Towards model driven software development for Arduino platforms: a DSL and automatic code generation

La tesi ha lo scopo di esplorare la produzione di sistemi software per Embedded Systems mediante l'utilizzo di tecniche relative al mondo del Model Driven Software Development. La fase più importante dello sviluppo sarà la definizione di un Meta-Modello che caratterizza i concetti fondamentali relativi agli embedded systems. Tale modello cercherà di astrarre dalla particolare piattaforma utilizzata ed individuare quali astrazioni caratterizzano il mondo degli embedded systems in generale. Tale meta-modello sarà quindi di tipo platform-independent. Per la generazione automatica di codice è stata adottata una piattaforma di riferimento, cioè Arduino. Arduino è un sistema embedded che si sta sempre più affermando perché coniuga un buon livello di performance ed un prezzo relativamente basso. Tale piattaforma permette lo sviluppo di sistemi special purpose che utilizzano sensori ed attuatori di vario genere, facilmente connessi ai pin messi a disposizione. Il meta-modello definito è un'istanza del meta-metamodello MOF, definito formalmente dall'organizzazione OMG. Questo permette allo sviluppatore di pensare ad un sistema sotto forma di modello, istanza del meta-modello definito. Un meta-modello può essere considerato anche come la sintassi astratta di un linguaggio, quindi può essere definito da un insieme di regole EBNF. La tecnologia utilizzata per la definizione del meta-modello è stata Xtext: un framework che permette la scrittura di regole EBNF e che genera automaticamente il modello Ecore associato al meta-modello definito. Ecore è l'implementazione di EMOF in ambiente Eclipse. Xtext genera inoltre dei plugin che permettono di avere un editor guidato dalla sintassi, definita nel meta-modello. La generazione automatica di codice è stata realizzata usando il linguaggio Xtend2. Tale linguaggio permette di esplorare l'Abstract Syntax Tree generato dalla traduzione del modello in Ecore e di generare tutti i file di codice necessari. Il codice generato fornisce praticamente tutta la schematic part dell'applicazione, mentre lascia all'application designer lo sviluppo della business logic. Dopo la definizione del meta-modello di un sistema embedded, il livello di astrazione è stato spostato più in alto, andando verso la definizione della parte di meta-modello relativa all'interazione di un sistema embedded con altri sistemi. Ci si è quindi spostati verso un ottica di Sistema, inteso come insieme di sistemi concentrati che interagiscono. Tale difinizione viene fatta dal punto di vista del sistema concentrato di cui si sta definendo il modello. Nella tesi viene inoltre introdotto un caso di studio che, anche se abbastanza semplice, fornisce un esempio ed un tutorial allo sviluppo di applicazioni mediante l'uso del meta-modello. Ci permette inoltre di notare come il compito dell'application designer diventi piuttosto semplice ed immediato, sempre se basato su una buona analisi del problema. I risultati ottenuti sono stati di buona qualità ed il meta-modello viene tradotto in codice che funziona correttamente.

Urban water demand model: the case study of Emilia Romagna (Italy)

Water is the driving force in nature. We use water for washing cars, doing laundry, cooking, taking a shower, but also to generate energy and electricity. Therefore water is a necessary product in our daily lives (USGS. Howard Perlman, 2013). The model that we created is based on the urban water demand computer model from the Pacific Institute (California). With this model we will forecast the future urban water use of Emilia Romagna up to the year of 2030. We will analyze the urban water demand in Emilia Romagna that includes the 9 provinces: Bologna, Ferrara, Forli-Cesena, Modena, Parma, Piacenza, Ravenna, Reggio Emilia and Rimini. The term urban water refers to the water used in cities and suburbs and in homes in the rural areas. This will include the residential, commercial, institutional and the industrial use. In this research, we will cover the water saving technologies that can help to save water for daily use. We will project what influence these technologies have to the urban water demand, and what it can mean for future urban water demands. The ongoing climate change can reduce the snowpack, and extreme floods or droughts in Italy. The changing climate and development patterns are expected to have a significant impact on water demand in the future. We will do this by conducting different scenario analyses, by combining different population projections, climate influence and water saving technologies. In addition, we will also conduct a sensitivity analyses. The several analyses will show us how future urban water demand is likely respond to changes in water conservation technologies, population, climate, water price and consumption. I hope the research can contribute to the insight of the reader’s thoughts and opinion.

Assessing the effectiveness of ISO 3382 for evaluating the acoustical quality of italian historical theatres: the case study of the Bonci Theatre

The present study concerns the acoustical characterisation of Italian historical theatres. It moved from the ISO 3382 which provides the guidelines for the measurement of a well established set of room acoustic parameters inside performance spaces. Nevertheless, the peculiarity of Italian historical theatres needs a more specific approach. The Charter of Ferrara goes in this direction, aiming at qualifying the sound field in this kind of halls and the present work pursues the way forward. Trying to understand how the acoustical qualification should be done, the Bonci Theatre in Cesena has been taken as a case study. In September 2012 acoustical measurements were carried out in the theatre, recording monaural e binaural impulse responses at each seat in the hall. The values of the time criteria, energy criteria and psycho-acoustical and spatial criteria have been extracted according to ISO 3382. Statistics were performed and a 3D model of the theatre was realised and tuned. Statistical investigations were carried out on the whole set of measurement positions and on carefully chosen reduced subsets; it turned out that these subsets are representative only of the “average” acoustics of the hall. Normality tests were carried out to verify whether EDT, T30 and C80 could be described with some degree of reliability with a theoretical distribution. Different results, according to the varying assumptions underlying each test, were found. Finally, an attempt was made to correlate the numerical results emerged from the statistical analysis to the perceptual sphere. Looking for “acoustical equivalent areas”, relative difference limens were considered as threshold values. No rule of thumb emerged. Finally, the significance of the usual representation through mean values and standard deviation, which may be meaningful for normal distributed data, was investigated.

Prosperity Thinking in Action: a case study from Future Food Institute’s Paideia Campus

The need for sustainable economic growth and environmental stewardship emerged around the start of the twentieth century when society became aware that the traditional development model would lead to the collapse of the terrestrial ecosystem in the long run. Over the years, the international community's environmental efforts have demonstrated unequivocally that the planet's limits are real. And so, the new development approach has laid the groundwork for the future. According to this model, design also plays a key role in ensuring a better future. The design has undergone an ecological and sustainable evolution as a result of the global environmental crisis and the degradation of our ecosystem and biodiversity. In this contest, Prosperity Thinking is inserted, a still evolving methodology developed by the Future Food Institute starting from 2019. The main concepts on which it is based are described, as well as the method that identifies it, which is divided into the following stages: 1) Problem Framing 2) Ideation and Prototyping 3) Test & Analyze. The development of the prosperity thinking toolkit is described, beginning with the search for tools from the literature on sustainable design and ending with its validation with the help of design experts. The testing of some tools will be recounted during a workshop organized by FFI, in which 15 people ranging in age from 14 to 40 will participate, and then the final version of the toolkit will be presented which has been obtained by adding to it the tools proposed by the experts. Finally, a reflection on the future of Prosperity Thinking, a method in constant evolution that must continue to follow societal and environmental changes in order to respond to the ever-increasingly complex challenge of sustainability.

Nature-based solutions for urban heat island effect mitigation: the case study of Isla, Malta

Global population growth reflects how humans increasingly exploited Earth's resources. Urbanization develops along with anthropization. It is estimated that nearly 60% of the world's population lives in urban areas, which symbolize the denaturalized dimension of current modernity. Cities are artificial ecosystems that suffer most from environmental issues and climate change. The Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect is a common microclimatic phenomenon affecting cities, which causes considerable differences between urban and rural areas temperatures. Among the driving factors, the lack of vegetation in urban settlements can damage both humans and the environment (health diseases, heat waves caused deaths, biodiversity loss, and so on). As the world continues to urbanize, sustainable development increasingly depends on successful management of urban areas. To enhance cities’ resilience, Nature-based Solutions (NbSs), are defined as an umbrella concept that encompasses a wide range of ecosystem-based approaches and actions to climate change adaptation (CCA) and disaster risk reduction (DRR). This paper analyzes a 15-days study on air temperature trends carried out in Isla, a small locality in the Maltese archipelago, and proposes Nature-based Solutions-characterized scenarios to mitigate the Urban Heat Island effect the Mediterranean city is affected by. The results demonstrates how in some areas where vegetation is present, lower temperatures are recorded than in areas where vegetation is absent or scarce. It also appeared that in one location, the specific type of vegetation does not contribute to high temperature mitigation, whereas in another one, different environmental parameters can influence the measurements. Among the case-specific Nature-based Solutions proposed there are vertical greening (green wall, façades, ground based greening, etc.), tree lines, green canopy, and green roofs.

HBIM to Virtual Reality Workflow for Industrial Archaeology Immovable Assets’ Management: A Case Study

As a witness on the industrialization in Bologna, since its first generation was born in the late 1760, the Battiferro lock has been coping with the innovation that the city experienced throughout the centuries, until it has lost its functionality due to the technological development for which Bologna’s canals were gradually covered starting from the 1950s under Giuseppe Dozza ’s administration, as part of the reconstruction, reclamation and urban requalification that was carried out in the aftermath the World War II and which involved the whole city. The interest of the research carried out on this case study was primarily to reintroduce the landmark that is still intact, to what is considered to be the fourth generation of the industrial revolution, namely in the construction field, which is recognized as Construction 4.0, by means of the Historic (or Heritage) Information Modeling HBIM and Virtual Reality (VR) application. A scan-to-BIM approach was followed to create 3D as-built BIM model, as a first step towards the storytelling of the abandoned industrial built asset in VR environment, or as a seed for future applications such as Digital Twins (DT), heritage digital learning, sustainable impact studies, and/or interface with other interfaces such as GIS. Based on the HBIM product, examples of the primary BIM deliverables such as 2D layouts is given, then a workflow to VR is proposed and investigated the reliability of data and the type of users that may benefit of the VR experience, then the potential future development of the model is investigated, with comparison of a relatively similar experience in the UK.

"The capacity of contrastive analysis to successfully predict the errors of second language learners - a case study"

The aim of this dissertation is to show the power of contrastive analysis in successfully predicting the errors a language learner will make by means of a concrete case study. First, there is a description of what language transfer is and why it is important in the matter of second language acquisition. Second, a brief explanation of the history and development of contrastive analysis will be offered. Third, the focus of the thesis will move to an analysis of errors usually made by language learners. To conclude, the dissertation will focus on the concrete case study of a Russian learner of English: after an analysis of the errors the student is likely to make, a recorded conversation will be examined.

Videogame localization. A case study: Final Fantasy XII

Globalization has influenced all economic sectors and the demand for translation services has increased like never before. The videogame industry has become a worldwide phenomenon worth billions. Many people around the globe, male and female, children and adults alike, choose this leisure activity and enjoy it like reading or watching a film. It is a global phenomenon capable of producing as much revenue and anticipation as the film industry. Most games are developed in Japanese or English and the new global market requires this product to be translated into many other languages. The scenario has brought about a new field of specialization in translation studies, commonly known as videogame localization. The emergence of this new field calls not only for a review of translation studies, but also a shift in the role that some translators and translated products are expected to play within a globalized world. The aim of this dissertation is to provide an overview of videogame localization and its challenges under the guidance of a professional translator such as Alexander O. Smith, who agreed to provide counsel through several Skype interviews. This provided a first-hand insight into how translation decisions are carried out by game translators. Alexander O. Smith was a former translator for Square Enix, one of the biggest Japanese videogame developer, publisher and distribution company in the market. He now works as an independent translator and in 2003 he founded the localization agency called Kajiya Productions with his friend and fellow translator Joseph Reeder. Together with Alexander O. Smith, the twelfth installment of the Final Fantasy series by Square Enix has been chosen as a very good example of the issues and challenges brought on by videogame localization. The game which revealed itself to be one of the most fun, challenging and rewarding professional experiences of Alexander O. Smith.