Towards an Energy-Aware Framework for Application Development and Execution in Heterogeneous Parallel Architectures

The Transparent heterogeneous hardware Architecture deployment for eNergy Gain in Operation (TANGO) project’s goal is to characterise factors which affect power consumption in software development and operation for Heterogeneous Parallel Hardware (HPA) environments. Its main contribution is the combination of requirements engineering and design modelling for self-adaptive software systems, with power consumption awareness in relation to these environments. The energy efficiency and application quality factors are integrated into the application lifecycle (design, implementation and operation). To support this, the key novelty of the project is a reference architecture and its implementation. Moreover, a programming model with built-in support for various hardware architectures including heterogeneous clusters, heterogeneous chips and programmable logic devices is provided. This leads to a new cross-layer programming approach for heterogeneous parallel hardware architectures featuring software and hardware modelling. Application power consumption and performance, data location and time-criticality optimization, as well as security and dependability requirements on the target hardware architecture are supported by the architecture

Model-driven requirements engineering: Synchronising models in an air traffic management case study

Different modelling techniques from different disciplines are needed to model complex socio-technical systems and their requirements. This paper describes the application of RESCUE, a process that integrates 4 modelling techniques to model and analyse stakeholder requirements for DMAN, a system for scheduling and managing the departure of aircraft from major European airports. It describes how human activity, use case and i* modelling were applied and integrated using synchronisation checks to model requirements on DMAN. Synchronisation checks applied at predefined stages in RESCUE revealed omissions and potential inconsistencies in the models and stakeholder requirements that, in turn, led to improvements to the models and resulting specification. The paper ends with implications for requirements model integration, and describes future work to extend and apply RESCUE

The normalization of online campaigning in the web.2.0 era

This article is based on a comparative study of online campaigning and its effects by country and over time, using four of the largest European Union member states (France, Germany, Poland and the United Kingdom) as a case study. Our research explores the extent of embeddedness of online campaigning, the strategic uses of the whole online environment and in particular the use of the interactive features associated with web.2.0 era. However, our research goes beyond studies of online campaigning as we also determine whether online campaigning across platforms matters in electoral terms. Our data support the normalization hypothesis which shows overall low levels of innovation but that the parties with the highest resources tend to develop online campaigns with the highest functionality. We find that there is a vote dividend for those parties which utilized web.2.0 features the most and so offered visitors to their web presence a more interactive experience