Web-based contractor evaluation system for mass-housing projects in Turkey

Determining the most appropriate contractor for a construction project is a highly critical issue. Selecting the right contractor for the right job can significantly influence the overall project performance. In the selection process, construction clients have to know all financial, technical and general information about the contractors to determine the most appropriate one for the project. Within this context, clients should consider several criteria that may include quality of production, adequacy of technical staff and financial stability. In this study, a survey was carried out among 52 construction professionals working at the Public Housing Development Administration (PHDA) in Turkey. The objective of this survey is to examine the relative weights of the criteria that have been using by this owner in the construction contractor selection process. Afterwards, a web-based contractor evaluation system, WEB-CONTEST, by which the contractors can be evaluated based on a combined criterion, is proposed. The system facilitates the contractor selection process and enables the construction owner to select the most correct contractors for its relevant projects

A Model-Based Development and Verification Framework for Distributed System-on-Chip Architecture

The capabilities and thus, design complexity of VLSI-based embedded systems have increased tremendously in recent years, riding the wave of Moore’s law. The time-to-market requirements are also shrinking, imposing challenges to the designers, which in turn, seek to adopt new design methods to increase their productivity. As an answer to these new pressures, modern day systems have moved towards on-chip multiprocessing technologies. New architectures have emerged in on-chip multiprocessing in order to utilize the tremendous advances of fabrication technology. Platform-based design is a possible solution in addressing these challenges. The principle behind the approach is to separate the functionality of an application from the organization and communication architecture of hardware platform at several levels of abstraction. The existing design methodologies pertaining to platform-based design approach don’t provide full automation at every level of the design processes, and sometimes, the co-design of platform-based systems lead to sub-optimal systems. In addition, the design productivity gap in multiprocessor systems remain a key challenge due to existing design methodologies. This thesis addresses the aforementioned challenges and discusses the creation of a development framework for a platform-based system design, in the context of the SegBus platform - a distributed communication architecture. This research aims to provide automated procedures for platform design and application mapping. Structural verification support is also featured thus ensuring correct-by-design platforms. The solution is based on a model-based process. Both the platform and the application are modeled using the Unified Modeling Language. This thesis develops a Domain Specific Language to support platform modeling based on a corresponding UML profile. Object Constraint Language constraints are used to support structurally correct platform construction. An emulator is thus introduced to allow as much as possible accurate performance estimation of the solution, at high abstraction levels. VHDL code is automatically generated, in the form of “snippets” to be employed in the arbiter modules of the platform, as required by the application. The resulting framework is applied in building an actual design solution for an MP3 stereo audio decoder application.Siirretty Doriast

Engineering Adaptive Model-Driven User Interfaces for Enterprise Applications

Enterprise applications such as enterprise resource planning systems have numerous complex user interfaces (UIs). Usability problems plague these UIs because they are offered as a generic off-the-shelf solution to end-users with diverse needs in terms of their required features and layout preferences. Adaptive UIs can help in improving usability by tailoring the features and layout based on the context-of-use. The model-driven UI development approach offers the possibility of applying different types of adaptations on the various UI levels of abstraction. This approach forms the basis for many works researching the development of adaptive UIs. Yet, several gaps were identified in the state-of-the-art adaptive model-driven UI development systems. To fill these gaps, this thesis presents an approach that offers the following novel contributions: - The Cedar Architecture serves as a reference for developing adaptive model-driven enterprise application user interfaces. - Role-Based User Interface Simplification (RBUIS) is a mechanism for improving usability through adaptive behavior, by providing end-users with a minimal feature-set and an optimal layout based on the context-of-use. - Cedar Studio is an integrated development environment, which provides tool support for building adaptive model-driven enterprise application UIs using RBUIS based on the Cedar Architecture. The contributions were evaluated from the technical and human perspectives. Several metrics were established and applied to measure the technical characteristics of the proposed approach after integrating it into an open-source enterprise application. Additional insights about the approach were obtained through the opinions of industry experts and data from real-life projects. Usability studies showed the approach’s ability to significantly improve usability in terms of end-user efficiency, effectiveness and satisfaction

Subcontractor selection using the integration of the AHP and PROMRTHEE methods

On many construction projects, especially building projects, 80–90% of the tasks are performed by subcontractors. Since the success of the project highly depends on the performances of the subcontractors, selecting the right subcontractor for the right job is critical. Main contractors generally tend to select the subcontractors that offer the lowest bid price. However, working with unqualified and insufficiently financed subcontractors may result in inefficiencies and failures. Thus, a combination of several compromising and conflicting criteria underpinning financial capacity and competencies of the subcontractors should be considered during the subcontractor selection process. This paper proposes an integrated decision approach, which employs analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and preference ranking organization method for enrichment evaluations (PROMETHEE) together, for the subcontractor selection problem. In the proposed approach, AHP is used to analyze the structure of the subcontractor selection problem and to determine the weights of the criteria, and PROMETHEE is employed to obtain complete ranking and perform sensitivity analysis by changing the weights of criteria. The proposed approach is applied to a problem of selecting the most appropriate subcontractor to be worked with in an international construction project. Company management found the proposed decision approach satisfactory and implementable in future subcontractor selection problems. First published online: 29 Apr 201

NewsPercept: A Simple Data Science Pipeline for Online News Perception Mining

NewsPercept: A Simple Data Science Pipeline for Online News Perception Mining presenterer en forskning hvor man, ved hjelp av sentiment analyse kan trekke ut kunnskap om en bedrift eller organisasjon i en nyhetsartikkel. Videre, så presenterer forskningen en fremgangsmåte på å identifisere organisasjonene ved hjelp av navn og antall nevninger i tekst.Masteroppgave i informasjonsvitenskapINFO390MASV-IKTMASV-INF

Semantic technologies: from niche to the mainstream of Web 3? A comprehensive framework for web Information modelling and semantic annotation

Context: Web information technologies developed and applied in the last decade have considerably changed the way web applications operate and have revolutionised information management and knowledge discovery. Social technologies, user-generated classification schemes and formal semantics have a far-reaching sphere of influence. They promote collective intelligence, support interoperability, enhance sustainability and instigate innovation. Contribution: The research carried out and consequent publications follow the various paradigms of semantic technologies, assess each approach, evaluate its efficiency, identify the challenges involved and propose a comprehensive framework for web information modelling and semantic annotation, which is the thesis’ original contribution to knowledge. The proposed framework assists web information modelling, facilitates semantic annotation and information retrieval, enables system interoperability and enhances information quality. Implications: Semantic technologies coupled with social media and end-user involvement can instigate innovative influence with wide organisational implications that can benefit a considerable range of industries. The scalable and sustainable business models of social computing and the collective intelligence of organisational social media can be resourcefully paired with internal research and knowledge from interoperable information repositories, back-end databases and legacy systems. Semantified information assets can free human resources so that they can be used to better serve business development, support innovation and increase productivity

Ubiquitous Computing

The aim of this book is to give a treatment of the actively developed domain of Ubiquitous computing. Originally proposed by Mark D. Weiser, the concept of Ubiquitous computing enables a real-time global sensing, context-aware informational retrieval, multi-modal interaction with the user and enhanced visualization capabilities. In effect, Ubiquitous computing environments give extremely new and futuristic abilities to look at and interact with our habitat at any time and from anywhere. In that domain, researchers are confronted with many foundational, technological and engineering issues which were not known before. Detailed cross-disciplinary coverage of these issues is really needed today for further progress and widening of application range. This book collects twelve original works of researchers from eleven countries, which are clustered into four sections: Foundations, Security and Privacy, Integration and Middleware, Practical Applications

Towards a unified methodology for supporting the integration of data sources for use in web applications

Organisations are making increasing use of web applications and web-based systems as an integral part of providing services. Examples include personalised dynamic user content on a website, social media plug-ins or web-based mapping tools. For these types of applications to have maximum use for the user where the applications are fully functional, they require the integration of data from multiple sources. The focus of this thesis is in improving this integration process with a focus on web applications with multiple sources of data. Integration of data from multiple sources is problematic for many reasons. Current integration methods tend to be domain specific and application specific. They are often complex, have compatibility issues with different technologies, lack maturity, are difficult to re-use, and do not accommodate new and emerging models and integration technologies. Technologies to achieve integration, such as brokers and translators do exist, but they cannot be used as a generic solution for developing web-applications achieving the integration outcomes required for successful web application development due to their domain specificity. It is because of these difficulties with integration, and the wide variety of integration approaches that there is a need to provide assistance to the developer in selecting the integration approach most appropriate to their needs. This thesis proposes GIWeb, a unified top-down data integration methodology instantiated with a framework that will aid developers in their integration process. It will act as a conceptual structure to support the chosen technical approach. The framework will assist in the integration of data sources to support web application builders. The thesis presents the rationale for the need for the framework based on an examination of the range of applications, associated data sources and the range of potential solutions. The framework is evaluated using four case studies