A simulation access language and framework for project management applications

As computer programs become ever more complex, software development has shifted from focusing on programming towards focusing on integration. This paper describes a simulation access language (SimAL) that can be used to access and compose software applications over the Internet. Specifically, the framework is developed for the integration of tools for project management applications. The infrastructure allows users to specify and to use existing heterogeneous tools (e.g., Microsoft Project, Microsoft Excel, Primavera Project Planner, and AutoCAD) for simulation of project scenarios. This paper describes the components of the SimAL language and the implementation efforts required in the development of the SimAL framework. An illustration example bringing on-line weather forecasting service for project scheduling and management applications is provided to demonstrate the use of the simulation language and the infrastructure framework

Simulation as Supplementary Tool in Construction Management Education

Many academic programs utilize simulation applications to supplement higher education, but there are only a few applications responding to the need in construction curricula, particularly with a focus on project management. Project management is an interdisciplinary area of study, crosscutting multiple fields including the construction, information technology, and business sectors. This paper presents the design, development, and test of a research project entitled Project-oriented Educational Research Fostering Excellence in Cyber-infrastructure Teaching (PERFECT). It investigates the effect of a construction project management simulation on construction management students’ engagement and perceptions at the University of Nebraska- Lincoln. The goal of PERFECT was to develop and study the efficacy of a simulation for construction project time management. This is a common knowledge area in the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) standard published by the Project Management Institute (PMI). PERFECT was a pilot module created in a simulated environment and allowed students to be interactively engaged in time managementrelated processes. Participants played the role of a project manager and were required to make management decisions throughout the simulation. Processes like input, tools and methods, and outputs in PERFECT were designed in accordance with the PMBOK standard. The fully developed application was tested with two groups of 30 construction students: the first group included students with prior project time management knowledge (Group A) whereas the second group consisted of students without any prior knowledge (Group B). The students’ data were captured and retrieved automatically without any human interaction. A quantitative research method was used for analyzing the data and a retrospective post- survey was conducted to obtain participants’ perceptions of the application. The results indicated the effectiveness of PERFECT and supported the expansion and further development of similar simulation applications. This type of evidence-based learning system not only enhances the validity and reliability of the application, but has a potential for incorporation into the academic arena particularly in construction

Simulation as Supplementary Tool in Construction Management Education

Many academic programs utilize simulation applications to supplement higher education, but there are only a few applications responding to the need in construction curricula, particularly with a focus on project management. Project management is an interdisciplinary area of study, crosscutting multiple fields including the construction, information technology, and business sectors. This paper presents the design, development, and test of a research project entitled Project-oriented Educational Research Fostering Excellence in Cyber-infrastructure Teaching (PERFECT). It investigates the effect of a construction project management simulation on construction management students’ engagement and perceptions at the University of Nebraska- Lincoln. The goal of PERFECT was to develop and study the efficacy of a simulation for construction project time management. This is a common knowledge area in the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) standard published by the Project Management Institute (PMI). PERFECT was a pilot module created in a simulated environment and allowed students to be interactively engaged in time managementrelated processes. Participants played the role of a project manager and were required to make management decisions throughout the simulation. Processes like input, tools and methods, and outputs in PERFECT were designed in accordance with the PMBOK standard. The fully developed application was tested with two groups of 30 construction students: the first group included students with prior project time management knowledge (Group A) whereas the second group consisted of students without any prior knowledge (Group B). The students’ data were captured and retrieved automatically without any human interaction. A quantitative research method was used for analyzing the data and a retrospective post- survey was conducted to obtain participants’ perceptions of the application. The results indicated the effectiveness of PERFECT and supported the expansion and further development of similar simulation applications. This type of evidence-based learning system not only enhances the validity and reliability of the application, but has a potential for incorporation into the academic arena particularly in construction

Simulation as Supplementary Tool in Construction Management Education

Many academic programs utilize simulation applications to supplement higher education, but there are only a few applications responding to the need in construction curricula, particularly with a focus on project management. Project management is an interdisciplinary area of study, crosscutting multiple fields including the construction, information technology, and business sectors. This paper presents the design, development, and test of a research project entitled Project-oriented Educational Research Fostering Excellence in Cyber-infrastructure Teaching (PERFECT). It investigates the effect of a construction project management simulation on construction management students’ engagement and perceptions at the University of Nebraska- Lincoln. The goal of PERFECT was to develop and study the efficacy of a simulation for construction project time management. This is a common knowledge area in the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) standard published by the Project Management Institute (PMI). PERFECT was a pilot module created in a simulated environment and allowed students to be interactively engaged in time managementrelated processes. Participants played the role of a project manager and were required to make management decisions throughout the simulation. Processes like input, tools and methods, and outputs in PERFECT were designed in accordance with the PMBOK standard. The fully developed application was tested with two groups of 30 construction students: the first group included students with prior project time management knowledge (Group A) whereas the second group consisted of students without any prior knowledge (Group B). The students’ data were captured and retrieved automatically without any human interaction. A quantitative research method was used for analyzing the data and a retrospective post- survey was conducted to obtain participants’ perceptions of the application. The results indicated the effectiveness of PERFECT and supported the expansion and further development of similar simulation applications. This type of evidence-based learning system not only enhances the validity and reliability of the application, but has a potential for incorporation into the academic arena particularly in construction

A Workflow for Fast Evaluation of Mapping Heuristics Targeting Cloud Infrastructures

Resource allocation is today an integral part of cloud infrastructures management to efficiently exploit resources. Cloud infrastructures centers generally use custom built heuristics to define the resource allocations. It is an immediate requirement for the management tools of these centers to have a fast yet reasonably accurate simulation and evaluation platform to define the resource allocation for cloud applications. This work proposes a framework allowing users to easily specify mappings for cloud applications described in the AMALTHEA format used in the context of the DreamCloud European project and to assess the quality for these mappings. The two quality metrics provided by the framework are execution time and energy consumption.Comment: 2nd International Workshop on Dynamic Resource Allocation and Management in Embedded, High Performance and Cloud Computing DREAMCloud 2016 (arXiv:cs/1601.04675

iTETRIS Platform Architecture for the Integration of Cooperative Traffic and Wireless Simulations

The use of cooperative wireless communications can support driving through dynamic exchange of Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) and Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) messages. Traffic applications based on such systems will be able to generate a safer, faster, cheaper and cleaner way for people and goods to move. In this context, the iTERIS project aims at providing the framework to combine traffic mobility and wireless communication simulations for large scale testing of traffic management solutions based on cooperative systems. This paper addresses the description and explanation of the implementation choices taken to build a modular and interoperable architecture integrating heterogeneous traffic and wireless simulators, and application algorithms supporting traffic management strategies. The functions of an “in-between” control system for managing correct simulation executions over the platform are presented. The inter-block interaction procedures identified to ensure optimum data transfer for simulation efficiency are also introduced

DigiBuzz-VTT – Towards digital twin’s concrete commercial exploitation

The DigiBuzz-VTT project, a part of the DigiBuzz common effort, focused on the applications of digital twins in manufacturing industry ecosystems. The DigiBuzz-VTT project had two main focuses, 1) functional digital twins, or simulation-based digital twins, of machines and machine systems and their applications, and 2) the life cycle management of digital twins (the digital part of the twin), emphasising data modelling and data management. These themes were studied from the technical and from the business point of views. The detailed research topics were:• Business opportunities and added value of digital twins for manufacturing industry• Data-based digital twins, use of machine learning for feature recognition• The status of standardisation for the lifecycle data management of digital twins, means for preserving model data• Hybrid modelling with digital twins, combination of experimental and simulation data• The optimisation of the measurement points location, method development• The use of Kalman filters in estimating simulation data correlation with measured data• The status of Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) for digital twinsThis report summarises the implementation of the DigiBuzz-VTT project and lists the main deliverables of the project. The project produced several scientific articles and research reports, which report the research results in detail

Toward a Unified Performance and Power Consumption NAND Flash Memory Model of Embedded and Solid State Secondary Storage Systems

This paper presents a set of models dedicated to describe a flash storage subsystem structure, functions, performance and power consumption behaviors. These models cover a large range of today's NAND flash memory applications. They are designed to be implemented in simulation tools allowing to estimate and compare performance and power consumption of I/O requests on flash memory based storage systems. Such tools can also help in designing and validating new flash storage systems and management mechanisms. This work is integrated in a global project aiming to build a framework simulating complex flash storage hierarchies for performance and power consumption analysis. This tool will be highly configurable and modular with various levels of usage complexity according to the required aim: from a software user point of view for simulating storage systems, to a developer point of view for designing, testing and validating new flash storage management systems

3D and 4D Simulations for Landscape Reconstruction and Damage Scenarios. GIS Pilot Applications

The project 3D and 4D Simulations for Landscape Reconstruction and Damage Scenarios: GIS Pilot Applications has been devised with the intention to deal with the demand for research, innovation and applicative methodology on the part of the international programme, requiring concrete results to increase the capacity to know, anticipate and respond to a natural disaster. This project therefore sets out to develop an experimental methodology, a wide geodatabase, a connected performant GIS platform and multifunctional scenarios able to profitably relate the added values deriving from different geotechnologies, aimed at a series of crucial steps regarding landscape reconstruction, event simulation, damage evaluation, emergency management, multi-temporal analysis. The Vesuvius area has been chosen for the pilot application owing to such an impressive number of people and buildings subject to volcanic risk that one could speak in terms of a possible national disaster. The steps of the project move around the following core elements: creation of models that reproduce the territorial and anthropic structure of the past periods, and reconstruction of the urbanized area, with temporal distinctions; three-dimensional representation of the Vesuvius area in terms of infrastructuralresidential aspects; GIS simulation of the expected event; first examination of the healthcareepidemiological consequences; educational proposals. This paper represents a proactive contribution which describes the aims of the project, the steps which constitute a set of specific procedures for the methodology which we are experimenting, and some thoughts regarding the geodatabase useful to “package” illustrative elaborations. Since the involvement of the population and adequate hazard preparedness are very important aspects, some educational and communicational considerations are presented in connection with the use of geotechnologies to promote the knowledge of risk

A simulation access language and framework for project management applications

As computer programs become ever more complex, software development has shifted from focusing on programming towards focusing on integration. This paper describes a simulation access language (SimAL) that can be used to access and compose software applications over the Internet. Specifically, the framework is developed for the integration of tools for project management applications. The infrastructure allows users to specify and to use existing heterogeneous tools (e.g., Microsoft Project, Microsoft Excel, Primavera Project Planner, and AutoCAD) for simulation of project scenarios. This paper describes the components of the SimAL language and the implementation efforts required in the development of the SimAL framework. An illustration example bringing on-line weather forecasting service for project scheduling and management applications is provided to demonstrate the use of the simulation language and the infrastructure framework