Digital Preservation Services : State of the Art Analysis

Research report funded by the DC-NET project.An overview of the state of the art in service provision for digital preservation and curation. Its focus is on the areas where bridging the gaps is needed between e-Infrastructures and efficient and forward-looking digital preservation services. Based on a desktop study and a rapid analysis of some 190 currently available tools and services for digital preservation, the deliverable provides a high-level view on the range of instruments currently on offer to support various functions within a preservation system.European Commission, FP7peer-reviewe

A Delphi Study Assessing Long-term Access to Electronic Medical Records (EMR)

This research effort addressed the issue of long-term access to electronic medical records as technological generations become obsolete, thereby preventing the access to patient health information. Using the Delphi methodology, experts with experience in electronic medical records and applicable systems provided insight based on their years of hands-on experience managing and/or using records and these systems. The end result of this research was a collection of ideas that medical institutions and medical informaticians must consider to ensure that patients and hospitals do not lose long-term access to electronic medical records as electronic medical records and technology continually evolves. Results of the study identified the need for more research in this particular area as no definitive solution to long-term access to electronic medical records was revealed. Additionally, the research findings highlighted the fact that a few medical institutions may actually be concerned about long-term access to electronic records

Design and evaluation of a self-configuring wireless mesh network architecture

Wireless network connectivity plays an increasingly important role in supporting our everyday private and professional lives. For over three decades, self-organizing wireless multi-hop ad-hoc networks have been investigated as a decentralized replacement for the traditional forms of wireless networks that rely on a wired infrastructure. However, despite the tremendous efforts of the international wireless research community and widespread availability of devices that are able to support these networks, wireless ad-hoc networks are hardly ever used. In this work, the reasons behind this discrepancy are investigated. It is found that several basic theoretical assumptions on ad-hoc networks prove to be wrong when solutions are deployed in reality, and that several basic functionalities are still missing. It is argued that a hierarchical wireless mesh network architecture, in which specialized, multi-interfaced mesh nodes form a reliable multi-hop wireless backbone for the less capable end-user clients is an essential step in bringing the ad-hoc networking concept one step closer to reality. Therefore, in a second part of this work, algorithms increasing the reliability and supporting the deployment and management of these wireless mesh networks are developed, implemented and evaluated, while keeping the observed limitations and practical considerations in mind. Furthermore, the feasibility of the algorithms is verified by experiment. The performance analysis of these protocols and the ability to deploy the developed algorithms on current generation off-the-shelf hardware indicates the successfulness of the followed research approach, which combines theoretical considerations with practical implementations and observations. However, it was found that there are also many pitfalls to using real-life implementation as a research technique. Therefore, in the last part of this work, a methodology for wireless network research using real-life implementation is developed, allowing researchers to generate more reliable protocols and performance analysis results with less effort

BlogForever: D3.1 Preservation Strategy Report

This report describes preservation planning approaches and strategies recommended by the BlogForever project as a core component of a weblog repository design. More specifically, we start by discussing why we would want to preserve weblogs in the first place and what it is exactly that we are trying to preserve. We further present a review of past and present work and highlight why current practices in web archiving do not address the needs of weblog preservation adequately. We make three distinctive contributions in this volume: a) we propose transferable practical workflows for applying a combination of established metadata and repository standards in developing a weblog repository, b) we provide an automated approach to identifying significant properties of weblog content that uses the notion of communities and how this affects previous strategies, c) we propose a sustainability plan that draws upon community knowledge through innovative repository design

A framework for whole lifecycle cost of long-term digital preservation

Digital preservation, also known as digital curation, is the active management of digital information, over time, to ensure its accessibility and usability. Digital preservation is nowadays an active area of research, for many reasons: the rapid evolution of technology, which also results in the rapid obsolescence of old technologies; degradation of physical records; constantly increasing volumes of digital information and, importantly, the fact that it has started to become a legal obligation in many countries. This research project aims to develop an innovative framework estimate costs of long term digital preservation. The framework can lead to generating a cost model that quantifies costs within different business sectors, while capturing the impact of obsolescence and uncertainties on predicted cost. Case studies from financial, healthcare and clinical trials sectors are used to prove the framework concept. Those sectors were chosen because between them they share all file types that are required to be preserved and all are either obliged by European or local laws, e.g. EU Data Retention Directive (2006/24/EC) and/or UK Data Retention Regulations 2014 No. 2042, or interested in preserving their digital assets. The framework comprises of three phases: assessing digital preservation activities, cost analysis and expansion and cost estimation. The framework has integrated two processes that will enable the user to reach a more accurate cost estimate; a process for identifying uncertainties with digital preservation activities and a cost modelling process. In the framework cloud computing was used as an example for storage and compute technologies. Combining different research methodology techniques was used in this research project. Starting with conducting a thorough literature review covering digital preservation and cost modelling. Following the literature review; is a combination qualitative and quantitative approaches, using semi-structured interview technique to collect data from industry experts. Industry experts were chosen from companies, firms and government bodies working with or researching digital preservation. Finalising with validating results by real-life case studies from businesses in selected sectors and experts’ verdict. Comparing the output of the framework to real-life case studies, demonstrated how companies/firms, who target to preserve their digital assets, can utilise it to predict accurately future costs for undertaking such investment. By applying industrially-based cost modelling approaches the framework generates a cost model that predicts single-point and three-points cost estimates, an obsolescence taxonomy, uncertainties identification process and quantifying uncertainties and obsolescence impact on cost prediction. Providing decision makers with all the framework outputs, will provide them with quantifiable information about their future investment, while remaining clear to understand and easy to amend. This makes the framework provide long-term total cost prediction solution for digital preservation to firms; helping, guiding and adding insight into digital preservation added value

Optimización de problemas de varios objetivos desde un enfoque de eficiencia energética aplicado a redes celulares heterogéneas 5G usando un marco de conmutación de celdas pequeñas

This Ph.D. dissertation addresses the Many-Objective Optimization Problem (MaOP) study to reduce the inter-cell interference and the power consumption for realistic Centralized, Collaborative, Cloud, and Clean Radio Access Networks (C-RANs). It uses the Cell Switch-Off (CSO) scheme to switch-off/on Remote Radio Units (RRUs) and the Coordinated Scheduling (CS) technique to allocate resource blocks smartly. The EF1-NSGA-III (It is a variation of the NSGA-III algorithm that uses the front 1 to find extreme points at the normalization procedure extended in this thesis) algorithm is employed to solve a proposed Many-Objective Optimization Problem (MaOP). It is composed of four objective functions, four constraints, and two decision variables. However, the above problem is redefined to have three objective functions to see the performance comparison between the NSGA-II and EF1-NSGA-III algorithms. The OpenAirInterface (OAI) platform is used to evaluate and validate the performance of an indoor coverage system because most of the user-end equipment of next-generation cellular networks will be in an indoor environment. It constitutes the fastest growing 5G open-source platform that implements 3GPP technology on general-purpose computers, fast Ethernet transport ports, and Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) software-defined radio hardware. This document is composed of five contributions. The first one is a survey about testbed, emulators, and simulators for 4G/5G cellular networks. The second one is the extension of the KanGAL's NSGA-II code to implement the EF1-NSGA-III, adaptive EF1-NSGA-III (A-EF1-NSGA-III), and efficient adaptive EF1-NSGA-III (A$^2$-EF1-NSGA-III). They support up to 10 objective functions, manage real, integer, and binary decision variables, and many constraints. The above algorithms outperform other works in terms of the Inverted Generational Distance (IGD) metric. The third contribution is the implementation of real-time emulation methodologies for C-RANs using a frequency domain representation in OAI. It improves the average computation time 10-fold compared to the time domain without using Radio Frequency hardware and avoids their uncertainties. The fourth one is the implementation of the Coordination Scheduling (CS) technique as a proof-of-concept to validate the advantages of frequency domain methodologies and to allocate resource blocks dynamically among RRUs. Finally, a many-objective optimization problem is defined and solved with evolutionary algorithms where diversity is managed based on crowded-distance and reference points to reduce the power consumption for C-RANs. The solutions obtained are considered to control the scheduling task at the Radio Cloud Center (RCC) and to switch RRUs.Este disertación aborda el estudio del problema de optimización de varios objetivos (MaOP) para reducir la interferencia entre células y el consumo de energía para redes de acceso de radio en tiempo real, colaborativas, en la nube y limpias (C-RAN). Utiliza el esquema de conmutacion de celdas (CSO) para apagar / encender unidades de radio remotas (RRU) y la técnica de programación coordinada (CS) para asignar bloques de recursos de manera inteligente. El algoritmo EF1-NSGA-III (es una variación del algoritmo NSGA-III que usa el primer frente de pareto para encontrar puntos extremos en el procedimiento de normalización extendido en esta tesis) se utiliza para resolver un problema de optimización de varios objetivos (MaOP) propuesto. Se compone de cuatro funciones objetivos, cuatro restricciones y dos variables de decisión. Sin embargo, el problema anterior se redefine para tener tres funciones objetivas para ver la comparación de rendimiento entre los algoritmos NSGA-II y EF1-NSGA-III. La plataforma OpenAirInterface (OAI) se utiliza para evaluar y validar el rendimiento de un sistema de cobertura en interiores porque la mayoría del equipos móviles de las redes celulares de próxima generación estarán en un entorno interior. Ella constituye la plataforma de código abierto 5G de más rápido crecimiento que implementa la tecnología 3GPP en computadoras de uso general, puertos de transporte Ethernet rápidos y hardware de radio definido por software comercial (COTS). Este documento se compone de cinco contribuciones. La primera es una estudio sobre banco de pruebas, emuladores y simuladores para redes celulares 4G / 5G. El segundo es la extensión del código NSGA-II de KanGAL para implementar EF1-NSGA-III, EF1-NSGA-III adaptativo (A-EF1-NSGA-III) y EF1-NSGA-III adaptativo eficiente (A $^ 2$ -EF1-NSGA-III). Admiten hasta 10 funciones objetivas, gestionan variables de decisión reales, enteras y binarias, y muchas restricciones. Los algoritmos anteriores superan a otros trabajos en términos de la métrica de distancia generacional invertida (IGD). La tercera contribución es la implementación de metodologías de emulación en tiempo real para C-RAN utilizando una representación de dominio de frecuencia en OAI. Mejora el tiempo de cálculo promedio 10 veces en comparación con el dominio del tiempo sin usar hardware de radiofrecuencia y evita sus incertidumbres. El cuarto es la implementación de la técnica de Programación de Coordinación (CS) como prueba de concepto para validar las ventajas de las metodologías de dominio de frecuencia y asignar bloques de recursos dinámicamente entre las RRU. Finalmente, un problema de optimización de muchos objetivos se define y resuelve con algoritmos evolutivos en los que la diversidad se gestiona en función de la distancia de crouding y los puntos de referencia para reducir el consumo de energía de las C-RAN. Las soluciones obtenidas controlan la tarea de programación en Radio Cloud Center (RCC) y conmutan las RRU.Proyecto personal: Redes celulares de próxima generaciónDoctorad

Parallel and Distributed Computing

The 14 chapters presented in this book cover a wide variety of representative works ranging from hardware design to application development. Particularly, the topics that are addressed are programmable and reconfigurable devices and systems, dependability of GPUs (General Purpose Units), network topologies, cache coherence protocols, resource allocation, scheduling algorithms, peertopeer networks, largescale network simulation, and parallel routines and algorithms. In this way, the articles included in this book constitute an excellent reference for engineers and researchers who have particular interests in each of these topics in parallel and distributed computing

DRIVER Technology Watch Report

This report is part of the Discovery Workpackage (WP4) and is the third report out of four deliverables. The objective of this report is to give an overview of the latest technical developments in the world of digital repositories, digital libraries and beyond, in order to serve as theoretical and practical input for the technical DRIVER developments, especially those focused on enhanced publications. This report consists of two main parts, one part focuses on interoperability standards for enhanced publications, the other part consists of three subchapters, which give a landscape picture of current and surfacing technologies and communities crucial to DRIVER. These three subchapters contain the GRID, CRIS and LTP communities and technologies. Every chapter contains a theoretical explanation, followed by case studies and the outcomes and opportunities for DRIVER in this field