Modelling web-server Flash Events

A Flash Event (FE) represents a period of time when a web-server experiences a dramatic increase in incoming traffic, either following a newsworthy event that has prompted users to locate and access it, or as a result of redirection from other popular web or social media sites. This usually leads to network congestion and Quality-of-Service (QoS) degradation. These events can be mistaken for Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks aimed at disrupting the server. Accurate detection of FEs and their distinction from DDoS attacks is important, since different actions need to be undertaken by network administrators in these two cases. However, lack of public domain FE datasets hinders research in this area. In this paper we present a detailed study of flash events and classify them into three broad categories. In addition, the paper describes FEs in terms of three key components: the volume of incoming traffic, the related source IP-addresses, and the resources being accessed. We present such a FE model with minimal parameters and use publicly available datasets to analyse and validate our proposed model. The model can be used to generate different types of FE traffic, closely approximating real-world scenarios, in order to facilitate research into distinguishing FEs from DDoS attacks.

From the editor

In this issue of the Journal, the articles presented to the readers cover the breadth and depth of project management research and practice by addressing the relationship between project strategy and managing projects (Patanakul and Shenhar, “What Project Strategy Really Is: The Fundamental Building Block in Strategic Project Management”), on the need to align corporate strategy with program management (Ritson, Johansen, and Osborne, “Successful Programs Wanted: Exploring the Impact of Alignment”), identifying metrics to measure program success across project contexts (Shao, Müller, and Turner, “Measuring Program Success”), managing individual projects by identifying major risks in customer relationship management (CRM) implementation projects (Papadopoulos, Ojiako, Chipulu, and Lee, “The Criticality of Risk Factors in Customer Relationship Management Projects”), application of earned value management (EVM) to aerospace projects (Kwak and Anbari, “History, Practices, and Future of Earned Value Management in Government: Perspectives From NASA”), and capturing tacit knowledge of construction project professionals to determine the optimal construction site layout (Abdul-Rahman, Wang, and Siong, “Knowledge Acquisition Using Psychotherapy Technique for Critical Factors Influencing Construction Project Layout Planning”)...

From the Editor

In this issue of the Journal, the articles considered reflect the depth of research and practice that is unique to project management discipline. The range of topics addressed includes managing project contracts (Chan et al., “A Comparative Study of the Benefits of Applying Target Cost Contracts Between South Australia and Hong Kong”), managing project complexity (Chronéer and Bergquist, “Managerial Complexity in Process Industrial R&D Projects: A Swedish Study”), identifying early warning signs in complex projects (Williams et al., “Identifying and Acting on Early Warning Signs in Complex Projects”), project risk management (Krane, Olsson, and Rolstadås, “How Project Manager–Project Owner Interaction Can Work Within and Influence Project Risk Management”), exploring decisions regarding outsourcing and alignment of the project management office (Martins and Martins, “Outsourcing Operations in Project Management Offices: The Reality of Brazilian Companies”), and project management practices at strategic and tactical levels of the organization leading to sustainable development (Herazo, Lizarralde, and Paquin, “Sustainable Development in the Building Sector: A Canadian Case Study on the Alignment of Strategic and Tactical Management”).

From the Editor

The five articles appearing in this issue of the journal reflect the breadth of project management research and the cross-fertilization of ideas from other management disciplines with project management. These articles focus on the evolution of project management theory (“A Bibliometric View on the Use of Contingency Theory in Project Management Research” by Hanisch and Wald), interfirm knowledge management and learning in project networks (“Exploring Negotiation Through Boundary Objects in Global Design Project Networks” by Di Marco, Alin, and Taylor), learning within one project organization (“Organizational Learning in Project-Based Companies: A Process Thinking Approach” by Koskinen), identifying the factors affecting project performance (“Factors Causing Design Schedule Delays in Turnkey Projects in Taiwan: An Empirical Study of Power Distribution Substation Projects” by Yau and Yang), and considering the antecedents of negative employee behavior and its consequences for project team performance (“Counteracting Free-Riding With Team Morale—An Experimental Study” by He).

From the editor

This special issue of Project Management Journal presents a collection of six of the best papers presented at the International Research Network on Organizing by Projects (IRNOP) Conference hosted by the University of Quebec at Montreal (UQAM) in June 2011 in Montréal, Canada. In this editorial, Professor Brian Hobbs, organizer of the IRNOP 2011 Conference and Project Management Chair at UQAM, shares his observations about the current state of project research and identifies trends...

From the editor

In this issue of the Journal, articles presented to the readers cover project management practices throughout history (“Frontinus—A Project Manager From the Roman Empire Era,” Walker and Dart), project success and failure revisited through integrated theoretical lens on the one hand (“Translation and Convergence in Projects: An Organizational Perspective on Project Success,” Alderman and Ivory) and, on the other hand, with a focus on systems engineers' capacity for engineering systems thinking (“The Relationship Among Systems Engineers' Capacity for Engineering Systems Thinking, Project Types, and Project Success,” Frank, Sadeh, and Ashkenasi), project management offices (PMOs) investigated through community of practice theory (“Exploring PMOs Through Community of Practice Theory,” Aubry, Müller, and Glückler), influence of cultural patterns on project team behavior (“Cultural Patterns Influencing Project Team Behavior in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Case Study in Ethiopia,” Jetu, Riedl, and Roithmayr), and human factors and differences of perception and their impact on risk management (“Exploring Risk Dimensions in the Indian Software Industry,” Sharma, Sengupta, and Gupta)...

From the editor

Intelligence and context, knowledge, competence, and performance and results summarize the content of the papers presented to readers in this issue of the Journal. This is a very relevant series of papers as, for the past 50 years, project management has become a well-accepted way to manage organizations. The field of project management has evolved from operational research techniques and tools to a discipline of management encompassing various schools of thought (Söderlund, 2002; Turner, Huemann, Anbari, & Bredillet, 2010)...

From the editor

In order to read this Project Management Journal issue, I suggest embracing a modeling perspective. Talking about modeling should lead me to define what is meant by “model” and to develop some kind of categorization, classification, or taxonomy of models. One can consider basic categories like quantitative vs. qualitative, explanatory vs. predictive, stochastic, nonstochastic mathematical, or qualitative models, linear vs. nonlinear and their underlying assumptions, degree of simplification, systemic effects integration, and so on...

From the editor

In this Project Management Journal issue, the reader will “travel” from human capital to portfolio selection through knowledge development and maturity, systems thinking and problem (dis)solving, and development of combinative capabilities...

From the editor

In this issue of the Project Management Journal, the reader will explore understanding better the contribution of project management to organizational performance, discovering the necessity to move beyond the old reigning paradigm of single-loop project control, raising the question whether PMP® certification leads to better performance, learning how to develop project management competence through a course based on service learning and an experiential learning approach, supporting new product development with the use of “dormant knowledge,” and increasing performance of virtual new product development projects...

From the editor

In this issue of Project Management Journal, the reader will explore different perspectives, exemplifying the dynamic and creativity at stake within the project, program, and portfolio management field. These papers provide good illustrations of the various schools of project management research I introduced in the From the Editor letters between June 2007 and September 2008...

Augmenting public participation : enhancing planning outcomes through the use of social media and web 2.0

Social media and web 2.0 tools offer opportunities to devise novel participation strategies that can engage previously difficult to reach as well as new segments of society in urban planning. This paper examines participatory planning in the four local government areas of Brisbane City Council, Gold Coast City Council, Redland City Council, and Toowoomba Regional Council, all situated in South East Queensland, Australia. The paper discusses how social media and web 2.0 tools can deliver a more engaging planning experience to citizens, and investigates local government’s current use and receptiveness to social media tools for plan making and community engagement. The study’s research informed the development of criteria to assess the level of participation reached through the current use of social media and web 2.0 in the four local government areas. This resulted in an adaptation of the International Association for Public Participation (IAP2) Toolbox to integrate these new tools which is being presented to encourage further discussion and evaluation by planning professionals.

Talk and web searching in an early years classroom

Recent Australian early childhood policy and curriculum guidelines promoting the use of technologies invite investigations of young children’s practices in classrooms. This study examined the practices of one preparatory year classroom, to show teacher and child interactions as they engaged in Web searching. The study investigated the in situ practices of the teacher and children to show how they accomplished the Web search. The data corpus consists of eight hours of videorecorded interactions over three days where children and teachers engaged in Web searching. One episode was selected that showed a teacher and two children undertaking a Web search. The episode is shown to consist of four phases: deciding on a new search subject, inputting the search query, considering the result options, and exploring the selected result. The sociological perspectives of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis were employed as the conceptual and methodological frameworks of the study, to analyse the video-recorded teacher and child interactions as they co-constructed a Web search. Ethnomethodology is concerned with how people make ‘sense’ in everyday interactions, and conversation analysis focuses on the sequential features of interaction to show how the interaction unfolds moment by moment. This extended single case analysis showed how the Web search was accomplished over multiple turns, and how the children and teacher collaboratively engaged in talk. There are four main findings. The first was that Web searching featured sustained teacher-child interaction, requiring a particular sort of classroom organisation to enable the teacher to work in this sustained way. The second finding was that the teacher’s actions recognised the children’s interactional competence in situ, orchestrating an interactional climate where everyone was heard. The third finding was that the teacher drew upon a range of interactional resources designed to progress the activity at hand, that of accomplishing the Web search. The teacher drew upon the interactional resources of interrogatives, discourse markers, and multi-unit turns during the Web search, and these assisted the teacher and children to co-construct their discussion, decide upon and co-ordinate their future actions, and accomplish the Web search in a timely way. The fourth finding explicates how particular social and pedagogic orders are accomplished through talk, where children collaborated with each other and with the teacher to complete the Web search. The study makes three key recommendations for the field of early childhood education. The study’s first recommendation is that fine-grained transcription and analysis of interaction aids in understanding interactional practices of Web searching. This study offers material for use in professional development, such as using transcribed and videorecorded interactions to highlight how teachers strategically engage with children, that is, how talk works in classroom settings. Another strategy is to focus on the social interactions of members engaging in Web searches, which is likely to be of interest to teachers as they work to engage with children in an increasingly online environment. The second recommendation involves classroom organisation; how teachers consider and plan for extended periods of time for Web searching, and how teachers accommodate children’s prior knowledge of Web searching in their classrooms. The third recommendation is in relation to future empirical research, with suggested possible topics focusing on the social interactions of children as they engage with peers as they Web search, as well as investigations of techno-literacy skills as children use the Internet in the early years.

QUT Para at TREC 2012 Web Track : Word Associations for Retrieving Web Documents

Many existing information retrieval models do not explicitly take into account in- formation about word associations. Our approach makes use of rst and second order relationships found in natural language, known as syntagmatic and paradigmatic associ- ations, respectively. This is achieved by using a formal model of word meaning within the query expansion process. On ad hoc retrieval, our approach achieves statistically sig- ni cant improvements in MAP (0.158) and P@20 (0.396) over our baseline model. The ERR@20 and nDCG@20 of our system was 0.249 and 0.192 respectively. Our results and discussion suggest that information about both syntagamtic and paradigmatic associa- tions can assist with improving retrieval eectiveness on ad hoc retrieval.

Extending Web Modeling Language to exploit stigmergy : intentionally recording unintentional trails

Software development and Web site development techniques have evolved significantly over the past 20 years. The relatively young Web Application development area has borrowed heavily from traditional software development methodologies primarily due to the similarities in areas of data persistence and User Interface (UI) design. Recent developments in this area propose a new Web Modeling Language (WebML) to facilitate the nuances specific to Web development. WebML is one of a number of implementations designed to enable modeling of web site interaction flows while being extendable to accommodate new features in Web site development into the future. Our research aims to extend WebML with a focus on stigmergy which is a biological term originally used to describe coordination between insects. We see design features in existing Web sites that mimic stigmergic mechanisms as part of the UI. We believe that we can synthesize and embed stigmergy in Web 2.0 sites. This paper focuses on the sub-topic of site UI design and stigmergic mechanism designs required to achieve this.