1,269 research outputs found
Industrialized construction - explorations of current practice and opportunities
Industrialized construction has over the years taken different expressions and gone through different phases depending on where inspiration has come from. In this project, industrialized construction has been studied in two applications: timber house manufacturing and renovation of multi-family houses. In Sweden industrialized production of timber houses is relatively strong in the housing sector, it however resides somewhere between industrial production and the traditional construction sector, which has led to some ambivalence. IT support and product documentation largely reflects the traditional construction sector, which means that they find it difficult to use the potential of industrialized construction in full. The efficiency of production of timber houses could be improved by more effective use of IT support, as well as better coherence between internal processes and the business model. Further, they need to consider how to document products in an industrialized context. These changes will inevitably have an impact on how they are organized and would require new or changed processes. It will also have an impact on how product documentation can be used. In Sweden there are strong property owners who are able to take an active role in industrialized construction if they were provided with the right knowledge and tools. An increasingly interesting sub-sector of construction is the renovation of multi-family houses, today investment in renovation is larger than in new construction. The renovation need in multi-family houses in Sweden, as well as in the rest of Europe, is large. How it will be financed and implemented is a problem that many property owners struggle with and different strategies have been used. For example pipe renovation is a major and costly action and many buildings are in great need. Several Swedish property owners can altogether show volumes over 1000 bathrooms per year in renovation and new construction, this could justify investments in industrialized strategies. A case study company in the research project has adopted an approach that standardizes pipe renovation to a limited number of solutions. This can be seen as a first step of an industrial strategy. For further industrialization, clients need to implement a comprehensive approach to the development and standardization of solutions, as well as ensuring better control of processes for implementing pipe renovation projects. The effort to create industrialized strategies is not unattainable, but it requires investments and expertise that property owners today typically do not have. If property owners would act as concept owners for industrialized platforms for renovation and new construction, it has the potential to create a new market
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The design and engineering of innovative mobile data services: An ontological framework founded on business model thinking
This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.This research investigates mobile service design and engineering in the mobile telecommunications industry. The mobile telecommunication business is shifting from one that was voice-centric to one that is almost all data-centric; thanks to recent rapid advances in Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). The underlying reasons behind this shift can be traced back to two main issues that are interlinked. The first and major reason is that telecoms (telecommunication companies) are trying to generate new revenue streams based on data and information transmissions, given the saturation of the voice market. This is rational given the market opportunities in one direction and the pressures being generated by the current economic downturn from the other direction. The second reason relates to the flexibility of data, compared to voice. Indeed, the number of services that can be developed on the basis of data are much greater than those that can be developed on the basis of voice. However, the design and engineering of successful and innovative mobile data services has proven to be a complex undertaking. The number of effective mobile data services is relatively small and the revenue generated from such offerings has generally been below expectations. This research develops an ontological framework to help in changing this situation, and making mobile services engineering more effective and successful, following the design-science research paradigm.
Design-science research, in general, aims to solve unstructured but relevant organizational or social problems through the development of novel and useful artefacts. As the current research aims to help in solving the mobile data services engineering dilemma by developing a purposeful ontological framework, the design-science research paradigm is deemed fitting. Within this paradigm, the author develops a novel design approach specified for ontology engineering, termed âOntoEngâ. This design approach is used in this research for developing the ontological framework.
The developed ontological framework is founded on business model thinking. The idea is that creating innovative mobile data services requires developing innovative business models. Indeed, innovative business models can help translate technological potential into economic value and allow telecoms to achieve their strategic objectives. The ontological framework includes the development of an ontology, termed âV4 Mobile Service BM Ontologyâ as well as âMobile Key Value Driversâ for designing and engineering innovative mobile data services. The V4 Mobile Service BM Ontology incorporates four design dimensions: (1) value proposition including targeting; (2) value architecture including technological and organizational infrastructure; (3) value network dealing with aspects relating to partnerships and co-operations; and finally (4) value finance relating to costs, pricing, and revenue structures. Within these four dimensions, sixteen design concepts are identified along with their constituent elements. Relationships and interdependencies amongst the identified design constructs are established and clear semantics are produced. The research then derives six key value drivers for mobile service engineering as follows: (a) Market Alignment; (b) Cohesion; (c) Dynamicity; (d) Uniqueness; (e) Fitting Network-Mode; and (f) Explicitness.
The developed ontological framework in this research is evaluated to ensure that it can be successfully implemented and performs correctly in the real world. The research mainly utilizes case analysis methods to ensure the semantic correctness of the ontological framework. Indeed, the developed ontological framework is employed as an analytical lens to examine the design and engineering of three key real-life cases in the mobile telecommunications industry. These cases are: (1) Appleâs iPhone Services and Applications; (2) NTT DoCoMoâs i-mode Services; and (3) Orange Business Services. For further validation, the developed ontological framework is evaluated against a set of criteria synthesized from ontology engineering and evaluation literature. These criteria are: Clarity; Coherence; Conciseness; Preciseness; Completeness; and Customizability.
The developed ontological framework is argued to make significant contributions for theory, practice, and methodology. For theory, this research provides (1) a novel ontological framework for designing and engineering mobile data services; (2) a unified framework of the business model concept; and (3) a new design approach for ontology engineering in information systems. For practice, the current research provides practitioners in the telecommunications industry with systematic and customizable means to design, implement, analyze, evaluate, and change new and existing mobile data services to make them more manageable, effective, and creative. For methodology, the use of the design- science research paradigm for ontology engineering signifies the focal methodological contribution in this research given its novelty. This research also contributes to the understanding of the design-science research paradigm in information systems as it is relatively new. It provides a working example in which the author illustrates how recognizing design-science research as a paradigm is essential and useful to the research in information systems discipline
Rapid Response Command and Control (R2C2): a systems engineering analysis of scaleable communications for Regional Combatant Commanders
Includes supplementary materialDisaster relief operations, such as the 2005 Tsunami and Hurricane Katrina, and wartime operations, such as
Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom, have identified the need for a standardized command and control
system interoperable among Joint, Coalition, and Interagency entities. The Systems Engineering Analysis Cohort 9 (SEA-9)
Rapid Response Command and Control (R2C2) integrated project team completed a systems engineering (SE) process to
address the militaryâs command and control capability gap. During the process, the R2C2 team conducted mission analysis,
generated requirements, developed and modeled architectures, and analyzed and compared current operational systems versus
the teamâs R2C2 system. The R2C2 system provided a reachback capability to the Regional Combatant Commanderâs (RCC)
headquarters, a local communications network for situational assessments, and Internet access for civilian counterparts
participating in Humanitarian Assistance/Disaster Relief operations. Because the team designed the R2C2 system to be
modular, analysis concluded that the R2C2 system was the preferred method to provide the RCC with the required flexibility
and scalability to deliver a rapidly deployable command and control capability to perform the range of military operations
Study of neural circuits using multielectrode arrays in movement disorders
Treballs Finals de Grau d'Enginyeria BiomĂšdica. Facultat de Medicina i CiĂšncies de la Salut. Universitat de Barcelona. Curs: 2022-2023. Tutor/Director: RodrĂguez AlluĂ©, Manuel JosĂ©Neurodegenerative movement-related disorders are characterized by a progressive degeneration and loss of neurons, which lead to motor control impairment. Although the precise mechanisms underlying these conditions are still unknown, an increasing number of studies point towards the analysis of neural networks and functional connectivity to unravel novel insights. The main objective of this work is to understand cellular mechanisms related to dysregulated motor control symptoms in movement disorders, such as Chorea-Acanthocytosis (ChAc), by employing multielectrode arrays to analyze the electrical activity of neuronal networks in mouse models. We found no notable differences in cell viability between neurons with and without VPS13A knockdown, that is the only gene known to be implicated in the disease, suggesting that the absence of VPS13A in neurons may be partially compensated by other proteins. The MEA setup used to capture the electrical activity from neuron primary cultures is described in detail, pointing out its specific characteristics. At last, we present the alternative backup approach implemented to overcome the challenges faced during the research process and to explore the advanced algorithms for signal processing and analysis.
In this report, we present a thorough account of the conception and implementation of our research, outlining the multiple limitations that have been encountered all along the course of the project. We provide a detailed analysis on the projectâs economical and technical feasibility, as well as a comprehensive overview of the ethical and legal aspects considered during the execution
A two-stage framework for designing visual analytics systems to augment organizational analytical processes
A perennially interesting research topic in the field of visual analytics is how to effectively develop systems that support organizational knowledge workerâs decision-making and reasoning processes. The primary objective of a visual analytic system is to facilitate analytical reasoning and discovery of insights through interactive visual interfaces. It also enables the transfer of capability and expertise from where it resides to where it is neededâacross individuals, and organizations as necessary.
The problem is, however, most domain analytical practices generally vary from organizations to organizations. This leads to the diversified design of visual analytics systems in incorporating domain analytical processes, making it difficult to generalize the success from one domain to another. Exacerbating this problem is the dearth of general models of analytical workflows available to enable such timely and effective designs.
To alleviate these problems, this dissertation presents a two-stage framework for informing the design of a visual analytics system. This two-stage design framework builds upon and extends current practices pertaining to analytical workflow and focuses, in particular, on investigating its effect on the design of visual analytics systems for organizational environments. It aims to empower organizations with more systematic and purposeful information analyses through modeling the domain usersâ reasoning processes.
The first stage in this framework is an Observation and Designing stage,
in which a visual analytic system is designed and implemented to abstract and encapsulate general organizational analytical processes, through extensive collaboration with domain users. The second stage is the User-centric Refinement stage, which aims at interactively enriching and refining the already encapsulated domain analysis process based on understanding userâs intentions through analyzing their task behavior. To implement this framework in the process of designing a visual analytics system, this dissertation proposes four general design recommendations that, when followed, empower such systems to bring the users closer to the center of their analytical processes.
This dissertation makes three primary contributions: first, it presents a general characterization of the analytical workflow in organizational environments. This characterization fills in the blank of the current lack of such an analytical model and further represents a set of domain analytical tasks that are commonly applicable to various organizations. Secondly, this dissertation describes a two-stage framework for facilitating the domain usersâ workflows through integrating their analytical models
into interactive visual analytics systems. Finally, this dissertation presents recommendations and suggestions on enriching and refining domain analysis through capturing and analyzing knowledge workersâ analysis processes.
To exemplify the generalizability of these design recommendations, this dissertation presents three visual analytics systems that are developed following the proposed recommendations, including Taste for Xerox Corporation, OpsVis for Microsoft, and IRSV for the U.S. Department of Transportation. All of these systems are deployed to domain knowledge workers and are adopted for their analytical practices. Extensive empirical evaluations are further conducted to demonstrate efficacy of these systems in facilitating domain analytical processes
An analysis of the effectiveness and cost of project security management
This research analyzes the idea of managing information security risk on projects, as well as the effectiveness and costs associated with this kind of management. Organizations today face a myriad of security risks given their increased use of information technology. New solutions to improve information security within organizations large and small need to be researched and analyzed. Review of relevant literature has determined that although organizations are managing security from the top down, there is a lack of security management at the project level and that most project managers and their teams rely on the organizational security measures to keep information secure. The concept of managing security risks at the project level is not well defined and there exists no concrete and widely accepted framework for it. This research examines if managing security at the project level within a multi-tiered defensive strategy can be effective and at what cost. It also seeks to determine if budgeting for security in projects will lead to more secure project assets and products. This qualitative study uses three sources of data to deduce conclusions and recommendations. One, literary sources, two, subject interviews of security and project management professionals, and three, a computerized model built to simulate a defense in depth strategy. The primary finding of this research is that the concept of managing information security in projects is valid, and that doing so will lead to more secure project assets and products. This type of management will increase the security posture of the project itself and the organization as a whole. Recommendations are made by the researcher as to what steps a project manager and the organization above it must take to leverage the management of information security risks on projects
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