Groundwater Visualisation System (GVS): a software framework for developing low-end, scalable and robust software for 3D visualisation and animation of groundwater conceptual models

Effective management of groundwater requires stakeholders to have a realistic conceptual understanding of the groundwater systems and hydrological processes.However, groundwater data can be complex, confusing and often difficult for people to comprehend..A powerful way to communicate understanding of groundwater processes, complex subsurface geology and their relationships is through the use of visualisation techniques to create 3D conceptual groundwater models. In addition, the ability to animate, interrogate and interact with 3D models can encourage a higher level of understanding than static images alone. While there are increasing numbers of software tools available for developing and visualising groundwater conceptual models, these packages are often very expensive and are not readily accessible to majority people due to complexity. .The Groundwater Visualisation System (GVS) is a software framework that can be used to develop groundwater visualisation tools aimed specifically at non-technical computer users and those who are not groundwater domain experts. A primary aim of GVS is to provide management support for agencies, and enhancecommunity understanding.

Blogs, wikis and podcasts : collaborative knowledge building tools in a design and technology course

Design and Technology has become an important part of the school curriculum. In Queensland, Australia, Technology (which encompasses Design) is one of the Key Learning Areas (KLAs) for students in the first ten years of schooling. This KLA adopts a student-centred, hands-on constructivist approach to teaching and learning. The ability to conceptualise and implement appropriate learning experiences, however, has been a challenge for some early career teachers. This paper describes how Design and Technology is being taught to pre-service primary teachers at an Australian University through their involvement in a range of authentic problem-solving activities supported by social learning tools such as wikis and blogs. An interview with a sample from this group (N=5) provides an insight into how these social software tools enhanced their knowledge and learning. This paper will describe how these social learning tools impact on the agency of learning.

DesignWorld : a tool for team collaboration in high band virtual environments

Current software tools for documenting and developing models of buildings focus on supporting a single user who is a specialist in the specific software used within their own discipline. Extensions to these tools for use by teams maintain the single discipline view and focus on version and file management. There is a perceived need in industry to have tools that specifically support collaboration among individuals from multiple disciplines with both a graphical representation of the design and a persistent data model. This project involves the development of a prototype of such a software tool. We have identified multi-user 3D virtual worlds as an appropriate software base for the development of a collaborative design tool. These worlds are inherently multi-user and therefore directly support collaboration through a sense of awareness of others in the virtual world, their location within the world, and provide various channels for direct and indirect communication. Such software platforms also provide a 3D building and modelling environment that can be adapted to the needs of the building and construction industry. DesignWorld is a prototype system for collaborative design developed by augmenting the Second Life (SL) commercial software platform1 with a collection web-based tools for communication and design. Agents manage communication between the 3D virtual world and the web-based tools. In addition, agents maintain a persistent external model of designs in the 3D world which can be augmented with data such as relationships, disciplines and versions not usually associated with 3D virtual worlds but required in design scenarios.

How to achieve sustainability : regulatory challenges

The importance of designing sustainable buildings is gaining greater acceptance worldwide. Evidence of this is how regulators are incorporating sustainable design principles into building regulations and requirements. The aim being to increase the number of sustainable buildings and move from a traditional voluntary compliance to one that is mandatory. However, developing regulations that actually achieve these aims can be a difficult exercise. Several countries in South East Asia, such as Singapore and Malaysia, have performance based building regulations that are supplemented by prescriptive measures for achieving the desired performance. Australia too has similar building regulations and has had energy efficiency regulations within the Building Code of Australia for over a decade. This paper explores some of the difficulties and problems that Australian regulators have experienced with the performance-based method and the prescriptive or “deemed-to-comply” method and measures that have been taken to try and overcome these problems. These experiences act as a useful guide to all regulators considering the incorporation of sustainable design measures into their countries building regulations. The paper also speculates on future environmental requirements being incorporated into regulations, including the possibility of non-residential buildings being required to meet minimum energy efficiency requirements, and the possible systems that would need to be in place before such requirements were included. Finally, the paper looks at a possible way forward using direct assessment from electronic designs and introduces several software tools that are currently being developed that move towards achieving this goal. Keywords: Sustainable buildings, Performance-based, Regulations, Energy efficiency, Assessment tools.

Integrating concrete and virtual materials in an elementary mathematics classroom : a case study of success with fractions

This paper describes an approach to introducing fraction concepts using generic software tools such as Microsoft Office's PowerPoint to create "virtual" materials for mathematics teaching and learning. This approach replicates existing concrete materials and integrates virtual materials with current non-computer methods of teaching primary students about fractions. The paper reports a case study of a 12-year-old student, Frank, who had an extremely limited understanding of fractions. Frank also lacked motivation for learning mathematics in general and interacted with his peers in a negative way during mathematics lessons. In just one classroom session involving the seamless integration of off-computer and on-computer activities, Frank acquired a basic understanding of simple common equivalent fractions. Further, he was observed as the session progressed to be an enthusiastic learner who offered to share his learning with his peers. The study's "virtual replication" approach for fractions involves the manipulation of concrete materials (folding paper regions) alongside the manipulation of their virtual equivalent (shading screen regions). As researchers have pointed out, the emergence of new technologies does not mean old technologies become redundant. Learning technologies have not replaced print and oral language or basic mathematical understanding. Instead, they are modifying, reshaping, and blending the ways in which humankind speaks, reads, writes, and works mathematically. Constructivist theories of learning and teaching argue that mathematics understanding is developed from concrete to pictorial to abstract and that, ultimately, mathematics learning and teaching is about refinement and expression of ideas and concepts. Therefore, by seamlessly integrating the use of concrete materials and virtual materials generated by computer software applications, an opportunity arises to enhance the teaching and learning value of both materials.

Toward a fuzzy domain ontology extraction method for adaptive e-learning

With the widespread applications of electronic learning (e-Learning) technologies to education at all levels, increasing number of online educational resources and messages are generated from the corresponding e-Learning environments. Nevertheless, it is quite difficult, if not totally impossible, for instructors to read through and analyze the online messages to predict the progress of their students on the fly. The main contribution of this paper is the illustration of a novel concept map generation mechanism which is underpinned by a fuzzy domain ontology extraction algorithm. The proposed mechanism can automatically construct concept maps based on the messages posted to online discussion forums. By browsing the concept maps, instructors can quickly identify the progress of their students and adjust the pedagogical sequence on the fly. Our initial experimental results reveal that the accuracy and the quality of the automatically generated concept maps are promising. Our research work opens the door to the development and application of intelligent software tools to enhance e-Learning.

Legislative and security requirements of audit material for evidentiary purpose

This research used the Queensland Police Service, Australia, as a major case study. Information on principles, techniques and processes used, and the reason for the recording, storing and release of audit information for evidentiary purposes is reported. It is shown that Law Enforcement Agencies have a two-fold interest in, and legal obligation pertaining to, audit trails. The first interest relates to the situation where audit trails are actually used by criminals in the commission of crime and the second to where audit trails are generated by the information systems used by the police themselves in support of the recording and investigation of crime. Eleven court cases involving Queensland Police Service audit trails used in evidence in Queensland courts were selected for further analysis. It is shown that, of the cases studied, none of the evidence presented was rejected or seriously challenged from a technical perspective. These results were further analysed and related to normal requirements for trusted maintenance of audit trail information in sensitive environments with discussion on the ability and/or willingness of courts to fully challenge, assess or value audit evidence presented. Managerial and technical frameworks for firstly what is considered as an environment where a computer system may be considered to be operating “properly” and, secondly, what aspects of education, training, qualifications, expertise and the like may be considered as appropriate for persons responsible within that environment, are both proposed. Analysis was undertaken to determine if audit and control of information in a high security environment, such as law enforcement, could be judged as having improved, or not, in the transition from manual to electronic processes. Information collection, control of processing and audit in manual processes used by the Queensland Police Service, Australia, in the period 1940 to 1980 was assessed against current electronic systems essentially introduced to policing in the decades of the 1980s and 1990s. Results show that electronic systems do provide for faster communications with centrally controlled and updated information readily available for use by large numbers of users who are connected across significant geographical locations. However, it is clearly evident that the price paid for this is a lack of ability and/or reluctance to provide improved audit and control processes. To compare the information systems audit and control arrangements of the Queensland Police Service with other government departments or agencies, an Australia wide survey was conducted. Results of the survey were contrasted with the particular results of a survey, conducted by the Australian Commonwealth Privacy Commission four years previous, to this survey which showed that security in relation to the recording of activity against access to information held on Australian government computer systems has been poor and a cause for concern. However, within this four year period there is evidence to suggest that government organisations are increasingly more inclined to generate audit trails. An attack on the overall security of audit trails in computer operating systems was initiated to further investigate findings reported in relation to the government systems survey. The survey showed that information systems audit trails in Microsoft Corporation's “Windows” operating system environments are relied on quite heavily. An audit of the security for audit trails generated, stored and managed in the Microsoft “Windows 2000” operating system environment was undertaken and compared and contrasted with similar such audit trail schemes in the “UNIX” and “Linux” operating systems. Strength of passwords and exploitation of any security problems in access control were targeted using software tools that are freely available in the public domain. Results showed that such security for the “Windows 2000” system is seriously flawed and the integrity of audit trails stored within these environments cannot be relied upon. An attempt to produce a framework and set of guidelines for use by expert witnesses in the information technology (IT) profession is proposed. This is achieved by examining the current rules and guidelines related to the provision of expert evidence in a court environment, by analysing the rationale for the separation of distinct disciplines and corresponding bodies of knowledge used by the Medical Profession and Forensic Science and then by analysing the bodies of knowledge within the discipline of IT itself. It is demonstrated that the accepted processes and procedures relevant to expert witnessing in a court environment are transferable to the IT sector. However, unlike some discipline areas, this analysis has clearly identified two distinct aspects of the matter which appear particularly relevant to IT. These two areas are; expertise gained through the application of IT to information needs in a particular public or private enterprise; and expertise gained through accepted and verifiable education, training and experience in fundamental IT products and system.

Implementing an emergency department patient admission predictive tool : insights from practice

Purpose: This paper aims to show that identification of expectations and software functional requirements via consultation with potential users is an integral component of the development of an emergency department patient admissions prediction tool. ---------- Design/methodology/approach: Thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with 14 key health staff delivered rich data regarding existing practice and future needs. Participants included emergency department staff, bed managers, nurse unit managers, directors of nursing, and personnel from health administration. ---------- Findings: Participants contributed contextual insights on the current system of admissions, revealing a culture of crisis, imbued with misplayed communication. Their expectations and requirements of a potential predictive tool provided strategic data that moderated the development of the Emergency Department Patient Admissions Prediction Tool, based on their insistence that it feature availability, reliability and relevance. In order to deliver these stipulations, participants stressed that it should be incorporated, validated, defined and timely. ---------- Research limitations/implications: Participants were envisaging a concept and use of a tool that was somewhat hypothetical. However, further research will evaluate the tool in practice. ---------- Practical implications: Participants' unsolicited recommendations regarding implementation will not only inform a subsequent phase of the tool evaluation, but are eminently applicable to any process of implementation in a healthcare setting. ---------- Originality/value: The consultative process engaged clinicians and the paper delivers an insider view of an overburdened system, rather than an outsider's observations.

Smart Grid Test Bed Design and Implementation

Given there is currently a migration trend from traditional electrical supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems towards a smart grid based approach to critical infrastructure management. This project provides an evaluation of existing and proposed implementations for both traditional electrical SCADA and smart grid based architectures, and proposals a set of reference requirements which test bed implementations should implement. A high-level design for smart grid test beds is proposed and initial implementation performed, based on the proposed design, using open source and freely available software tools. The project examines the move towards smart grid based critical infrastructure management and illustrates the increased security requirements. The implemented test bed provides a basic framework for testing network requirements in a smart grid environment, as well as a platform for further research and development. Particularly to develop, implement and test network security related disturbances such as intrusion detection and network forensics. The project undertaken proposes and develops an architecture of the emulation of some smart grid functionality. The Common Open Research Emulator (CORE) platform was used to emulate the communication network of the smart grid. Specifically CORE was used to virtualise and emulate the TCP/IP networking stack. This is intended to be used for further evaluation and analysis, for example the analysis of application protocol messages, etc. As a proof of concept, software libraries were designed, developed and documented to enable and support the design and development of further smart grid emulated components, such as reclosers, switches, smart meters, etc. As part of the testing and evaluation a Modbus based smart meter emulator was developed to provide basic functionality of a smart meter. Further code was developed to send Modbus request messages to the emulated smart meter and receive Modbus responses from it. Although the functionality of the emulated components were limited, it does provide a starting point for further research and development. The design is extensible to enable the design and implementation of additional SCADA protocols. The project also defines an evaluation criteria for the evaluation of the implemented test bed, and experiments are designed to evaluate the test bed according to the defined criteria. The results of the experiments are collated and presented, and conclusions drawn from the results to facilitate discussion on the test bed implementation. The discussion undertaken also present possible future work.

Archiving nature’s heartbeat using smart phones

The impact of urban development and climate change has created the impetus to monitor changes in the environment, particularly, the behaviour, habitat and movement of fauna species. The aim of this chapter is to present the design and development of a sensor network based on smart phones to automatically collect and analyse acoustic and visual data for environmental monitoring purposes. Due to the communication and sophisticated programming facilities offered by smart phones, software tools can be developed to allow data to be collected, partially processed and sent to a remote server over the network for storage and further processing. This sensor network which employs a client-server architecture has been deployed in three applications: monitoring a rare bird species near Brisbane Airport, study of koalas behaviour at St Bees Island, and detection of fruit flies. The users of this system include scientists (e.g. ecologists, ornithologists, computer scientists) and community groups participating in data collection or reporting on the environment (e.g. students, bird watchers). The chapter focuses on the following aspects of our research: issues involved in using smart phones as sensors; the overall framework for data acquisition, data quality control, data management and analysis; current and future applications of the smart phone-based sensor network, and our future research directions.

GPFlow: an intuitive environment for web-based scientific workflow

Increasingly scientists are using collections of software tools in their research. These tools are typically used in concert, often necessitating laborious and error-prone manual data reformatting and transfer. We present an intuitive workflow environment to support scientists with their research. The workflow, GPFlow, wraps legacy tools, presenting a high level, interactive web-based front end to scientists. The workflow backend is realized by a commercial grade workflow engine (Windows Workflow Foundation). The workflow model is inspired by spreadsheets and is novel in its support for an intuitive method of interaction enabling experimentation as required by many scientists, e.g. bioinformaticians. We apply GPFlow to two bioinformatics experiments and demonstrate its flexibility and simplicity.

Objectifying early-number : a visual nomenclature to express mathematical domain knowledge

To address issues of divisive ideologies in the Mathematics Education community and to subsequently advance educational practice, an alternative theoretical framework and operational model is proposed which represents a consilience of constructivist learning theories whilst acknowledging the objective but improvable nature of domain knowledge. Based upon Popper’s three-world model of knowledge, the proposed theory supports the differentiation and explicit modelling of both shared domain knowledge and idiosyncratic personal understanding using a visual nomenclature. The visual nomenclature embodies Piaget’s notion of reflective abstraction and so may support an individual’s experience-based transformation of personal understanding with regards to shared domain knowledge. Using the operational model and visual nomenclature, seminal literature regarding early-number counting and addition was analysed and described. Exemplars of the resultant visual artefacts demonstrate the proposed theory’s viability as a tool with which to characterise the reflective abstraction-based organisation of a domain’s shared knowledge. Utilising such a description of knowledge, future research needs to consider the refinement of the operational model and visual nomenclature to include the analysis, description and scaffolded transformation of personal understanding. A detailed model of knowledge and understanding may then underpin the future development of educational software tools such as computer-mediated teaching and learning environments.

The development of Monte Carlo techniques for the verification of radiotherapy treatments

Radiotherapy is a cancer treatment modality in which a dose of ionising radiation is delivered to a tumour. The accurate calculation of the dose to the patient is very important in the design of an effective therapeutic strategy. This study aimed to systematically examine the accuracy of the radiotherapy dose calculations performed by clinical treatment planning systems by comparison againstMonte Carlo simulations of the treatment delivery. A suite of software tools known as MCDTK (Monte Carlo DICOM ToolKit) was developed for this purpose, and is capable of: • Importing DICOM-format radiotherapy treatment plans and producing Monte Carlo simulation input files (allowing simple simulation of complex treatments), and calibrating the results; • Analysing the predicted doses of and deviations between the Monte Carlo simulation results and treatment planning system calculations in regions of interest (tumours and organs-at-risk) and generating dose-volume histograms, so that conformity with dose prescriptions can be evaluated. The code has been tested against various treatment planning systems, linear acceleratormodels and treatment complexities. Six clinical head and neck cancer treatments were simulated and the results analysed using this software. The deviations were greatest where the treatment volume encompassed tissues on both sides of an air cavity. This was likely due to the method the planning system used to model low density media.

Determinants of driver vs. second row occupant posture modelling

Digital human modeling (DHM), as a convenient and cost-effective tool, is increasingly incorporated into product and workplace design. In product design, it is predominantly used for the development of driver-vehicle systems. Most digital human modeling software tools, such as JACK, RAMSIS and DELMIA HUMANBUILDER provide functions to predict posture and positions for drivers with selected anthropometry according to SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) Recommended Practices and other ergonomics guidelines. However, few studies have presented 2nd row passenger postural information, and digital human modeling of these passenger postures cannot be performed directly using the existing driver posture prediction functions. In this paper, the significant studies related to occupant posture and modeling were reviewed and a framework of determinants of driver vs. 2nd row occupant posture modeling was extracted. The determinants which are regarded as input factors for posture modeling include target population anthropometry, vehicle package geometry and seat design variables as well as task definitions. The differences between determinants of driver and 2nd row occupant posture models are significant, as driver posture modeling is primarily based on the position of the foot on the accelerator pedal (accelerator actuation point AAP, accelerator heel point AHP) and the hands on the steering wheel (steering wheel centre point A-Point). The objectives of this paper are aimed to investigate those differences between driver and passenger posture, and to supplement the existing parametric model for occupant posture prediction. With the guide of the framework, the associated input parameters of occupant digital human models of both driver and second row occupant will be identified. Beyond the existing occupant posture models, for example a driver posture model could be modified to predict second row occupant posture, by adjusting the associated input parameters introduced in this paper. This study combines results from a literature review and the theoretical modeling stage of a second row passenger posture prediction model project.