Model-Driven Methodology for Rapid Deployment of Smart Spaces based on Resource-Oriented Architectures

Advances in electronics nowadays facilitate the design of smart spaces based on physical mash-ups of sensor and actuator devices. At the same time, software paradigms such as Internet of Things (IoT) and Web of Things (WoT) are motivating the creation of technology to support the development and deployment of web-enabled embedded sensor and actuator devices with two major objectives: (i) to integrate sensing and actuating functionalities into everyday objects, and (ii) to easily allow a diversity of devices to plug into the Internet. Currently, developers who are applying this Internet-oriented approach need to have solid understanding about specific platforms and web technologies. In order to alleviate this development process, this research proposes a Resource-Oriented and Ontology-Driven Development (ROOD) methodology based on the Model Driven Architecture (MDA). This methodology aims at enabling the development of smart spaces through a set of modeling tools and semantic technologies that support the definition of the smart space and the automatic generation of code at hardware level. ROOD feasibility is demonstrated by building an adaptive health monitoring service for a Smart Gym

SES and Ecore for Ontology-based Scenario Modeling in Aviation Scenario Definition Language (ASDL)

The Aviation Scenario Definition Language (ASDL) is a domain-specific language proposal which aims to provide a standard aviation scenario specification mechanism and enable the reuse of scenario generation methods among different simulators. This paper presents a model-based scenario development approach that exploits Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF) core (Ecore) and System Entity Structure (SES) for metamodeling and modeling these elements. The construction of the ASDL metamodel using both platforms is described to illustrate the processes. As a result of comparing two approaches, it is concluded that they follow a similar structure in the hierarchical definition of modeled elements despite there being different toolsets available in each method. Thereby, each metamodel can be easily converted into the other type using transformations. As an application use case, the use of the proposed ontology-based scenario development in the aviation domain is discussed, where a training tool is being developed that utilizes SES/Ecore approach to build a scenario-driven training tool for air traffic controllers

A new MDA-SOA based framework for intercloud interoperability

Cloud computing has been one of the most important topics in Information Technology which aims to assure scalable and reliable on-demand services over the Internet. The expansion of the application scope of cloud services would require cooperation between clouds from different providers that have heterogeneous functionalities. This collaboration between different cloud vendors can provide better Quality of Services (QoS) at the lower price. However, current cloud systems have been developed without concerns of seamless cloud interconnection, and actually they do not support intercloud interoperability to enable collaboration between cloud service providers. Hence, the PhD work is motivated to address interoperability issue between cloud providers as a challenging research objective. This thesis proposes a new framework which supports inter-cloud interoperability in a heterogeneous computing resource cloud environment with the goal of dispatching the workload to the most effective clouds available at runtime. Analysing different methodologies that have been applied to resolve various problem scenarios related to interoperability lead us to exploit Model Driven Architecture (MDA) and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) methods as appropriate approaches for our inter-cloud framework. Moreover, since distributing the operations in a cloud-based environment is a nondeterministic polynomial time (NP-complete) problem, a Genetic Algorithm (GA) based job scheduler proposed as a part of interoperability framework, offering workload migration with the best performance at the least cost. A new Agent Based Simulation (ABS) approach is proposed to model the inter-cloud environment with three types of agents: Cloud Subscriber agent, Cloud Provider agent, and Job agent. The ABS model is proposed to evaluate the proposed framework.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) - (Referencia da bolsa: SFRH SFRH / BD / 33965 / 2009) and EC 7th Framework Programme under grant agreement n° FITMAN 604674 (http://www.fitman-fi.eu

CEEPES: An Evolving System for Agro-environmental Policy

Nonpoint source pollution from agricultural production is now front-and-center in the policy debate over potential sources of environmental degradation (see, for example, Shortie and Dunn 1986; Russell and Shogren 1993). Although partially related to scientific advances in measurement and detection, perceived risks due to chemical loading have intensified the pressure to more closely coordinate agricultural and environmental policy (Cohen, Eiden, and Lorber 1986; Johnson, Wolcott, and Aradhyula 1990). But strategies to coordinate these policies have been impeded by a serious information gap on the explicit environmental and economic trade-offs of various public and private actions. Although most decision makers would agree that securing this information is critical for more effective agro-environmental policy, the question remains as to the best course of action

Analytical metadata modeling for next generation BI systems

Business Intelligence (BI) systems are extensively used as in-house solutions to support decision-making in organizations. Next generation BI 2.0 systems claim for expanding the use of BI solutions to external data sources and assisting the user in conducting data analysis. In this context, the Analytical Metadata (AM) framework defines the metadata artifacts (e.g., schema and queries) that are exploited for user assistance purposes. As such artifacts are typically handled in ad-hoc and system specific manners, BI 2.0 argues for a flexible solution supporting metadata exploration across different systems. In this paper, we focus on the AM modeling. We propose SM4AM, an RDF-based Semantic Metamodel for AM. On the one hand, we claim for ontological metamodeling as the proper solution, instead of a fixed universal model, due to (meta)data models heterogeneity in BI 2.0. On the other hand, RDF provides means for facilitating defining and sharing flexible metadata representations. Furthermore, we provide a method to instantiate our metamodel. Finally, we present a real-world case study and discuss how SM4AM, specially the schema and query artifacts, can help traversing different models instantiating our metamodel and enabling innovative means to explore external repositories in what we call metamodel-driven (meta)data exploration.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

INTEGRATED ECONOMIC-HYDROLOGIC ANALYSIS OF POLICY RESPONSES TO PROMOTE SUSTAINABLE WATER USE UNDER CHANGING CLIMATIC CONDITIONS

Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Framework for a business interoperability quotient measurement model

Dissertação apresentada na Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade Nova da Lisboa para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia e Gestão Industrial (MEGI)Over the last decade the context of Interoperability has been changing rapidly. It has been expanding from the largely technically focused area of Information Systems towards Business Processes and Business Semantics. However, there exists a need for more comprehensive ways to define business interoperability and enable its performance measurement as a first step towards improvement of interoperability conditions between collaborating entities. Through extensive literature reviews and analysis of European Research initiatives in this area, this dissertation presents the State of the Art in Business Interoperability. The objective of this dissertation is to develop a model that closely captures the factors that are responsible for Business Interoperability in the context of Collaborative Business Processes. This Business Interoperability Quotient Measurement Model (BIQMM), developed in this dissertation uses an interdisciplinary approach to capture the key elements responsible for collaboration performance. Through the quantification of the relevance of each element to the particular collaboration scenario in question, this model enables a quantitative analysis of Business Interoperability, so that an overall interoperability score can be arrived at for enhanced performance measurements.Finally, the BIQMM is applied to a business case involving Innovayt and LM Glassfiber to demonstrate its applicability to different collaboration scenarios

Modelling of agriculture and climate policies: Impacts of cooperation on sustainability and economic growth

In this dissertation, the economic effects of different climate policy regimes are quantified using ex-ante modelling, with a focus on cooperative policy measures. The work makes three distinct contributions (1) a methodological contribution through the development of a Bayesian calibration method for reference scenarios in dynamic computable general equilibrium models (CGE) (2) a systematic review (qualitative and empirical) of the vast literature on CO2 pricing (3) the modelling and analysis of the effects of climate policy measures in the context of the Paris Agreement using DART. The specific policy relevant questions that are explored through the modelling work are -what are the channels through which countries incur mitigation costs of climate policies? What are the economic impacts of cooperation in reaching the Nationally Determined Commitments (NDC) via an ETS and who will the winners and losers be? If the EU and China decide to link their respective ETSs then what policy design, if at all, would maximize the gains from linking for both EU and China and what impacts do changes in trade barriers have on the linking? What is the range of cost estimates from the modelling studies for reaching the goals of Paris Agreement and how can the divergence in costs across models be explained? Would carbon egalitarianism lead to monetary transfers to the developing countries and how large will these transfers be? Is there carbon leakage from the EUETS and if yes, then do technological advancement in renewables and electricity grids, mitigation targets in non-ETS sectors and behavioral changes in consumers help mitigate the leakage? Overall, the dissertation makes contributions to questions of cost savings through internationally coordinated CO2 pricing while looking at specific regional cooperation. It also combines econometric tools to extract deeper insights from the CGE literature on CO2 pricing