Using Tropos methodology to Model an Integrated Health Assessment System

This paper presents a case study to illustrate the features and the stages of the Tropos methodology. Tropos is an agent-oriented software engineering methodology that covers four development stages: early and late requirements analysis, architectural design and detail design. The electronic Single Assessment Process (eSAP), and electronic system to deliver the integrated health assessment of health and social care needs of older people is used as the case study throughout the paper. Furthermore, a preliminary analysis on extending Tropos to accommodate security concerns is presented

Modelling Requirements for Content Recommendation Systems

This paper addresses the modelling of requirements for a content Recommendation System (RS) for Online Social Networks (OSNs). On OSNs, a user switches roles constantly between content generator and content receiver. The goals and softgoals are different when the user is generating a post, as opposed as replying to a post. In other words, the user is generating instances of different entities, depending on the role she has: a generator generates instances of a "post", while the receiver generates instances of a "reply". Therefore, we believe that when addressing Requirements Engineering (RE) for RS, it is necessary to distinguish these roles clearly. We aim to model an essential dynamic on OSN, namely that when a user creates (posts) content, other users can ignore that content, or themselves start generating new content in reply, or react to the initial posting. This dynamic is key to designing OSNs, because it influences how active users are, and how attractive the OSN is for existing, and to new users. We apply a well-known Goal Oriented RE (GORE) technique, namely i-star, and show that this language fails to capture this dynamic, and thus cannot be used alone to model the problem domain. Hence, in order to represent this dynamic, its relationships to other OSNs' requirements, and to capture all relevant information, we suggest using another modelling language, namely Petri Nets, on top of i-star for the modelling of the problem domain. We use Petri Nets because it is a tool that is used to simulate the dynamic and concurrent activities of a system and can be used by both practitioners and theoreticians.Comment: 28 pages, 7 figure

Analysing Security Requirements of Information Systems using Tropos

Security is an important issue when developing complex information systems, however very little work has been done in integrating security concerns during the analysis of information systems. Current methodologies fail to adequately integrate security and systems engineering, basically because they lack concepts and models as well as a systematic approach towards security. We believe that security should be considered during the whole development process and it should be defined together with the requirements specification. This paper introduces extensions to the Tropos methodology to accommodate security. A description of new concepts is given along with an explanation of how these concepts are integrated to the current stages of Tropos. The above is illustrated using an agent-based health and social care information system as a case study

Testing the Suitability and the Limitations of Agent Technology to Support Integrated Assessment of Health and Social Care Needs of Older People

This paper explores the potential and the limitations of agent technology to support delivery of integrated information systems for the health and social care sector. In doing so, it points out the similarities and the mutual characteristics (such as distribution of expertise) of integrated health and social care information systems and agent technology. On the other hand, it identifies an important limitation of agent technology in the development of health and social care systems, which is the lack of a complete and mature analysis and design methodology that will provide guidance in the analysis and design of complex computer-based systems for health and social care. The Single Assessment Process (SAP) [http://www.doh.gov.uk/scg/sap/], an integrated assessment of health and social care needs of older people is used as an example of an integrated health and social care information system throughout the paper

iTrust: a trust-aware ontology for information systems development

This paper gives a synopsis of our present state of affairs in modelling an ontology which reflects trust related concepts collectively in information systems development. The main problem is that there is a lack of ontological and methodological support to model and reason about trust with its related concepts in one allied framework. This situation provides the foremost motivation for our research. In particular, our aim is to develop a reasoning and modelling framework that will enable information system developers to consider trust and its related concepts collectively during the development of information systems

Developing an Intelligent User Manager System for controlling Smart School Network Resources

This paper presents an Intelligent User Manager System (UMAS) for controlling access to network resources in a Smart School network. Network resources, especially in a Smart School, are in short supply and relatively expensive to acquire, therefore a control mechanism should be in place so that available resources can be allocated for legitimate usages only. An intelligent mechanism using Fuzzy Logic is deployed for the purpose of knowledge learning in order to process all the user requests accordingly. A decision of granting a network resource request needs to be based on several data sets that represent the current network state, transmission state and users. The system is analysed and designed using the Tropos Methodology. Tropos was chosen because it covers four stages of development. The proposed system was modelled using Fuzzy Logic algorithms for simulation purposes in order to find the relationship between two fuzzy sets with the computed allocated time

Extending the Unified Modeling Language to Model Mobile Agents

Mobile Agents represent a crucial part in most agent-based systems. However, very little work has taken place in modelling such systems and, up to now, none of the existing agent oriented methodologies provide concepts and notations to fully capture mobile agents. In this work we are presenting extensions to the Unified Modeling Language (UML) to model mobile agents. We use three different scenarios to illustrate the proposed extensions

A Novel Agent-Based System to Support the Single Assessment Process of Older People

Older people often have a complex mixture of health and social care needs and several different health and social care professionals are involved in their care. National policy in England is to promote the single assessment process (SAP), an integrated assessment of health and social care needs of older people. However, most of the current information systems do not adequately provide the functionality that is required by health and social care professionals. In this paper we discuss the suitability of agent technology, explaining why we selected it as offering the greatest potential for efficient and flexible information collection and sharing, and for supporting effective care planning. Also, we point out benefits derived from the use of agent technology in the development of health and social care systems, such as the minimization of health and social care professionals' workload. In addition, we describe how we have developed a model for an integrated information system, based on agent technology, for health and social care needs assessment of older people. Finally, we discuss issues, such as security and mobility, involved in the development of such a system, which will need to be designed and tested prior to its implementation in health and social care practice

Integrating Security and Systems Engineering: Towards the Modelling of Secure Information Systems

Security is a crucial issue for information systems. Traditionally, security is considered after the definition of the system. However, this approach often leads to problems, which translate into security vulnerabilities. From the viewpoint of the traditional security paradigm, it should be possible to eliminate such problems through better integration of security and systems engineering. This paper argues for the need to develop a methodology that considers security as an integral part of the whole system development process. The paper contributes to the current state of the art by proposing an approach that considers security concerns as an integral part of the entire system development process and by relating this approach with existing work. The different stages of the approach are described with the aid of a case study; a health and social care information system

A Natural Extension of Tropos Methodology for Modelling Security

Although security is an important issue when developing complex computerised systems, very little work has been done in integrating security concerns in the agentoriented methodologies. This paper introduces extensions to the Tropos methodology to accommodate security. A description of new concepts is given along with an explanation of how these concepts are integrated to the current stages of Tropos. The above is illustrated using an agent-based health and social care information system as a case study