An Autonomous Engine for Services Configuration and Deployment.

The runtime management of the infrastructure providing service-based systems is a complex task, up to the point where manual operation struggles to be cost effective. As the functionality is provided by a set of dynamically composed distributed services, in order to achieve a management objective multiple operations have to be applied over the distributed elements of the managed infrastructure. Moreover, the manager must cope with the highly heterogeneous characteristics and management interfaces of the runtime resources. With this in mind, this paper proposes to support the configuration and deployment of services with an automated closed control loop. The automation is enabled by the definition of a generic information model, which captures all the information relevant to the management of the services with the same abstractions, describing the runtime elements, service dependencies, and business objectives. On top of that, a technique based on satisfiability is described which automatically diagnoses the state of the managed environment and obtains the required changes for correcting it (e.g., installation, service binding, update, or configuration). The results from a set of case studies extracted from the banking domain are provided to validate the feasibility of this propos

Analysis domain model for shared virtual environments

The field of shared virtual environments, which also encompasses online games and social 3D environments, has a system landscape consisting of multiple solutions that share great functional overlap. However, there is little system interoperability between the different solutions. A shared virtual environment has an associated problem domain that is highly complex raising difficult challenges to the development process, starting with the architectural design of the underlying system. This paper has two main contributions. The first contribution is a broad domain analysis of shared virtual environments, which enables developers to have a better understanding of the whole rather than the part(s). The second contribution is a reference domain model for discussing and describing solutions - the Analysis Domain Model

Briefing Note 1A - Life-Cycle Costs Approach: Costing Sustainable Services

This briefing note uses an accounting framework, the life-cycle costs approach (LCCA), to explain the main cost components for water and sanitation in rural and peri-urban areas. The briefing note explains the building blocks used in the LCCA, then shows how this approach estimates the true cost of extending sustainable and good quality water and sanitation services to the poorest. The LCCA approach provides the most useful answer to: "What is the cost per year per person of delivering clean water and good sanitation services?" Detailed cost breakdowns are available in the annex

Current practice in project appraisal in Europe.

The work reported in this paper presents the results from the compilation of the national assessment practices in EU25 Member States and Switzerland. The work was completed as part of the current European Union 6th Framework project HEATCO (Developing Harmonised European Approaches for Transport Costing and Project Assessment), which has the objective of developing a set of harmonised guidelines for project assessment and transport costing at an EU level. This paper presents the starting point to this project. Based on the work described in this paper the HEATCO consortium will be developing common definitions and consistent valuation methods for the evaluation of TEN projects. Previous projects such as EUNET had conducted a similar review to the research presented in this paper. The key reason for repeating the research was the expansion of the EU to 25 countries in May 2004 and the fact that appraisal practices in many countries has evolved since the last survey. A proforma was designed and sent to country representatives to complete. This paper is based predominantly on the results that this data provided. The proforma focused specifically on the use of Cost Benefit Analysis in appraisal with the aim of identifying similarities and differences in country practice. Aside from the national appraisal framework the proforma also considered the individual impacts included in appraisal. The paper describes some of the similarities and differences in how construction costs, time savings, safety and environmental impacts are used across Europe. The paper then concludes with the key differences and similarities as identified by the analysis. This paper aims at providing an overview of the current appraisal practice and more country specific details are given in Odgaard et al (2005)