Pervasive Monitoring - An Intelligent Sensor Pod Approach for Standardised Measurement Infrastructures

Geo-sensor networks have traditionally been built up in closed monolithic systems, thus limiting trans-domain usage of real-time measurements. This paper presents the technical infrastructure of a standardised embedded sensing device, which has been developed in the course of the Live Geography approach. The sensor pod implements data provision standards of the Sensor Web Enablement initiative, including an event-based alerting mechanism and location-aware Complex Event Processing functionality for detection of threshold transgression and quality assurance. The goal of this research is that the resultant highly flexible sensing architecture will bring sensor network applications one step further towards the realisation of the vision of a “digital skin for planet earth”. The developed infrastructure can potentially have far-reaching impacts on sensor-based monitoring systems through the deployment of ubiquitous and fine-grained sensor networks. This in turn allows for the straight-forward use of live sensor data in existing spatial decision support systems to enable better-informed decision-making.Seventh Framework Programme (European Commission) (FP7 project GENESIS no. 223996)Austria. Federal Ministry of Transport, Innovation and TechnologyERA-STAR Regions Project (G2real)Austria. Federal Ministry of Science and Researc

Architecture and Information Requirements to Assess and Predict Flight Safety Risks During Highly Autonomous Urban Flight Operations

As aviation adopts new and increasingly complex operational paradigms, vehicle types, and technologies to broaden airspace capability and efficiency, maintaining a safe system will require recognition and timely mitigation of new safety issues as they emerge and before significant consequences occur. A shift toward a more predictive risk mitigation capability becomes critical to meet this challenge. In-time safety assurance comprises monitoring, assessment, and mitigation functions that proactively reduce risk in complex operational environments where the interplay of hazards may not be known (and therefore not accounted for) during design. These functions can also help to understand and predict emergent effects caused by the increased use of automation or autonomous functions that may exhibit unexpected non-deterministic behaviors. The envisioned monitoring and assessment functions can look for precursors, anomalies, and trends (PATs) by applying model-based and data-driven methods. Outputs would then drive downstream mitigation(s) if needed to reduce risk. These mitigations may be accomplished using traditional design revision processes or via operational (and sometimes automated) mechanisms. The latter refers to the in-time aspect of the system concept. This report comprises architecture and information requirements and considerations toward enabling such a capability within the domain of low altitude highly autonomous urban flight operations. This domain may span, for example, public-use surveillance missions flown by small unmanned aircraft (e.g., infrastructure inspection, facility management, emergency response, law enforcement, and/or security) to transportation missions flown by larger aircraft that may carry passengers or deliver products. Caveat: Any stated requirements in this report should be considered initial requirements that are intended to drive research and development (R&D). These initial requirements are likely to evolve based on R&D findings, refinement of operational concepts, industry advances, and new industry or regulatory policies or standards related to safety assurance

The Road Ahead for Networking: A Survey on ICN-IP Coexistence Solutions

In recent years, the current Internet has experienced an unexpected paradigm shift in the usage model, which has pushed researchers towards the design of the Information-Centric Networking (ICN) paradigm as a possible replacement of the existing architecture. Even though both Academia and Industry have investigated the feasibility and effectiveness of ICN, achieving the complete replacement of the Internet Protocol (IP) is a challenging task. Some research groups have already addressed the coexistence by designing their own architectures, but none of those is the final solution to move towards the future Internet considering the unaltered state of the networking. To design such architecture, the research community needs now a comprehensive overview of the existing solutions that have so far addressed the coexistence. The purpose of this paper is to reach this goal by providing the first comprehensive survey and classification of the coexistence architectures according to their features (i.e., deployment approach, deployment scenarios, addressed coexistence requirements and architecture or technology used) and evaluation parameters (i.e., challenges emerging during the deployment and the runtime behaviour of an architecture). We believe that this paper will finally fill the gap required for moving towards the design of the final coexistence architecture.Comment: 23 pages, 16 figures, 3 table

3TZ collaborative team environments incorporating the hybrid holonic architecture

The paper describes a business reengineering process (BPR) approach to address multi-timezone (3-timezone or 3TZ) collaborative teamwork environments by combining the Holonic architecture with the Zachman Metamodel Framework. While the use of collaborative project systems is not new, the methodology to share time resources from different timezones seeks to address pedagogical and engineering process concerns in team-based project development. The benefits of collaborative project management tools go beyond a uniform platform to deploy project resources, but to also enhance systemic processes and engineering practice. This facilitates team members to dedicate their time towards common work tasks, delineates individual and shared work packages, and improves student-tutor feedback techniques as teachers can actively monitor progress of development throughout the project lifecycle. © 2010 IEEE

Success Factors for SOA Implementation in Network Centric Environment, Journal of Telecommunications and Information Technology, 2011, nr 1

This paper discusses challenges and success factors for service oriented architecture (SOA) implementation in network centric environment. The authors identify 9 fundamental challenges for the SOA approach in order to make the biggest benefit for the NATO NEC (NNEC) and increase the mission effectiveness to the highest extent. They cover the areas of applicability to existing military communications and the ability to reflect military processes. Their range is quite broad, pointing out technological as well as SOA governmental problems. The authors emphasize that any COTS solution available on the market today is able to overcome all of them at once. However, they propose solutions to some of the problems and present quick wins that can speed up the process of achieving capabilities in a heterogeneous multinational NEC environment

Public eTendering in Portugal: vortalGOV® Case Study

Vortal is the leader in electronic platform operations for public and private market contracting in Portugal and one of four international reference points in electronic public contracting. In 2004, after having achieved a wealth of private market experience acquired through electronic market operations within the construction sector through its brand Econstroi, Vortal launched a new brand, vortalGOV, which is specifically aimed a the public sector and indeed the first ever electronic public tender in Portugal was launched through this Vortal platform. In 2008 a new public contract law came into force directing all entities linked to electronic contracting platform use to formalise pre-contracting. Furthermore, that same law specified that platforms should not charge the economical operators, the suppliers, any fees to access their basic services. In other words, revenues from the Public eTendering platforms should only come from public entities awarding the contracts. In 2009, order to meet these new legal requirements, Vortal launched its free Universal service. In 2010, Vortal decided to contract the services of a specialist company to carry out a satisfaction survey of its Universal clients. The Vortal Board of Directors sought to evaluate possible scenarios for the development of the public sector market drawing on the experience the company had acquired in the private market. The vortalGOV case study aims to stimulate reflection on the innovation surrounding the legal limitations of business operations, based on an analysis of customer value.A Vortal é a empresa líder na operação de plataformas electrónicas de contratação nos mercados público e privado em Portugal e uma das 4 referências internacionais em Contratação Pública Electrónica. Com uma vasta experiência no mercado privado, adquirido através da operação do mercado electrónico para o sector da Construção, o econstroi, a Vortal lançou em 2004 o vortalGOV, para o sector público. O primeiro concurso público electrónico em Portugal foi lançado através da plataforma da Vortal. Em 2008 foi publicada a nova lei dos contratos públicos que obriga todas as entidades vinculadas à utilização de plataformas electrónicas de contratação pública para formalização dos procedimentos de pré-contratação. Esta mesma lei indicada ainda que as plataformas não poderiam cobrar qualquer valor aos operadores económicos, os fornecedores, para acesso aos serviços básicos das mesmas. Isto é, as receitas das plataformas de contratação electrónica seriam apenas provenientes das entidades públicas adjudicantes. Para fazer face a esta contingência, a Vortal lançou logo em 2009 o serviço Universal, gratuito, de acordo com todos os requisitos da lei em vigor. Em 2010 a Vortal decidiu solicitar os serviços de uma empresa especializada para fazer um inquérito à satisfação dos seus clientes Universais. A Administração da Vortal pretende avaliar os cenários possíveis para desenvolver o mercado do sector público a partir da experiência adquirida no mercado privado. O caso de estudo do vortalGOV pretende estimular uma reflexão em torno da inovação em torno de limitações legais à operação do negócio, em função da análise de valor para o cliente