Ontological Foundations for Geographic Information Science

We propose as a UCGIS research priority the topic of “Ontological Foundations for Geographic Information.” Under this umbrella we unify several interrelated research subfields, each of which deals with different perspectives on geospatial ontologies and their roles in geographic information science. While each of these subfields could be addressed separately, we believe it is important to address ontological research in a unitary, systematic fashion, embracing conceptual issues concerning what would be required to establish an exhaustive ontology of the geospatial domain, issues relating to the choice of appropriate methods for formalizing ontologies, and considerations regarding the design of ontology-driven information systems. This integrated approach is necessary, because there is a strong dependency between the methods used to specify an ontology, and the conceptual richness, robustness and tractability of the ontology itself. Likewise, information system implementations are needed as testbeds of the usefulness of every aspect of an exhaustive ontology of the geospatial domain. None of the current UCGIS research priorities provides such an integrative perspective, and therefore the topic of “Ontological Foundations for Geographic Information Science” is unique

Shifting the Focus: The Role of Presence in Reconceptualising the Design Process

In this paper the relationship between presence and imaging is examined with the view to establish how our understanding of imaging, and subsequently the design process, may be reconceptualised to give greater focus to its experiential potential. First, the paper outlines the research project contributing to the discussion. Then, it provides brief overviews of research on both imaging and presence in the process highlighting the narrow conceptions of imaging (and the recognition of the need for further research) compared to the more holistic and experiential understandings of presence. The paper concludes with an argument and proposed study for exploring the role of digital technology and presence in extending the potential of imaging and its role in the design process. As indicated in the DRS Conference Theme, this paper focuses “…on what people experience and the systems and actions that create those experiences.” Interface designers, information architects and interactive media artists understand the powerful influence of experience in design. ‘Experience design’ is a community of practice driven by individuals within digital based disciplines where the belief is that understanding people is essential to any successful design in any medium and that “…experience is the personal connection with the moment and… every aspect of living is an experience, whether we are the creators or simply chance participants” (Shedroff, 2001, p. 5). Keywords: Design, Design Process, Presence, Imaging, Grounded Theory</p

A twin data-driven approach for user-experience based design innovation

Data-driven innovation has received increasing attention, which explores big data technologies to gain more insights and advantages for product design. In user experience (UX) based design innovation, user-generated data and archived design documents are two valuable resources for various design activities such as identifying opportunities and generating design ideas. However, these two resources are usually isolated in different systems. Additionally, design information typically represented based on functional aspects is limited for UX-oriented design. To facilitate experience-oriented design activities, we propose a twin data-driven approach to integrate UX data and archived design documents. In particular, we aim to extract UX concepts from product reviews and design concepts from patents respectively and to discover associations between the extracted concepts. First, a UX-integrated design information representation model is proposed to associate capabilities with key elements of UX at the concept, category, and aspect levels of information. Based on this model, a twin data-driven approach is developed to bridge experience information and design information. It contains three steps: experience aspect identification using an attention-based LSTM (Long short-term memory) network, design information categorization based on topic clustering using BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers) and LAD (Latent Dirichlet allocation) model, and experience needs and design information integration by leveraging word embedding techniques to measure concept similarity. A case study using healthcare-related experience and design information has demonstrated the feasibility and effectiveness of this approach

Detecting the Onset of Dementia using Context-Oriented Architecture

In the last few years, Aspect Oriented Software De- velopment (AOSD) and Context Oriented Software Development (COSD) have become interesting alternatives for the design and construction of self-adaptive software systems. An analysis of these technologies shows them all to employ the principle of the separation of concerns, Model Driven Architecture (MDA) and Component-based Software Development (CBSD) for building high quality of software systems. In general, the ultimate goal of these technologies is to be able to reduce development costs and effort, while improving the adaptability, and dependability of software systems. COSD, has emerged as a generic devel- opment paradigm towards constructing self-adaptive software by integrating MDA with context-oriented component model. The self-adaptive applications are developed using a Context- Oriented Component-based Applications Model-Driven Architec- ture (COCA-MDA), which generates an Architecture Description language (ADL) presenting the architecture as a components- based software system. COCA-MDA enables the developers to modularise the application based on their context-dependent behaviours, and separate the context-dependent functionality from the context-free functionality of the application. In this article, we wish to study the impact of the decomposition mechanism performed in MDA approaches over the software self-adaptability. We argue that a better and significant advance in software modularity based on context information can increase software adaptability and increase their performance and modi- fiability

Energy Efficiency in Communications and Networks

The topic of "Energy Efficiency in Communications and Networks" attracts growing attention due to economical and environmental reasons. The amount of power consumed by information and communication technologies (ICT) is rapidly increasing, as well as the energy bill of service providers. According to a number of studies, ICT alone is responsible for a percentage which varies from 2% to 10% of the world power consumption. Thus, driving rising cost and sustainability concerns about the energy footprint of the IT infrastructure. Energy-efficiency is an aspect that until recently was only considered for battery driven devices. Today we see energy-efficiency becoming a pervasive issue that will need to be considered in all technology areas from device technology to systems management. This book is seeking to provide a compilation of novel research contributions on hardware design, architectures, protocols and algorithms that will improve the energy efficiency of communication devices and networks and lead to a more energy proportional technology infrastructure

Refinement of SDBC Business Process Models Using ISDL

Aiming at aligning business process modeling and software specification, the SDBC approach considers a multi-viewpoint modeling where static, dynamic, and data business process aspect models have to be mapped adequately to corresponding static, dynamic, and data software specification aspect models. Next to that, the approach considers also a business process modeling viewpoint which concerns real-life communication and coordination issues, such as meanings, intentions, negotiations, commitments, and obligations. Hence, in order to adequately align communication and dynamic aspect models, SDBC should use at least two modeling techniques. However, the transformation between two techniques unnecessarily complicates the modeling process. Next to that, different techniques use different modeling formalisms whose reflection sometimes causes limitations. For this reason, we explore in the current paper the value which the (modeling) language ISDL could bring to SDBC in the alignment of communication and behavioral (dynamic) business process aspect models; ISDL can usefully refine dynamic process models. Thus, it is feasible to expect that ISDL can complement the SDBC approach, allowing refinement of dynamic business process aspect models, by adding communication and coordination actions. Furthermore, SDBC could benefit from ISDL-related methods assessing whether a realized refinement conforms to the original process model. Our studies in the paper are supported by an illustrative example

Quality-aware model-driven service engineering

Service engineering and service-oriented architecture as an integration and platform technology is a recent approach to software systems integration. Quality aspects ranging from interoperability to maintainability to performance are of central importance for the integration of heterogeneous, distributed service-based systems. Architecture models can substantially influence quality attributes of the implemented software systems. Besides the benefits of explicit architectures on maintainability and reuse, architectural constraints such as styles, reference architectures and architectural patterns can influence observable software properties such as performance. Empirical performance evaluation is a process of measuring and evaluating the performance of implemented software. We present an approach for addressing the quality of services and service-based systems at the model-level in the context of model-driven service engineering. The focus on architecture-level models is a consequence of the black-box character of services

Early aspects: aspect-oriented requirements engineering and architecture design

This paper reports on the third Early Aspects: Aspect-Oriented Requirements Engineering and Architecture Design Workshop, which has been held in Lancaster, UK, on March 21, 2004. The workshop included a presentation session and working sessions in which the particular topics on early aspects were discussed. The primary goal of the workshop was to focus on challenges to defining methodical software development processes for aspects from early on in the software life cycle and explore the potential of proposed methods and techniques to scale up to industrial applications

Integrating manufacturing knowledge with design process to improve quality in aerospace industry

There had been research efforts in the knowledge management and related disciplines devoted to integrating data and knowledge generated from manufacturing activities into the design process. Such efforts focused on approaches for enhancing engineering specifications and supplier related decision making in order to improve manufacturing quality through reducing defects. However, rarely did previous researchers address the ‘Integration’ aspect as part of a centrally-driven systematic workflow that enables collaborative knowledge capture between the internal design teams and manufacturing engineering teams firstly, and also with dispersed supplier teams. The industrial context of this research is discussed in this paper reflecting on the nature of the aerospace industry, which involves heavy reliance on information exchange to optimise designs on a day-to-day basis. This aspect had already been identified by many researchers to be under-addressed and a very significant challenge of collaborative design. The main aim of describing the context is to address the complexity involved in integrating manufacturing data generated internally first, and from suppliers second, within workflow context in order to to design a collaborative framework using knowledge management principles. The complexity also features aspects of product design and manufacturing specifically related to the the aerospace industry which tend to have exceptional functional specifications than other products from other industries. The implications of the proposed approach in the light of high value, low volume and high product lifecycle management challenges is also discussed. This paper also reports findings of an empirical investigation carried out with a leading UK based manufacturer of avionic systems with regards to manufacturing knowledge integration challenges related to improving the design of complex avionic systems, in order to enhance the design process for the business and improve the adaptation of a generic product design knowledge base. The purpose of it is to enable more rich data towards information driven design to improve manufacturing quality through defect reduction strategies and techniques

An overview of Mirjam and WeaveC

In this chapter, we elaborate on the design of an industrial-strength aspectoriented programming language and weaver for large-scale software development. First, we present an analysis on the requirements of a general purpose aspect-oriented language that can handle crosscutting concerns in ASML software. We also outline a strategy on working with aspects in large-scale software development processes. In our design, we both re-use existing aspect-oriented language abstractions and propose new ones to address the issues that we identified in our analysis. The quality of the code ensured by the realized language and weaver has a positive impact both on maintenance effort and lead-time in the first line software development process. As evidence, we present a short evaluation of the language and weaver as applied today in the software development process of ASML