Conceptual quality modelling and integrated control of combined urban drainage system

This paper presents the first results of conceptual quality modelling approach oriented to the integrated real-time control (RTC) strategy for urban drainage networks (UDN) and wastewater treatment plants (WWTP) developed in the European project LIFE EFFIDRAIN (Efficient Integrated Real-time Control in Urban Drainage and Wastewater Treatment Plants for Environmental Protection). Model predictive control (MPC) has been selected as a proper RTC to minimize the polluting discharge in case of raining events. The simulator SWMM5 was modified to integrate a lumped conceptual model for total suspended solids (TSS) called SWMM-TSS, which has been used as virtual reality for calibration and validation of the proposed modelling approaches in Perinot network, a real case study in Bordeaux.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Construct redundancy in process modelling grammars: Improving the explanatory power of ontological analysis

Conceptual modelling supports developers and users of information systems in areas of documentation, analysis or system redesign. The ongoing interest in the modelling of business processes has led to a variety of different grammars, raising the question of the quality of these grammars for modelling. An established way of evaluating the quality of a modelling grammar is by means of an ontological analysis, which can determine the extent to which grammars contain construct deficit, overload, excess or redundancy. While several studies have shown the relevance of most of these criteria, predictions about construct redundancy have yielded inconsistent results in the past, with some studies suggesting that redundancy may even be beneficial for modelling in practice. In this paper we seek to contribute to clarifying the concept of construct redundancy by introducing a revision to the ontological analysis method. Based on the concept of inheritance we propose an approach that distinguishes between specialized and distinct construct redundancy. We demonstrate the potential explanatory power of the revised method by reviewing and clarifying previous results found in the literature

Tailoring temporal description logics for reasoning over temporal conceptual models

Temporal data models have been used to describe how data can evolve in the context of temporal databases. Both the Extended Entity-Relationship (EER) model and the Unified Modelling Language (UML) have been temporally extended to design temporal databases. To automatically check quality properties of conceptual schemas various encoding to Description Logics (DLs) have been proposed in the literature. On the other hand, reasoning on temporally extended DLs turn out to be too complex for effective reasoning ranging from 2ExpTime up to undecidable languages. We propose here to temporalize the ‘light-weight’ DL-Lite logics obtaining nice computational results while still being able to represent various constraints of temporal conceptual models. In particular, we consider temporal extensions of DL-Lite^N_bool, which was shown to be adequate for capturing non-temporal conceptual models without relationship inclusion, and its fragment DL-Lite^N_core with most primitive concept inclusions, which are nevertheless enough to represent almost all types of atemporal constraints (apart from covering)

Pattern-based software architecture for service-oriented software systems

Service-oriented architecture is a recent conceptual framework for service-oriented software platforms. Architectures are of great importance for the evolution of software systems. We present a modelling and transformation technique for service-centric distributed software systems. Architectural configurations, expressed through hierarchical architectural patterns, form the core of a specification and transformation technique. Patterns on different levels of abstraction form transformation invariants that structure and constrain the transformation process. We explore the role that patterns can play in architecture transformations in terms of functional properties, but also non-functional quality aspects

A Semiotic Approach for Guiding the Visualizing of Time and Space in Enterprise Models

Part 2: Organizational Semiotics and ApplicationsInternational audienceEven if geographical aspects such as location are included already in the Zachman framework (as the where-perspective), it is not common to have detailed geographical aspects included in enterprise models. Cartography is the science of visualizing geographical information in maps. Traditionally the field has not included conceptual relationships that you find in enterprise models. Both cartography and enterprise modelling have developed guidelines for obtaining high quality visualizations. SEQUAL is a quality framework developed for understanding quality of models and modelling languages based on semiotic theory. In cartography such frameworks are not common. An adaptation of SEQUAL in the context of cartographic maps called MAPQUAL has been presented earlier. Differences between quality of maps and quality of conceptual models, pointing to guidelines for combined representations have been performed, and we try in this paper to investigate the utility of these guidelines in a simple trial. The result of the trial is presented, indicating that it is possible to represent conceptual, temporal, and spatial aspects in the same models in many ways, but that the choice of main perspective should depend on participant appropriateness