Gestion de la qualité de contexte pour l'intelligence ambiante

L'informatique sensible au contexte vise à réduire la quantité d'informations explicites qu'un utilisateur doit fournir pour que le système accomplisse la tâche souhaitée. Ceci est particulièrement vrai dans le domaine récent de l'intelligence ambiante où les objets de la vie courante deviennent capables de déclencher une action ou un échange spontané d'informations, sans interaction avec l'utilisateur. Les progrès techniques en matière de réseaux de communication sans fil, d'équipements mobiles individuels, de capteurs et de logiciels embarqués, rendent aujourd'hui possibles des services aux usagers dépendants du contexte, mais les applications concrètes demeurent encore très limitées. Les travaux existants dans la littérature décomposent la gestion de contexte en quatre fonctionnalités: la collecte, l'interprétation, la détection de situations et l'utilisation pour l'adaptation. L'élément discriminant des solutions existantes est la qualité des informations abstraites obtenues par inférence et devant caractériser les situations de l'utilisateur. Les limites de ces solutions sont le manque de composition aisée des informations de contexte, le passage à l'échelle, tant en termes de quantité d'informations de contexte que de nombre d'applications clientes, l'absence de garantie sur la cohérence et la qualité des informations de contexte, et le manque de solutions intergicielles permettant de libérer le concepteur d'applications des aspects liés à la gestion de contexte. Nous nous intéressons dans cette thèse à la gestion de la qualité de contexte (QoC) dans un environnement ambiant. Les problématiques de gestion de la qualité de contexte sont multiples: choisir la méthode adéquate pour la gestion du contexte, extraire la qualité associée au contexte, interpréter et analyser la qualité de contexte pour les applications sensibles au contexte. Nous proposons de répondre à ces problématiques en intégrant la qualité de contexte au sein de la plateforme de gestion de contexte COSMOS (http://picoforge.lntevrv.fr/proiects/svn/cosmos) de l'équipe MARGE (http://www-inf.itsudparis.eu/MARGE) de Télécom SudParis. Afin d'effectuer cette intégration, nous avons conçu des éléments spécifiques à la qualité de contexte et avons mis en place une gestion fine et efficiente de cette qualité en limitant le surcoût associé. Nous proposons également un processus de conception basé sur l'ingénierie dirigée par les modèles afin de générer les éléments requis à la gestion de la qualité de contexte. Nous avons validé nos contributions à l'aide de deux applications fonctionnant sur téléphone mobile : une application de "vente flash" dans un centre commercial et une application de détection de localisation sur un campus. Les tests de performances que nous avons effectués permettent de comparer les résultats avec et sans la prise en compte de la QoC et montrent le faible coût de la gestion de la qualité par rapport aux améliorations apportées aux applications sensibles au contexteContext-aware computing aims to reduce the amount of explicit information required from a user for a system to perform a task. This is particularly true in the recent domain of ambient intelligence where everyday life objects are able to trigger an action or a spontaneous information exchange, without any interaction with the user. Technical advances in wireless communication, personal mobile devices, sensors and embedded software make context-aware services possible, but concrete applications are still very limited. The solutions proposed in the literature decompose context management into four functions: acquisition, interpretation, situation detection and application adaptation. The differentiating element in these proposals is the quality of the high-level context information obtained by inference and characterising the situation of the user. The limits of these solutions are the difficulty for composing context information scalability in terms of the quantity of context information and of the number of client applications, the absence of guarantee on the consistency of context information and the lack of middleware solutions able to free the designer of context-aware applications from the management of context data. In this thesis, we are interested in the management of the quality of context information (QoC) in an ambient environment. There are several key issues in QoC management: choosing the adequate method for context management, extracting the quality associated to the context, analysing and interpreting the quality of the context with regard to the requirements of context-aware applications. We propose to answer these questions by integrating QoC management into the COSMOS context management framework (http://picoforge.int-evry.fr/projects/svn/cosmos) developed by the MARGE team (http://www-inf.itsudparis.eu/MARGE) of Télécom SudParis.For this purpose, we have designed the necessary components dedicated to QoC management and we have implemented the mechanisms allowing a fine-grain manipulation of the QoC together with a limitation of the associated overhead. We also propose a design process based on model-driven engineering in order to automatically generate the elements responsible of QoC management. We validate our contributions through the development of two prototype applications running on mobile phones: a Flash sale offer application to be used in malls and a location detection application proposed to the students of a campus. The performance tests we have conducted allow to compare the results obtained with and without taking into account the QoC and show the low overhead associated to QoC manaqement with regard to the benefits brought to context-aware applications and servicesEVRY-INT (912282302) / SudocSudocFranceF

On Designing Self-Adaptive Software Systems

Ante condiciones cambiantes del entorno, los sistemas autoadaptativos pueden modificarse a sí mismos para controlar la satisfacción de sus requerimientos en tiempo de ejecución. Durante el siglo pasado los sistemas de retroalimentación fueron importantes modelos para controlar el comportamiento dinámico de sistemas mecánicos, eléctricos, de fluidos y químicos, en sus respectivos campos de la ingeniería. Más recientemente fueron adoptados para diseñar software autoadaptativo. No obstante, lograr mapeos coherentes y explícitos consistentemente entre las arquitecturas de software adaptativo y los elementos de sistemas de retroalimentación es aún un reto abierto. Este artículo, sobre un modelo de referencia propuesto con ese propósito, discute aspectos clave del diseño de software autoadaptativo, en que los elementos de sistemas de retroalimentación se definen explícitamente como componentes de primer nivel en su arquitectura. Adicionalmente, ilustra la aplicación de este modelo de referencia a un ejemplo real de software adaptativo. El artículo ofrece a los ingenieros de software un punto de referencia para iniciar el diseño de software autoadaptativo.Self-adaptive systems modify themselves at run-time in order to control the satisfaction of their requirements under changing environmental conditions. Over the past century, feedback-loops have been used as important models for controlling dynamic behavior of mechanical, electrical, fluid and chemical systems in the corresponding fields of engineering. More recently, they also have been adopted for engineering self-adaptive software systems. However, obtaining sound and explicit mappings consistently between adaptive software architectures and feedback loop elements is still an open challenge. This paper, recalling a reference model proposed previously with that goal, discuss key aspects on the design of adaptive software where feedback loop elements are explicitly defined as first-class components in its software architecture. It complements this discussion with an illustration of the process to use this reference model by applying it to a plausible adaptive software example. This paper aims at providing a reference starting point to support software engineers in the process of designing self-adaptive software systems

Recognition Situations Using Extended Dempster-Shafer Theory

Weiser’s [111] vision of pervasive computing describes a world where technology seamlessly integrates into the environment, automatically responding to peoples’ needs. Underpinning this vision is the ability of systems to automatically track the situation of a person. The task of situation recognition is critical and complex: noisy and unreliable sensor data, dynamic situations, unpredictable human behaviour and changes in the environment all contribute to the complexity. No single recognition technique is suitable in all environments. Factors such as availability of training data, ability to deal with uncertain information and transparency to the user will determine which technique to use in any particular environment. In this thesis, we propose the use of Dempster-Shafer theory as a theoretically sound basis for situation recognition - an approach that can reason with uncertainty, but which does not rely on training data. We use existing operations from Dempster-Shafer theory and create new operations to establish an evidence decision network. The network is used to generate and assess situation beliefs based on processed sensor data for an environment. We also define two specific extensions to Dempster-Shafer theory to enhance the knowledge that can be used for reasoning: 1) temporal knowledge about situation time patterns 2) quality of evidence sources (sensors) into the reasoning process. To validate the feasibility of our approach, this thesis creates evidence decision networks for two real-world data sets: a smart home data set and an officebased data set. We analyse situation recognition accuracy for each of the data sets, using the evidence decision networks with temporal/quality extensions. We also compare the evidence decision networks against two learning techniques: Naïve Bayes and J48 Decision Tree

Mobility-awareness in complex event processing systems

The proliferation and vast deployment of mobile devices and sensors over the last couple of years enables a huge number of Mobile Situation Awareness (MSA) applications. These applications need to react in near real-time to situations in the environment of mobile objects like vehicles, pedestrians, or cargo. To this end, Complex Event Processing (CEP) is becoming increasingly important as it allows to scalably detect situations “on-the-fly” by continously processing distributed sensor data streams. Furthermore, recent trends in communication networks promise high real-time conformance to CEP systems by processing sensor data streams on distributed computing resources at the edge of the network, where low network latencies can be achieved. Yet, supporting MSA applications with a CEP middleware that utilizes distributed computing resources proves to be challenging due to the dynamics of mobile devices and sensors. In particular, situations need to be efficiently, scalably, and consistently detected with respect to ever-changing sensors in the environment of a mobile object. Moreover, the computing resources that provide low latencies change with the access points of mobile devices and sensors. The goal of this thesis is to provide concepts and algorithms to i) continuously detect situations that recently occurred close to a mobile object, ii) support bandwidth and computational efficient detections of such situations on distributed computing resources, and iii) support consistent, low latency, and high quality detections of such situations. To this end, we introduce the distributed Mobile CEP (MCEP) system which automatically adapts the processing of sensor data streams according to a mobile object’s location. MCEP provides an expressive, location-aware query model for situations that recently occurred at a location close to a mobile object. MCEP significantly reduces latency, bandwidth, and processing overhead by providing on-demand and opportunistic adaptation algorithms to dynamically assign event streams to queries of the MCEP system. Moreover, MCEP incorporates algorithms to adapt the deployment of MCEP queries in a network of computing resources. This way, MCEP supports latency-sensitive, large-scale deployments of MSA applications and ensures a low network utilization while mobile objects change their access points to the system. MCEP also provides methods to increase the scalability in terms of deployed MCEP queries by reusing event streams and computations for detecting common situations for several mobile objects

Recht und Diversität: Lokale Konstellationen und globale Perspektiven von der Frühen Neuzeit bis zur Gegenwart

Paralleljustiz, Antidiskriminierungsgesetze, Rechtstransfer - das Thema "Recht und Diversität" verbindet unterschiedlichste aktuelle Diskussionen und erweist sich als zentral für den gesellschaftlichen Umgang mit Differenz und Gleichheit. Die Beiträger*innen des Bandes - aus der Geschichts- und Rechtswissenschaft sowie den Jüdischen Studien - rücken dieses Thema in eine historische Perspektive und nehmen Konstellationen und Umgangsweisen mit Rechtsvielfalt von der Frühen Neuzeit bis in die Gegenwart in den Blick. Beleuchtet werden Situationen des Kulturkontakts und des interreligiösen Zusammenlebens sowie global agierende Akteur*innen und Organisationen in Europa, Asien, den Amerikas und Afrika

Recht und Diversität. Lokale Konstellationen und globale Perspektiven von der Frühen Neuzeit bis zur Gegenwart

Brauner C, Flüchter A, eds. Recht und Diversität. Lokale Konstellationen und globale Perspektiven von der Frühen Neuzeit bis zur Gegenwart. BiUP General. 1st ed. Bielefeld: Bielefeld University Press; 2020.Paralleljustiz, Antidiskriminierungsgesetze, Rechtstransfer - das Thema »Recht und Diversität« verbindet unterschiedlichste aktuelle Diskussionen und erweist sich als zentral für den gesellschaftlichen Umgang mit Differenz und Gleichheit. Die Beiträger\*innen des Bandes - aus der Geschichts- und Rechtswissenschaft sowie den Jüdischen Studien - rücken dieses Thema in eine historische Perspektive und nehmen Konstellationen und Umgangsweisen mit Rechtsvielfalt von der Frühen Neuzeit bis in die Gegenwart in den Blick. Beleuchtet werden Situationen des Kulturkontakts und des interreligiösen Zusammenlebens sowie global agierende Akteur\*innen und Organisationen in Europa, Asien, den Amerikas und Afrika

Development of context-sensitive user interfaces

Dobro dizajniran, intuitivan i privlačan za korišćenje korisnički interfejs predstavlja ključni faktor uspeha računarskih proizvoda i sistema. Radi unapređenja razvoja i upotrebljivosti korisničkih interfejsa potrebno je uzeti u obzir karakteristike korisnika. Ovo zahteva interdisciplinaran pristup i korišćenje znanja iz različitih oblasti kao što su računarske, saznajne i biološke nauke. Pored toga, potrebno je uzeti u obzir karakteristike medija i fizičkog okruženja u kojem se odvija interakcija čoveka i računara. Razvoj korisničkog interfejsa treba da uvaži i karakteristike hardverskih uređaja koji se koriste u komunikaciji sa korisnikom, dostupne softverske resurse, kao i karakteristike programskih sistema koji treba da koriste korisnički interfejs. U skladu sa tim, uvodi se pojam kontekstno-osetljivog interfejsa koji se definiše kao korisnički interfejs koji je prilagodljiv kontekstu interakcije sa konkretnim korisnikom. Kontekst interakcije čine tri klase entiteta: korisnik računarskog sistema (čovek); hardverska i softverska platforma pomoću kojih korisnici interaguju sa sistemom i fizičko okruženje u kojem se odigrava interakcija sa sistemom. Posmatrajući evoluciju razvoja softvera uočavamo povećanje nivoa apstrakcije na kojem se softver opisuje. Dostignuti nivo razvoja omogućava platformski nezavisnu specifikaciju softvera koja se postepeno ili automatizovano prevodi u izvršne aplikacije za različite softverske i hardverske platforme. Arhitektura upravljana modelima, koja se koristi za razvoj složenih programskih rešenja, hijerarhijski organizuje koncepte i modele u više nivoa apstrakcije. Ovo je posebno bitno imajući u vidu da je razvoj kontekstno-osetljivih korisničkih interfejsa složen proces koji uključuje modelovanje velikog broja elemenata na različitim nivoima apstrakcije. U ovoj tezi smo istraživali problem unapređenja razvoja kontekstno-osetljivih korisničkih interfejsa. Predloženo je rešenje koje omogućava automatizaciju razvoja korisničkog interfejsa prilagođenog kontekstu interakcije čoveka i računara. Rešenje se ogleda u proširenju jezika za modelovanje, standardnog procesa razvoja softverskih sistema (Unified proces) i razvojnih alata elementima specifičnim za interakciju čoveka i računara. U skladu sa prethodnim, razvijen je model kontekstno-osetljive interakcije čoveka i računara i predloženi su modeli korisničkih interfejsa na različitim nivoima apstrakcije. Zbog standardizacije, široke prihvaćenosti, i dostupnosti razvojnih alata, odlučili smo se za proširenje UML (Unified Modeling Language) jezika za modelovanje i ATL (Atlas Transformation Language) jezika za transformacije modela. Primena predloženog pristupa je demonstrirana na primerima dve studije slučaja iz različitih domena...Well-designed, intuitive and catchy-to-use user interface represents key issue of success of computer products and systems. In order to improve development and usability of user interfaces it is needed to take into account user’s charasteristics. This entails interdisciplinary approach and use of knowledge from different fields such as computing, cognitive and biological sciences. In addition, it is needed to consider features of the physical environment and the medium in which interaction between human and computer takes place. Development of user interface must include characteristics of hardware devices employed in interaction with the user, availabale software resources, as well as characteristics of software systems using the interface. According to stated, concept of context-sensitive user interface is introduced, defined as a user interface adaptable to context of interaction with concrete user. Context of interaction is decomposed into three classes of entitites: user of a computer system (human); hardware and software platforms by which users interact with the system and physical environment in which interaction with system happens. Looking at the evolution of software development, we can notice that the abstraction level on which software is described is increasing all the time. The latest trend is to specify software using platform-independent models, which are then gradually and (semi-) automatically transformed into executable applications for different platforms and target devices. Modeldriven architecture, used for development of complex software solutions, hierarchically organizes concepts and models into multiple abstraction levels. This is especially important regarding development of context-sensitive user interfaces which appears to be a complex process involved with modeling of a large number of elements on different abstraction levels. In this thesis, we have been exploring problem concerned with the improvement of development of context-sensitive user interfaces. Solution enabling automation of development of user interface adaptable to context of interaction between human and computer is proposed. Solution includes extensions of modelling language, standard software development process (Unified process) and development tools with the elements specific for human-computer interaction. Based on previous, model of context-sensitive human-computer interaction has been developed and user interface models on different abstraction levels have been proposed. For reasons of standardization, wide acceptance and availability of development tools, we have decided to extend UML (Unified Modeling Language) modeling language and ATL (Atlas Transformation Language) language for model transformations. Application of the proposed approach is demonstrated with examples of two case studies from different domains..

La contextualisation en entreprise (mettre en avant utilisateurs et développeurs)

Les applications contextuelles doivent gérer un flux contenu de contexte selon une logique approprié. Les travaux de recherche en contextualisation se limitent à proposer des plateformes de développement proposant des mécanismes d adaptation prédéfinie. Cette thèse se propose d étende l état de l art en proposant des nouveaux concepts formant la fondation pour la création d application contextuelles en adoptant des principes de l ingénierie logicielle et une décomposition fonctionnelle. Aussi, cela permet l intégration de comportements contextualisés à des applications non initialement conçus pour cela. La thèse propose une autre manière centrée-contexte permettant de séparer la représentation du contexte de son interprétation, offrant encore plus de flexibilité à la gestion de contexte. Les propositions sont analysées aux lumières d étude de cas et de simulations. Le résultat de la thèse est l introduction de nouvelle approche de création d applications contextuelles qui met en avant le développeur mais aussi l utilisateurContext-aware applications must manage a continuous stream of context according to dedicated business logic. Research was limited on proposing frameworks and platforms that have predefined behavior toward applications. This thesis attempts to extend background works by proposing new concepts serving as foundation for a flexible approach for building context-aware applications. The thesis examines the state of the art of context-aware computing, then adopts well-established software design principles and a functional decomposition for designing a reference model for context management enabling seamless integration of context-awareness into applications. Also, the thesis studies the use of context in common applications and proposes a context-centric modeling approach which allows the creation of a graph-based representation where entities are connected to each other through links representing context. Furthermore, the context graph decouples the presentation and the semantics of context, leaving each application to manage the appropriate semantic for their context data. Case studies are conducted for the evaluation of the proposed system in terms of its support for the creation of applications enhanced with context-awareness. A simulation study is performed to analyze the performance properties of the proposed system. The result of this thesis is the introduction of a novel approach for supporting the creation of context-aware applications that supports the integration of context-awareness to existing applications. It empowers developers as well as users to participate in the creation process, thereby reducing usability issuesEVRY-INT (912282302) / SudocSudocFranceF

The role of volunteered geographic information in land administration systems in developing countries

PhD ThesisDeveloping countries, especially in Africa are faced with a lack of formally registered land. Available limited records are outdated, inaccurate and unreliable, which makes it a challenge to properly administer and manage land and its resources. Moreover, limited maintenance budgets prevalent in these countries make it difficult for organizations to conduct regular systematic updates of geographic information. Despite these challenges, geographic information still forms a major component for effective land administration. For a land administration system (LAS) to remain useful, it must reflect realities on the ground, and this can only be achieved if land information is reported regularly. However, if changes in land are not captured in properly administered land registers, LAS lose societal relevance and are eventually replaced by informal systems. Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) can address these LAS challenges by providing timely, affordable, up-to-date, flexible, and fit for purpose (FFP) land information to support the limited current systems. Nonetheless, the involvement of volunteers, who in most cases are untrained or non-experts in handling geographic information, implies that VGI can be of varying quality. Thus, VGI is characterised by unstructured, heterogeneous, unreliable data which makes data integration for value-added purposes difficult to effect. These quality challenges can make land authorities reluctant to incorporate the contributed datasets into their official databases. This research has developed an innovative approach for establishing the quality and credibility of VGI such that it can be considered in LAS on an FFP basis. However, verifying volunteer efforts can be difficult without reference to ground truth, which is prevalent in many developing countries. Therefore, a novel Trust and Reputation Modelling (TRM) methodology is proposed as a suitable technique to effect such VGI validation. TRM relies on a view that the public can police themselves in establishing ‘proxy’ measures of VGI quality and credibility of volunteers, thus facilitating VGI to be used on an FFP basis in LAS. The output of this research is a conceptual participatory framework for an FFP land administration based on VGI. The framework outlines major aspects (social, legal, technical, and institutional) necessary for establishing a participatory FFP LAS in developing countries.University of Botswan