Research Naval Postgraduate School, v.12, no.3, October 2002

NPS Research is published by the Research and Sponsored Programs, Office of the Vice President and Dean of Research, in accordance with NAVSOP-35. Views and opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the Department of the Navy.Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited

Software Engineering Laboratory Series: Proceedings of the Twenty-Second Annual Software Engineering Workshop

The Software Engineering Laboratory (SEL) is an organization sponsored by NASA/GSFC and created to investigate the effectiveness of software engineering technologies when applied to the development of application software. The activities, findings, and recommendations of the SEL are recorded in the Software Engineering Laboratory Series, a continuing series of reports that includes this document

Service Innovation as a Drive for Competitiveness

Diplomová práce představuje paradigmata servisně orientované ekonomiky z hlediska konkurenceschopnosti firmy. Zaměřuje se na konkurenční výhody, kterých lze dosáhnout nebo podporovat rozvojem služeb. Teoretický základ prezentuje specifika a význam sektoru služeb v současných nejvyspělejších ekonomikách. Jmenuje hlavní konkurenční strategie používané v sektoru služeb a srovnává je se zažitými strategiemi známými z produktově orientované ekonomiky. Práce blíže analyzuje metody rozvoje služeb ve společnosti IBM GSDC Brno v oblasti globalních IT služeb. Pojednává o hlavních problémech spojených s jejich inovací a zároveň naznačuje současné a budoucí trendy v oblasti IT služeb. V praktické návrhové části jsou prezentovány nové přístupy k rozvoji služeb, které by mohly podpořit konkurenceschopnost firmy na globálním trhu služeb.The master thesis discusses the service-oriented economy paradigms with the focus on the company’s competitiveness. Specifically it points at the competitive advantages which can be achieved or promoted through service innovation. The theoretical background demostrates the specifics and the importance of services in today`s leading economies. It shows the competitive strategies used in service companies and compares them with the known strategies defined for and used in product-oriented economy. The thesis analyzes more closely the service innovation methods used by the IBM GSDC Brno company in the global IT services area. It indicates and discusses the main problems of service innovation which can hinder the competitive advantage development as well as the current and future trends in the IT services sector. As a result the thesis proposes the improved approaches to service innovation which can lead to better competitiveness on the global service marketplace.

Agents for educational games and simulations

This book consists mainly of revised papers that were presented at the Agents for Educational Games and Simulation (AEGS) workshop held on May 2, 2011, as part of the Autonomous Agents and MultiAgent Systems (AAMAS) conference in Taipei, Taiwan. The 12 full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from various submissions. The papers are organized topical sections on middleware applications, dialogues and learning, adaption and convergence, and agent applications

Master of Science in Risk Management and Safety Engineering at Lund University, Sweden - Executive Summaries

To obtain a Master of Science in Risk Management and Safety Engineering at Lund University the students must write a master’s thesis based on a final project. The efforts correspond to full-time studies for one semester, i.e. 30 ETCS credits or 20 Swedish credits. The students can choose to write the report in Swedish, i.e. their mother tongue, or in English. In addition to the thesis a student is also required to summarize the work in an executive summary written in English. This report includes the executive summaries written by students for the years 2001 - 2006. A short description of the structure and contents of the Master’s programme is presented in Appendix A

Systemic Design for the innovation of home appliances The meaningfulness of data in designing sustainable systems

This work addressed the domestic environment considering this context as a complex system characterised by significant impacts in terms of resource consumption. Within the theoretical framework of Systemic Design (SD), this thesis focused on home appliances, in order to understand how to reduce the impact directly attributable to them, while optimising and simplifying daily tasks for the user. A design methodology towards environmental sustainability has been structured, by focusing on the use of data for design purposes and on creating value for the user through meaningful products. It considers the user, the product and the environment as central topics, by giving them the same relevance and the literature review is structured accordingly, investigating needs and requirements, ethical issues, but also current products and future scenarios. During my experience at TU Delft, I spent six months in the Department of Internet of Things at the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering. Together with computer scientists, we developed a prototype to collect some missing data, establishing the importance of grounding the decision-making on reliable information. IoT and data gathering open a variety of possibilities in monitoring, accessing more precise knowledge of products and households useful for design purposes, up to understand how to fill the gap perceived by the user between needs and solutions. It considered the potential benefits of using IoT indicators to collect missing information about both the product, its use and its operating environment to address critical aspects in the design stage, thus extending products’ lifetime. This thesis highlighted the importance of building multidisciplinary design teams to investigate different classes of requirements, and the need for flexible tools to cope with complex and evolving requirements, the co-evolution of problem and solutions and investigating open-ended questions. This approach leaves room for addressing every step of the traditional life-cycle in a more circular way, shifting the focus from the life-cycle centrality of the previous century to a more complex vision about the product