Developing a distributed electronic health-record store for India

The DIGHT project is addressing the problem of building a scalable and highly available information store for the Electronic Health Records (EHRs) of the over one billion citizens of India

A Model Driven Approach to Model Transformations

The OMG's Model Driven Architecture (MDA) initiative has been the focus of much attention in both academia and industry, due to its promise of more rapid and consistent software development through the increased use of models. In order for MDA to reach its full potential, the ability to manipulate and transform models { most obviously from the Platform Independent Model (PIM) to the Platform Specific Models (PSM) { is vital. Recognizing this need, the OMG issued a Request For Proposals (RFP) largely concerned with finding a suitable mechanism for trans- forming models. This paper outlines the relevant background material, summarizes the approach taken by the QVT-Partners (to whom the authors belong), presents a non-trivial example using the QVT-Partners approach, and finally sketches out what the future holds for model transformations

CIRCULAR ARCHITECTURE: MODELS AND STRATEGIES TO REUSE AND RECYCLE BUILDINGS

How we design, construct and live in our houses as well as go to work can mitigate carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and global climate change. Furthermore, the complex world we live in is in an ongoing transformation process. The housing shortage problem is increasing as the world population and cities are increasingly growing. Thereby, we must think of all the other issues that come along with population growth, such as increased demand for built space, mobility, expansion of cities into green areas, use of resources, and materials scarcity. Various projects from history have used alternatives to solve the problem of social housing, such as increasing density in cities through housing complexes, fast and low-cost constructions with prefabricated methods and materials, and modularisation systems. However, the current architecture is not designed to meet users’ future needs and reduce the environmental impact. A proposal to change this situation would be to go back to the beginning of architecture’s conception and to design it differently. In addition, nowadays, there is an increasing focus on moving towards sustainable and circular living spaces based on shared, adaptable and modular built environments to improve residents’ quality of life. For this reason, the main objective of this thesis is to study the potential of architecture that can reconfigure spatially and temporally, and produce alternative generic models to reuse and recycle architectural elements and spaces for functional flexibility through time. To approach the discussion, a documentary research methodology was applied to study the modular, prefabricated and ecological architectural typologies to address recyclability in buildings. The Atlas with case studies and architectural design strategies emerged from the analyses of projects from Durant to the 21st century. Furthermore, this thesis is a part of the research project Eco-Construction for Sustainable Development (ECON4SD), which is co-funded by the EU in partnership with the University of Luxembourg, and it presents three new generic building typologies. They are named according to their strong characteristics: Prototype 1 - Slab typology, a building designed as a concrete shelf structure in which timber housing units can be plugged in and out; Prototype 2 - Tower typology, a tower building with a flexible floor plan combining working and residential facilities with adjacent multi-purpose facilities; and Prototype 3 - Block typology, a structure characterised by the entire disassembly. The three new typologies combine modularity, prefabrication, flexibility and disassembly strategies to address the increasing demand for multi-use, reusable and resourceefficient housing units. The prototypes continually adapt to the occupants’ needs as the infrastructure incorporates repetition, exposed structure, central core, terrace, open floors, unfinished spaces, prefabrication, combined activities, and have reduced and different housing unit sizes, in which parts can be disassembled. They also densify the region that they are being implemented in. Moreover, the new circular typologies can offer more generous public and shared space for the occupants within the same building size as an ordinary building. The alternative design allows the reconversion of existing buildings or the reconstruction of the same buildings in other places reducing waste and increases its useful lifespan. Once the building is adapted and reused as much as possible, and the life cycle comes to an end, it can be disassembled, and the materials can be sorted for reusable or recyclable resources. The results demonstrate that circular architecture is feasible, realistic, adapts through time, increases material use, avoids unnecessary demolition, reduces construction waste and CO2 emissions and extends the useful life of the buildings

European Territorial Governance and Spatial Planning Practices

Territorial governance is an extremely heterogeneous activity. Each European country is characterised by a complex system of legal acts, tools, discourses and practices that had consolidated through time, as a consequence of peculiar path-dependent processes. At the same time, since more than 30 years the European Union is developing territorially relevant actions and interventions, ultimately aiming at achieving the economic, social and territorial cohesion of the continent. The mutual relations entangling domestic and supranational territorial governance remain unclear: on the one hand, the European Union is required to produce a framework for delivering its policies that is flexible enough to accommodate domestic differences; on the other hand, domestic territorial governance and spatial planning systems should adapt in order to allow room for cross-fertilization with supranational interventions. This contribution builds on the evidence collected by the research project ESPON COMPASS to frame and explore this issue. In doing so, it serves as an introduction for this special issue that, in the following contributions, presents a number of concrete examples of interaction between EU spatial policies and domestic territorial governance and spatial planning

Ontologies learn by searching

Dissertation to obtain the Master degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer ScienceDue to the worldwide diversity of communities, a high number of ontologies representing the same segment of reality which are not semantically coincident have appeared. To solve this problem, a possible solution is to use a reference ontology to be the intermediary in the communications between the community enterprises and to outside. Since semantic mappings between enterprise‘s ontologies are established, this solution allows each of the enterprises to keep internally its own ontology and semantics unchanged. However information systems are not static, thus established mappings become obsoletes with time. This dissertation‘s objective is to identify a suitable method that combines semantic mappings with user‘s feedback, providing an automatic learning to ontologies & enabling auto-adaptability and dynamism to the information system

Publications 2000

This publication comprises the monographs published by the Institutions of the Communit

Publications 2000

This publication comprises the monographs published by the Institutions of the Communit

Innovating with Emerging IT in Highly Structured Environments - An Organising Vision Perspective on Blockchain and Digital Identity Wallets

This cumulative thesis explores the challenges and institutional mechanisms of innovating with emerging information technologies (IT) in highly structured environments. Emerging technologies are often difficult to implement because they arrive on the market in an immature state and with unclear use cases. To make sense of the emerging IT, members of the innovation community develop various interpretations. These are typically replete with wishful and unbalanced claims, resulting in a vibrant IT discourse that is characterized by a plethora of discursive frames and value-laden buzz words. When this discourse becomes coherent, it often leads to contagion and motivates organizations to engage with the emerging IT. Such engagement is challenging even for the most flexible organizations with innovation-friendly structures – and it can be downright daunting in highly structured environments. The latter organizations often face high structural and cultural barriers that encumber digital innovation with emerging IT. Adopting the macro-level cognitive institutional perspective of organizing vision theory, this thesis sets out to investigate how organizations in these environments can nevertheless make sense of emerging IT and materialize it in applications that create organizational value. My thesis examines the challenges of surfacing a pertinent business problematic from the organizing vision and of unpacking the technologies’ abilities and limitations. Moreover, it segues into pathways for navigating the aforementioned structural and cultural barriers. I develop four conjectures that provide practical guidelines for organizations in highly structured environments that are willing to engage with emerging IT. These insights build on 15 research papers, which are part of this thesis

Publications 1998

This publication comprises the monographs published by the Institutions of the Communit

System organization and operation in the context of local flexibility markets at distribution level

9. Industry, innovation and infrastructur