Special Libraries, October 1963

Volume 54, Issue 8https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/sla_sl_1963/1007/thumbnail.jp

Engineering holistic fault tolerance

PhD ThesisFault-tolerant software should be engineered to be maintainable as well as efficient with regards to performance and resources. These characteristics should be evaluated before deployment of the software. However, the main focus is very often made on the functional features of the application, whereas fault tolerance mechanisms are neglected. As a result, they are often neither maintainable nor efficient. The concept of Holistic Fault Tolerance was introduced to deal with these issues. It is a novel crosscutting approach to the design and implementation of fault tolerance mechanisms for developing reliable software applications that meet non-functional requirements, such as performance and resource utilisation. The thesis starts with the description of problems that were motivating for the idea of Holistic Fault Tolerance. These problems are related to resource utilisation requirements of modern computer-based systems, since more resources like hardware components and energy are required to process modern computational tasks and ensure performance and reliability of the computation. Moreover, the complexity of these systems grows, leading to maintainability deterioration, especially of those system parts, which are responsible for satisfying non-functional requirements, such as reliability, performance and resource usage. After analysis of the problems and motivations, the engineering approach to Holistic Fault Tolerance is introduced and main engineering steps are defined. Next, an architectural pattern for Holistic Fault Tolerance is presented. The method to refine the proposed architecture and ensure efficiency of a particular system under development is demonstrated during the modelling step. Then the implementation of Holistic Fault Tolerance based on the proposed architecture and modelling is described in detail. Finally, the Holistic Fault Tolerance architecture is evaluated with regards to efficiency and maintainability. The evaluation demonstrates that Holistic Fault Tolerance assists in meeting the non-functional requirements, makes fault tolerance mechanisms easier to maintain and ensures higher modularity of the source cod

Promoting and implementing self care: a mixed methods study of offshore workers and remote healthcare practitioners.

The oil and gas industry is a vital contributor to the global economy and a key source of employment within oil-producing countries. Oil production is largely dependent on a skilled population who are adept in coping with the demands of an offshore environment. Due to the high risk nature of work offshore, it is a requisite that personnel engage in health promoting behaviours. The research aimed to identify aspects of offshore workers self care which required behaviour change and the behavioural determinants which were associated with engagement in self care. A mixed methods design was utilised to generate novel data and original findings. Phase 1 used a quantitative cross-sectional online survey to assess offshore workers (n=352, 53.6% response rate) health, quality of life, mental wellbeing and self care status. The findings highlighted key areas of concern, as indicated by negative scoring across measures, relating to: overweight/obesity; medication adherence; absenteeism (with regard to travelling offshore); medical evacuation; lack of adherence to 5-a-day fruit and vegetable guidelines; physical activity; smoking; hazardous alcohol use, and insomnia. Phase 2 used qualitative theory-based telephone interviews to explore self care behaviours from the perspective of offshore workers (n=16). Offshore workers who had completed a survey and indicated they would like to receive further information on the interviews were invited to participate. Both the interview schedule and data analysis were informed by the Theoretical Domains Framework (TDF). Healthy eating and physical activity were the behaviours most frequently discussed by offshore workers and identified as areas requiring behaviour change. TDF domains representing both behaviours included: beliefs about capabilities; beliefs about consequences; intentions; goals; memory, attention and decision processes; environmental context and resources; social influences; emotion, and behavioural regulation. Phase 3 used qualitative theory-based telephone interviews to explore offshore workers (n=13) self care behaviours from the perspective of remote healthcare practitioners. Both the interview schedule and data analysis were informed by TDF. Healthy eating and harmful/hazardous alcohol use were the behaviours most frequently discussed by remote healthcare practitioners and identified as areas requiring behaviour change. TDF domains representing both behaviours included: knowledge; environmental context and resources; social influences; emotion, and behavioural regulation. The findings, when triangulated suggest that offshore workers may benefit from the implementation of a self care intervention which targets healthy eating, physical activity and alcohol consumption. It is advised that the intervention target multiple self care behaviours and that development is underpinned by behaviour change theory to ensure effectiveness. The intervention may be tailored in accordance with the TDF domains identified in this research as determinants of healthy eating, physical activity and alcohol use behaviours

Potsdamer Platz and development in reunified Berlin

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 1996.Includes bibliographical references (p. 91-98).by Nomi V. Brakhan.M.C.P

Impacts from transportation measures in national appraisal guidelines: coverage and practices

Holmen, R.B., Biesinger, B., Hindriks, I., (2022). Impacts from transportation measures in national appraisal guidelines: coverage and practices. Archives ofTransport, 63(3), 67-111. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5604/01.3001.0015.9928Transportation appraisal has a potential important role in prioritization of transportation investment projects and other transportation measures. Appraisal practices vary much over countries and time, but these differences are not fully known. More knowledge on the variation in practices may contribute to smoother knowledge exchange between countries and more informed choices in the further development of each national practice. In this paper, we present both an updated mapping and a meta-analysis of impact coverage in national appraisal guidelines for transportation measures and spatial measures more generally. Our updated mapping of impact coverage covers 18 national and regional guideline sets and 44 sorts of impact. It shows rather similar overall impact coverage in the reviewed guide-lines for economic, social and environmental impacts. The most advanced appraisal practices are found in Northern and Western Europe and Oceania. We find that supplementary quantitative analyses are most common for economic impacts, while multi-criteria analyses are most common for environmental impacts. Our meta-analysis covers ours and 15 earlier impact mappings, jointly covering 42 countries and regions. In this examination, we show how impact cover-age in appraisal practices has improved over time, particularly for environmental, user and wider economic impacts. The meta-analysis also reveals that Western and Northern European and Oceanian countries and dependencies have had the widest impact coverage from 1998 to 2020, both in CB and overall. To examine what characterize countries with broad and narrow impact coverage, we have applied econometric regression models that are linear (i.e. linear least squares), quasi-linear (i.e. Tobit) and fractional response-based (i.e. fractional probit and fractional logit). In these regression analyses, we control for study-specific characteristics and clustering the standard errors on countries. Our results show that the CB impact coverage tends to increase with economic wealth, equality and population size in developed countries, while we find no such patterns for overall impact coverage.publishedVersio

A Multiple Perspective Approach Towards the Assessment and Development of Expert Systems in Manufacturing. Volume 1

Current approaches to technology innovation often fail because they are conceived and assessed from a single perspective or dimension. Thus, current considerations in expert systems development are characterised by a strong focus upon the technology and technical issues without a prior process of wider appraisal and technology assessment. A central theme of this study is that the business, organisational and human factors, which determine how effectively the technology will be used in practice, must be an integral part of the assessment process. The thesis describes a ‘multiple perspective approach’ to technology assessment applied to expert systems innovation in a large manufacturing organisation. This research therefore embraces detailed technical, organisational and individual perspectives of expert systems assessment and development and describes how each perspective adds new concepts, methods and tools. In practice, this has meant modelling activities and information flows in a two-site manufacturing organisation, the identification of a variety of potential areas for expert systems development, the narrowing down and selection of particular areas according to technical, organisational, business and personal criteria, and the eventual design, development, ‘operationalisation’ and evaluation of a single application. This study is placed in a wider context by complementary analyses of other manufacturing users and suppliers of expert systems. The work aims to contribute towards an understanding of expert systems innovation and to improved methodologies for technology assessment and technology transfer.Ph