Spanish Nuclear Safety Research under International Frameworks

The Nuclear Safety research requires a wide international collaboration of several involved groups. In this sense this paper pretends to show several examples of the Nuclear Safety research under international frameworks that is being performed in different Universities and Research Institutions like CIEMAT, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) and Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV).

Reporting experiments to satisfy professionals information needs

Although the aim of empirical software engineering is to provide evidence for selecting the appropriate technology, it appears that there is a lack of recognition of this work in industry. Results from empirical research only rarely seem to find their way to company decision makers. If information relevant for software managers is provided in reports on experiments, such reports can be considered as a source of information for them when they are faced with making decisions about the selection of software engineering technologies. To bridge this communication gap between researchers and professionals, we propose characterizing the information needs of software managers in order to show empirical software engineering researchers which information is relevant for decision-making and thus enable them to make this information available. We empirically investigated decision makers? information needs to identify which information they need to judge the appropriateness and impact of a software technology. We empirically developed a model that characterizes these needs. To ensure that researchers provide relevant information when reporting results from experiments, we extended existing reporting guidelines accordingly.We performed an experiment to evaluate our model with regard to its effectiveness. Software managers who read an experiment report according to the proposed model judged the technology?s appropriateness significantly better than those reading a report about the same experiment that did not explicitly address their information needs. Our research shows that information regarding a technology, the context in which it is supposed to work, and most importantly, the impact of this technology on development costs and schedule as well as on product quality is crucial for decision makers.

Exploring the link between sustainability reporting and sustainability management: a conceptual framework.

Sustainability managementand Sustainability Reporting (SR) practices have dramatically increased during the last two decades, raising important questions about the relationship between internal practices and external communication. Previous literature on SR has almost exclusively highlighted the role of institutional and stakeholder pressures in driving its adoption. However, as surveys among reporters also identify internal benefits of SR, its full role for company-level sustainability management remains unclear. In order to address this question, we develop a framework accounting for four SR configurations, stemming from different levels of relative importance of external and internal motives for SR. A multiple case study involving four large Spanish companies serves to illustrate the framework and to identify company-level factors that act both as enablers and barriers of SR internal relevance. We conclude that motivations for SR, along with such internal factors, decisively influence its contribution to sustainability management.

Embedding logical frameworks in scala

El Framework Lógico de Edimburgo ha demostrado ser una poderosa herramienta en el estudio formal de sistemas deductivos, como por ejemplo lenguajes de programación. Sin embargo su principal implementación, el sistema Twelf, carece de expresividad, obligando al programador a escribir código repetitivo. Este proyecto presenta una manera alternativa de utilizar Twelf: a través de un EDSL (Lenguaje Embebido de Dominio Específico) en Scala que permite representar firmas del Framework Lógico, y apoyándonos en Twelf como backend para la verificación, abrimos la puerta a diversas posibilidades en términos de metaprogramación. El código fuente, así como instrucciones para instalar y configurar, está accesible en https://github.com/akathorn/elfcala. ---ABSTRACT---The Edinburgh Logical Framework has proven to be to be a powerful tool in the formal study of deductive systems, such as programming languages. However, its main implementation, the Twelf system, lacks expressiveness, requiring the programmer to write repetitive code. This project presents an alternative way of using Twelf: by providing a Scala EDSL (Embedded Domain Specific Language) that can encode Logical Framework signatures and relying on Twelf as a backend for the verification, we open the door to different possibilities in terms of metaprogramming. The source code, along with instructions to install and configure, is accessible at https://github.com/akathorn/elfcala

Wind pumps for irrigating greenhouse crops: Comparison in different socio-economical frameworks

A methodology is applied for economic evaluation of water pumping technologies. Different socioeconomic frameworks are considered for Spain, Cuba and Pakistan. The levelised cost of energy is used to determine the best technology. Wind speed, distance to grid, water storage size and elevation are considered. The water elevation has greater influence on wind pumps than on solar PV pumping.

Reporting experiments to satisfy professionals’information needs

Although the aim of empirical software engineering is to provide evidence for selecting the appropriate technology, it appears that there is a lack of recognition of this work in industry. Results from empirical research only rarely seem to find their way to company decision makers. If information relevant for software managers is provided in reports on experiments, such reports can be considered as a source of information for them when they are faced with making decisions about the selection of software engineering technologies. To bridge this communication gap between researchers and professionals, we propose characterizing the information needs of software managers in order to show empirical software engineering researchers which information is relevant for decision-making and thus enable them to make this information available. We empirically investigated decision makers? information needs to identify which information they need to judge the appropriateness and impact of a software technology. We empirically developed a model that characterizes these needs. To ensure that researchers provide relevant information when reporting results from experiments, we extended existing reporting guidelines accordingly. We performed an experiment to evaluate our model with regard to its effectiveness. Software managers who read an experiment report according to the proposed model judged the technology?s appropriateness significantly better than those reading a report about the same experiment that did not explicitly address their information needs. Our research shows that information regarding a technology, the context in which it is supposed to work, and most importantly, the impact of this technology on development costs and schedule as well as on product quality is crucial for decision makers.

A case study on cross-platform development frameworks for mobile applications and UX

Cross-platform development frameworks for mobile applications promise important advantages in cost cuttings and easy maintenance, posing as a very good option for organizations interested in the design of mobile applications for several platforms. Given that platform conventions are especially important for the User eXperience (UX) of mobile applications, the usage of a framework where the same code defines the behavior of the app in different platforms could have a negative impact in the UX. This paper describes a study where two independent teams have designed two different versions of a mobile application, one using a framework that generates Android and iOS versions automatically, and another team using native tools. The alternative versions for each platform have been evaluated with 37 users with a combination of a laboratory usability test and a longitudinal study. The results show that differences are minimal in the Android platform, but in iOS, even if a reasonably good UX can be obtained with the usage of this framework by an UX-conscious design team, a higher level of UX can be obtained directly developing with a native tool.

Wind pumps for irrigating greenhouse crops: comparison in different socio-economical frameworks

Wind power can play an interesting role in irrigation projects in different areas. A methodology can determine the feasibility of the technology and the levels of daily irrigation demand satisfied by windmills at different levels of risk, using tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum Mill) as greenhouse crop. The present work compared the feasibility of the technology and the critical factors involved in three different countries: Cuba, Spain and Pakistan. The study considered as factors the wind speed level, the energy cost, the tomato prices, the reliability and distance to the electrical grid, and the crop development dates, determining the economic feasibility for each combination of factors in each country.

From transparency to performance? Exploring how and why companies implement sustainability reporting practices.

Esta tesis se centra en el estudio de la implementación de prácticas de reporte de sostenibilidad (o RSC) en las empresas europeas. Estas prácticas han adquirido una relevancia notable a lo largo de los últimos 20 años, siendo utilizadas actualmente por el 93% de las 250 mayores empresas a nivel mundial y por más de 8000 organizaciones en total (de acuerdo a la base de datos de Global Reporting Initiative). Hasta la fecha, el considerable volumen de estudios existentes sobre las prácticas de reporte a nivel corporativo ha permitido caracterizar la influencia de una serie de factores externos (como la presión social o el comportamiento de organizaciones similares) a la hora de adoptar estas prácticas. Sin embargo, se dispone de mucho menos conocimiento respecto a las características internas que influyen en esta decisión, así como a la influencia de ambas causas (externas e internas) en la manera que el reporte se implementa una vez adoptado. Por tanto, esta tesis se centra en abordar estos dos aspectos. Para ello, se ha generado un marco conceptual que permite integrar ambas explicaciones para la adopción del reporte, combinando teorías institucionales (centradas en la influencia de fuerzas externas) y teorías organizativas (centradas en la eficiencia de una práctica a nivel de compañía). De manera análoga al ámbito de la RSC, en el cual existe una diversidad de contribuciones que reconocen la importancia de los factores externos y los factores internos (estratégicos) a la hora de impulsar estas prácticas, el marco conceptual generado tiene por objetivo propiciar un entendimiento más completo de las prácticas de reporte a nivel de compañía. De forma adicional al marco conceptual se han formulado también una serie de hipótesis específicas que relacionan la existencia de determinantes externos e internos y las distintas estrategias de implementación del reporte en cada organización.

Desarrollo de frameworks con .NET

La expansión experimentada por la informática, las nuevas tecnologías e internet en los últimos años, no solo viene dada por la evolución del hardware subyacente, sino por la evolución del desarrollo de software y del crecimiento del número de desarrolladores. Este incremento ha hecho evolucionar el software de unos sistemas de gestión basados en ficheros, prácticamente sin interfaz gráfico y de unos pocos miles de líneas a grandes sistemas distribuidos multiplataforma. El desarrollo de estos grandes sistemas, requiere gran cantidad de personas involucradas en el desarrollo, y que las herramientas de desarrollo hayan crecido también para facilitar su análisis, diseño, codificación, pruebas, implantación y mantenimiento. La base de estas herramientas software las proveen las propias plataformas de desarrollo, pero la experiencia de los desarrolladores puede aportar un sinfín de utilidades y de técnicas que agilicen los desarrollos y cumplan los requisitos del software en base a la reutilización de soluciones lo suficientemente probadas y optimizadas. Dichas herramientas se agrupan ordenadamente, creando así frameworks personalizados, con herramientas de todo tipo, clases, controles, interfaces, patrones de diseño, de tal manera que se dan soluciones personalizadas a un amplio número de problemas para emplearlas cuantas veces se quiera, bien marcando directrices de desarrollo mediante el uso de patrones, bien con la encapsulación de complejidades de tal modo que los desarrolladores ya dispongan de componentes que asuman cierta lógica o cierta complejidad aliviando así la fase de construcción. En este trabajo se abordan temas sobre las tecnologías base y plataformas de desarrollo para poder acometer la creación de un framework personalizado, necesidades a evaluar antes de acometerlo, y técnicas a emplear para la consecución del mismo, orientadas a la documentación, mantenimiento y extensión del framework. La exposición teórica consiste en mostrar y evaluar los requisitos para crear un framework, requisitos de la plataforma de desarrollo, y explicar cómo funcionan las grandes plataformas de desarrollo actuales, que elementos los componen y su funcionamiento, así como marcar ciertas pautas de estructuración y nomenclatura que el desarrollo de un framework debe contemplar para su mantenimiento y extensión. En la parte metodológica se ha usado un subconjunto de Métrica V3, ya que para el desarrollo de controles no aplica dicha metodología en su totalidad, pero contempla el catálogo de requisitos, los casos de uso, diagramas de clase, diagramas de secuencia, etc… Aparte de los conceptos teóricos, se presenta un caso práctico con fines didácticos de cómo parametrizar y configurar el desarrollo bajo la plataforma .NET. Dicho caso práctico consiste en la extensión de un control de usuario genérico de la plataforma .NET, de tal modo que se aplican conceptos más allá del hecho de crear funciones como las funcionalidades que puede brindar un API. Conceptos sobre como extender y modificar controles ya existentes, que interactúan por medio de eventos con otros controles, con vistas a que ese nuevo control forme parte de una biblioteca de controles de usuario personalizados ampliamente divulgada. Los controles de usuario son algo que no solo tienen una parte funcional, sino que también tienen una parte visual, y definiciones funcionales distintas de las típicas del software de gestión, puesto que han de controlar eventos, visualizaciones mientras se dan estos eventos y requisitos no funcionales de optimización de rendimiento, etc… Para el caso práctico se toma como herramienta la plataforma de desarrollo .Net Framework, en todas sus versiones, ya que el control a extender es el control ListView y hacerlo editable. Este control está presente en todas las versiones de .NET framework y con un alto grado de reutilización. Esta extensión muestra además como se puede migrar fácilmente este tipo de extensiones sobre todos los frameworks. Los entornos de desarrollo usados son varias versiones de Visual Studio para el mostrar dicha compatibilidad, aunque el desarrollo que acompaña este documento esté realizado sobre Visual Studio 2013. ABSTRACT The expansion in computer science, new technologies and the Internet in recent years, not only is given by the evolution of the underlying hardware, but for the evolution of software development and the growing number of developers. This increase has evolved software from management systems based on files almost without graphical interface and a few thousand of code lines, to large multiplatform distributed systems. The development of these large systems, require lots of people involved in development, and development tools have also grown to facilitate analysis, design, coding, testing, deployment and maintenance. The basis of these software tools are providing by their own development platforms, but the experience of the developers can bring a lot of utilities and techniques to speed up developments and meet the requirements of software reuse based on sufficiently proven solutions and optimized. These tools are grouped neatly, creating in this way custom frameworks, with tools of all types, classes, controls, interfaces, design patterns,… in such a way that they provide customized solutions to a wide range of problems to use them many times as you want to occur, either by dialing development guidelines by using patterns or along with the encapsulation of complexities, so that developers already have components that take some logic or some complexity relieving the construction phase. This paper cover matters based on technologies and development platforms to undertake the creation of a custom framework, needs to evaluate before rush it and techniques to use in order to achieve it, a part from techniques oriented to documentation, maintenance and framework extension. The theoretical explanation consists in to demonstrate and to evaluate the requirements for creating a framework, development platform requirements, and explain how large current development platforms work, which elements compose them and their operation work, as well as mark certain patterns of structure and nomenclature that the development of a framework should include for its maintenance and extension. In the methodological part, a subset of Métrica V3 has been used, because of, for the development of custom controls this methodology does not apply in its entirety, but provides a catalogue of requirements, use cases, class diagrams, sequence diagrams, etc ... Apart from the theoretical concepts, a study case for teaching purposes about how to parameterize and configure the development under the .NET platform is presented. This study case involves the extension of a generic user control of the .NET platform, so that concepts apply beyond the fact of creating functions as the functionalities that can provide an API. Concepts on how to extend and modify existing controls that interact through events with other controls, overlooking that new control as a part of a custom user controls library widely publicized. User controls are something that not only have a functional part, but also have a visual part, and various functional definitions of typical management software, since that they have to control events, visualizations while these events are given and not functional of performance optimization requirements, etc ... For the study case the development platform .Net Framework is taken as tool, in all its versions, considering that control to extend is the ListView control and make it editable. This control is present in all versions of .NET framework and with a high degree of reuse. This extension also shows how you can easily migrate these extensions on all frameworks. The used development environments are several versions of Visual Studio to show that compatibility, although the development that accompanies this document is done on Visual Studio 2013.

Organizational determinants of substantive sustainability reporting practices: the role of company-level fit

As sustainability reporting (SR) practices have being increasingly adopted by corporations over the last twenty years, most of the existing literature on SR has stressed the role of external determinants (such as institutional and stakeholder pressures) in explaining this uptake. However, given that recent evidence points to a broader range of motives and uses (both external and internal) of SR, we contend that its role within company-level activities deserves greater academic attention. In order to address this research gap, this paper seeks to provide a more detailed examination of the organizational characteristics acting as drivers and/or barriers of SR integration within corporate sustainability practices at the company-level. More specifically, we suggest that substantive SR implementation can be predicted by assessing the level of fit between the organization and the SR framework being adopted. Building on this hypothesis, our theoretical model defines three forms of fit (technical, cultural and political) and identifies organizational characteristics associated to each of these fits. Finally, implications for academic research, businesses and policy-makers are derived.

Symbolic vs substantive sustainability reporting: examining the role of company-level characteristics

As sustainability reporting (SR) practices have being increasingly adopted by corporations over the last twenty years, most of the existing literature on SR has stressed the role of external determinants (such as institutional and stakeholder pressures) in explaining this uptake. However, given that recent evidence points to a broader range of motives and uses (both external and internal) of SR, we contend that its role within company-level activities deserves greater academic attention. In order to address this research gap, this paper seeks to provide a more integrated perspective of both institutional and efficiency explanations of SR dynamics, as well as to highlight the role of company-level characteristics in explaining its contribution to sustainability management practices. More specifically, we suggest that substantive SR implementation can be predicted by assessing the level of fit between the organization and the SR framework being adopted. Building on this idea, our theoretical model defines three forms of fit (technical, cultural and political) and identifies organizational characteristics associated to each of these fits. Finally, implications for academic research, businesses and policy-makers are derived.