Using Technology Enabled Qualitative Research to Develop Products for the Social Good, An Overview

This paper discusses the potential benefits of the convergence of three recent trends for the design of socially beneficial products and services: the increasing application of qualitative research techniques in a wide range of disciplines, the rapid mainstreaming of social media and mobile technologies, and the emergence of software as a service. Presented is a scenario facilitating the complex data collection, analysis, storage, and reporting required for the qualitative research recommended for the task of designing relevant solutions to address needs of the underserved. A pilot study is used as a basis for describing the infrastructure and services required to realize this scenario. Implications for innovation of enhanced forms of qualitative research are presented

On cost-effective reuse of components in the design of complex reconfigurable systems

Design strategies that benefit from the reuse of system components can reduce costs while maintaining or increasing dependability—we use the term dependability to tie together reliability and availability. D3H2 (aDaptive Dependable Design for systems with Homogeneous and Heterogeneous redundancies) is a methodology that supports the design of complex systems with a focus on reconfiguration and component reuse. D3H2 systematizes the identification of heterogeneous redundancies and optimizes the design of fault detection and reconfiguration mechanisms, by enabling the analysis of design alternatives with respect to dependability and cost. In this paper, we extend D3H2 for application to repairable systems. The method is extended with analysis capabilities allowing dependability assessment of complex reconfigurable systems. Analysed scenarios include time-dependencies between failure events and the corresponding reconfiguration actions. We demonstrate how D3H2 can support decisions about fault detection and reconfiguration that seek to improve dependability while reducing costs via application to a realistic railway case study

Developing a distributed electronic health-record store for India

The DIGHT project is addressing the problem of building a scalable and highly available information store for the Electronic Health Records (EHRs) of the over one billion citizens of India

Routing-Verification-as-a-Service (RVaaS): Trustworthy Routing Despite Insecure Providers

Computer networks today typically do not provide any mechanisms to the users to learn, in a reliable manner, which paths have (and have not) been taken by their packets. Rather, it seems inevitable that as soon as a packet leaves the network card, the user is forced to trust the network provider to forward the packets as expected or agreed upon. This can be undesirable, especially in the light of today's trend toward more programmable networks: after a successful cyber attack on the network management system or Software-Defined Network (SDN) control plane, an adversary in principle has complete control over the network. This paper presents a low-cost and efficient solution to detect misbehaviors and ensure trustworthy routing over untrusted or insecure providers, in particular providers whose management system or control plane has been compromised (e.g., using a cyber attack). We propose Routing-Verification-as-a-Service (RVaaS): RVaaS offers clients a flexible interface to query information relevant to their traffic, while respecting the autonomy of the network provider. RVaaS leverages key features of OpenFlow-based SDNs to combine (passive and active) configuration monitoring, logical data plane verification and actual in-band tests, in a novel manner