Modeling, Simulation and Emulation of Intelligent Domotic Environments

Intelligent Domotic Environments are a promising approach, based on semantic models and commercially off-the-shelf domotic technologies, to realize new intelligent buildings, but such complexity requires innovative design methodologies and tools for ensuring correctness. Suitable simulation and emulation approaches and tools must be adopted to allow designers to experiment with their ideas and to incrementally verify designed policies in a scenario where the environment is partly emulated and partly composed of real devices. This paper describes a framework, which exploits UML2.0 state diagrams for automatic generation of device simulators from ontology-based descriptions of domotic environments. The DogSim simulator may simulate a complete building automation system in software, or may be integrated in the Dog Gateway, allowing partial simulation of virtual devices alongside with real devices. Experiments on a real home show that the approach is feasible and can easily address both simulation and emulation requirement

Service Orientation and the Smart Grid state and trends

The energy market is undergoing major changes, the most notable of which is the transition from a hierarchical closed system toward a more open one highly based on a “smart” information-rich infrastructure. This transition calls for new information and communication technologies infrastructures and standards to support it. In this paper, we review the current state of affairs and the actual technologies with respect to such transition. Additionally, we highlight the contact points between the needs of the future grid and the advantages brought by service-oriented architectures.

A Web Services Component Discovery and Deployment Architecture for Simulation Model Reuse

CSPs are widely used in industry, although have yet to operate across organizational boundaries. Reuse across organizations is restricted by the same semantic issues that restrict the inter-organization use of web services. The current representations of web components are predominantly syntactic in nature lacking the fundamental semantic underpinning required to support discovery on the emerging semantic web. Semantic models, in the form of ontology, utilized by web service discovery and deployment architecture provide one approach to support simulation model reuse. Semantic interoperation is achieved through the use of simulation component ontology to identify required components at varying levels of granularity (including both abstract and specialized components). Selected simulation components are loaded into a CSP, modified according to the requirements of the new model and executed. The paper presents the development carried out within CSPI-PDG and Fluidity Group at Brunel University, of an ontology, connector software and web service discovery architecture. The ontology is extracted from simulation scenarios involving airport, restaurant and kitchen service suppliers. The ontology engineering framework and discovery architecture provide a novel approach to inter-organization simulation, adopting a less intrusive interface between participants. Although specific to CSPs the work has wider implications for the simulation community

Semantic web service architecture for simulation model reuse

COTS simulation packages (CSPs) have proved popular in an industrial setting with a number of software vendors. In contrast, options for re-using existing models seem more limited. Re-use of simulation component models by collaborating organizations is restricted by the same semantic issues however that restrict the inter-organization use of web services. The current representations of web components are predominantly syntactic in nature lacking the fundamental semantic underpinning required to support discovery on the emerging semantic web. Semantic models, in the form of ontology, utilized by web service discovery and deployment architecture provide one approach to support simulation model reuse. Semantic interoperation is achieved through the use of simulation component ontology to identify required components at varying levels of granularity (including both abstract and specialized components). Selected simulation components are loaded into a CSP, modified according to the requirements of the new model and executed. The paper presents the development of ontology, connector software and web service discovery architecture in order to understand how such ontology are created, maintained and subsequently used for simulation model reuse. The ontology is extracted from health service simulation - comprising hospitals and the National Blood Service. The ontology engineering framework and discovery architecture provide a novel approach to inter- organization simulation, uncovering domain semantics and adopting a less intrusive interface between participants. Although specific to CSPs the work has wider implications for the simulation community

Data mediation to message level conflict in heterogeneous web services

Enterprise Information Systems (EISs) are built in isolated and independent environments leading to unpredictable and incompatible structure of data stores. An EI system can expose its functionalities as Web services to share resources of existing global internet infrastructure. The goal of this research paper is to facilitate inter-operation between Web services. Successful and reliable information (message) exchange between Web services is necessary to meet the current challenge of Enterprise Information Integration (EII). A real-\ud world business process, which consists of Web services WS1 and WS2, can be used as a practical scenario for data or message exchange between Web services. In this scenario, message is exchanged by using output of WS1 as input of WS2. If data format of WS1 and WS2 are heterogeneous or incompatible, interoperation between them is impossible if data mediation is not used to resolve message level conflict and incompatibility in the context of syntax and semantics. Data Mediation requires mapping a message from one format to another. We propose to derive a mediation technique that will enable previously less inter-operative heterogeneous Web services to become more inter-operative now. To improve inter-operational performance between Web services our data mediation approach extends and utilizes existing Web service supporting tools WSDL and SAWSDL. (Authors' abstract

Interoperable intelligent environmental decision support systems: a framework proposal

In this paper, an approach for the development of Interoperable Intelligent Environmental Decision Support Systems (IEDSS) is proposed. The framework is based upon the cognitive-oriented approach for the development of IEDSS proposed in (Sànchez-Marrè et al., 2008), where three kind of tasks must be built: analysis tasks, synthesis tasks and prognosis tasks. Now, a fourth level will be proposed: the model construction layer, which is normally an off-line task. At each level, interoperability should be possible and inter-level interoperability must be als o achieved. This interoperability is proposed to be obtained using data interchange protocols like Predictive Model Markup Language (PMML), which is a model interc hange protocol based on XML language, using an ontology of data and AI models to characterize data types and AI models and to set-up a common terminology, and using workflows of the whole interoperation scheme. In the future, a Multi-Agent System will be used to implement the software components. An example of use of the pro posed methodology applied to the supervision of a Wastewater Treatment Plant is provided. This Interoperable IEDSS framework will be the first step to an actual interoperability of AI models which will make IEDSS more reliable and accurate to solve complex environmental problems.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Forum Session at the First International Conference on Service Oriented Computing (ICSOC03)

The First International Conference on Service Oriented Computing (ICSOC) was held in Trento, December 15-18, 2003. The focus of the conference ---Service Oriented Computing (SOC)--- is the new emerging paradigm for distributed computing and e-business processing that has evolved from object-oriented and component computing to enable building agile networks of collaborating business applications distributed within and across organizational boundaries. Of the 181 papers submitted to the ICSOC conference, 10 were selected for the forum session which took place on December the 16th, 2003. The papers were chosen based on their technical quality, originality, relevance to SOC and for their nature of being best suited for a poster presentation or a demonstration. This technical report contains the 10 papers presented during the forum session at the ICSOC conference. In particular, the last two papers in the report ere submitted as industrial papers

Research on Role-Centric Collaborative Technology

With the development of e-business, the collaboration between enterprises is increasingly strengthened, which, at the same time, challenges coordination technologies in distributed enterprise transactions. Workflow management has as its priority the support of coordination functions and workflow interoperability points the way towards collaborative business environments. Though WfMC, Workflow Management Coalition, specifies the abstract interoperability, differences such as workflow concept models, ontology etc. cannot be dealt with effectively because the specification is only technical. On the other hand, portal technology focuses on the integration of information and application services customized according to roles. It can provide support for the interoperability of workflows. In this paper, workflows are integrated with portal technology. And a role centric collaborative environment is proposed which is a way out for problems existing in workflow interoperability