An Ontology-Based Context Model for Managing Security Knowledge in Software Development

Software security has been the focus of the security community and practitioners over the past decades. Much security information is widely available in books, open literature or on the internet. We argue that the generated huge mass of information has resulted in a form of information overload to software engineers who usually finish reading it without being able to apply those principles clearly to their own application context. Our research tackles software security issues from a knowledge management perspective. In this paper, we present an ontology approach to model the knowledge of software security in a context- sensitive manner, supporting software engineers and learners to enable the correlation process between security domain knowledge and their working context. We also propose a web-based application for security knowledge sharing and learning where the ontology is adopted as the central knowledge repository

Modelo de contexto para apoio à adaptação de processos de software com foco na colaboração

A adaptação de processo de software é o ato de particularizar o processo organizacional para um processo aplicável a um projeto específico. Esta não é uma tarefa trivial, normalmente realizada por um gerente de projeto baseado em diretrizes de adaptação organizacionais. A combinação da experiência do gerente, as características do projeto e as diretrizes organizacionais compõem o contexto para a tomada de decisão em relação à adaptação do processo e colaboração esperada para o processo. Este trabalho apresenta um modelo que organiza itens de informação para apoiar gerentes na compreensão das características do contexto quando o foco da adaptação está no nível da colaboração que se deseja conferir ao processo resultante. A estrutura e aplicação do modelo foram avaliadas por gerentes de projetos de software, através de entrevistas e estudos de caso

Conflicts treatment for ubiquitous collective and context-aware applications

Context-aware computing is a research field that defines systems capable of adapting their behavior according to any relevant information about entities (e.g., people, places and objects) of interest. The ubiquitous computing is closely related to the use of contexts, since it aims to provide personalized, transparent and on-demand services. Ubiquitous systems are frequently shared among multiple users, which may lead to conflicts that occur during adaptation actions due to individual profiles divergences and/or environment resources incompatibility. In such situations it is interesting to detect and solve those conflicts, considering what is better for the group but also being fair enough with each individual demand, whenever possible. This work presents the important concepts on the collective ubiquitous context-aware applications field. Furthermore, it proposes a novel methodology for conflicts detection and resolution that considers the trade-off between quality of services and resources consumption. A case study based on a collective tourist guide was implemented as a proof-of-study to the proposed methodology.Key words: context and awareness in collaborative systems, ubiquitous computing, adaptive collaborative environments

Uma Revisão de Técnicas de Distribuição e Persistência de Informações de Contexto e Inferências de Situações em Sistemas Ubíquos

A computação ubíqua (ou computação onipresente) define que a computação alie alta mobilidade e alta imersão computacional no ambiente e na rotina dos usuários. Para prover a imersão computacional necessária, sistemas ubíquos devem ser cientes de contexto. Ou seja, eles devem ser capazes de se adaptar ao ambiente de acordo com o que está acontecendo nele (eventos) ou baseado no seu estado atual. Uma das questões abordadas em pesquisas recentes na área de sensibilidade de contexto trata de formas com que contexto pode ser armazenado e recuperado, e de que forma isto pode ser integrado a aplicações pervasivas para que estas adaptem sua execução ou apresentação de informações ao usuário em tempo real. Neste artigo, apresentamos um estudo sobre as áreas de sensibilidade ao contexto e a situações (uma abstração de alto nível de contextos). A partir deste estudo, e da definição de um estudo de caso baseado na integração entre aplicações de dois domínios, foi possível identificar um conjunto de oportunidades de pesquisa na área

Practice-centred e-health system design for cross-boundary clinical decision support

The idea of cross-boundary clinical decision support has the potential to transform the design of future work environments for e-health through a connected healthcare system that allows for harnessing of information and peer opinion across geographical boundaries for better decision-making. The trouble, however, is that the use of healthcare information in decision-making usually occurs within the context of a complex structure of clinical work practices that is often shaped by a wide range of factors, including organisational culture, local work contexts, socially constructed traditions of actions, experiences and patients’ circumstances. They vary across geographical boundaries, and have remained largely unaccounted for in the design of current e-health systems. As a result, achieving the visions of e-health, particularly in relation to cross-boundary clinical decision support, requires a rethinking of key clinical and organisational processes in a manner that accommodates work practice as a fundamental part of how clinicians work and make decisions in the real-world. This thesis investigates the concept of work practice as a design requirement for cross-boundary clinical decision support systems in e-health. It is argued that the task of enabling informed decision support across geographical boundaries in e-health can be enhanced through an understanding, and a formal characterisation, of work practices in various healthcare work contexts, and a specification of how practice can be used, managed and transformed to suit various clinical problem situations and patients’ needs. This research takes a clinical practice-centred approach to inform e-health system design, and draws on the concept of work practice and cultural-historical theory in social science as well as situation awareness in order to describe the local traditions of actions that guide clinicians’ work in the real world. It contributes a coherent conceptual architecture comprising a practice-centred awareness model for cross-boundary awareness, a frame-based technique, named PracticeFrame, for formalising and representing work practice for system design, and ContextMorph, for adaptively transforming a suggestion across work boundaries to suit a user’s local work context and practices. An in-depth user-informed requirements capture was used to gain an understanding of clinical work practices for designing e-health system for cross-boundary decision support. A proof of concept prototype, named CaDHealth, which is based on the Brahms work practice modelling tool and includes a work practice visualisation model, named the practice display, was developed and used to conduct user-based evaluation. The evaluation revealed that incorporating practice-centred awareness enhances usefulness, acceptance and user adoption of e-health systems for cross-boundary clinical decision support

Reinforcing shared context to improve collaboration

National audienceContributing with and using knowledge is a communication process among the organization's actors. As a communication process, the transfer of knowledge among actors can only be effective if there is a common interpretive focus and context where they can understand each other and communicate. The concept of context plays an important role in collaboration, specially on what is concerned to facilitate communication, interaction and knowledge sharing, reflecting on group work productivity, quality and satisfaction. What we expect to do in this work is to explore the formalization of context in order to understand how context is shared in a group. We address the representation and dynamics of context discussing its implications and opportunities to improving collaborative work support