The role of soil physics in fighting soil degradation. A case study in the Valencia Region, Spain

Taking into consideration the peculiar characteristics of climate, topography, geology, soils and managing systems in the Valencia region, some proven general facts in soil Physics are presented, emphasizing some points needing further investigation which, as a whole, fall within the framework of actions in controlling soil degradation processes. The text is divided into two sections: the first, and longer, deals with the study of hydrological and erosion processes. Involving Soil Physics In the explanation of some behaviours and mechanisms; in the second, the various mechanisms of physical degradation leading to soil compaction are shown, and the main causes and Impacts are also determined.[es] Teniendo en cuenta las características peculiares del clima, topografía, geología, suelos y sistemas de manejo en la Región Valenciana, se exponen algunos hechos probados como suficientemente generales en la Física de suelos y algunos de los avances más significativos de dicha disciplina, enmarcando al mismo tiempo aspectos que necesitan ser Investigados, como base para la aplicación de un modelo conceptual de actuación para el control de los procesos de degradación del suelo. La exposición queda dividida, por consideraciones didácticas, en dos apartados. El primero, más extenso, se dedica al estudio de los procesos hidrológicos y erosivos, implicando a la Física del Suelo en la explicación de algunos comportamientos y mecanismos. En el segundo, se exponen los diferentes mecanismos de degradación física que conducen a la compactación del suelo, identificándose las principales causas y las repercusiones. [fr] Compte tenu des particulières caractéristiques du climat, topographie, géologie, sols et systèmes d'aménagement des sols dans la Région de Valence, on expose Ici quelques sujets bien connus, sur la Physique du Sol, et on signale certains rapports qui doivent être recherchés pour l'application d'un modèle conceptuel dans la prévision rational des processus de dégradation du sol. Le travail est divisé en deux parties: dans la première on étude les processus hydrologiques et les processus érosifs, en impliquant la Physique du Sol dans la recherche des mécanismes des conduites. Dans la deuxième partie on présente les mécanismes de la dégradation physique du sol -notamment le compactage et le scellage du sol- et on identifie les causes principales menant à leur prévision, les effets de la conduite du sol, et quelques lignes de recherche applicables à la minimisation des risques de dégradation physique du sol

Capacidad de las raíces para penetrar sustratos compactados y detectar grietas. Metodología y aplicación a la colonización vegetal de laderas erosionadas en ambiente semiárido

En el presente trabajo, proponemos profundizar en el conocimiento sobre los procesos que limitan la colonización vegetal de laderas erosionadas en ambientes semiáridos, y más específicamente sobre la penetración de raíces en suelos compactados. Para ello, hemos desarrollado una metodología para el estudio de la capacidad de las raíces para penetrar sustratos y detectar grietas en un rango amplio de compactaciones. Hemos analizado además el efecto de la morfología de las raíces, del nivel de resistencia a la penetración y del espesor del nivel más superficial del sustrato en la penetración de las raíces y en la detección de grietas por las raíces. Esta metodología se basa en el uso de discos de cera cuyo nivel de resistencia a la penetración depende de las proporciones de mezcla de parafina y vaselina en condiciones controladas de laboratorio. Para el estudio se utilizó un diseño factorial cruzado 2 x 2 x 5, con dos especies de distinta morfología radicular (pivotante vs. fasciculada), dos espesores de sustrato (3 y 7 mm) y cinco niveles de resistencia a la penetración comprendidos entre 60 y 1500 kPa. Los resultados indican que el nivel de resistencia a la penetración y el espesor del sustrato influyen sobre la tasa (número de raíces por semilla que penetran el sustrato) y velocidad (número de días para que se produzca la primera penetración) de penetración de las raíces para las dos morfologías de raíces estudiadas. Al contrario, no se aprecia ningún efecto del tipo de raíz en la velocidad para penetrar el sustrato. Por otro lado, se ha puesto de manifiesto el papel importante del nivel de resistencia a la penetración y de la morfología de las raíces en la detección de grietas superficiales por las raíces. A partir de los resultados obtenidos, se discuten las distintas estrategias posibles que podrían explicar el éxito de las especies colonizadoras de taludes de carreteras. Asimismo, una estrategia mixta, que contempla la penetración del suelo o la detección de grietas superficiales por las raíces, podría tener éxito en los terraplenes, mientras que en los desmontes con valores limitantes de resistencia a la penetración por las raíces en las capas superficiales del sustrato geológico, la capacidad de las raíces para detectar grietas con un microambiente más favorable podría ser una estrategia de éxito para las plantas.Este trabajo ha sido realizado con la financiación del Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología (Proyecto REN 2001-2313 y Programa Ramón y Cajal co-financiado por el Fondo Social Europeo).Peer Reviewe

Addressing Fine-Grained Variability in User-Centered Software Product Lines: A Case Study on Dashboards

Software product lines provide a theoretical framework to generate and customize products by studying the target domain and by capturing the commonalities among the potential products of the family. This domain knowledge is subsequently used to implement a series of configurable core assets that will be systematically reused to obtain products with different features to match particular user requirements. Some kind of interactive systems, like dashboards, require special attention as their features are very fine-grained. Having the capacity of configuring a dashboard product to match particular user requirements can improve the utility of these products by providing the support to users to reach useful insights, in addition to a decrease in the development time and an increase in maintainability. Several techniques for implementing features and variability points in the context of SPLs are available, and it is important to choose the right one to exploit the SPL paradigm benefits to the maximum. This work addresses the materialization of fine-grained variability in SPL through code templates and macros, framed in the particular domain of dashboards

Towards a Technological Ecosystem to Provide Information Dashboards as a Service: A Dynamic Proposal for Supplying Dashboards Adapted to Specific Scenarios

[EN]Data are crucial to improve decision-making and obtain greater benefits in any type of activity. However, the large amount of information generated by new technologies has made data analysis and knowledge generation a complex task. Numerous tools have emerged to facilitate this generation of knowledge, such as dashboards. Although dashboards are useful tools, their effectiveness can be affected by poor design or by not taking into account the context in which they are placed. Therefore, it is necessary to design and create custom dashboards according to the audience and data domain. This paper presents an application of the software product line paradigm and the integration of this approach into a web service to allow users to request source code for customized information dashboards. The main goal is to introduce the idea of creating a holistic ecosystem of different services to craft and integrate information visualizations in a variety of contexts. One of the contexts that can be especially favored by this approach is the educational context, where learning analytics, data analysis of student performance, and didactic tools are becoming very relevant. Three different use cases of this approach are presented to illustrate the benefits of the developed generative service

Taking advantage of the software product line paradigm to generate customized user interfaces for decision-making processes: a case study on university employability

[EN]University employment and, specifically, employability has gained relevance since research in these fields can lead to improvement in the quality of life of individual citizens. However, empirical research is still insufficient to make significant decisions, and relying on powerful tools to explore data and reach insights on these fields is paramount. Information dashboards play a key role in analyzing and visually exploring data about a specific topic or domain, but end users can present several necessities that differ from each other, regarding the displayed information itself, design features and even functionalities. By applying a domain engineering approach (within the software product line paradigm), it is possible to produce customized dashboards to fit into particular requirements, by the identification of commonalities and singularities of every product that could be part of the product line. Software product lines increase productivity, maintainability and traceability regarding the evolution of the requirements, among other benefits. To validate this approach, a case study of its application in the context of the Spanish Observatory for University Employability and Employment system has been developed, where users (Spanish universities and administrators) can control their own dashboards to reach insights about the employability of their graduates. These dashboards have been automatically generated through a domain specific language, which provides the syntax to specify the requirements of each user. The domain language fuels a template-based code generator, allowing the generation of the dashboards' source code. Applying domain engineering to the dashboards' domain improves the development and maintainability of these complex software products given the variety of requirements that users might have regarding their graphical interfaces

Advances in the use of domain engineering to support feature identification and generation of information visualizations

Information visualization tools are widely used to better understand large and complex datasets. However, to make the most out of them, it is necessary to rely on proper designs that consider not only the data to be displayed, but also the audience and the context. There are tools that already allow users to configure their displays without requiring programming skills, but this research project aims at exploring the automatic generation of information visualizations and dashboards in order to avoid the configuration process, and select the most suitable features of these tools taking into account their contexts. To address this problem, a domain engineering, and machine learning approach is proposed

Tailored information dashboards: A systematic mapping of the literature

Information dashboards are extremely useful tools to exploit knowledge. Dashboards enable users to reach insights and to identify patterns within data at-a-glance. However, dashboards present a series of characteristics and configurations that could not be optimal for every user, thus requiring the modification or variation of its features to fulfill specific user requirements. This variation process is usually referred to as customization, personalization or adaptation, depending on how this variation process is achieved. Given the great number of users and the exponential growth of data sources, tailoring an information dashboard is not a trivial task, as several solutions and configurations could arise. To analyze and understand the current state-of-the-art regarding tailored information dashboards, a systematic mapping has been performed. This mapping focus on answering questions regarding how existing dashboard solutions in the literature manage the customization, personalization and/or adaptation of its elements to produce tailored displays

Information Dashboards and Tailoring Capabilities: A Systematic Literature Review

[EN]The design and development of information dashboards are not trivial. Several factors must be accounted; from the data to be displayed to the audience that will use the dashboard. However, the increase in popularity of these tools has extended their use in several and very different contexts among very different user pro les. This popularization has increased the necessity of building tailored displays focused on speci c requirements, goals, user roles, situations, domains, etc. Requirements are more sophisticated and varying; thus, dashboards need to match them to enhance knowledge generation and support more complex decision-making processes. This sophistication has led to the proposal of new approaches to address personal requirements and foster individualization regarding dashboards without involving high quantities of resources and long development processes. The goal of this work is to present a systematic review of the literature to analyze and classify the existing dashboard solutions that support tailoring capabilities and the methodologies used to achieve them. The methodology follows the guidelines proposed by Kitchenham and other authors in the eld of software engineering. As results, 23 papers about tailored dashboards were retrieved. Three main approaches were identi ed regarding tailored solutions: customization, personalization, and adaptation. However, there is a wide variety of employed paradigms and features to develop tailored dashboards. The present systematic literature review analyzes challenges and issues regarding the existing solutions. It also identi es new research paths to enhance tailoring capabilities and thus, to improve user experience and insight delivery when it comes to visual analysis

A Meta-modeling Approach to Take into Account Data Domain Characteristics and Relationships in Information Visualizations

[EN]Visual explanations are powerful means to convey information to large audiences. However, the design of information visualizations is a complex task, because a lot of factors are involved (the audience profile, the data domain, etc.). The complexity of this task can lead to poor designs that could make users reach wrong conclusions from the visualized data. This work illustrates the process of identifying features that could make an information visualization confusing or even misleading with the goal of arranging them into a meta-model. The metamodel provides a powerful resource to automatically generate information visualizations and dashboards that take into account not only the input data, but also the audience’s characteristics, the available data domain knowledge and even the data context

A Meta-Model Integration for Supporting Knowledge Discovery in Specific Domains: A Case Study in Healthcare

[EN]Knowledge management is one of the key priorities of many organizations. They face di erent challenges in the implementation of knowledge management processes, including the transformation of tacit knowledge—experience, skills, insights, intuition, judgment and know-how—into explicit knowledge. Furthermore, the increasing number of information sources and services in some domains, such as healthcare, increase the amount of information available. Therefore, there is a need to transform that information in knowledge. In this context, learning ecosystems emerge as solutions to support knowledge management in a di erent context. On the other hand, the dashboards enable the generation of knowledge through the exploitation of the data provided from di erent sources. The model-driven development of these solutions is possible through two meta-models developed in previous works. Even though those meta-models solve several problems, the learning ecosystem meta-model has a lack of decision-making support. In this context, this work provides two main contributions to face this issue. First, the definition of a holistic meta-model to support decision-making processes in ecosystems focused on knowledge management, also called learning ecosystems. The second contribution of this work is an instantiation of the presented holistic meta-model in the healthcare domain