An evaluation tool for design quality: PFI sheltered housing

The complex procurement process entailed by the private finance initiative (PFI) means that clients need new capacities to manage their relationships with bidders and to assess project proposals if the desired level of design quality is to be achieved. To assist local authorities in their client role, a new Architectural Design Quality Evaluation Tool was developed. The aim was to improve the quality of design in residential sheltered housing, procured through the PFI. The tool was developed for and applied to a programme that will see the replacement of a local authority's entire sheltered housing stock. The tool has two functions: (1) to inform the client's assessment process and assist with the selection of the preferred bidding consortium through a series of stages in the PFI process; and (2) to improve the quality of all the submitted designs through an iterative process. Although several existing mechanisms are available for evaluating the performance attributes of buildings, few also tackle the less tangible amenity attributes, which are vital to the feeling of home. The new tool emphasizes the amenity attributes without neglecting performance

D3.2 Cost Concept Model and Gateway Specification

This document introduces a Framework supporting the implementation of a cost concept model against which current and future cost models for curating digital assets can be benchmarked. The value built into this cost concept model leverages the comprehensive engagement by the 4C project with various user communities and builds upon our understanding of the requirements, drivers, obstacles and objectives that various stakeholder groups have relating to digital curation. Ultimately, this concept model should provide a critical input to the development and refinement of cost models as well as helping to ensure that the curation and preservation solutions and services that will inevitably arise from the commercial sector as ‘supply’ respond to a much better understood ‘demand’ for cost-effective and relevant tools. To meet acknowledged gaps in current provision, a nested model of curation which addresses both costs and benefits is provided. The goal of this task was not to create a single, functionally implementable cost modelling application; but rather to design a model based on common concepts and to develop a generic gateway specification that can be used by future model developers, service and solution providers, and by researchers in follow-up research and development projects.<p></p> The Framework includes:<p></p> • A Cost Concept Model—which defines the core concepts that should be included in curation costs models;<p></p> • An Implementation Guide—for the cost concept model that provides guidance and proposes questions that should be considered when developing new cost models and refining existing cost models;<p></p> • A Gateway Specification Template—which provides standard metadata for each of the core cost concepts and is intended for use by future model developers, model users, and service and solution providers to promote interoperability;<p></p> • A Nested Model for Digital Curation—that visualises the core concepts, demonstrates how they interact and places them into context visually by linking them to A Cost and Benefit Model for Curation.<p></p> This Framework provides guidance for data collection and associated calculations in an operational context but will also provide a critical foundation for more strategic thinking around curation such as the Economic Sustainability Reference Model (ESRM).<p></p> Where appropriate, definitions of terms are provided, recommendations are made, and examples from existing models are used to illustrate the principles of the framework

Trusted Computing and Secure Virtualization in Cloud Computing

Large-scale deployment and use of cloud computing in industry is accompanied and in the same time hampered by concerns regarding protection of data handled by cloud computing providers. One of the consequences of moving data processing and storage off company premises is that organizations have less control over their infrastructure. As a result, cloud service (CS) clients must trust that the CS provider is able to protect their data and infrastructure from both external and internal attacks. Currently however, such trust can only rely on organizational processes declared by the CS provider and can not be remotely verified and validated by an external party. Enabling the CS client to verify the integrity of the host where the virtual machine instance will run, as well as to ensure that the virtual machine image has not been tampered with, are some steps towards building trust in the CS provider. Having the tools to perform such verifications prior to the launch of the VM instance allows the CS clients to decide in runtime whether certain data should be stored- or calculations should be made on the VM instance offered by the CS provider. This thesis combines three components -- trusted computing, virtualization technology and cloud computing platforms -- to address issues of trust and security in public cloud computing environments. Of the three components, virtualization technology has had the longest evolution and is a cornerstone for the realization of cloud computing. Trusted computing is a recent industry initiative that aims to implement the root of trust in a hardware component, the trusted platform module. The initiative has been formalized in a set of specifications and is currently at version 1.2. Cloud computing platforms pool virtualized computing, storage and network resources in order to serve a large number of customers customers that use a multi-tenant multiplexing model to offer on-demand self-service over broad network. Open source cloud computing platforms are, similar to trusted computing, a fairly recent technology in active development. The issue of trust in public cloud environments is addressed by examining the state of the art within cloud computing security and subsequently addressing the issues of establishing trust in the launch of a generic virtual machine in a public cloud environment. As a result, the thesis proposes a trusted launch protocol that allows CS clients to verify and ensure the integrity of the VM instance at launch time, as well as the integrity of the host where the VM instance is launched. The protocol relies on the use of Trusted Platform Module (TPM) for key generation and data protection. The TPM also plays an essential part in the integrity attestation of the VM instance host. Along with a theoretical, platform-agnostic protocol, the thesis also describes a detailed implementation design of the protocol using the OpenStack cloud computing platform. In order the verify the implementability of the proposed protocol, a prototype implementation has built using a distributed deployment of OpenStack. While the protocol covers only the trusted launch procedure using generic virtual machine images, it presents a step aimed to contribute towards the creation of a secure and trusted public cloud computing environment

The OMII Software Distribution

This paper describes the work carried out at the Open Middleware Infrastructure Institute (OMII) and the key elements of the OMII software distribution that have been developed in collaboration with members of the Managed Programme Initiative. The main objective of the OMII is to preserve and consolidate the achievements of the UK e-Science Programme by collecting, maintaining and improving the software modules that form the key components of a generic Grid middleware. Recently, the activity at Southampton has been extended beyond 2009 through a new project, OMII-UK, that forms a partnership that now includes the OGSA-DAI activities at Edinburgh and the myGrid project at Manchester