Model Based Development of Quality-Aware Software Services

Modelling languages and development frameworks give support for functional and structural description of software architectures. But quality-aware applications require languages which allow expressing QoS as a first-class concept during architecture design and service composition, and to extend existing tools and infrastructures adding support for modelling, evaluating, managing and monitoring QoS aspects. In addition to its functional behaviour and internal structure, the developer of each service must consider the fulfilment of its quality requirements. If the service is flexible, the output quality depends both on input quality and available resources (e.g., amounts of CPU execution time and memory). From the software engineering point of view, modelling of quality-aware requirements and architectures require modelling support for the description of quality concepts, support for the analysis of quality properties (e.g. model checking and consistencies of quality constraints, assembly of quality), tool support for the transition from quality requirements to quality-aware architectures, and from quality-aware architecture to service run-time infrastructures. Quality management in run-time service infrastructures must give support for handling quality concepts dynamically. QoS-aware modeling frameworks and QoS-aware runtime management infrastructures require a common evolution to get their integration

Infrastructural Speculations: Tactics for Designing and Interrogating Lifeworlds

This paper introduces “infrastructural speculations,” an orientation toward speculative design that considers the complex and long-lived relationships of technologies with broader systems, beyond moments of immediate invention and design. As modes of speculation are increasingly used to interrogate questions of broad societal concern, it is pertinent to develop an orientation that foregrounds the “lifeworld” of artifacts—the social, perceptual, and political environment in which they exist. While speculative designs often imply a lifeworld, infrastructural speculations place lifeworlds at the center of design concern, calling attention to the cultural, regulatory, environmental, and repair conditions that enable and surround particular future visions. By articulating connections and affinities between speculative design and infrastructure studies research, we contribute a set of design tactics for producing infrastructural speculations. These tactics help design researchers interrogate the complex and ongoing entanglements among technologies, institutions, practices, and systems of power when gauging the stakes of alternate lifeworlds

Forecasting the demand for privatized transport - What economic regulators should know, and why

Forecasting has long been a challenge, and will remain so for the foreseeable future. But the analytical instruments and data processing capabilities available through the latest technology, and software, should allow much better forecasting than transport ministries, or regulatory agencies typically observe. Privatization brings new needs for demand forecasting. More attention is paid to risk under privatization, than when investments are publicly financed. And regulators must be able to judge traffic studies done by operators, and to learn what strategic behavior influenced these studies. Many governments, and regulators avoid good demand, modeling out of lack of conviction that theory, and models can do better than the"old hands"of the sector. This is dangerous when privatization changes the nature of business. For projects amounting to investments of $100-200 million, a cost of$ 100,000-200,000 is not a reason to reject a reasonable modeling effort. And some private forecasting firms are willing to sell guarantees, or insurance with their forecasts, to cover significant gaps between forecasts, and reality.Markets and Market Access,Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Decentralization,Banks&Banking Reform,Markets and Market Access,Economic Theory&Research,Banks&Banking Reform,Access to Markets,Environmental Economics&Policies

Farming Differentiation in the Rural-urban Interface of the Middle Mountains, Nepal: Application of Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP)Modeling

This article investigates the dominant factors of farming differentiation in the rural-urban interface of the densely populated Kathmandu Valley, using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) modeling. The rural-urban interface in the Kathmandu Valley is an important vegetable production pocket which supplies a large amount of the vegetables in the city core. While subsistence farming in the rural area is characterized by a system which integrates livestock and forestry with agriculture, the intensification in the urban fringe is characterized by triple crop rotations and market-oriented intensive vegetable production. Seven factors which were supposed to cause farming variation in the interface were incorporated in the AHP framework and then subjected to the farmers’ judgment in distinctly delineated three farming zones. These factors played crucial yet differing roles in different farming zones. Inaccessibility and use of local resources; higher yield and accessibility and agro-ecological consideration and quality production are the key impacting factors of subsistence, commercial inorganic and smallholder organic farming respectively. The quantification of such factors of farming differentiation through AHP is an important piece of information that will contribute in modeling farming in the rural-urban interface of developing countries which are characterized by a high diversity of farming practices and are undergoing a rapid change in the land use pattern

Acceptability factors to transport policy changes

The authors have set out an analytical framework of the acceptability of pricing changes in the transport sector. This framework combines the dimensions of economic efficiency (to manage the demand efficiently), territorial equity (guarantee of accessibility), horizontal equity (user-pays principle), and vertical equity (welfare of most underprivileged). The application of this framework was validated on some urban or suburban road toll case studies. The analysis showed that these dimensions of efficiency and equity generally reinforce themselves in their negative or positive aspects. This analysis also showed that these various dimensions of equity cannot be ignored on pain of failure. Moreover the ways according to which the acceptability of urban road user charging could be improved, if not guaranteed, were identified.Transport ; policy ; road user ; road pricing ; equity ; acceptability ; economic efficiency

How to make public works work : a review of the experiences

This paper reviews the experience with public works programs (PWPs) in several countries over the past 20 years to delineate use patterns and to determine the factors contributing to its use as a successful safety net program. The analysis shows that PWP have been used extensively in response to either a one-time large covariate shock, or repeated shocks. In low income countries, PWPs also have an antipoverty or poverty reduction objective. Our review shows that well designed and implemented PWPs can help mitigating income shocks; the program can also be used as an effective anti-poverty instrument. The paper examines the factors behind the observed wide variation in the effectiveness of the program in accomplishing its goals and identifies prerequisites for making PWPs successful safety net interventions capable of protecting the poor from income shocks, thus reducing both temporal and seasonal poverty, while creating useful public goods or services for the communities. For public works programs to be successful, it is important firstly to: a) have clear objectives; b) select projects that can create valuable public goods; and c) ensure predictable funding. Secondly, the success of the program depends critically on careful design and incorporation of all the key design features. Finally, a credible monitoring and evaluation system designed right upfront, prior to launching of theprogram can allow for mid course corrections and to respond to sudden changes which can inhibit effective implementation. The potential of the PWP program is enormous both in countries that have experiences with these programs and especially in countries that never used them. However, more research is needed investigation is needed to better understand the impact of PWPs, such as second round effects from the created assets, the impacts on the labor market, and their cost-effectiveness after factoring in both the immediate and second round benefits from its program.Safety Nets and Transfers,Rural Poverty Reduction,Labor Markets,Labor Policies,Public Sector Economics

The innovation system vs. cluster process: common contributive elements towards regional development

Recent approaches to the study of innovations enhance some similar aspects of the innovation process in knowledge-based economies: (i) the systemic and interrelated nature of innovation and (ii) its geographic and inter-economic activities density of networking. One perspective is linked to the innovation systems approach at the national, regional and local level. What we know so far is that the most specialized forms of knowledge are becoming a short lived resource, in face of the (increasingly) fast changes that are occurring in the global economy; it’s the ability to learn permanently and to adapt to this fast changing scenario that determines the innovative performance of firms, regions and countries. Another approach is to be found in the research on cluster development, where proximity and interrelated technical/technological linkage are the main features to take under consideration. Although these two approaches operate at slightly different spatial scale of analysis, they both allow the identification of a set of key factors that contribute to understand the way in which institutions and actors, considering the innovation system or the cluster process, participate in the innovation atmosphere and in the economic growth. Nevertheless, both approaches show the same limitation: they tend to focalise into the descriptive and analytical level, disregarding the explanatory level. Local and regional authorities are, mainly, interested in the process of cluster intensification in the local and regional economies context. This feature stress out one other controversy level: are the “hard” location factors (the concrete tangible location factors) more important than the “soft” location factors (qualitative, intangible factors) or vice-versa? This paper aims to explore the current knowledge about this process and to open some fields of future research.

Decision support model for the selection of asphalt wearing courses in highly trafficked roads

The suitable choice of the materials forming the wearing course of highly trafficked roads is a delicate task because of their direct interaction with vehicles. Furthermore, modern roads must be planned according to sustainable development goals, which is complex because some of these might be in conflict. Under this premise, this paper develops a multi-criteria decision support model based on the analytic hierarchy process and the technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution to facilitate the selection of wearing courses in European countries. Variables were modelled using either fuzzy logic or Monte Carlo methods, depending on their nature. The views of a panel of experts on the problem were collected and processed using the generalized reduced gradient algorithm and a distance-based aggregation approach. The results showed a clear preponderance by stone mastic asphalt over the remaining alternatives in different scenarios evaluated through sensitivity analysis. The research leading to these results was framed in the European FP7 Project DURABROADS (No. 605404).The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013) under Grant Agreement No. 605404

A taxonomy of multi-industry labour force skills

This paper proposes an empirical study of the skill repertoires of 290 sectors in the United States over the period 2002–2011. We use information on employment structures and job content of occupations to flesh out structural characteristics of industry-specific know-how. The exercise of mapping the skills structures embedded in the workforce yields a taxonomy that discloses novel nuances on the organization of industry. In so doing we also take an initial step towards the integration of labour and employment in the area of innovation studies