Managing Process Variants in the Process Life Cycle

When designing process-aware information systems, often variants of the same process have to be specified. Each variant then constitutes an adjustment of a particular process to specific requirements building the process context. Current Business Process Management (BPM) tools do not adequately support the management of process variants. Usually, the variants have to be kept in separate process models. This leads to huge modeling and maintenance efforts. In particular, more fundamental process changes (e.g., changes of legal regulations) often require the adjustment of all process variants derived from the same process; i.e., the variants have to be adapted separately to meet the new requirements. This redundancy in modeling and adapting process variants is both time consuming and error-prone. This paper presents the Provop approach, which provides a more flexible solution for managing process variants in the process life cycle. In particular, process variants can be configured out of a basic process following an operational approach; i.e., a specific variant is derived from the basic process by applying a set of well-defined change operations to it. Provop provides full process life cycle support and allows for flexible process configuration resulting in a maintainable collection of process variants

Software for Interactive Secure Systems Design: Lessons Learned Developing and Applying CAIRIS

As systems become more complex, the potential for security vulnerabilities being introduced increases. If we are to provide assurances about systems we design then we need the means of analysing, managing, and generally making sense of the data that contributes to the design. Unfortunately, despite ongoing research into tools for supporting secure software development, there are few examples of how tools can be used to help build and support design models associated with security and usability. This paper summarises some of our experiences developing and applying CAIRIS: a requirements management tool for usable and secure system design. We describe our motivation for building CAIRIS, summarise how it was built and evaluated, and present our experiences applying it to real world case studies

Boundary Interactions and Motors of Change in Requirements Elicitation: A Dynamic Perspective on Knowledge Sharing

The building of shared understanding between project stakeholders in the requirements elicitation phase is necessary for knowledge sharing and a key factor for successful information systems (IS) development. However, the processes that lead to shared understanding and successful knowledge sharing are still not well understood. We examine how stakeholders interact and use boundary objects during requirements elicitation in data warehouse development projects. We draw on Carlile’s (2004) framework for managing knowledge across boundaries and introduce the concept of brokering situations. Using the concept of brokering situations, we examine how shared understanding develops and knowledge is shared through the interplay of brokers, their individual knowledge, and boundary objects as well as through the alignment of project participants’ situation models. We contribute to the literature on knowledge sharing and requirements elicitation in three ways: by introducing the concept of brokering situations; by developing a theoretical framework – the boundary interaction framework – that provides an analytical perspective on the dynamics of knowledge sharing in requirements elicitation; and by applying the framework to show that both goal-driven (teleological) and conflict-driven (dialectical) motors of change explain process progress and the changes of brokers as well as boundary objects during the building of shared understanding

Evaluating medico-legal decisional competency criteria

In this paper I get clearer on the considerations that ought to inform the evaluation and development of medico-legal competency criteria-where this is taken to be a question regarding the abilities that ought to be needed for a patient to be found competent in medico-legal contexts. In the "Decisional Competency in Medico-Legal Contexts" section I explore how the question regarding the abilities that ought to be needed for decisional competence is to be interpreted. I begin by considering an interpretation that takes the question to be asking about the abilities needed to satisfy an idealized view of competent decision-making, according to which decisional competency is a matter of possessing those abilities or attributes that are needed to engage in good or effective or, perhaps, substantially autonomous or rational decision-making. The view has some plausibility-it accords with the way decisional competency is understood in a number of everyday contexts-but fails as an interpretation of the question regarding the abilities that should be needed for decisional competence in medico-legal contexts. Nevertheless, consideration of why it is mistaken suggests a more accurate interpretation and points the way in which the question regarding the evaluation of medico-legal competency criteria is to be answered. Building on other scholarly work in the area, I outline in the "Primary and Secondary Requirements" section several requirements that decisional competence criteria ought to satisfy. Then, in the "Applying the Framework" section, I say something about the extent to which medico-legal competency criteria, as well as some models of decisional competency proposed in the academic literature, fulfil those requirements

FEM Analysis and Experimental Research into Carrier Brackets in Ventilated Facades

Ventilated facades are one of the most durable and attractive ways of finishing a building facade. The weight of cladding panels and substructure elements of ventilated facades is transferred into building structure via carrier brackets (mounting brackets). This article is focused on resistance to vertical load which is one of the basic technical requirements that need to be met by facades carrier brackets inside the European Union, defined in European Technical Approval Guidelines – ETAG 034. FEM models of carrier brackets were presented, and the results of a non-linear analysis were described. The results of the numerical analysis were verified by means of laboratory testing. The article examines the influence of adopting various material stress-strain diagrams in FEM models on calculation results, especially when pertaining to the viability of applying a diagram in accordance with the continuous strength method (CSM). Based on the laboratory tests and the analysis of the FEM models it was shown which part of the carrier bracket is its weakest link and is decisive for its load-bearing capacity. The relationship between serviceability limit state and ultimate limit state for stainless steel brackets with various overhangs was also presented

Timed Automata Models for Principled Composition of Middleware

Middleware for Distributed Real-time and Embedded (DRE) systems has grown more and more complex in recent years due to the varying functional and temporal requirements of complex real-time applications. To enable DRE middleware to be configured and customized to meet the demands of different applications, a body of ongoing research has focused on applying model-driven development techniques to developing QoS-enabled middleware. While current approaches for modeling middleware focus on easing the task of as-assembling, deploying and configuring middleware and middleware-based applications, a more formal basis for correct middleware composition and configuration in the context of individual applications is needed. While the modeling community has used application-level formal models that are more abstract to uncover certain flaws in system design, a more fundamental and lower-level set of models is needed to be able to uncover more subtle safety and timing errors introduced by interference between application computations, particularly in the face of alternative concurrency strategies in the middleware layer. In this research, we have examined how detailed formal models of lower-level middle-ware building blocks provide an appropriate level of abstraction both for modeling and synthesis of a variety of kinds of middleware from these building blocks. When combined with model checking techniques, these formal models can help developers in composing correct combinations of middleware mechanisms, and configuring those mechanisms for each particular application

Issues in Modeling Process Variants with Provop

For a particular business process, typically, different variants exist. Each of them constitutes an adjustment of a basic process (e.g. a reference process) to specific requirements building the process context. Contemporary business process management (BPM) tools, however, do not adequately support the modeling and management of process variants. Either the variants have to be specified by separate process models or they are expressed in terms of conditional branches within the same process model. Both methods can lead to high model redundancies, which make model adaptations a time consuming and error-prone task. In this paper we discuss advanced modeling concepts of our Provop approach, which provides a flexible and powerful solution for modeling and managing process variants. With Provop, a particular process variant can be configured at a high level of abstraction by applying a set of well-defined change operations to a basic process model

Influence of Adaptive Comfort Models in Execution Cost Improvements for Housing Thermal Environment in Concepción, Chile

Most of the operational energy needed by the housing sector is used to compensate energy losses or thermal gains through the building’s envelope. As a result, any improvement in the thermal behavior will provide important opportunities to reduce energy consumption. This research analyzes improvements in the thermal envelope in social housing in the Greater Concepción area in Chile using adaptive thermal comfort models and thermal insulation investments. The objective set out is to evaluate the economic reduction of thermal envelope improvement costs for dwellings, which entails using the adaptive thermal comfort model obtained through monitoring and the surveys applied to the users of social housing in Concepción (CAS), against the international adaptive thermal comfort models established by the EN 15251:2007 and ASHRAE 55-2017 standards. Finally, it is concluded that, on having applied the social housing adaptive thermal comfort model (CAS), execution costs are reduced by between 28.8% and 58.2%, reaching a time of comfort in free oscillation similar to that obtained from applying the models of the EN 15251:2007 (74.2%) and ASHRAE 55-2017 standards (59.9%)CONICYT FONDECYT 3160806VI PPIT-U