2,851 research outputs found
On the real world practice of Behaviour Driven Development
Surveys of industry practice over the last decade suggest that Behaviour Driven Development is a popular Agile practice. For example, 19% of respondents to the 14th State of Agile annual survey reported using BDD, placing it in the top 13 practices reported. As well as potential benefits, the adoption of BDD necessarily involves an additional cost of writing and maintaining Gherkin features and scenarios, and (if used for acceptance testing,) the associated step functions. Yet there is a lack of published literature exploring how BDD is used in practice and the challenges experienced by real world software development efforts. This gap is significant because without understanding current real world practice, it is hard to identify opportunities to address and mitigate challenges. In order to address this research gap concerning the challenges of using BDD, this thesis reports on a research project which explored: (a) the challenges of applying agile and undertaking requirements engineering in a real world context; (b) the challenges of applying BDD specifically and (c) the application of BDD in open-source projects to understand challenges in this different context.
For this purpose, we progressively conducted two case studies, two series of interviews, four iterations of action research, and an empirical study. The first case study was conducted in an avionics company to discover the challenges of using an agile process in a large scale safety critical project environment. Since requirements management was found to be one of the biggest challenges during the case study, we decided to investigate BDD because of its reputation for requirements management. The second case study was conducted in the company with an aim to discover the challenges of using BDD in real life. The case study was complemented with an empirical study of the practice of BDD in open source projects, taking a study sample from the GitHub open source collaboration site.
As a result of this Ph.D research, we were able to discover: (i) challenges of using an agile process in a large scale safety-critical organisation, (ii) current state of BDD in practice, (iii) technical limitations of Gherkin (i.e., the language for writing requirements in BDD), (iv) challenges of using BDD in a real project, (v) bad smells in the Gherkin specifications of open source projects on GitHub. We also presented a brief comparison between the theoretical description of BDD and BDD in practice. This research, therefore, presents the results of lessons learned from BDD in practice, and serves as a guide for software practitioners planning on using BDD in their projects
A Holistic Analysis of Internet of Things (IoT) Security : Principles, Practices, and New Perspectives
Peer reviewedPublisher PD
Automation for network security configuration: state of the art and research trends
The size and complexity of modern computer networks are progressively increasing, as a consequence of novel architectural paradigms such as the Internet of Things and network virtualization. Consequently, a manual orchestration and configuration of network security functions is no more feasible, in an environment where cyber attacks can dramatically exploit breaches related to any minimum configuration error. A new frontier is then the introduction of automation in network security configuration, i.e., automatically designing the architecture of security services and the configurations of network security functions, such as firewalls, VPN gateways, etc. This opportunity has been enabled by modern computer networks technologies, such as virtualization. In view of these considerations, the motivations for the introduction of automation in network security configuration are first introduced, alongside with the key automation enablers. Then, the current state of the art in this context is surveyed, focusing on both the achieved improvements and the current limitations. Finally, possible future trends in the field are illustrated
A Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Framework to Evaluate the Impact of Industry 5.0 Technologies: Case Study, Lessons Learned, Challenges and Future Directions
Smart technologies have demonstrated striking outcomes regarding the early diagnosis of diseases and the delivery of the necessary healthcare in the last decade. However, by emphasizing the core fundamentals of social justice and sustainability, together with digitalization and smart technologies that predicate raising productivity and flexibility, Industry 5.0 has proven to achieve more efficient results. Industry 5.0 technologies provide more intelligent ways for human employees and higher efficiency development while also improving safety and performance in many applications. In this research, the contribution is focused on the healthcare and how Industry 5.0 technologies demonstrate several advantages for the healthcare sector, starting with automated and precise disease prediction, moving on to aiding medical personnel in continual surveillance and monitoring and concluding with successful digital automation of smart equipment. The objective of this study is to apply a hybrid multi-criteria decision-making approach under a neutrosophic environment to evaluate the advantages of industry 5.0 technologies in the healthcare sector. Industry 5.0 primary value is to reach human-centric, sustainable, and resilient industries. While Industry 5.0 technologies sub-values regarding the healthcare sector are determined and distinguished according to the 3-main values mentioned previously based on literature. The methodologies applied in this study are: The Analytical Hierarchy approach (AHP) evaluates the main values and sub-values. Subsequently, the effectiveness of industry 5.0 technologies according to their values to the healthcare sector are ranked by Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS). The approach is constructed under uncertainty based on a neutrosophic environment to achieve accuracy in the evaluation process. The results show that the most influential technology in healthcare are AI and cloud computing, while nano-technology, drone technology, and robots are at the end of the ranking. While validating the suggested technique, outcome comparisons were carried out to demonstrate the benefits of the methodologies. A sensitivity study indicates that adjusting the weightings of the sub-values has no significant effect on the ranking of technologies
UMSL Bulletin 2023-2024
The 2023-2024 Bulletin and Course Catalog for the University of Missouri St. Louis.https://irl.umsl.edu/bulletin/1088/thumbnail.jp
Multidisciplinary perspectives on Artificial Intelligence and the law
This open access book presents an interdisciplinary, multi-authored, edited collection of chapters on Artificial Intelligence (‘AI’) and the Law. AI technology has come to play a central role in the modern data economy. Through a combination of increased computing power, the growing availability of data and the advancement of algorithms, AI has now become an umbrella term for some of the most transformational technological breakthroughs of this age. The importance of AI stems from both the opportunities that it offers and the challenges that it entails. While AI applications hold the promise of economic growth and efficiency gains, they also create significant risks and uncertainty. The potential and perils of AI have thus come to dominate modern discussions of technology and ethics – and although AI was initially allowed to largely develop without guidelines or rules, few would deny that the law is set to play a fundamental role in shaping the future of AI. As the debate over AI is far from over, the need for rigorous analysis has never been greater. This book thus brings together contributors from different fields and backgrounds to explore how the law might provide answers to some of the most pressing questions raised by AI. An outcome of the Católica Research Centre for the Future of Law and its interdisciplinary working group on Law and Artificial Intelligence, it includes contributions by leading scholars in the fields of technology, ethics and the law.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
Risk and threat mitigation techniques in internet of things (IoT) environments: a survey
Security in the Internet of Things (IoT) remains a predominant area of concern. Although several other surveys have been published on this topic in recent years, the broad spectrum that this area aims to cover, the rapid developments and the variety of concerns make it impossible to cover the topic adequately. This survey updates the state of the art covered in previous surveys and focuses on defences and mitigations against threats rather than on the threats alone, an area that is less extensively covered by other surveys. This survey has collated current research considering the dynamicity of the IoT environment, a topic missed in other surveys and warrants particular attention. To consider the IoT mobility, a life-cycle approach is adopted to the study of dynamic and mobile IoT environments and means of deploying defences against malicious actors aiming to compromise an IoT network and to evolve their attack laterally within it and from it. This survey takes a more comprehensive and detailed step by analysing a broad variety of methods for accomplishing each of the mitigation steps, presenting these uniquely by introducing a “defence-in-depth” approach that could significantly slow down the progress of an attack in the dynamic IoT environment. This survey sheds a light on leveraging redundancy as an inherent nature of multi-sensor IoT applications, to improve integrity and recovery. This study highlights the challenges of each mitigation step, emphasises novel perspectives, and reconnects the discussed mitigation steps to the ground principles they seek to implement
UMSL Bulletin 2022-2023
The 2022-2023 Bulletin and Course Catalog for the University of Missouri St. Louis.https://irl.umsl.edu/bulletin/1087/thumbnail.jp
Digital Innovations for a Circular Plastic Economy in Africa
Plastic pollution is one of the biggest challenges of the twenty-first century that requires innovative and varied solutions. Focusing on sub-Saharan Africa, this book brings together interdisciplinary, multi-sectoral and multi-stakeholder perspectives exploring challenges and opportunities for utilising digital innovations to manage and accelerate the transition to a circular plastic economy (CPE).
This book is organised into three sections bringing together discussion of environmental conditions, operational dimensions and country case studies of digital transformation towards the circular plastic economy. It explores the environment for digitisation in the circular economy, bringing together perspectives from practitioners in academia, innovation, policy, civil society and government agencies. The book also highlights specific country case studies in relation to the development and implementation of different innovative ideas to drive the circular plastic economy across the three sub-Saharan African regions. Finally, the book interrogates the policy dimensions and practitioner perspectives towards a digitally enabled circular plastic economy.
Written for a wide range of readers across academia, policy and practice, including researchers, students, small and medium enterprises (SMEs), digital entrepreneurs, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and multilateral agencies, policymakers and public officials, this book offers unique insights into complex, multilayered issues relating to the production and management of plastic waste and highlights how digital innovations can drive the transition to the circular plastic economy in Africa.
The Open Access version of this book, available at https://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license
Connecting the Dots in Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence: From AI Principles, Ethics, and Key Requirements to Responsible AI Systems and Regulation
Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence (AI) is based on seven technical
requirements sustained over three main pillars that should be met throughout
the system's entire life cycle: it should be (1) lawful, (2) ethical, and (3)
robust, both from a technical and a social perspective. However, attaining
truly trustworthy AI concerns a wider vision that comprises the trustworthiness
of all processes and actors that are part of the system's life cycle, and
considers previous aspects from different lenses. A more holistic vision
contemplates four essential axes: the global principles for ethical use and
development of AI-based systems, a philosophical take on AI ethics, a
risk-based approach to AI regulation, and the mentioned pillars and
requirements. The seven requirements (human agency and oversight; robustness
and safety; privacy and data governance; transparency; diversity,
non-discrimination and fairness; societal and environmental wellbeing; and
accountability) are analyzed from a triple perspective: What each requirement
for trustworthy AI is, Why it is needed, and How each requirement can be
implemented in practice. On the other hand, a practical approach to implement
trustworthy AI systems allows defining the concept of responsibility of
AI-based systems facing the law, through a given auditing process. Therefore, a
responsible AI system is the resulting notion we introduce in this work, and a
concept of utmost necessity that can be realized through auditing processes,
subject to the challenges posed by the use of regulatory sandboxes. Our
multidisciplinary vision of trustworthy AI culminates in a debate on the
diverging views published lately about the future of AI. Our reflections in
this matter conclude that regulation is a key for reaching a consensus among
these views, and that trustworthy and responsible AI systems will be crucial
for the present and future of our society.Comment: 30 pages, 5 figures, under second revie
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