Water resources planning using integrated systems of marketable water rights and reservoir design and operation

The needs and the approaches for developing (1) efficient methods for the allocation of water resources and (2) efficient planning tools for the design and operation of storage facilities and other water supply enhancement techniques, are often interrelated, and should be addressed in a coordinated fashion. Recent studies have shown that the marketable water permits system holds some attractive features as a vehicle for allocating water supplies. In this study, management techniques to integrate marketable water rights systems with systems for the design and operation of a single reservoir are developed. Three kinds of rights may be found in such integrated systems. They are natural flowing water rights, release rights, and storage rights, which are contingent on possession of permits. Auctions of these rights or other market transactions may be helpful to the design and operation of the reservoir by providing useful information about the users' demand and benefit functions. In order to assess the efficiency of these policies, their operations are simulated using economic data based on corn irrigation. These programs are then compared to some other methods of water allocation and reservoir operation. Results of the study show that high efficiency may be attained by these integrated systems. As in many other water resources and reservoir management systems, the efficiencies attained are, in part, dependent on how well the future is predicted. A highly sophisticated storage management policy is likely to generate higher efficiency than simple ones, but only if the release decisions are carefully determined. Restrictions on spot trading would also prevent some of the efficiency from being captured. When the integrated system is operated and managed by a profit-seeking private enterprise, some degree of supervision from the authority may be required to prevent the problem of supply curtailment (i.e., undersizing of the reservoir), caused by a potentially larger profit at a smaller reservoir size.U.S. Geological SurveyU.S. Department of the InteriorOpe

Dynamic Service Level Agreement Management for Efficient Operation of Elastic Information Systems

The growing awareness that effective Information Systems (IS), which contribute to sustainable business processes, secure a long-lasting competitive advantage has increasingly focused corporate transformation efforts on the efficient usage of Information Technology (IT). In this context, we provide a new perspective on the management of enterprise information systems and introduce a novel framework that harmonizes economic and operational goals. Concretely, we target elastic n-tier applications with dynamic on-demand cloud resource provisioning. We design and implement a novel integrated management model for information systems that induces economic influence factors into the operation strategy to adapt the performance goals of an enterprise information system dynamically (i.e., online at runtime). Our framework forecasts future user behavior based on historic data, analyzes the impact of workload on system performance based on a non-linear performance model, analyzes the economic impact of different provisioning strategies, and derives an optimal operation strategy. The evaluation of our prototype, based on a real production system workload trace, is carried out in a custom test infrastructure (i.e., cloud testbed, n-tier benchmark application, distributed monitors, and control framework), which allows us to evaluate our approach in depth, in terms of efficiency along the entire SLA lifetime. Based on our thorough evaluation, we are able to make concise recommendations on how to use our framework effectively in further research and practice

Life Cycle Engineering 4.0: A Proposal to Conceive Manufacturing Systems for Industry 4.0 Centred on the Human Factor (DfHFinI4.0)

Engineering 4.0 environments are characterised by the digitisation, virtualisation, and connectivity of products, processes, and facilities composed of reconfigurable and adaptive socio-technical cyber-physical manufacturing systems (SCMS), in which Operator 4.0 works in real time in VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) contexts and markets. This situation gives rise to the interest in developing a framework for the conception of SCMS that allows the integration of the human factor, management, training, and development of the competencies of Operator 4.0 as fundamental aspects of the aforementioned system. The present paper is focused on answering how to conceive the adaptive manufacturing systems of Industry 4.0 through the operation, growth, and development of human talent in VUCA contexts. With this objective, exploratory research is carried, out whose contribution is specified in a framework called Design for the Human Factor in Industry 4.0 (DfHFinI4.0). From among the conceptual frameworks employed therein, the connectivist paradigm, Ashby's law of requisite variety and Vigotsky's activity theory are taken into consideration, in order to enable the affective-cognitive and timeless integration of the human factor within the SCMS. DfHFinI4.0 can be integrated into the life cycle engineering of the enterprise reference architectures, thereby obtaining manufacturing systems for Industry 4.0 focused on the human factor. The suggested framework is illustrated as a case study for the Purdue Enterprise Reference Architecture (PERA) methodology, which transforms it into PERA 4.0

The influencing mechanism of manufacturing scene change on process domain knowledge reuse

It is necessary for a enterprise to reuse outside process domain knowledge to develop intelligent manufacturing technology. The key factors influencing knowledge reuse in digital manufacturing scene are manufacturing activities and PPR (Products, Processes and Resources) related to knowledge modeling, enterprise and integrated systems related to knowledge utilizing. How these factors influence knowledge modeling and utilizing is analyzed. Process domain knowledge reuse across the enterprises consists of knowledge reconfiguration and integrated application with CAx systems. The module-based knowledge model and loosely-coupled integration application of process domain knowledge are proposed. The aircraft sheet metal process domain knowledge reuse is taken as an example, and it shows that the knowledge reuse process can be made flexible and rapid

Integrating IVHM and Asset Design

Integrated Vehicle Health Management (IVHM) describes a set of capabilities that enable effective and efficient maintenance and operation of the target vehicle. It accounts for the collection of data, conducting analysis, and supporting the decision-making process for sustainment and operation. The design of IVHM systems endeavours to account for all causes of failure in a disciplined, systems engineering, manner. With industry striving to reduce through-life cost, IVHM is a powerful tool to give forewarning of impending failure and hence control over the outcome. Benefits have been realised from this approach across a number of different sectors but, hindering our ability to realise further benefit from this maturing technology, is the fact that IVHM is still treated as added on to the design of the asset, rather than being a sub-system in its own right, fully integrated with the asset design. The elevation and integration of IVHM in this way will enable architectures to be chosen that accommodate health ready sub-systems from the supply chain and design trade-offs to be made, to name but two major benefits. Barriers to IVHM being integrated with the asset design are examined in this paper. The paper presents progress in overcoming them, and suggests potential solutions for those that remain. It addresses the IVHM system design from a systems engineering perspective and the integration with the asset design will be described within an industrial design process

Development of the Integrated Model of the Automotive Product Quality Assessment

Issues on building an integrated model of the automotive product quality assessment are studied herein basing on widely applicable methods and models of the quality assessment. A conceptual model of the automotive product quality system meeting customer requirements has been developed. Typical characteristics of modern industrial production are an increase in the production dynamism that determines the product properties; a continuous increase in the volume of information required for decision-making, an increased role of knowledge and high technologies implementing absolutely new scientific and technical ideas. To solve the problem of increasing the automotive product quality, a conceptual structural and hierarchical model is offered to ensure its quality as a closed system with feedback between the regulatory, manufacturing, and information modules, responsible for formation of the product quality at all stages of its life cycle. The three module model of the system of the industrial product quality assurance is considered to be universal and to give the opportunity to explore processes of any complexity while solving theoretical and practical problems of the quality assessment and prediction for products for various purposes, including automotive

Ontology-based patterns for the integration of business processes and enterprise application architectures

Increasingly, enterprises are using Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) as an approach to Enterprise Application Integration (EAI). SOA has the potential to bridge the gap between business and technology and to improve the reuse of existing applications and the interoperability with new ones. In addition to service architecture descriptions, architecture abstractions like patterns and styles capture design knowledge and allow the reuse of successfully applied designs, thus improving the quality of software. Knowledge gained from integration projects can be captured to build a repository of semantically enriched, experience-based solutions. Business patterns identify the interaction and structure between users, business processes, and data. Specific integration and composition patterns at a more technical level address enterprise application integration and capture reliable architecture solutions. We use an ontology-based approach to capture architecture and process patterns. Ontology techniques for pattern definition, extension and composition are developed and their applicability in business process-driven application integration is demonstrated

Integrating IVHM and asset design

Integrated Vehicle Health Management (IVHM) describes a set of capabilities that enable effective and efficient maintenance and operation of the target vehicle. It accounts for the collecting of data, conducting analysis, and supporting the decision-making process for sustainment and operation. The design of IVHM systems endeavours to account for all causes of failure in a disciplined, systems engineering, manner. With industry striving to reduce through-life cost, IVHM is a powerful tool to give forewarning of impending failure and hence control over the outcome. Benefits have been realised from this approach across a number of different sectors but, hindering our ability to realise further benefit from this maturing technology, is the fact that IVHM is still treated as added on to the design of the asset, rather than being a sub-system in its own right, fully integrated with the asset design. The elevation and integration of IVHM in this way will enable architectures to be chosen that accommodate health ready sub-systems from the supply chain and design trade-offs to be made, to name but two major benefits. Barriers to IVHM being integrated with the asset design are examined in this paper. The paper presents progress in overcoming them, and suggests potential solutions for those that remain. It addresses the IVHM system design from a systems engineering perspective and the integration with the asset design will be described within an industrial design process

A Combined Component-Based Approach for the Design of Distributed Software Systems

Component-based software development enables the construction of software artefacts by assembling binary units of production, distribution and deployment, the so-called components. Several approaches to component-based development have been proposed recently. Most of these approaches are based on the Unified Modeling Language (UML). UML has been increasingly used in component-based development, despite some shortcomings of this language. This paper presents a methodology for the design of component-based applications that combines a model-based approach with a UML-based approach. This combined approach tackles some of the limitations of UML, allowing a better control of the design proces

Towards a methodology for the development of integrated IT infrastructures

In this paper, the authors propose and validate a methodology for the development of integrated Information Technology (IT) infrastructures. The motivation for putting forward a new methodology is grounded on the limitations of the various software engineering methodologies (traditional) that exist today. Despite that the traditional methodologies result in the development of Information Systems (IS) from scratch, Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) builds integrated IT infrastructures using existing applications. This significant difference is associated with many issues needed to be realised and addressed like: (a) the changes that such an infrastructure brings to organisations, (b) the resistance to change and (c) the extension of IS lifecycle’s. The proposed methodology consist of eight stages and aims at supporting software engineers, organisations and researchers to build integrated IT infrastructures. As a result the methodology seeks to contribute to the body of knowledge