Turning Emergency Plans into Executable Artifacts

ISBN: 978-0-692-21194-6 Available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) LicenseInternational audienceOn the way to the improvement of Emergency Plans, we show how a structured specification of the response procedures allows transforming static plans into dynamic, executable entities that can drive the way different actors participate in crisis responses. Additionally, the execution of plans requires the definition of information access mechanisms allowing execution engines to provide an actor with all the information resources he or she needs to accomplish a response task. We describe work in progress to improve the SAGA's Plan definition Module and Plan Execution Engine to support information-rich plan execution

From planning to resilience: The role (and value) of the emergency plan

This is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Technological Forecasting & Social Change. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Technological Forecasting & Social Change 121 (2017) 17–30. DOI 10.1016/j.techfore.2016.12.004.The study of resilience in the emergency management field is nowadays in effervescence. Traditionally, the robustness of organizations against disasters is based on several pillars: equipment, staff training, organization and, especially, planning. All of these dimensions are aimed at increasing the preparedness and recovery of organizations against disasters. While the approaches to resilience in emergency management focus on the processes that implement these dimensions, we approach resilience-building processes from a different perspective: instead of focusing on planning-related activities, we pay attention to the principal outcome of such activities, namely emergency plan. We show how the management of the emergency plan can contribute to reinforcing an organization's resilience. First, we identify the major resilience-related emergency plan components and suggest improved emergency plans that consider the characteristics that contribute to resilience. Secondly, we show how to reinforce the resilience of the organizations that have emergency plans. Our study is based on QuEP, a quality-based framework for the assessment and improvement of emergency plan management within organizations. We have extended and integrated the resilience characteristics as practices of the QuEP's maturity level hierarchy to make up QuEP + R. We describe its resilience model and give details of a supporting tool, currently under development. © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.The work of M. C. Penades and J. H. Canos& was partially funded by MINECO under grant CALPE (TIN2015-68608-R) and A.G. NCifiez received support from SENESCYT scholarship program of the Republic of Ecuador.Penadés Gramage, MC.; Núñez Ávila, AG.; Canos Cerda, JH. (2016). From planning to resilience: The role (and value) of the emergency plan. Technological Forecasting and Social Change. 121(3):17-30. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2016.12.004S1730121

Introducing Complex Sociotechnical Systems to First-and Second-Year Students

Retention of undergraduate engineering students remains a key challenge faced across the globe; in particular, the first two years of the required curriculum is often cited as a significant hurdle. Many students are attracted to engineering in order to solve important real-world problems. However, in the first two years, the majority of students find themselves in classes focused on the fundamentals of math and science, with little or no apparent connection to the real-world issues they care deeply about. Furthermore, most students traditionally develop a deep understanding in a specific engineering discipline, with limited opportunity to consider or analyze complex, sociotechnical systems (e.g. energy systems, transportation networks, healthcare) – systems that are the focus of critical engineering challenges. Although the subject of large-scale, sociotechnical systems has been successfully integrated into the realm of graduate education, it has seen limited attention in undergraduate studies where it has the potential to inspire and help retain the next generation of engineers. This paper describes the development and implementation of a novel course, intended for freshmen and sophomores, that has been designed to address some of the needs of a new generation of students who are passionate and more engaged than ever before in understanding and impacting contemporary problems. The new course centers around the theme of Critical Contemporary Issues (CCI) – important and difficult problems pertinent to our present times on topics of sustainability, mobility, energy and the environment, healthcare, communication, the internet etc. In this course, we weave introductory instruction in system dynamics, networks and uncertainty with teams working on different semester-long projects. Through this approach, we enable students to engage in and understand the issues at play in a problem of their interest, appreciate the scope of the sociotechnical complexities in CCIs, and gain an introduction to analytical tools that can help in addressing some of these issues. This paper discusses the overall philosophy and motivation for establishing the course, the design of the curriculum, and the approach, execution, and integration of team-based projects

Early aspects: aspect-oriented requirements engineering and architecture design

This paper reports on the third Early Aspects: Aspect-Oriented Requirements Engineering and Architecture Design Workshop, which has been held in Lancaster, UK, on March 21, 2004. The workshop included a presentation session and working sessions in which the particular topics on early aspects were discussed. The primary goal of the workshop was to focus on challenges to defining methodical software development processes for aspects from early on in the software life cycle and explore the potential of proposed methods and techniques to scale up to industrial applications

Designing Digital Forensics Challenges for Multinational Cyber Defense Exercises

Töös püütakse kujundada ja hinnata digitaalse kohtuekspertiisi väljakutset, mida kasutada rahvusvahelisel küberkaitse õppusel. Eesmärk on fokusseerida põhioskustele, mida üks riiklik organisatsioon oma digitaalse kohtuekspertiisi ekspertidelt vajab ja disainida ning integreerida tehnilisi ülesandeid, mis adekvaatselt testivad neid oskusi suuremal küberkaitse õppusel. See töö kasutab NATO Locked Shields küberkaitse õppust test-näitena, mille jaoks väitekirja autor liitus digitaalse kohtuekspertiisi disainimeeskonnaga, NATO Cyber Defense Centre of Excellence juures, kui nad kavandasid ja rakendasid kolme-päevast digitaalse kohtuekspertiisi väljakutset. See lõputöö kehtestab rea tehnilisi ja protseduurilisi oskuseid, mida riiklikud organisatsioonid vajavad oma ekspertidelt, määrab viisid, kuidas testida neid oskusi ja arendab stsenaariumipõhist digitaalse kohtuekspertiisi väljakutset. Kasutades vahetult saadud tähelepanekuid, osaleja tagasisidet ja väljakutse tulemusi, et hinnata väljakutse efektiivsust, lõputöös leitakse, et stsenaarium testis piisavalt enamus oskusi õigel raskustasemel ja vajab parendamist ajastuses ning aruandlusstandardites. Lõpetuseks uuritakse erinevaid viise, kuidas parendada valitud meetodeid ja ülesandeid tuleviku õppusteks.This thesis seeks to design and evaluate a digital forensics challenge for inclusion in a multinational cyber defense exercise. The intent is to narrow down the key skills a state-based organization requires of its digital forensics experts and design and integrate technical tasks that adequately test these skills into a larger cyber defense exercise. It uses the NATO Locked Shields cyber defense exercise as a test case, for which the thesis author joined the digital forensics design team at the NATO Cyber Defense Centre of Excellence in designing and implementing a three day digital forensics challenge. This thesis establishes a series of technical and procedural skills state-based organizations require of their experts, determines ways to test these skills, and develops a scenario-based digital forensics challenge. Using first hand observations, participant feedback, and challenge scores to evaluate the effectiveness of the challenge, it finds that the scenario adequately tested a majority of the skills at the appropriate difficulty level and needs improvement in timing and reporting standards. Finally, it explores ways to improve upon the selected methods and tasks for future exercises

-ilities Tradespace and Affordability Project – Phase 3

One of the key elements of the SERC’s research strategy is transforming the practice of systems engineering and associated management practices – “SE and Management Transformation (SEMT).” The Grand Challenge goal for SEMT is to transform the DoD community’s current systems engineering and management methods, processes, and tools (MPTs) and practices away from sequential, single stovepipe system, hardware-first, document-driven, point- solution, acquisition-oriented approaches; and toward concurrent, portfolio and enterprise- oriented, hardware-software-human engineered, model-driven, set-based, full life cycle approaches.This material is based upon work supported, in whole or in part, by the U.S. Department of Defense through the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (ASD(R&E)) under Contract H98230-08- D-0171 (Task Order 0031, RT 046).This material is based upon work supported, in whole or in part, by the U.S. Department of Defense through the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (ASD(R&E)) under Contract H98230-08- D-0171 (Task Order 0031, RT 046)

The FAIR Cookbook - the essential resource for and by FAIR doers

The notion that data should be Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable, according to the FAIR Principles, has become a global norm for good data stewardship and a prerequisite for reproducibility. Nowadays, FAIR guides data policy actions and professional practices in the public and private sectors. Despite such global endorsements, however, the FAIR Principles are aspirational, remaining elusive at best, and intimidating at worst. To address the lack of practical guidance, and help with capability gaps, we developed the FAIR Cookbook, an open, online resource of hands-on recipes for “FAIR doers” in the Life Sciences. Created by researchers and data managers professionals in academia, (bio)pharmaceutical companies and information service industries, the FAIR Cookbook covers the key steps in a FAIRification journey, the levels and indicators of FAIRness, the maturity model, the technologies, the tools and the standards available, as well as the skills required, and the challenges to achieve and improve data FAIRness. Part of the ELIXIR ecosystem, and recommended by funders, the FAIR Cookbook is open to contributions of new recipes.We thank all book dash participants and recipe authors, as well as the FAIRplus fellows, all partners, and the members of the FAIRplus Scientific Advisory Board, and the management team. In particular we acknowledge a number of colleagues for their role in the FAIRplus project, in particular: Ebitsam Alharbi (0000-0002-3887-3857), Oya Deniz Beyan (0000-0001-7611-3501), Ola Engkvist (0000-0003-4970-6461), Laura Furlong (0000-0002-9383-528X), Carole Goble (0000-0003-1219-2137), Mark Ibberson (0000-0003-3152-5670), Manfred Kohler, Nick Lynch (0000-0002-8997-5298), Scott Lusher (0000-0003-2401-4223), Jean-Marc Neefs, George Papadotas, Manuela Pruess (0000-0002-6857-5543), Ratnesh Sahay, Rudi Verbeeck (0000-0001-5445-6095), Bryn Williams-Jones, and Gesa Witt (0000-0003-2344-706X). This work and the authors were primarily funded by FAIRplus (IMI 802750). PRS and SAS also acknowledge contributions from the following grants (the FAIR Cookbook is also embedded in or connected to): ELIXIR Interoperability Platform, EOSC-Life (H2020-EU 824087), FAIRsharing (Wellcome 212930/Z/18/Z), NIH CFDE Coordinating Center (NIH Common Fund OT3OD025459-01), Precision Toxicology (H2020-EU 965406), UKRI DASH grant (MR/V038966/1), BY-COVID (Horizon-EU 101046203), AgroServ (Horizon-EU 101058020).Peer Reviewed"Article signat per 33 autors/es: Philippe Rocca-Serra, Wei Gu, Vassilios Ioannidis, Tooba Abbassi-Daloii, Salvador Capella-Gutierrez, Ishwar Chandramouliswaran, Andrea Splendiani, Tony Burdett, Robert T. Giessmann, David Henderson, Dominique Batista, Ibrahim Emam, Yojana Gadiya, Lucas Giovanni, Egon Willighagen, Chris Evelo, Alasdair J. G. Gray, Philip Gribbon, Nick Juty, Danielle Welter, Karsten Quast, Paul Peeters, Tom Plasterer, Colin Wood, Eelke van der Horst, Dorothy Reilly, Herman van Vlijmen, Serena Scollen, Allyson Lister, Milo Thurston, Ramon Granell, the FAIR Cookbook Contributors & Susanna-Assunta Sansone"Postprint (published version

SmartPM: automatic adaptation of dynamic processes at run-time

The research activity outlined in this thesis is devoted to define a general approach, a concrete architecture and a prototype Process Management System (PMS) for the automated adaptation of dynamic processes at run-time, on the basis of a declarative specification of process tasks and relying on well-established reasoning about actions and planning techniques. The purpose is to demonstrate that the combination of procedural and imperative models with declarative elements, along with the exploitation of techniques from the field of artificial intelligence (AI), such as Situation Calculus, IndiGolog and automated planning, can increase the ability of existing PMSs of supporting dynamic processes. To this end, a prototype PMS named SmartPM, which is specifically tailored for supporting collaborative work of process participants during pervasive scenarios, has been developed. The adaptation mechanism deployed on SmartPM is based on execution monitoring for detecting failures at run-time, which does not require the definition of the adaptation strategy in the process itself (as most of the current approaches do), and on automatic planning techniques for the synthesis of the recovery procedure

Intuitive Instruction of Industrial Robots : A Knowledge-Based Approach

With more advanced manufacturing technologies, small and medium sized enterprises can compete with low-wage labor by providing customized and high quality products. For small production series, robotic systems can provide a cost-effective solution. However, for robots to be able to perform on par with human workers in manufacturing industries, they must become flexible and autonomous in their task execution and swift and easy to instruct. This will enable small businesses with short production series or highly customized products to use robot coworkers without consulting expert robot programmers. The objective of this thesis is to explore programming solutions that can reduce the programming effort of sensor-controlled robot tasks. The robot motions are expressed using constraints, and multiple of simple constrained motions can be combined into a robot skill. The skill can be stored in a knowledge base together with a semantic description, which enables reuse and reasoning. The main contributions of the thesis are 1) development of ontologies for knowledge about robot devices and skills, 2) a user interface that provides simple programming of dual-arm skills for non-experts and experts, 3) a programming interface for task descriptions in unstructured natural language in a user-specified vocabulary and 4) an implementation where low-level code is generated from the high-level descriptions. The resulting system greatly reduces the number of parameters exposed to the user, is simple to use for non-experts and reduces the programming time for experts by 80%. The representation is described on a semantic level, which means that the same skill can be used on different robot platforms. The research is presented in seven papers, the first describing the knowledge representation and the second the knowledge-based architecture that enables skill sharing between robots. The third paper presents the translation from high-level instructions to low-level code for force-controlled motions. The two following papers evaluate the simplified programming prototype for non-expert and expert users. The last two present how program statements are extracted from unstructured natural language descriptions