PROCESS Data Infrastructure and Data Services

Due to energy limitation and high operational costs, it is likely that exascale computing will not be achieved by one or two datacentres but will require many more. A simple calculation, which aggregates the computation power of the 2017 Top500 supercomputers, can only reach 418 petaflops. Companies like Rescale, which claims 1.4 exaflops of peak computing power, describes its infrastructure as composed of 8 million servers spread across 30 datacentres. Any proposed solution to address exascale computing challenges has to take into consideration these facts and by design should aim to support the use of geographically distributed and likely independent datacentres. It should also consider, whenever possible, the co-allocation of the storage with the computation as it would take 3 years to transfer 1 exabyte on a dedicated 100 Gb Ethernet connection. This means we have to be smart about managing data more and more geographically dispersed and spread across different administrative domains. As the natural settings of the PROCESS project is to operate within the European Research Infrastructure and serve the European research communities facing exascale challenges, it is important that PROCESS architecture and solutions are well positioned within the European computing and data management landscape namely PRACE, EGI, and EUDAT. In this paper we propose a scalable and programmable data infrastructure that is easy to deploy and can be tuned to support various data-intensive scientific applications

A workflow system as an information support to companies operating in the area of sustainable construction

Doktorska disertacija obravnava področje dostopnosti informacij, pomembnih za odločanje o izbiri storitev in proizvodov pri prenovi stavbe. Te so pogosto neurejene in razpršene po celotnem spletu ter zapisane v različnih formatih. Posledično je lahko iskanje želenih informacij zelo zamudno in nepregledno. Informacije lahko zajamemo v delotoku, ki predstavlja zaporedje povezanih storitev, izvajanih v primerno orkestriranih korakih. Osnovna hipoteza trdi, da lahko model informacijskega sistema delotokov zajame visoko stopnjo ključnih informacij in znanj na področju trajnostne gradnje in načrtovanja ter kot tak predstavlja primerno informacijsko podporo gradbenim podjetjem in investitorjem. Potrebe po informacijski podpori ugotavljamo s pomočjo raziskave med ključnimi deležniki na področju gradbeništva. Rezultati izvedene raziskave razkrivajo velike potrebe po dostopu do urejenih informacij in kažejo na veliko pripravljenosti deležnikov za sodelovanje ter medsebojno deljenje informacij. Izdelan je pregled obstoječih rešitev in dognanj na omenjenem področju. Predstavljen je trajnosten pogled na stavbe s pregledom najbolj razširjenih in aktualnih pristopov trajnostnega ocenjevanja stavb, ki razkriva razlike pri pripisovanju teže posameznim trajnostnim vidikom. V nadaljevanju izdelamo pregled stanja slovenskega stavbnega fonda, ki razkriva, da je velika večina stavb potencialno potrebnih prenove. Predstavljene so tudi semantične tehnologije, ki omogočajo izdelavo naprednih informacijskih sistemov in ki jih zato uporabimo v nadaljnjem delu. V nadaljevanju dela je predstavljen razvoj prototipa informacijskega sistema, ki temelji na delotokih. Opisana je zasnova arhitekture informacijskega sistema, model sprejemanja odločitev in razvita ontologija, ki podpira zapis informacij v delotoke in hrambo informacij v pripadajoči podatkovni bazi OWL/RDF. V zaključnem delu je predstavljena validacija prototipa informacijskega sistema, ki kaže, da smo uspeli zadostiti opredeljenim zahtevam. Postavljena hipoteza je torej potrjena.The research presented in this thesis is concerned with the accessibility of information on the world web, crucial for the decision making process regarding products and services required for building refurbishment. This information is often dispersed, poorly structured and written in various formats. As a consequence, information search on the web can be extremely time-consuming and difficult to carry out. The information can be sequenced in a workflow consisting of a series of interconnected services which are executed in orchestrated steps. The research hypothesis postulates that the workflow information system model is able to encompass a large proportion of key information and knowledge from the sustainable construction field. As such, it represents efficient information support to potential clients and construction contracting companies. Information support requirements of various stakeholders from the construction sector were identified by using a survey. The obtained results exhibit a clear need for structured information, as well as a significant willingness of stakeholders to share the information. An overview of the existing solutions and accomplishments in sustainable construction is presented. The concept of sustainability assessment is presented, along with an overview of the most frequently employed approaches for the sustainability assessment of buildings, which reveals differences in assigning relative importance to individual sustainability aspects. An overview of the Slovenian residential building fund is carried out. It shows that the majority of residential building stock is in need of refurbishment. Further, semantic technologies that enable the establishment of advanced information systems are presented. The second part presents the development of a workflow-based prototype information system. The design of the information system architecture is presented, together with the decision making model and the ontology that supports information recording into workflows and data storage into the OWL/RDF database. The validation of the information system is presented in the concluding part. It is shown that the system requirements defined in the beginning of the research were achievedthe initial hypothesis is therefore confirmed

A workflow system as an information support to companies operating in the area of sustainable construction

The research presented in this thesis is concerned with the accessibility of information on the world web, crucial for the decision making process regarding products and services required for building refurbishment. This information is often dispersed, poorly structured and written in various formats. As a consequence, information search on the web can be extremely time-consuming and difficult to carry out. The information can be sequenced in a workflow consisting of a series of interconnected services which are executed in orchestrated steps. The research hypothesis postulates that the workflow information system model is able to encompass a large proportion of key information and knowledge from the sustainable construction field. As such, it represents efficient information support to potential clients and construction contracting companies.\ud Information support requirements of various stakeholders from the construction sector were identified by using a survey. The obtained results exhibit a clear need for structured information, as well as a significant willingness of stakeholders to share the information. An overview of the existing solutions and accomplishments in sustainable construction is presented. The concept of sustainability assessment is presented, along with an overview of the most frequently employed approaches for the sustainability assessment of buildings, which reveals differences in assigning relative importance to individual sustainability aspects. An overview of the Slovenian residential building fund is carried out. It shows that the majority of residential building stock is in need of refurbishment. Further, semantic technologies that enable the establishment of advanced information systems are presented.\ud The second part presents the development of a workflow-based prototype information system. The design of the information system architecture is presented, together with the decision making model and the ontology that supports information recording into workflows and data storage into the OWL/RDF database.\ud The validation of the information system is presented in the concluding part. It is shown that the system requirements defined in the beginning of the research were achieved; the initial hypothesis is therefore confirmed

A workflow system as an information support to companies operating in the area of sustainable construction

Doktorska disertacija obravnava področje dostopnosti informacij, pomembnih za odločanje o izbiri storitev in proizvodov pri prenovi stavbe. Te so pogosto neurejene in razpršene po celotnem spletu ter zapisane v različnih formatih. Posledično je lahko iskanje želenih informacij zelo zamudno in nepregledno. Informacije lahko zajamemo v delotoku, ki predstavlja zaporedje povezanih storitev, izvajanih v primerno orkestriranih korakih. Osnovna hipoteza trdi, da lahko model informacijskega sistema delotokov zajame visoko stopnjo ključnih informacij in znanj na področju trajnostne gradnje in načrtovanja ter kot tak predstavlja primerno informacijsko podporo gradbenim podjetjem in investitorjem. Potrebe po informacijski podpori ugotavljamo s pomočjo raziskave med ključnimi deležniki na področju gradbeništva. Rezultati izvedene raziskave razkrivajo velike potrebe po dostopu do urejenih informacij in kažejo na veliko pripravljenosti deležnikov za sodelovanje ter medsebojno deljenje informacij. Izdelan je pregled obstoječih rešitev in dognanj na omenjenem področju. Predstavljen je trajnosten pogled na stavbe s pregledom najbolj razširjenih in aktualnih pristopov trajnostnega ocenjevanja stavb, ki razkriva razlike pri pripisovanju teže posameznim trajnostnim vidikom. V nadaljevanju izdelamo pregled stanja slovenskega stavbnega fonda, ki razkriva, da je velika večina stavb potencialno potrebnih prenove. Predstavljene so tudi semantične tehnologije, ki omogočajo izdelavo naprednih informacijskih sistemov in ki jih zato uporabimo v nadaljnjem delu. V nadaljevanju dela je predstavljen razvoj prototipa informacijskega sistema, ki temelji na delotokih. Opisana je zasnova arhitekture informacijskega sistema, model sprejemanja odločitev in razvita ontologija, ki podpira zapis informacij v delotoke in hrambo informacij v pripadajoči podatkovni bazi OWL/RDF. V zaključnem delu je predstavljena validacija prototipa informacijskega sistema, ki kaže, da smo uspeli zadostiti opredeljenim zahtevam. Postavljena hipoteza je torej potrjena.The research presented in this thesis is concerned with the accessibility of information on the world web, crucial for the decision making process regarding products and services required for building refurbishment. This information is often dispersed, poorly structured and written in various formats. As a consequence, information search on the web can be extremely time-consuming and difficult to carry out. The information can be sequenced in a workflow consisting of a series of interconnected services which are executed in orchestrated steps. The research hypothesis postulates that the workflow information system model is able to encompass a large proportion of key information and knowledge from the sustainable construction field. As such, it represents efficient information support to potential clients and construction contracting companies. Information support requirements of various stakeholders from the construction sector were identified by using a survey. The obtained results exhibit a clear need for structured information, as well as a significant willingness of stakeholders to share the information. An overview of the existing solutions and accomplishments in sustainable construction is presented. The concept of sustainability assessment is presented, along with an overview of the most frequently employed approaches for the sustainability assessment of buildings, which reveals differences in assigning relative importance to individual sustainability aspects. An overview of the Slovenian residential building fund is carried out. It shows that the majority of residential building stock is in need of refurbishment. Further, semantic technologies that enable the establishment of advanced information systems are presented. The second part presents the development of a workflow-based prototype information system. The design of the information system architecture is presented, together with the decision making model and the ontology that supports information recording into workflows and data storage into the OWL/RDF database. The validation of the information system is presented in the concluding part. It is shown that the system requirements defined in the beginning of the research were achievedthe initial hypothesis is therefore confirmed

Architecture and the Built Environment:

This publication provides an overview of TU Delft’s most significant research achievements in the field of architecture and the built environment during the years 2010–2012. It is the first presentation of the joint research portfolio of the Faculty of Architecture and OTB Research Institute since their integration into the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment. As such the portfolio holds a strong promise for the future. In a time when the economy seems to be finally picking up and in which such societal issues as energy, climate and ageing are more prominent than ever before, there are plenty of fields for us to explore in the next three years

Text-image synergy for multimodal retrieval and annotation

Text and images are the two most common data modalities found on the Internet. Understanding the synergy between text and images, that is, seamlessly analyzing information from these modalities may be trivial for humans, but is challenging for software systems. In this dissertation we study problems where deciphering text-image synergy is crucial for finding solutions. We propose methods and ideas that establish semantic connections between text and images in multimodal contents, and empirically show their effectiveness in four interconnected problems: Image Retrieval, Image Tag Refinement, Image-Text Alignment, and Image Captioning. Our promising results and observations open up interesting scopes for future research involving text-image data understanding.Text and images are the two most common data modalities found on the Internet. Understanding the synergy between text and images, that is, seamlessly analyzing information from these modalities may be trivial for humans, but is challenging for software systems. In this dissertation we study problems where deciphering text-image synergy is crucial for finding solutions. We propose methods and ideas that establish semantic connections between text and images in multimodal contents, and empirically show their effectiveness in four interconnected problems: Image Retrieval, Image Tag Refinement, Image-Text Alignment, and Image Captioning. Our promising results and observations open up interesting scopes for future research involving text-image data understanding.Text und Bild sind die beiden häufigsten Arten von Inhalten im Internet. Während es für Menschen einfach ist, gerade aus dem Zusammenspiel von Text- und Bildinhalten Informationen zu erfassen, stellt diese kombinierte Darstellung von Inhalten Softwaresysteme vor große Herausforderungen. In dieser Dissertation werden Probleme studiert, für deren Lösung das Verständnis des Zusammenspiels von Text- und Bildinhalten wesentlich ist. Es werden Methoden und Vorschläge präsentiert und empirisch bewertet, die semantische Verbindungen zwischen Text und Bild in multimodalen Daten herstellen. Wir stellen in dieser Dissertation vier miteinander verbundene Text- und Bildprobleme vor: • Bildersuche. Ob Bilder anhand von textbasierten Suchanfragen gefunden werden, hängt stark davon ab, ob der Text in der Nähe des Bildes mit dem der Anfrage übereinstimmt. Bilder ohne textuellen Kontext, oder sogar mit thematisch passendem Kontext, aber ohne direkte Übereinstimmungen der vorhandenen Schlagworte zur Suchanfrage, können häufig nicht gefunden werden. Zur Abhilfe schlagen wir vor, drei Arten von Informationen in Kombination zu nutzen: visuelle Informationen (in Form von automatisch generierten Bildbeschreibungen), textuelle Informationen (Stichworte aus vorangegangenen Suchanfragen), und Alltagswissen. • Verbesserte Bildbeschreibungen. Bei der Objekterkennung durch Computer Vision kommt es des Öfteren zu Fehldetektionen und Inkohärenzen. Die korrekte Identifikation von Bildinhalten ist jedoch eine wichtige Voraussetzung für die Suche nach Bildern mittels textueller Suchanfragen. Um die Fehleranfälligkeit bei der Objekterkennung zu minimieren, schlagen wir vor Alltagswissen einzubeziehen. Durch zusätzliche Bild-Annotationen, welche sich durch den gesunden Menschenverstand als thematisch passend erweisen, können viele fehlerhafte und zusammenhanglose Erkennungen vermieden werden. • Bild-Text Platzierung. Auf Internetseiten mit Text- und Bildinhalten (wie Nachrichtenseiten, Blogbeiträge, Artikel in sozialen Medien) werden Bilder in der Regel an semantisch sinnvollen Positionen im Textfluss platziert. Wir nutzen dies um ein Framework vorzuschlagen, in dem relevante Bilder ausgesucht werden und mit den passenden Abschnitten eines Textes assoziiert werden. • Bildunterschriften. Bilder, die als Teil von multimodalen Inhalten zur Verbesserung der Lesbarkeit von Texten dienen, haben typischerweise Bildunterschriften, die zum Kontext des umgebenden Texts passen. Wir schlagen vor, den Kontext beim automatischen Generieren von Bildunterschriften ebenfalls einzubeziehen. Üblicherweise werden hierfür die Bilder allein analysiert. Wir stellen die kontextbezogene Bildunterschriftengenerierung vor. Unsere vielversprechenden Beobachtungen und Ergebnisse eröffnen interessante Möglichkeiten für weitergehende Forschung zur computergestützten Erfassung des Zusammenspiels von Text- und Bildinhalten

Exploring attributes, sequences, and time in Recommender Systems: From classical to Point-of-Interest recommendation

Tesis Doctoral inédita leída en la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Escuela Politécnica Superior, Departamento de Ingenieria Informática. Fecha de lectura: 08-07-2021Since the emergence of the Internet and the spread of digital communications throughout the world, the amount of data stored on the Web has been growing exponentially. In this new digital era, a large number of companies have emerged with the purpose of ltering the information available on the web and provide users with interesting items. The algorithms and models used to recommend these items are called Recommender Systems. These systems are applied to a large number of domains, from music, books, or movies to dating or Point-of-Interest (POI), which is an increasingly popular domain where users receive recommendations of di erent places when they arrive to a city. In this thesis, we focus on exploiting the use of contextual information, especially temporal and sequential data, and apply it in novel ways in both traditional and Point-of-Interest recommendation. We believe that this type of information can be used not only for creating new recommendation models but also for developing new metrics for analyzing the quality of these recommendations. In one of our rst contributions we propose di erent metrics, some of them derived from previously existing frameworks, using this contextual information. Besides, we also propose an intuitive algorithm that is able to provide recommendations to a target user by exploiting the last common interactions with other similar users of the system. At the same time, we conduct a comprehensive review of the algorithms that have been proposed in the area of POI recommendation between 2011 and 2019, identifying the common characteristics and methodologies used. Once this classi cation of the algorithms proposed to date is completed, we design a mechanism to recommend complete routes (not only independent POIs) to users, making use of reranking techniques. In addition, due to the great di culty of making recommendations in the POI domain, we propose the use of data aggregation techniques to use information from di erent cities to generate POI recommendations in a given target city. In the experimental work we present our approaches on di erent datasets belonging to both classical and POI recommendation. The results obtained in these experiments con rm the usefulness of our recommendation proposals, in terms of ranking accuracy and other dimensions like novelty, diversity, and coverage, and the appropriateness of our metrics for analyzing temporal information and biases in the recommendations producedDesde la aparici on de Internet y la difusi on de las redes de comunicaciones en todo el mundo, la cantidad de datos almacenados en la red ha crecido exponencialmente. En esta nueva era digital, han surgido un gran n umero de empresas con el objetivo de ltrar la informaci on disponible en la red y ofrecer a los usuarios art culos interesantes. Los algoritmos y modelos utilizados para recomendar estos art culos reciben el nombre de Sistemas de Recomendaci on. Estos sistemas se aplican a un gran n umero de dominios, desde m usica, libros o pel culas hasta las citas o los Puntos de Inter es (POIs, en ingl es), un dominio cada vez m as popular en el que los usuarios reciben recomendaciones de diferentes lugares cuando llegan a una ciudad. En esta tesis, nos centramos en explotar el uso de la informaci on contextual, especialmente los datos temporales y secuenciales, y aplicarla de forma novedosa tanto en la recomendaci on cl asica como en la recomendaci on de POIs. Creemos que este tipo de informaci on puede utilizarse no s olo para crear nuevos modelos de recomendaci on, sino tambi en para desarrollar nuevas m etricas para analizar la calidad de estas recomendaciones. En una de nuestras primeras contribuciones proponemos diferentes m etricas, algunas derivadas de formulaciones previamente existentes, utilizando esta informaci on contextual. Adem as, proponemos un algoritmo intuitivo que es capaz de proporcionar recomendaciones a un usuario objetivo explotando las ultimas interacciones comunes con otros usuarios similares del sistema. Al mismo tiempo, realizamos una revisi on exhaustiva de los algoritmos que se han propuesto en el a mbito de la recomendaci o n de POIs entre 2011 y 2019, identi cando las caracter sticas comunes y las metodolog as utilizadas. Una vez realizada esta clasi caci on de los algoritmos propuestos hasta la fecha, dise~namos un mecanismo para recomendar rutas completas (no s olo POIs independientes) a los usuarios, haciendo uso de t ecnicas de reranking. Adem as, debido a la gran di cultad de realizar recomendaciones en el ambito de los POIs, proponemos el uso de t ecnicas de agregaci on de datos para utilizar la informaci on de diferentes ciudades y generar recomendaciones de POIs en una determinada ciudad objetivo. En el trabajo experimental presentamos nuestros m etodos en diferentes conjuntos de datos tanto de recomendaci on cl asica como de POIs. Los resultados obtenidos en estos experimentos con rman la utilidad de nuestras propuestas de recomendaci on en t erminos de precisi on de ranking y de otras dimensiones como la novedad, la diversidad y la cobertura, y c omo de apropiadas son nuestras m etricas para analizar la informaci on temporal y los sesgos en las recomendaciones producida

QoS-guaranteed resource provisioning for cloud-based MapReduce

This PhD project has investigated how to guarantee the quality of MapReduce services in cloud computing while minimizing the operational cost of the MapReduce services through dynamic resource provisioning. In this PhD project, a framework for the dynamic resource provisioning has been developed. Meanwhile, theoretical results for the dynamic resource provisioning have been derived, and a set of efficient and effective algorithms used in the framework have been proposed

Copyright protection of scalar and multimedia sensor network data using digital watermarking

This thesis records the research on watermarking techniques to address the issue of copyright protection of the scalar data in WSNs and image data in WMSNs, in order to ensure that the proprietary information remains safe between the sensor nodes in both. The first objective is to develop LKR watermarking technique for the copyright protection of scalar data in WSNs. The second objective is to develop GPKR watermarking technique for copyright protection of image data in WMSN

Group trust in distributed systems and its relationship with information security and cyber security

Tesis inédita de la Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Facultad de Informática, Departamento de Ingeniería del Software e Inteligencia Artificial, leída el 15-01-2016This thesis describes aspects regarding trust, reputation, information security and cyber security as connected subjects. It is the belief of this research that without trust it is not possible to address security in computational systems properly. One fundamental aspect is to use information systems or to rely on them. One must trust the technology involved and consequently the entire system, without even knowing it in the rst place. Due to human characteristics, there is the tendency to trust that systems will keep our data secure. However, one basic problem is that trust and reputation deals with subjective evaluations. In many situations, information systems nowadays have distributed support. It means that there are a lot of parts that connect everything together, which is unknown to the ordinary users. Depending on the technology, it is even unknown to systems administrators when it comes to for example clusters, cloud and peer-to-peer systems. Considering the rst area of research - trust - from the perspective of this work, a group trust model for distributed systems is presented as an extension applied to conventional trust and reputation mechanisms, extension developed considering groups, which is herein de ned as a collection of entities with particular a nities and capabilities. Broadening this perspective, the formation of groups is very common, but very few trust and reputation models studied deal with trust in the perspective of a collection of entities with common a nities. Thus, group trust is a way of representing the set of trust and reputation of their particular members. One aspect to be aware of is the fact that this set has pre-de ned activities and common objectives....This thesis describes aspects regarding trust, reputation, information security and cyber security as connected subjects. It is the belief of this research that without trust it is not possible to address security in computational systems properly. One fundamental aspect is to use information systems or to rely on them. One must trust the technology involved and consequently the entire system, without even knowing it in the rst place. Due to human characteristics, there is the tendency to trust that systems will keep our data secure. However, one basic problem is that trust and reputation deals with subjective evaluations. In many situations, information systems nowadays have distributed support. It means that there are a lot of parts that connect everything together, which is unknown to the ordinary users. Depending on the technology, it is even unknown to systems administrators when it comes to for example clusters, cloud and peer-to-peer systems. Considering the rst area of research - trust - from the perspective of this work, a group trust model for distributed systems is presented as an extension applied to conventional trust and reputation mechanisms, extension developed considering groups, which is herein de ned as a collection of entities with particular a nities and capabilities. Broadening this perspective, the formation of groups is very common, but very few trust and reputation models studied deal with trust in the perspective of a collection of entities with common a nities. Thus, group trust is a way of representing the set of trust and reputation of their particular members. One aspect to be aware of is the fact that this set has pre-de ned activities and common objectives....Depto. de Ingeniería de Software e Inteligencia Artificial (ISIA)Fac. de InformáticaTRUEunpu