48,635 research outputs found

    Information technology in landscape architecture

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    This paper discusses the impact of information technology on the tools, methods, and professional role of the landscape architect. This profession is presently expanding into new fields, resulting in an increased specialization. The new tools made available through information technology adds to the difficulties ā€“ and possibilities ā€“ facing the individual landscape architect. The landscape architect is active in a system aimed at information processing. The study starts off in this system, focusing on the following elements: information, technology, data structure, role, communication, and result. As a foundation for the discussion, the general history of the computer is described. With the start in mainframe computing in the 1960s, the computer today provides personal computing power, as well as access to a worldwide network for communication and information retrieval. The historical description also covers the tools of the landscape architect ā€“ mainly maps, drawings, and images. The emphasis lies on presentation techniques, showing their evolution from the Egyptian multi-view tradition to the Renaissance single-point perspective, still dominating today. However, computer use has inspired a new form of presentation technique with several views and projections, thereby closing the circle. One of the problems facing the digital landscape architect is access to data and information. The processing itself is also complicated by the fact that many architectural problems fall outside the range of the software, especially in conceptual design. Knowledge engineering and expert systems are only giving rudimentary support to the process. Still, the computer is used in many fields of the profession, to a rapidly increasing extent. Computer aided drafting is today standard software in landscape architectural practices. Two areas of special interest in the future are geographic information systems, and three dimensional modeling in design and presentation as well as in construction. Data structure is of utmost importance for the further development of computer tools. As communication and digital information retrieval increases, standards must be agreed upon. This is a complex and slow process. Digital product modeling will be equally slow in acceptance. The range of software today covers much of the information processing that takes place in planning and design. Up till today, they have had its largest impact on communication and presentation. As a design tool, the computer has yet to prove its use to most landscape architects. Still, it use can in some respects strengthen the professional role, and give opportunities to new fields of expertise. Acquiring the ability to evaluate computer support, and to use it in a professional situation, is largely up to the individual. The parties surrounding the landscape architect provide the framework in terms of possibilities and expectations. Customers demands for the use of digital methods are rising. All these changes show the importance of IT strategies. First of all, the organizations employing the landcape architects need dynamic and up-to-date documents. However, since the choices of methods and tools have a large bearing on how individuals can and will function in planning and design systems, the choices must in the end be made individually. If the decisions are based on knowledge and insight, they can increase the possibilities for the profession to adapt to a changing society, and enhance its role as an active and creative part of this development

    Distribution pattern-driven development of service architectures

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    Distributed systems are being constructed by composing a number of discrete components. This practice is particularly prevalent within the Web service domain in the form of service process orchestration and choreography. Often, enterprise systems are built from many existing discrete applications such as legacy applications exposed using Web service interfaces. There are a number of architectural configurations or distribution patterns, which express how a composed system is to be deployed in a distributed environment. However, the amount of code required to realise these distribution patterns is considerable. In this paper, we propose a distribution pattern-driven approach to service composition and architecting. We develop, based on a catalog of patterns, a UML-compliant framework, which takes existing Web service interfaces as its input and generates executable Web service compositions based on a distribution pattern chosen by the software architect

    Framework for software architecture visualization assessment.

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    In order to assess software architecture visualisation strategies, we qualitatively characterize then construct an assessment framework with 7 key areas and 31 features. The framework is used for evaluation and comparison of various strategies from multiple stakeholder perspectives. Six existing software architecture visualisation tools and a seventh research tool were evaluated. All tools exhibited shortcomings when evaluated in the framework

    Towards a pivotal-based approach for business process alignment.

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    This article focuses on business process engineering, especially on alignment between business analysis and implementation. Through a business process management approach, different transformations interfere with process models in order to make them executable. To keep the consistency of process model from business model to IT model, we propose a pivotal metamodel-centric methodology. It aims at keeping or giving all requisite structural and semantic data needed to perform such transformations without loss of information. Through this we can ensure the alignment between business and IT. This article describes the concept of pivotal metamodel and proposes a methodology using such an approach. In addition, we present an example and the resulting benefits

    Discovering Strategies to Improve Business Value in Outsourcing Projects

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    This paper deals with the problem of leveraging client business value in a software development outsourcing relationship. We have observed software development projects from two different Dutch IT outsourcing companies and studied the approach they apply in their (successful) projects. The results show that they create a role dedicated to facilitate communication. This arrangement has the potential to put team members in a better position to communicate, facilitating the transfer of information supporting the rationale behind design decisions. Teams are thus better equipped to anticipate change and to react faster in solving everyday problems. This paper describes our observations and the practical implications we expect, such as the improvement of re-buy intention on the client's side

    Tracking decision-making during architectural design

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    There is a powerful cocktail of circumstances governing the way decisions are made during the architectural design process of a building project. There is considerable potential for misunderstandings, inappropriate changes, change which give rise to unforeseen difficulties, decisions which are not notified to all interested parties, and many other similar problems. The paper presents research conducted within the frame of the EPSRC funded ADS project aiming at addressing the problems linked with the evolution and changing environment of project information to support better decision-making. The paper presents the conceptual framework as well as the software environment that has been developed to support decision-making during building projects, and reports on work carried out on the application of the approach to the architectural design stage. This decision-tracking environment has been evaluated and validated by professionals and practitioners from industry using several instruments as described in the paper
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