Simulation of Road Traffic Applying Model-Driven Engineering

Road traffic is an important phenomenon in modern societies. The study of its different aspects in the multiple scenarios where it happens is relevant for a huge number of problems. At the same time, its scale and complexity make it hard to study. Traffic simulations can alleviate these difficulties, simplifying the scenarios to consider and controlling their variables. However, their development also presents difficulties. The main ones come from the need to integrate the way of working of researchers and developers from multiple fields. Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) addresses these problems using Modelling Languages (MLs) and semi-automatic transformations to organise and describe the development, from requirements to code. This paper presents a domain-specific MDE framework for simulations of road traffic. It comprises an extensible ML, support tools, and development guidelines. The ML adopts an agent-based approach, which is focused on the roles of individuals in road traffic and their decision-making. A case study shows the process to model a traffic theory with the ML, and how to specialise that specification for an existing target platform and its simulations. The results are the basis for comparison with related work

Social-Aware Driver Assistance Systems for City Traffic in Shared Spaces

Shared spaces are gaining presence in cities, where a variety of players and mobility types (pedestrians, bicycles, motorcycles, and cars) move without specifically delimited areas. This makes the traffic they comprise challenging for automated systems. The information traditionally considered (e.g., streets, and obstacle positions and speeds) is not enough to build suitable models of the environment. The required explanatory and anticipation capabilities need additional information to improve them. Social aspects (e.g., goal of the displacement, companion, or available time) should be considered, as they have a strong influence on how people move and interact with the environment. This paper presents the Social-Aware Driver Assistance System (SADAS) approach to integrate this information into traffic systems. It relies on a domain-specific modelling language for social contexts and their changes. Specifications compliant with it describe social and system information, their links, and how to process them. Traffic social properties are the formalization within the language of relevant knowledge extracted from literature to interpret information. A multi-agent system architecture manages these specifications and additional processing resources. A SADAS can be connected to other parts of traffic systems by means of subscription-notification mechanisms. The case study to illustrate the approach applies social knowledge to predict people&rsquo s movements. It considers a distributed system for obstacle detection and tracking, and the intelligent management of traffic signals. Document type: Articl

Intangible assets in the internationalization of Spanish wineries: directive and compared perception between family and non family businesses

Objeto: Determinar cuál es la dotación de recursos intangibles que presentan las empresas del sector vitivinícola español, como fuente de ventaja competitiva en el desarrollo de su estrategia internacional. Estudio exploratorio del impacto que los diferentes recursos intangibles de las bodegas españolas tienen sobre el grado de desarrollo de su estrategia internacional: diferencias en función del carácter familiar o no de las mismas. Diseño/metodología/enfoque: Estudio empírico cuantitativo de carácter básicamente descriptivo a partir del análisis de la información recogida en cuestionarios realizados a directivos de bodegas, familiares y no familiares españolas, representativas del sector en el contexto nacional. Aportaciones y resultados: La dotación de los recursos intangibles que presentan las empresas del sector vitivinícola español, como fuente de la ventaja competitiva en su expansión internacional, varía en relación al tipo de recursos analizados (tecnológicos, humanos, organizativos y relacionales) y, en algunos aspectos, en relación al carácter familiar o no de la empresa. Limitaciones: El hecho de haber concentrado todo el estudio en un único sector económico. Un estudio similar en otros sectores industriales podría ofrecer resultados distintos a los obtenidos en este trabajo. Implicaciones prácticas: Se señalan los principales retos a alcanzar por las empresas vitivinícolas españolas, en relación a su dotación de recursos intangibles, para reforzar y fortalecer su posición competitiva en el mercado internacional. Implicaciones sociales: Este estudio señala cómo podrían distintos organismos e instituciones, relacionados con el sector, de carácter público o privado, ayudar a las empresas a alcanzar los retos que se plantean. De igual manera orienta sobre cuáles y en qué medida han de ser aplicadas las políticas sobre recursos intangibles en este sector. Valor añadido: Pese a existir numerosos datos e información relacionada con el comercio exterior del sector vitivinícola español, ningún estudio anterior se ha centrado en el análisis de los recursos intangibles de estas compañías como fuente de la ventaja competitiva en el desarrollo de la estrategia internacional, ni tampoco se había diferenciado, previamente, entre el carácter familiar o no de las empresas que conforman el sector. Se trata de un primer trabajo que sienta las bases sobre la efectiva dotación de las bodegas familiares españolas.Purpose: To determine which of the intangible resources possessed by companies from the Spanish viticultural sector can serve as a source of competitive advantage in the development of their international strategies. Exploratory study of the impact of the different intangible resources possessed by Spanish wineries on the development of their international strategies: differences depending on the family-owned or non family-owned character of the viticultural companies in question. Design/methodology/approach: Empirical quantitative study of descriptive nature basically using the analysis of information gathered from surveys carried out with managers in Spanish wineries, family and non-family, representative of the sector in the national context. Findings: Companies from the Spanish viticultural sector show an intangible resource endowment, as a source of competitive advantage in the development of their international strategies. This endowment varies depending on the resources analyzed (technological, human, organizational and relational resources) and, in some aspects, does vary depending whether the firm is family-owned or not. Research limitations: We have focused our study in only one economic sector completely. The same analysis or study in other industrial sectors would provide different results from those achieved in this study. Practical implications: The main challenges facing Spanish wineries in achieving success are emphasized taking into consideration their intangible resource endowment, in order to reinforce their competitive position in international markets. Social implications: This study points out the way that different public and private organizations and institutions of the viticultural sector could help wineries to overcome the challenges that have been set out in this study. Just as it directs which different policies and how they should be applied to the intangible resources in the viticultural sector. Originality/value: Although there is numerous data and information about the International trade of the Spanish viticultural sector, no previous study has focused on the analysis of these companies’ intangible resources as a source of competitive advantage in the development of their international strategies. Furthermore, none of these previous studies have taken into account whether the winery is family-owned or not. It is a first piece of work that leads the foundations about the effective resource endowment of Spanish family wineries.Peer Reviewe

Implementation of context-aware workflows with Multi-agent Systems

Systems in Ambient Intelligence (AmI) need to manage workflows that represent users’ activities. These workflows can be quite complex, as they may involve multiple participants, both physical and computational, playing different roles. Their execution implies monitoring the development of the activities in the environment, and taking the necessary actions for them and the workflow to reach a certain end. The context-aware approach supports the development of these applications to cope with event processing and regarding information issues. Modeling the actors in these context-aware workflows, where complex decisions and interactions must be considered, can be achieved with multi-agent systems. Agents are autonomous entities with sophisticated and flexible behaviors, which are able to adapt to complex and evolving environments, and to collaborate to reach common goals. This work presents architectural patterns to integrate agents on top of an existing context-aware architecture. This allows an additional abstraction layer on top of context-aware systems, where knowledge management is performed by agents.This approach improves the flexibility of AmI systems and facilitates their design. A case study on guiding users in buildings to their meetings illustrates this approach

NÚCLEO, aprendizaje colaborativo escenificado mediante un juego de rol

En este trabajo se describe un experimento educativo que se está llevando a cabo paralelamente en dos facultades españolas y en un Instituto de Educación Secundaria, para la enseñanza de disciplinas relacionadas con la programación, y cuyo objetivo principal es mejorar el rendimiento y la motivación de los alumnos. Sustentado en las corrientes pedagógicas constructivistas y socio-constructivistas, el aprendizaje se plantea a través de un juego de rol en el que los alumnos colaboran en pequeños grupos para resolver una misión (que representa en realidad un problema complejo de programación ambientado de acuerdo con el espíritu de la metáfora). El juego se desarrolla a través de dos niveles de interacción social en la forma de colaboración entre los miembros de un mismo equipo y de competición entre los distintos equipos para lograr la mejor puntuación. Aunque el experimento aún no ha concluido disponemos de algunos resultados preliminares que nos inducen al optimismo

RadioEarth: herramienta de cálculo de cobertura radioeléctrica para Google Earth

RadioEarth es una herramienta que interacciona con Google Earth y permite realizar simulaciones de coberturas radioeléctricas de sistemas de radiocomunicaciones como GSM, UMTS, TETRA, LMDS, MMDS, Radio digital, TDT, WiFi, etc. utilizando diferentes modelos de propagación

A Multi-Agent System Architecture for Sensor Networks

The design of the control systems for sensor networks presents important challenges. Besides the traditional problems about how to process the sensor data to obtain the target information, engineers need to consider additional aspects such as the heterogeneity and high number of sensors, and the flexibility of these networks regarding topologies and the sensors in them. Although there are partial approaches for resolving these issues, their integration relies on ad hoc solutions requiring important development efforts. In order to provide an effective approach for this integration, this paper proposes an architecture based on the multi-agent system paradigm with a clear separation of concerns. The architecture considers sensors as devices used by an upper layer of manager agents. These agents are able to communicate and negotiate services to achieve the required functionality. Activities are organized according to roles related with the different aspects to integrate, mainly sensor management, data processing, communication and adaptation to changes in the available devices and their capabilities. This organization largely isolates and decouples the data management from the changing network, while encouraging reuse of solutions. The use of the architecture is facilitated by a specific modelling language developed through metamodelling. A case study concerning a generic distributed system for fire fighting illustrates the approach and the comparison with related work

Aspectos determinantes en la internacionalización de la empresa familiar

La internacionalización de la empresa puede considerarse una estrategia importante tanto para empresas familiares como no familiares. La literatura atribuye una serie de fortalezas y debilidades a la empresa familiar que pueden condicionar notablemente el éxito o el fracaso de su expansión internacional. Tras haber analizado el sector vitivinícola con denominación de origen en España, los resultados muestran que existe una relación entre grado de familiaridad, puntos fuertes y débiles de la empresa familiar y su desarrollo internacional. Así, a medida que las empresas familiares exhiben un mayor grado de familiaridad, encuentran más dificultades para afrontar su expansión internacional, a tenor del mayor número de estas específicas debilidades que en ellas se manifiestan y del menor número de fortalezas aprovechables. Sin embargo, cuando estas tienen un menor grado de familiaridad las debilidades prácticamente no son tales y sí las fortalezas susceptibles de ser utilizadas en pos de desarrollar una sólida estrategia de internacionalización.ABSTRACT Internationalization strategy is an important decision for both family and non family firms. Some singularities of family firms, pointed out by literature as strengths and weaknesses, can have influence on the success or failure of their international expansion. Results of our research, conducted in a guarantee of origin and quality of a wine industry in Spain, show that there is a clear link among familiness, weaknesses and strengths and international strategy. Higher levels of familiness involve more difficulties to international growth because family firms show most of the standard weeknesses and very few strengths. Lower levels of familiness involve less problems to international expansion because weaknesses don’t exist hardly and they show most of strengths.       &nbsp