Data Management: The Data Life Cycle

The scientific site of Kiel provides support for projects with data management requirements due to project size or interdisciplinarity. This infrastructure is the Kiel Data Management Infrastructure (KDMI) and was initially created by SFB574, SFB754, Excellence Cluster ‘The Future Ocean‘ and the GEOMAR | Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel. To achieve public data availability from publicly funded projects by the end of the funding period it is necessary to initiate the data acquisition during the data creation process. Accordingly the KDMI uses a three level approach to achieve this goal in SOPRAN III. Data management is al- ready involvedin the planning of expeditions or experiments. The resulting schedule for data files can be used by the project coordinationto increase the efficeny of data sharing within SOPRAN III. The scientists provide files with basic metainformation, which are available within the virtual research environment as soon as possible to all project members. Final data will be transferred to PANGAEA for long term availability when the data are analysed and interpreted in a scientific publication or by the end of SOPRAN III. The Kiel Data Management Team offers a portal for all GEOMAR and University Kiel marine projects. This portal will be used in SOPRAN III in combination with PANGAEA to fulfill the project’s data management requirements and to enhance the data sharing within SOPRAN III by a file sharing environment for preliminary data not yet suitable for PANGAEA

Threats Management Throughout the Software Service Life-Cycle

Software services are inevitably exposed to a fluctuating threat picture. Unfortunately, not all threats can be handled only with preventive measures during design and development, but also require adaptive mitigations at runtime. In this paper we describe an approach where we model composite services and threats together, which allows us to create preventive measures at design-time. At runtime, our specification also allows the service runtime environment (SRE) to receive alerts about active threats that we have not handled, and react to these automatically through adaptation of the composite service. A goal-oriented security requirements modelling tool is used to model business-level threats and analyse how they may impact goals. A process flow modelling tool, utilising Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) and standard error boundary events, allows us to define how threats should be responded to during service execution on a technical level. Throughout the software life-cycle, we maintain threats in a centralised threat repository. Re-use of these threats extends further into monitoring alerts being distributed through a cloud-based messaging service. To demonstrate our approach in practice, we have developed a proof-of-concept service for the Air Traffic Management (ATM) domain. In addition to the design-time activities, we show how this composite service duly adapts itself when a service component is exposed to a threat at runtime.Comment: In Proceedings GraMSec 2014, arXiv:1404.163

Impact of the ‘Family-firm life cycle’ on the Management Processes Involved in Sustainable Glasshouse Horticulture

In Flanders glasshouse vegetables and ornamental plants are typically produced at family businesses. At this type of businesses the objectives and long-term firm developments are influenced by the so called ‘family-firm life cycle’. In many cases the firm shows a life cycle that corresponds with the life cycle of the entrepreneur. The objective of the paper is to test the hypothesis that the ‘family-firm life cycle’ will have an impact on the personal and business characteristics, objectives and the quality of the management processes involved in sustainable glasshouse horticulture. As sustainable horticulture integrates the three P’s (People, Planet, Profit) special attention is paid to human resource, environmental and financial management. Data for the research are based on interviews and accounting data at 138 glasshouse holdings situated in Flanders (northern part of Belgium). The results reveal that the glasshouse managers in the different phases of the ‘family-firm life cycle’ show significant differences in age, education level and numbers of seminars attended. The economic dimension, modernity of durable goods, solvency and investment pattern of the firms in the different stages of the ‘family-firm life cycle’ also show significant differences. At the older businesses the availability of a successor has an important influence. The results confirm the hypothesis that the objectives and the quality of the management processes involved in environmental, human resource and financial management are dependent on the phase in the ‘family-firm life cycle’. In the early stages firm managers are more ambitious and attach a higher importance to the management processes involved in sustainable development. In the later stages the availability of a successor has an important influence. Unexpectedly no significant influence of the phase in the ‘family-firm life cycle’ on the income obtained per familial labour unit is found. The insights derived from this research have important implications both for research and practice. They can enable glasshouse growers and advisers to take and/or support correct decisions and may help policy makers to differentiate on the base of the ‘family-firm life cycle’.farm management, horticulture, sustainability, Crop Production/Industries, Farm Management,

Incorporating LCA Method into Asset and Facility Life Cycle Management

With the increasing awareness of sustainable development, incorporation of potential environmental impact into the consideration of asset and facility life cycle management is attracting increasing attention. On the one hand, businesses now widely recognize the needs to actively engage in the sustainability arena. On the other hand, companies are now also increasingly accountable for their impacts on the society, environment and economy. This paper presents an initial framework that takes account of sustainability consequences of the products into asset and facility life cycle management. It is shown that major physical assets and facilities in different areas/sectors may have quite different behaviour, thus requiring the uses of different high-level criteria/factors. The evaluation process to incorporate the environmental LCA concept into asset life cycle management is also developed and discussed

Life Cycle Management

This book provides insight into the Life Cycle Management (LCM) concept and the progress in its implementation. LCM is a management concept applied in industrial and service sectors to improve products and services, while enhancing the overall sustainability performance of business and its value chains. In this regard, LCM is an opportunity to differentiate through sustainability performance on the market place, working with all departments of a company such as research and development, procurement and marketing, and to enhance the collaboration with stakeholders along a company’s value chain. LCM is used beyond short-term business success and aims at long-term achievements by minimizing environmental and socio-economic burden, while maximizing economic and social value

Review of recent research towards power cable life cycle management

Power cables are integral to modern urban power transmission and distribution systems. For power cable asset managers worldwide, a major challenge is how to manage effectively the expensive and vast network of cables, many of which are approaching, or have past, their design life. This study provides an in-depth review of recent research and development in cable failure analysis, condition monitoring and diagnosis, life assessment methods, fault location, and optimisation of maintenance and replacement strategies. These topics are essential to cable life cycle management (LCM), which aims to maximise the operational value of cable assets and is now being implemented in many power utility companies. The review expands on material presented at the 2015 JiCable conference and incorporates other recent publications. The review concludes that the full potential of cable condition monitoring, condition and life assessment has not fully realised. It is proposed that a combination of physics-based life modelling and statistical approaches, giving consideration to practical condition monitoring results and insulation response to in-service stress factors and short term stresses, such as water ingress, mechanical damage and imperfections left from manufacturing and installation processes, will be key to success in improved LCM of the vast amount of cable assets around the world

A quality management based on the Quality Model life cycle

Managing quality is a hard and expensive task that involves the execution and control of processes and techniques. For a good quality management, it is important to know the current state and the objective to be achieved. It is essential to take into account with a Quality Model that specifies the purposes of managing quality. QuEF (Quality Evaluation Framework) is a framework to manage quality in MDWE (Model-driven Web Engineering). This paper suggests managing quality but pointing out the Quality Model life cycle. The purpose is to converge toward a quality continuous improvement by means of reducing effort and time.Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación TIN2010-20057-C03-02Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación TIN 2010-12312-EJunta de Andalucía TIC-578

Risk assessment in life-cycle costing for road asset management

Queensland Department of Main Roads, Australia, spends approximately A$ 1 billion annually for road infrastructure asset management. To effectively manage road infrastructure, firstly road agencies not only need to optimise the expenditure for data collection, but at the same time, not jeopardise the reliability in using the optimised data to predict maintenance and rehabilitation costs. Secondly, road agencies need to accurately predict the deterioration rates of infrastructures to reflect local conditions so that the budget estimates could be accurately estimated. And finally, the prediction of budgets for maintenance and rehabilitation must provide a certain degree of reliability. This paper presents the results of case studies in using the probability-based method for an integrated approach (i.e. assessing optimal costs of pavement strength data collection; calibrating deterioration prediction models that suit local condition and assessing risk-adjusted budget estimates for road maintenance and rehabilitation for assessing life-cycle budget estimates). The probability concept is opening the path to having the means to predict life-cycle maintenance and rehabilitation budget estimates that have a known probability of success (e.g. produce budget estimates for a project life-cycle cost with 5% probability of exceeding). The paper also presents a conceptual decision-making framework in the form of risk mapping in which the life-cycle budget/cost investment could be considered in conjunction with social, environmental and political issues

The use of non-intrusive user logging to capture engineering rationale, knowledge and intent during the product life cycle

Within the context of Life Cycle Engineering it is important that structured engineering information and knowledge are captured at all phases of the product life cycle for future reference. This is especially the case for long life cycle projects which see a large number of engineering decisions made at the early to mid-stages of a product's life cycle that are needed to inform engineering decisions later on in the process. A key aspect of technology management will be the capturing of knowledge through out the product life cycle. Numerous attempts have been made to apply knowledge capture techniques to formalise engineering decision rationale and processes; however, these tend to be associated with substantial overheads on the engineer and the company through cognitive process interruptions and additional costs/time. Indeed, when life cycle deadlines come closer these capturing techniques are abandoned due the need to produce a final solution. This paper describes work carried out for non-intrusively capturing and formalising product life cycle knowledge by demonstrating the automated capture of engineering processes/rationale using user logging via an immersive virtual reality system for cable harness design and assembly planning. Associated post-experimental analyses are described which demonstrate the formalisation of structured design processes and decision representations in the form of IDEF diagrams and structured engineering change information. Potential future research directions involving more thorough logging of users are also outlined

Life Cycle Management of Infrastructures

By definition, life cycle management (LCM) is a framework “of concepts, techniques, and procedures to address environmental, economic, technological, and social aspects of products and organizations in order to achieve continuous ‘sustainable’ improvement from a life cycle perspective” (Hunkeler et al.\ua02001). Thus, LCM theoretically integrates all sustainability dimensions, and strives to provide a holistic perspective. It also assists in the efficient and effective use of constrained natural and financial resources to reduce negative impacts on society (Sonnemann and Leeuw\ua02006; Adibi et al.\ua02015). The LCM of infrastructures is the adaptation of product life cycle management (PLM) as techniques to the design, construction, and management of infrastructures. Infrastructure life cycle management requires accurate and extensive information that might be generated through different kinds of intelligent and connected information workflows, such as building information modeling (BIM)