission between generations. Unfortunately, all this knowledge is typically elders-centered and it lacks effective processes of digitalization, storage and providing-systems for that all this heritage can effectively be perpetuated through future generations that are digital-born. From this base, it was created a project case study limited to the Portuguese Northeast region, named Viv@vó – living in the grandma's house. This paper presents the ICT platform that was created in this project and some main achievements during the project development process. Tourism and mainly experience and cultural heritage tourism are growing in tourist’s interests. Rural regions have an untapped potential for this slice of tourism industry. Rural regions have an enormous collection of ancestral knowledge that we are responsible to deliver to future generations as an inheritance to which they are entitled.The present work was developed under the Viv@vó Project: "Living in the Grandma's House", with the reference NORTE-01- 0145-FEDER-023637, financed by the Regional Operational Program of the North, Notice 02/SAICT/2016.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Analyse the risks of ad hoc programming in web development and develop a metrics of appropriate tools

Today the World Wide Web has become one of the most powerful tools for business promotion and social networking. As the use of websites and web applications to promote the businesses has increased drastically over the past few years, the complexity of managing them and protecting them from security threats has become a complicated task for the organizations. On the other hand, most of the web projects are at risk and less secure due to lack of quality programming. Although there are plenty of frameworks available for free in the market to improve the quality of programming, most of the programmers use ad hoc programming rather than using frameworks which could save their time and repeated work. The research identifies the different frameworks in PHP and .NET programming, and evaluates their benefits and drawbacks in the web application development. The research aims to help web development companies to minimize the risks involved in developing large web projects and develop a metrics of appropriate frameworks to be used for the specific projects. The study examined the way web applications were developed in different software companies and the advantages of using frameworks while developing them. The findings of the results show that it was not only the experience of developers that motivated them to use frameworks. The major conclusions and recommendations drawn from this research were that the main reasons behind web developers avoiding frameworks are that they are difficult to learn and implement. Also, the motivations factors for programmers towards using frameworks were self-efficiency, habit of learning new things and awareness about the benefits of frameworks. The research recommended companies to use appropriate frameworks to protect their projects against security threats like SQL injection and RSS injectio

Software architecture knowledge for intelligent light maintenance

The maintenance management plays an important role in the monitoring of business activities. It ensures a certain level of services in industrial systems by improving the ability to function in accordance with prescribed procedures. This has a decisive impact on the performance of these systems in terms of operational efficiency, reliability and associated intervention costs. To support the maintenance processes of a wide range of industrial services, a knowledge-based component is useful to perform the intelligent monitoring. In this context we propose a generic model for supporting and generating industrial lights maintenance processes. The modeled intelligent approach involves information structuring and knowledge sharing in the industrial setting and the implementation of specialized maintenance management software in the target information system. As a first step we defined computerized procedures from the conceptual structure of industrial data to ensure their interoperability and effective use of information and communication technologies in the software dedicated to the management of maintenance (E-candela). The second step is the implementation of this software architecture with specification of business rules, especially by organizing taxonomical information of the lighting systems, and applying intelligencebased operations and analysis to capitalize knowledge from maintenance experiences. Finally, the third step is the deployment of the software with contextual adaptation of the user interface to allow the management of operations, editions of the balance sheets and real-time location obtained through geolocation data. In practice, these computational intelligence-based modes of reasoning involve an engineering framework that facilitates the continuous improvement of a comprehensive maintenance regime

WebGIS development for base flow separation and recharge estimation

The basic flow rate is characterized by an important hydrological component being responsible for the estimation of the water recharge. Due to the difficulty of measurement, mathematical methods are used to calculate the flow separation. However, when hydrographic analysis is based on long historical series, the use of these methods becomes impracticable, making it necessary to use computational resources. A WebGIS (Web Geographical Information System) was developed for data selection and calculation of base flow separation, based on hydrological data from fluviometric stations located in the Taquari-Antas basin, located in the state of Rio Grande do Sul. A modified version of the Unified Process was used as a software development methodology. We used the MVC software architecture standard and the programming languages PHP 7.0, HTML5, JS and CSS3 for programmatic development of the constituent layers of the system. The hydrological data comes from the HIDROWEB portal, part of the National Information System on Water Resources (SNIRH), with hydrological information collected by the National Hydrometeorological Network (RHN) coordinated by the National Water Agency (ANA). The system facilitates the use of remote and distributed hydrological data, shared over the Internet, for various hydrological analyzes

Cyber-applications as gateway to data-rich digital earth systems

The underlying vision of the Digital Earth (DE) calls for applications that can embed vast quantities of geo-referenced data and allow users to study and analyse of our planet. Since the declaration of this vision in the late 90s, a significant number of DE data-sets have been created by the industry, governments, non-governmental organisations and individuals. An overwhelming majority of the successful applications that use DE data-sets has its end-user applications running on the desktop. While these applications are great tools, they remain inaccessible to the community as a whole. In this paper, we present a framework for the development of cyber-applications. We define an abstract architecture for cyber-applications based on the model-view-controller paradigm, which allows the dynamic inclusion of functional and data components into its execution engine at run-time. We define the operational characteristics of cyber-applications. We also specify the interface of pluggable components to the architecture. Finally, we demonstrate the appropriateness of the abstract architecture by means of a case stud

A Multi-Agent Approach for Designing Next Generation of Air Traffic Systems

This work was funded by Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness under grant TEC2011-28626 C01-C02, and by the Government of Madrid under grant S2009/TIC-1485 (CONTEXTS)

A Methodological Approach to Knowledge-Based Engineering Systems for Manufacturing

A survey of implementations of the knowledge-based engineering approach in different technological sectors is presented. The main objectives and techniques of examined applications are pointed out to illustrate the trends and peculiarities for a number of manufacturing field. Existing methods for the development of these engineering systems are then examined in order to identify critical aspects when applied to manufacturing. A new methodological approach is proposed to overcome some specific limitations that emerged from the above-mentioned survey. The aim is to provide an innovative method for the implementation of knowledge-based engineering applications in the field of industrial production. As a starting point, the field of application of the system is defined using a spatial representation. The conceptual design phase is carried out with the aid of a matrix structure containing the most relevant elements of the system and their relations. In particular, objectives, descriptors, inputs and actions are defined and qualified using categorical attributes. The proposed method is then applied to three case studies with different locations in the applicability space. All the relevant elements of the detailed implementation of these systems are described. The relations with assumptions made during the design are highlighted to validate the effectiveness of the proposed method. The adoption of case studies with notably different applications also reveals the versatility in the application of the method

Sistema de Informação Ambiental: proposta de adequações ao módulo de fauna para sua utilização como uma ferramenta de apoio à aprendizagem

A sociedade tem se transformado em um ritmo crescente e de forma acelerada, demandando a reinvenção das metodologias e ferramentas de ensino, visando uma aprendizagem mais significativa. Uma tendência que vem sendo utilizada como ferramenta de apoio à educação é a Tecnologia da Informação e Comunicação, permitindo aos alunos que interajam com o professor, apesar de restrições de tempo e local, fornecendo acesso a diferentes fontes de conhecimento a qualquer momento. O Instituto de Saneamento Ambiental da Universidade de Caxias do Sul (ISAM/UCS) vem desenvolvendo, ao longo de oito anos, um Sistema de Informação Ambiental (SIA), no qual são armazenadas informações relativas as temáticas: água, fauna, clima e geografia da Bacia Hidrográfica Taquari-Antas, monitorados por empreendimentos hidrelétricos ali instalados. A partir do cruzamento dos dados armazenados no SIA, é possível obter diferentes resultados e avaliações. Nesse contexto, esse trabalho objetiva propor adequações (de interface e de interação) para integrar ao SIA, com vistas a utilização do módulo específico de fauna como um Objeto de Aprendizagem (OA), como funcionalidades que permitem algum tipo de interatividade entre o usuário e a informação disponibilizada, tornando-o mais atrativo e eficiente do ponto de vista educacional. As alterações propostas foram baseadas na revisão de sistemas semelhantes e ferramentas educativas visando a inserção de novas funcionalidades no módulo de fauna. Desta forma, foram propostas quatro adequações: abordagem sobre o risco de extinção, compartilhamento de informações entre usuários, desenvolvimento e integração de um jogo educativo e a avaliação de usabilidade do sistema. A partir da implementação das adequações propostas, espera-se que esta ferramenta seja explorada no ambiente escolar, principalmente na região da Bacia Hidrográfica Taquari-Antas, visto que as informações disponibilizadas no SIA, retratam a realidade da fauna local.  http://dx.doi.org/10.18226/23185279.v5iss3p13

Agent Oriented Software Engineering (AOSE) Approach to Game Development Methodology

This thesis investigates existing game development methodologies, through the process of researching game and system development models. The results indicate that these methodologies are engineered to solve specific problems, and most are suitable only for specific game genres. Different approaches to building games have been proposed in recent years. However, most of these methodologies focus on the design and implementation phase. This research aims to enhance game development methodologies by proposing a novel game development methodology, with the ability to function in generic game genres, thereby guiding game developers and designers from the start of the game development phase to the end of the implementation and testing phase. On a positive note, aligning development practice with universal standards makes it far easier to incorporate extra team members at short notice. This increased the confidence when working in the same environment as super developers. In the gaming industry, most game development proceeds directly from game design to the implementation phase, and the researcher observes that this is the only industry in which this occurs. It is a consequence of the game industry’s failure to integrate with modern development techniques. The ultimate aim of this research to apply a new game development methodology using most game elements to enhance success. This development model will align with different game genres, and resolve the gap between industry and research area, so that game developers can focus on the important business of creating games. The primary aim of Agent Oriented Agile Base (AOAB) game development methodology is to present game development techniques in sequential steps to facilitate game creation and close the gap in the existing game development methodologies. Agent technology is used in complex domains such as e-commerce, health, manufacturing, games, etc. In this thesis we are interested in the game domain, which comprises a unique set of characteristics such as automata, collaboration etc. Our AOAB will be based on a predictive approach after adaptation of MaSE methodology, and an adaptive approach using Agile methodology. To ensure proof of concept, AOAB game development methodology will be evaluated against industry principles, providing an industry case study to create a driving test game, which was the problem motivating this research. Furthermore, we conducted two workshops to introduce our methodology to both academic and industry participants. Finally, we prepared an academic experiment to use AOAB in the academic sector. We have analyzed the feedbacks and comments and concluded the strengths and weakness of the AOAB methodology. The research achievements are summarized and proposals for future work outlined

Technological roadmap on AI planning and scheduling

At the beginning of the new century, Information Technologies had become basic and indispensable constituents of the production and preparation processes for all kinds of goods and services and with that are largely influencing both the working and private life of nearly every citizen. This development will continue and even further grow with the continually increasing use of the Internet in production, business, science, education, and everyday societal and private undertaking. Recent years have shown, however, that a dramatic enhancement of software capabilities is required, when aiming to continuously provide advanced and competitive products and services in all these fast developing sectors. It includes the development of intelligent systems – systems that are more autonomous, flexible, and robust than today’s conventional software. Intelligent Planning and Scheduling is a key enabling technology for intelligent systems. It has been developed and matured over the last three decades and has successfully been employed for a variety of applications in commerce, industry, education, medicine, public transport, defense, and government. This document reviews the state-of-the-art in key application and technical areas of Intelligent Planning and Scheduling. It identifies the most important research, development, and technology transfer efforts required in the coming 3 to 10 years and shows the way forward to meet these challenges in the short-, medium- and longer-term future. The roadmap has been developed under the regime of PLANET – the European Network of Excellence in AI Planning. This network, established by the European Commission in 1998, is the co-ordinating framework for research, development, and technology transfer in the field of Intelligent Planning and Scheduling in Europe. A large number of people have contributed to this document including the members of PLANET non- European international experts, and a number of independent expert peer reviewers. All of them are acknowledged in a separate section of this document. Intelligent Planning and Scheduling is a far-reaching technology. Accepting the challenges and progressing along the directions pointed out in this roadmap will enable a new generation of intelligent application systems in a wide variety of industrial, commercial, public, and private sectors