Goals Software Construction Process

Generalized hyper competitiveness in the world markets has determined the need to offer better products to potential and actual clients in order to mark an advantagefrom other competitors. To ensure the production of an adequate product, enterprises need to work on the efficiency and efficacy of their business processes (BPs) by means of the construction of Interactive Information Systems (IISs, including Interactive Multimedia Documents) so that they are processed more fluidly and correctly.The construction of the correct IIS is a major task that can only be successful if the needs from every intervenient are taken into account. Their requirements must bedefined with precision, extensively analyzed and consequently the system must be accurately designed in order to minimize implementation problems so that the IIS isproduced on schedule and with the fewer mistakes as possible. The main contribution of this thesis is the proposal of Goals, a software (engineering) construction process which aims at defining the tasks to be carried out in order to develop software. This process defines the stakeholders, the artifacts, and the techniques that should be applied to achieve correctness of the IIS. Complementarily, this process suggests two methodologies to be applied in the initial phases of the lifecycle of the Software Engineering process: Process Use Cases for the phase of requirements, and; MultiGoals for the phases of analysis and design. Process Use Cases is a UML-based (Unified Modeling Language), goal-driven and use case oriented methodology for the definition of functional requirements. It uses an information oriented strategy in order to identify BPs while constructing the enterprise’s information structure, and finalizes with the identification of use cases within the design of these BPs. This approach provides a useful tool for both activities of Business Process Management and Software Engineering. MultiGoals is a UML-based, use case-driven and architectural centric methodology for the analysis and design of IISs with support for Multimedia. It proposes the analysis of user tasks as the basis of the design of the: (i) user interface; (ii) the system behaviour that is modeled by means of patterns which can combine Multimedia and standard information, and; (iii) the database and media contents. This thesis makes the theoretic presentation of these approaches accompanied with examples from a real project which provide the necessary support for the understanding of the used techniques.

Transport modelling: macro and micro simulation for the studied case of Funchal

The work done in this thesis attempts to demonstrate the importance of using models that can predict and represent the mobility of our society. To answer the proposed challenges two models were examined, the first corresponds to macro simulation with the intention of finding a solution to the frequency of the bus company Horários do Funchal, responsible for transport in the city of Funchal, and some surrounding areas. Where based on a simplified model of the city it was possible to increase the frequency of journeys getting an overall reduction in costs. The second model concerns the micro simulation of Avenida do Mar, where currently is being built a new roundabout (Praça da Autonomia), which connects with this avenue. Therefore it was proposed to study the impact on local traffic, and the implementation of new traffic lights for this purpose. Four possible situations in which was seen the possibility of increasing the number of lanes on the roundabout or the insertion of a bus lane were created. The results showed that having a roundabout with three lanes running is the best option because the waiting queues are minimal, and at environmental level this model will project fewer pollutants. Thus, this thesis presents two possible methods of urban planning. Transport modelling is an area that is under constant development, the global goal is to encourage more and more the use of these models, and as such it is important to have more people to devote themselves to studying new ways of addressing current problems, so that we can have more accurate models and increasing their credibility.