Analysing Human Mobility Patterns of Hiking Activities through Complex Network Theory

The exploitation of high volume of geolocalized data from social sport tracking applications of outdoor activities can be useful for natural resource planning and to understand the human mobility patterns during leisure activities. This geolocalized data represents the selection of hike activities according to subjective and objective factors such as personal goals, personal abilities, trail conditions or weather conditions. In our approach, human mobility patterns are analysed from trajectories which are generated by hikers. We propose the generation of the trail network identifying special points in the overlap of trajectories. Trail crossings and trailheads define our network and shape topological features. We analyse the trail network of Balearic Islands, as a case of study, using complex weighted network theory. The analysis is divided into the four seasons of the year to observe the impact of weather conditions on the network topology. The number of visited places does not decrease despite the large difference in the number of samples of the two seasons with larger and lower activity. It is in summer season where it is produced the most significant variation in the frequency and localization of activities from inland regions to coastal areas. Finally, we compare our model with other related studies where the network possesses a different purpose. One finding of our approach is the detection of regions with relevant importance where landscape interventions can be applied in function of the communities.Comment: 20 pages, 9 figures, accepte

Complex Cloud Datacenters

AbstractThe network architecture deployed in a data center is of extreme importance and should provide the data center with the high throughput while keeping overprovisioning at the minimum costs. In order to provide these features new complex network based models have been proposed recently. In this paper we give an overview of the proposed models and their characteristics, advantages and problems. We then propose a new datacenter network model that provides easy subgrouping while preserving high bandwidth and low average path length and network diameter

Performance-related ontologies and semantic web applications for on-line performance assessment of intelligent systems

AbstractSeveral techniques and applications have been proposed to aid the decision taking process in the system performance domain. Most of these techniques have depicted the performance model of systems through annotations of performance measurements coming from specific software descriptive syntactical languages. However, the semantic representation of performance information provides the possibility of its ulterior machine-processable logical interpretation and therefore the applicability of inference rules about a particular domain. Moreover, ontologies ease the interchange and reuse of knowledge of particular domains, e.g. system performance. In this work, we propose a performance ontology together with the system performance analysis technique as an example of framework building for intelligent applications based on semantic web. The paper also shows the construction of performance rules through OWL to automatically infer new performance constraints and QoS knowledge about the system on execution

Business/IT Projects Alignment through the Project Portfolio Approval Process as IT Governance Instrument

AbstractIn this paper, we present the result of the alignment between the strategic and tactical objectives for information technology at a public company, precisely a public university, through the approval process of Information Technologies (IT) project portfolio. The main contribution of this work is to demonstrate that the three IT governance mechanisms: alignment, communication and structures, when used properly, are irreplaceable means to produce the value that the board expects from IT. We also depict part of our IT governance framework which uses these three mechanisms, with special reference to the business/IT alignment

Experiencias de utilización de aplicaciones móviles para la mejora de la participación del alumnado

La utilización de clickers en el entorno educativo universitario no es novedosa aunque las versiones antiguas de clickers llevaban consigo toda una serie de inconvenientes como era la infraestructura, recogida de la información, utilización, etc. Con la generalización del uso de los móviles inteligentes, han aparecido aplicaciones que simulan el comportamiento de los clickers tradicionales. Estas aplicaciones resuelven muchos de los problemas de las experiencias anteriores. Pero además, por las características propias de los dispositivos móviles, la utilización de estos clickers puede aplicarse en nuevos ámbitos, como por ejemplo, el de intentar buscar una mayor participación de los alumnos durante el desarrollo de las clases. En este artículo se presentan y analizan una serie de experiencias que se han llevado a cabo para utilizar estos dispositivos, ya no solo para la evaluación de los alumnos, si no también para mejorar la interacción entre el profesor y el alumno. Igualmente, se han realizado estudios estadísticos que muestran indicios de mejoría en la participación del alumnado en las clases con estos dispositivos.SUMMARY -- Clickers for e-learning at Universities is not a novelty and past drawbacks, e.g., the necessary IT infrastructure and information process, have been overpassed due to the explosion of the smart phone market. There are smart phone applications that simulate the traditional behavior of clickers. These applications not only solve the above mentioned drawbacks but also improve the participation of university students at classroom. In this paper, we present and analyze a set of experiments that have been carried out using these applications. Additionally, we have observed that these applications improve the interaction among professors and students. The paper includes a statistical study showing trends about these improvements

A Statistically Customisable Web Benchmarking Tool

AbstractWe describe a statistically customisable solution for Web benchmarking that includes three utilities: an Internet traffic generator for HTTP traffic, an static and dynamic Web pages generator in the Web server that is going to be tested and a performance monitor that reports some performance metrics during the test. The design of the tool is based on the implementation of the most important probability distributions that mainly characterise statistical properties of Internet traffic like the inter-arrival rate of the incoming Web traffic to the server, the number of objects contained in a Web page and the size of these Web objects. These properties can be customised for a specific capacity planning analysis. In this work, we describe the generation process of the Web pages and the customisable traffic characterization used by the benchmark. The monitoring process details and the validation of the probability distributions implemented are also included

Un recorrido actualizado por la docencia de Sistemas Digitales en el Grado en Ingeniería Informática

Este artículo presenta un recorrido por la docencia de los contenidos de sistemas digitales en el Grado de Ingeniería en Informática en las universidades españolas pertenecientes a la Conferencia de Directores y Decanos de Ingeniería Informática. Para ello se han analizado las competencias, los contenidos, la planificación y los recursos utilizados para las asignaturas directamente relacionadas con la docencia de este campo de conocimiento. Finalmente se presenta un análisis de los resultados obtenidos, dando una visión global de la situación nacional, y llevando a cabo una agrupación de universidades en función de los contenidos de las asignaturas utilizadas. Estos resultados son de interés para los docentes involucrados en estas asignaturas y para conocer la estandarización de los conocimientos sobre la materia, es decir, si el diseño curricular es o no homogéneo.This article presents a review of the contents related to Digital Systems in the Degree in Computer Engineering in the Spanish universities that belong to the Conferencia de Directores y Decanos de Ingeniería Informática. For this, the competences, contents, planning and resources used for the subjects, directly related to the teaching of this field, have been analyzed. Finally, an analysis of the results obtained is presented, giving a global vision, and carrying out a clustering of universities based on the contents of the subjects. These results are of interest to teachers involved in these subjects and to know the standardization ofthe knowledge area, i.e., whether or not the curricular design is homogeneous

Cascading ISO/IEC 38500 based Balanced Score Cards to improve board accountability

On one hand, with the standardization of Information Technology (IT) governance through ISO/IEC 38500, in the last decade, a good number of organizations have implemented IT governance (ITG) frameworks, although it is not a fully extended practice, yet. On the other hand, the use of Balanced Score Cards (BSC) on ITG is not an unknown practice, either. However, what has been given less importance is the application of BSC in the implementation of ISO/IEC 38500, since it normally appears as just examples of good practices. This work not only explains why the BSC’s applicability to align IT with business in ISO/IEC 38500 implementations is not included in the standard, but also justifies the importance of BSC to report to the board or senior executive team in a clear way, without the details of the particular implementation framework of the standard.publishedVersio