Regulatory Compliance-oriented Impediments and Associated Effort Estimation Metrics in Requirements Engineering for Contractual Systems Engineering Projects

Large-scale contractual systems engineering projects often need to comply with a myriad of government regulations and standards as part of contractual fulfillment. A key activity in the requirements engineering (RE) process for such a project is to elicit appropriate requirements from the regulations and standards that apply to the target system. However, there are impediments in achieving compliance due to such factors as: the voluminous contract and its high-level specifications, large number of regulatory documents, and multiple domains of the system. Little empirical research has been conducted on developing a shared understanding of the compliance-oriented complexities involved in such projects, and identifying and developing RE support (such as processes, tools, metrics, and methods) to improve overall performance for compliance projects. Through three studies on an industrial RE project, we investigated a number of issues in RE concerning compliance, leading to the following novel results:(i) a meta-model that captures artefacts-types and their compliance-oriented inter-relationships that exist in RE for contractual systems engineering projects; (ii) discovery of key impediments to requirements-compliance due to: (a) contractual complexities (e.g., regulatory requirements specified non-contiguously with non-regulatory requirements in the contract at the ratio of 1:19), (b) complexities in regulatory documents (e.g., over 300 regulatory documents being relevant to the subject system), and (c) large and complex system (e.g., 40% of the contractual regulatory requirements are cross-cutting); (iii) a method for deriving base metrics for estimating the effort needed to do compliance work during RE and demonstrate how a set of derived metrics can be used to create an effort estimation model for such work; (iv) a framework for structuring diverse regulatory documents and requirements for global product developments. These results lay a foundation in RE research on compliance issues with anticipation for its impact in real-world projects and in RE research

From the Group of Twenty to the Group of Two: The Need for Harmonizing Derivatives Regulation Between the United States and the European Union

Wireless Sensor Networks are often deployed in great numbers spanning large, sometimes hard to reach and hostile, areas with the aim of monitoring environmental conditions through the use of different sensors. Due to decreasing costs of ownership (e.g. non-proprietary protocols), recent advances in processor, radio, and memory technologies and the engineering of increasingly smaller sensing devices, the availability and area of application for wireless sensor networks have steadily been increasing. Sigma Technology Development Stockholm AB raised the question as to whether a wireless sensor network, running an open-source operating system and communicating over IPv6, could be used in the field of smart autonomous irrigation? The company also required a proof-of-concept system for demonstration purposes and to identify if the design choices made were suitable for an actual implementation. There are numerous of design decisions that have to be made when constructing an irrigation system: the back-end set-up, which irrigation algorithms to use, what hardware to choose and how to communicate? This thesis therefore focuses on the overall system design of a wireless sensor network in the field of irrigation and highlights the trade-offs being made and their pros and cons. Two improvements related to the existing technology and the proof-of-concept system are presented in this thesis. Firstly, the recommendation to use clustered self-healing routing despite claimed power consumption issues. Secondly, a new technique to minimize power consumption, by dynamically changing the sleep interval on the sensor nodes with the help of weather data. Furthermore, the proof-of-concept system is constructed and analysed to assess whether the system design choices made are valid for a real-life deployment.Trådlösa sensor nätverk används för att övervaka lokala miljöförändringar med hjälp av olika sorters sensorer. På grund av nedåtgående driftkostnader (ökad tillgänglighet av open-source mjukvara) och framsteg inom processor-, radio-, och datorminnesteknolgi har både tillgängligheten och användningsområdena för trådlösa sensornätverk stadigt ökat. Sigma Technology Development AB ställde frågan huruvida ett trådlöst sensornätverk, som använder sig av ett open-source operativsystem och kommunicerar över IPv6, kunde användas inom smart konstbevattning? Företaget ville även att ett proof-ofconcept system utvecklades för demonstration samt för att kunna avgöra om de designval som gjorts är lämpliga att använda i en verklig implementation. Det finns en mängd designval som måste göras när man konstruerar ett bevattningsystem: back-end lösningen, vilka bevattningsalogritmer som ska användas, vilken hårdvara som ska användas samt hur kommunikationen mellan noderna ska upprättas? Det här examensarbetet fokuserar därför på den övergripande systemdesigen av ett trådlöst sensornätverk inom konstbevattning, utvärderar och avgör vilka kompromisser som måste göras samt för- och nackdelarna med dessa val. Examensarbetet presenterar vidare två förbättringar på det utvecklade konceptsystemet som inte heller finns på marknanden. Först rekommenderas användandet av robusta självläkande routing protokoll trots påstådda energiförbrukningsproblem. Sedan föreslås även en teknik som minimerar energiåtgången genom att dynamiskt ändra hur länge sensornoden befinner sig i ’sleep mode’, detta med hjälp av insamlad väderdata. Slutligen så konstrueras och analyseras proof-of-concept systemet för att utvärdera om dessa designval är lämpliga för en implementering i det verkliga livet

Lowering barriers to agricultural exports through technical assistance

Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) regulations imposed by the developed world, significantly reduce the export opportunities of developing countries. Under the SPS Agreement, developed countries are obliged to provide technical assistance to developing countries, to help them meet SPS requirements. A survey of providers of technical assistance reveals, however, that assistance is allocated in an ad hoc manner. This article argues for a more systematic allocation of technical assistance to developing countries, based on relevant data and comparisons of benefits and costs of different kinds of capacity building. Data is presented which highlights the major problems of developing countries in exporting to the European Union, complementing earlier studies of exports to the United States.Food policy Agriculture Exports Technical assistance Aid evaluation

Impediments to resolvability. What is the status quo? December 2019

The feasibility and credibility of bank resolutions depends, among others, on whether the impediments to resolvability are addressed or removed. Based on the limited public information available, this paper assesses the current state of the identification and removal of impediments to the resolvability of banks under the remit of the Single Resolution Board (SRB). The main findings suggest that the inclusion of the impediments assessment is taking the SRB more time than originally foreseen, there is a greater dependence on banks to address or remove impediments and that the non-resolvable banks are not notified to the EBA. This document was provided by the Economic Governance Support Unit at the request of the ECON Committee