Towards Grid Interoperability

The Grid paradigm promises to provide global access to computing resources, data storage and experimental instruments. It also provides an elegant solution to many resource administration and provisioning problems while offering a platform for collaboration and resource sharing. Although substantial progress has been made towards these goals, nevertheless there is still a lot of work to be done until the Grid can deliver its promises. One of the central issues is the development of standards and Grid interoperability. Job execution is one of the key capabilities in all Grid environments. This is a well understood, mature area with standards and implementations. This paper describes some proof of concept experiments demonstrating the interoperability between various Grid environments

Technology without borders: case studies of successful technology transfer

Technology Without Borders presents case studies of successful transfer of climate-friendly technology and practices. It explores the causes for success and draws the lessons learned. Key messages are presented for the fight against climate destabilisation. The terms “climate-friendly technology” and “climate technology” used here refer to technologies, practices or techniques, which reduce greenhouse-gas emissions or assist countries in adapting to climate change

Barriers and Opportunities for Residential Solar PV and Storage Markets - A Western Australian Case Study

Residents and businesses around the world are increasingly installing solar photovoltaic (PV) panels and battery storage systems, satisfying not just their interest in clean energy, but also taking advantage of reduced technology costs and mitigating against future electricity price rises. Solar PV panels coupled with storage systems present an opportunity to move towards a resilient, affordable, flexible and secure electricity network. Western Australia provides a unique set of conditions (isolated network, high solar radiation, and rising electricity prices), which has contributed to the rapid uptake of solar PV’s in the state. Yet, a number of issues are still obstructing the transition to renewables. Using Western Australia as a case study, this paper investigates the barriers inhibiting the network transformation and explores the role that solar PV and storage can play as a disruptive threat to the incumbent, centralised service model of electricity utilities

Human Resource Management in the Public Sector: Getting the Mix Right.

For much of the 20th century, the main governance structure and method of service delivery of the public sector in western democracies was the bureaucracy. In the late 20th century however, public choice theorists proposed that political self-interest, not public concern for providing a range of community services to citizens, caused significant growth in the size of government. Further, it was argued this growth was accompanied by inefficiencies aggravated by the absence of market competition. The response was the implementation of wide scale changes that have been variously described and grouped under New Public Management (NPM). The main thrust of NPM was that the public sector needed to be more market driven and therefore more like its private sector counterparts

Power and politics in requirements engineering: embracing the dark side?

This vision paper considers the role of power and politics in requirements engineering (RE). It offers a working definition of both terms and reviews the existing literature both in RE and related disciplines. It argues that, given the increased complexity, uncertainty and organisational embeddedness faced by RE in practice, power and politics have become increasingly relevant factors that have not been adequately considered. Building upon recent relevant research, a research agenda is proposed that presents a methodological framework which examines power and politics through the structure of power relations and the process of decision-making. This framework will require validation through empirical research as a first step to developing models of power and politics that could be of practical use for RE. Although the potential problems faced by the study of power and politics in an RE context are acknowledged, it is argued that the potential benefits could be significant

Leveraging the Grid to Provide a Global Platform for Ubiquitous Computing Research

The requirement for distributed systems support for Ubicomp has led to the development of numerous platforms, each addressing a subset of the overall requirements of ubiquitous systems. In contrast, many other scientific disciplines have embraced the vision of a global distributed computing platform, i.e. the Grid. We believe that the Grid has the potential to evolve into an ideal platform for building ubiquitous computing applications. In this paper we explore in detail the areas of synergy between Grid computing and ubiquitous computing and highlight a series of research challenges in this space

Next Generation Cloud Computing: New Trends and Research Directions

The landscape of cloud computing has significantly changed over the last decade. Not only have more providers and service offerings crowded the space, but also cloud infrastructure that was traditionally limited to single provider data centers is now evolving. In this paper, we firstly discuss the changing cloud infrastructure and consider the use of infrastructure from multiple providers and the benefit of decentralising computing away from data centers. These trends have resulted in the need for a variety of new computing architectures that will be offered by future cloud infrastructure. These architectures are anticipated to impact areas, such as connecting people and devices, data-intensive computing, the service space and self-learning systems. Finally, we lay out a roadmap of challenges that will need to be addressed for realising the potential of next generation cloud systems.Comment: Accepted to Future Generation Computer Systems, 07 September 201

Technology Opportunities in Nordic Energy System Transitions (TOP-NEST): Final report

This report summarizes the outcomes of the 4-year research project “Technology Opportunities in Nordic Energy System Transitions (TOP-NEST). The project was funded by Nordic Energy Research, under the Sustainable Energy Programme 2050. We thank Nordic Energy Research for the funding. The project partners were NIFU Nordic Institute for Studies in Innovation, Research and Education (project leader), CIRCLE Centre for Innovation, Research and Competence in the Learning Economy and the Faculty of Engineering at Lund University, The Technical University of Denmark, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, and the Institute of Energy Systems and Environment at Riga Technical University in Latvia