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Using a Creativity Workshop to Generate Requirements for an Event Database Application
This paper describes one experience of using a creativity workshop to generate requirements for an event database application for a network of German Chambers of Commerce (CCI’s). The workshop described was the first to be run by the host organization. Techniques used during the workshop included discussion of system boundaries and use of creativity triggers. We discuss the results from the workshop in terms of the number and importance to stakeholders of the requirements generated. We end with a presentation of lessons learnt for improved creative practices in requirements engineering
Dealing with goal models complexity using topological metrics and algorithms
The inherent complexity of business goal-models is a challenge for organizations that has to analyze and maintaining them. Several approaches are developed to reduce the complexity into manageable limits, either by providing support to the modularization or designing metrics to monitor the complexity levels. These approaches are designed to identify an unusual complexity comparing it among models. In the present work, we expose two approaches based on structural characteristics of goal-model, which do not require these comparisons. The first one ranksthe importance of goalsto identify a manageable set of them that can be considered as a priority; the second one modularizes the model to reduce the effort to understand, analyze and maintain the model.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version
Formative Evaluation of Job Clubs Operated by Faith- and Community-Based Organizations: Findings From Site Visits and Options for Future Evaluation
Over the past several decades, job search support groups, commonly referred to as “job clubs,” have evolved into one of several important activities used by the public workforce system and faith- and community-based organizations to enhance worker readiness and employability, as well as to provide ongoing support to unemployed and underemployed individuals as they search for jobs. The U.S. Department of Labor\u27s (DOL) Chief Evaluation Office (CEO) contracted in September 2012 with Capital Research Corporation, Inc. and George Washington University to conduct an assessment of job clubs sponsored by faith-based and community-based organizations (FBOs/CBOs). The overall purpose of this evaluation effort was to systematically describe the key characteristics of job clubs being offered by a range of faith- and community- based organizations, document how they differ from and are similar to the job clubs operated by publicly-funded workforce agencies (such as at American Job Centers [AJCs]), and identify potential approaches that might be used for more rigorous formal evaluation of impacts and effectiveness.
Findings from the telephone interviews with stakeholders and in-person interviews with facilitators during the site visits indicate that job clubs operated by FBOs, CBOs and public workforce agencies are alike in many ways, with all of them emphasizing the critical importance of: (1) networking during the job search; (2) offering ongoing peer support and sharing of similar experiences among participants; and (3) providing instruction and guidance on the basics of the job search process (e.g., elevator pitches, resume development, job interview practice). Noteworthy differences between the FBO/CBO job clubs and those operated by public workforce agencies are related to staffing patterns and available resources for program operations and services. While public workforce agency job clubs are led by paid professional staff, supported by the full complement of workshops, activities, and other services typically available through AJCs/One-Stop Centers, FBO/CBO job clubs, in most cases, operate with limited budgets or no funding whatsoever. Additionally, compared with public sector agencies, FBOs/CBOs typically collect little in the way of participant-level data, such as participant identifiers, demographic characteristics, service receipt, or outcomes. Finally, although this report suggests several approaches to future rigorous experimental/non-experimental and process/implementation evaluation of FBO/CBO-sponsored job clubs, there are likely to be formidable challenges to implementation of rigorous evaluation methods because these job clubs rarely collect identifying information on participants, such as Social Security numbers, and are generally opposed to random assignment for their programs
Analysis of Solar Energy Aggregation under Various Billing Mechanisms
Ongoing reductions in the cost of solar photovoltaic (PV) systems are driving
their increased installations by residential households. Various incentive
programs such as feed-in tariff, net metering, net purchase and sale that allow
the prosumers to sell their generated electricity to the grid are also powering
this trend. In this paper, we investigate sharing of PV systems among a
community of households, who can also benefit further by pooling their
production. Using cooperative game theory, we find conditions under which such
sharing decreases their net total cost. We also develop allocation rules such
that the joint net electricity consumption cost is allocated to the
participants. These cost allocations are based on the cost causation principle.
The allocations also satisfy the standalone cost principle and promote PV solar
aggregation. We also perform a comparative analytical study on the benefit of
sharing under the mechanisms favorable for sharing, namely net metering, and
net purchase and sale. The results are illustrated in a case study using real
consumption data from a residential community in Austin, Texas.Comment: 12 page
Inter-organizational fault management: Functional and organizational core aspects of management architectures
Outsourcing -- successful, and sometimes painful -- has become one of the
hottest topics in IT service management discussions over the past decade. IT
services are outsourced to external service provider in order to reduce the
effort required for and overhead of delivering these services within the own
organization. More recently also IT services providers themselves started to
either outsource service parts or to deliver those services in a
non-hierarchical cooperation with other providers. Splitting a service into
several service parts is a non-trivial task as they have to be implemented,
operated, and maintained by different providers. One key aspect of such
inter-organizational cooperation is fault management, because it is crucial to
locate and solve problems, which reduce the quality of service, quickly and
reliably. In this article we present the results of a thorough use case based
requirements analysis for an architecture for inter-organizational fault
management (ioFMA). Furthermore, a concept of the organizational respective
functional model of the ioFMA is given.Comment: International Journal of Computer Networks & Communications (IJCNC
Phase topology identification in low-voltage distribution networks: a Bayesian approach
Knowledge of customer phase connection in low-voltage distribution networks is important for Distribution
System Operators (DSOs). This paper presents a novel data-driven phase identification method based on Bayesian
inference, which uses load consumption profiles as inputs. This method uses a non-linear function to establish the
probability of a customer being connected to a given phase, based on variations in the customer’s consumption
and those in the phase feeders. Owing to the Bayesian inference, the proposed method can provide up-to-date
certainty about the phase connection of each customer. To improve the detection of those customers that are
more difficult to identify, after obtaining the up-to-date certainty for all users, the consumption of those who
have an up-to-date certainty above a certain percentile compared with the rest of the substation (those that are
more likely to be correctly classified) is subtracted from the phase in which they are classified. The performance
of the proposed method was evaluated using a real (non-synthetic) low-voltage distribution network. Favourable
results (with accuracies higher than 97 %) were obtained in almost all cases, regardless of the percentage of
Smart Meter penetration and the size of the substation. A comparison with other state-of-the-art methods showed
that the proposed method outperforms (or equals) them. The proposed method does not necessarily require
previously labelled data; however, it can handle them even if they contain errors. Having previous information
(partial or complete) increases the performance of phase identification, making it possible to correct erroneous
previous labelling
False Data Injection Attacks in Smart Grids: State of the Art and Way Forward
In the recent years cyberattacks to smart grids are becoming more frequent
Among the many malicious activities that can be launched against smart grids
False Data Injection FDI attacks have raised significant concerns from both
academia and industry FDI attacks can affect the internal state estimation
processcritical for smart grid monitoring and controlthus being able to bypass
conventional Bad Data Detection BDD methods Hence prompt detection and precise
localization of FDI attacks is becomming of paramount importance to ensure
smart grids security and safety Several papers recently started to study and
analyze this topic from different perspectives and address existing challenges
Datadriven techniques and mathematical modelings are the major ingredients of
the proposed approaches The primary objective of this work is to provide a
systematic review and insights into FDI attacks joint detection and
localization approaches considering that other surveys mainly concentrated on
the detection aspects without detailed coverage of localization aspects For
this purpose we select and inspect more than forty major research contributions
while conducting a detailed analysis of their methodology and objectives in
relation to the FDI attacks detection and localization We provide our key
findings of the identified papers according to different criteria such as
employed FDI attacks localization techniques utilized evaluation scenarios
investigated FDI attack types application scenarios adopted methodologies and
the use of additional data Finally we discuss open issues and future research
direction
Integrated monitoring of multi-domain backbone connections -- Operational experience in the LHC optical private network
Novel large scale research projects often require cooperation between various
different project partners that are spread among the entire world. They do not
only need huge computing resources, but also a reliable network to operate on.
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN is a representative example for such a
project. Its experiments result in a vast amount of data, which is interesting
for researchers around the world. For transporting the data from CERN to 11
data processing and storage sites, an optical private network (OPN) has been
constructed. As the experiment data is highly valuable, LHC defines very high
requirements to the underlying network infrastructure. In order to fulfil those
requirements, the connections have to be managed and monitored permanently. In
this paper, we present the integrated monitoring solution developed for the
LHCOPN. We first outline the requirements and show how they are met on the
single network layers. After that, we describe, how those single measurements
can be combined into an integrated view. We cover design concepts as well as
tool implementation highlights.Comment: International Journal of Computer Networks & Communications (IJCNC
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