Sustainable development 20 years on from the earth summit: progress, gaps and strategic guidelines for Latin America and the Caribbean

Includes bibliography

Estimating the development of the fennel aphid, Hyadaphis foeniculi (Passerini) (Hemiptera: Aphiididae), using non-linear models

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Desarrollo de un sistema de control de asistencia de profesorado guiado por pruebas

[ES] El presente trabajo describe el desarrollo de una aplicación para el registro de las horas de docencia impartidas por el profesorado en la universidad. Con esto se persigue tener la información digitalizada para agilizar las gestiones que se tengan que realizar con ella. Por el lado del profesorado, se enviarán notificaciones vía correo electrónico para confirmar la docencia firmada, a modo de registro personal para que el profesor sepa la docencia que ha impartido y, en caso de sustitución, que también el profesor sustituido tenga constancia de la sustitución. El desarrollo se hará apoyándose en métodos ágiles, utilizando el desarrollo guiado por pruebas los módulos del modelo y persistencia.

Entorno de desarrollo integral para el lenguaje de modelado Tara

Máster Universitario en Sistemas Inteligentes y Aplicaciones Numéricas en Ingeniería (SIANI)

Proteo : lenguaje para la especificación de lenguajes específicos de dominio

Máster Universitario en Sistemas Inteligentes y Aplicaciones Numéricas en Ingeniería (SIANI)

Enabling a direct path from end-user specifications to executable protocols in a biology laboratory environment

Biomedical analyses are becoming increasingly complex, with respect to both the type of the data to be produced and the procedures to be executed. This trend is expected to continue in the future. The development of information and protocol management systems that can sustain this challenge is therefore becoming an essential enabling factor for all actors in the field. The use of custom-built solutions that require the biology domain expert to acquire or procure software engineering expertise in the development of the laboratory infrastructure is not fully satisfactory because it incurs undesirable mutual knowledge dependencies between the two camps. We propose instead an infrastructure concept that enables the domain experts to express laboratory protocols using proper domain knowledge, free from the incidence and mediation of the software implementation artefacts. In the system that we propose this is made possible by basing the modelling language on an authoritative domain specific ontology and then using modern model-driven architecture technology to transform the user models in software artefacts ready for execution in a multi-agent based execution platform specialized for biomedical laboratories.

Development of control-oriented models of Dual Clutch Transmission systems

A control-oriented model of a Dual Clutch Transmission was developed for real-time Hardware In the Loop (HIL) applications, to support model-based development of the DCT controller. The model is an innovative attempt to reproduce the fast dynamics of the actuation system while maintaining a step size large enough for real-time applications. The model comprehends a detailed physical description of hydraulic circuit, clutches, synchronizers and gears, and simplified vehicle and internal combustion engine sub-models. As the oil circulating in the system has a large bulk modulus, the pressure dynamics are very fast, possibly causing instability in a real-time simulation; the same challenge involves the servo valves dynamics, due to the very small masses of the moving elements. Therefore, the hydraulic circuit model has been modified and simplified without losing physical validity, in order to adapt it to the real-time simulation requirements. The results of offline simulations have been compared to on-board measurements to verify the validity of the developed model, that was then implemented in a HIL system and connected to the TCU (Transmission Control Unit). Several tests have been performed: electrical failure tests on sensors and actuators, hydraulic and mechanical failure tests on hydraulic valves, clutches and synchronizers, and application tests comprehending all the main features of the control performed by the TCU. Being based on physical laws, in every condition the model simulates a plausible reaction of the system. The first intensive use of the HIL application led to the validation of the new safety strategies implemented inside the TCU software. A test automation procedure has been developed to permit the execution of a pattern of tests without the interaction of the user; fully repeatable tests can be performed for non-regression verification, allowing the testing of new software releases in fully automatic mode.

The Effects of Social Anxiety on the Development of Romantic Relationships in Adolescence

The present study sought to investigate the ways in which social anxiety impedes the development of romantic relationships across adolescence. Previous research has demonstrated a natural progression for romantic associations during adolescence in which teens transition from same- to mixed-sex peer groups, and finally to dyadic relationships with romantic partners (Connolly, Furman, Konarski, 2000; Dunphy, 1963). This model of development was the basis for the present investigation. Social anxiety was examined in terms of how it impacted affiliations at the same- and mixed sex peer group levels, and ultimately the formation of romantic relationships. This project involved administering a series of questionnaires and rating scales to students enrolled in the 9th through \2l grades. Participants included 457 adolescents (196 males, 261 females) recruited from public high schools in the state of Maine. The questionnaires assessed social anxiety, peer acceptance, heterosocial competence, gender composition of adolescent peer networks, dating history, and relationship quality with significant others in the adolescent's life. Higher levels of social anxiety were expected to be associated with impairment at each of these three levels. Given the proposed developmental progression, the effects of anxiety were theorized to be most pronounced within the older cohort of adolescents. Moreover, gender was expected to affect the pattern of results. Social anxiety is most prevalent among females (LaGreca, 1998; LaGreca & Lopez, 1998), who are also thought to progress along the proposed developmental trajectory more quickly than their male counterparts. Therefore, social anxiety was expected to impact the females to a greater degree at each of the three levels. Correlation coefficients, multivariate analyses of variance, and regression analyses were used to evaluate the data. Overall, despite some discrepant findings, the results supported the hypotheses. Social anxiety was affiliated with problems in the same-sex peer group, the mixed-sex clique, and, for older adolescents, romantic relationships. As expected, social anxiety affected females the most at each level. There seems to be a maladaptive pathway that socially anxious teens are following that is markedly different than their non-anxious counterparts.

Economic development capitalizing on brand agriculture : turning development strategy on its head

This paper explores the possibilities of two unique Japanese concepts - the One Village One Product Movement (OVOP) and Michino Eki (or Roadside Stations) - as potential tools for bridging the gap between cities and rural areas through community-driven development. From the viewpoint of spatial economics and endogenous growth theory, this paper considers both OVOP and Michino Eki as rural development strategies of a broader nature based on "brand agriculture." Here, brand agriculture represents a general strategy for community-based rural development that identifies, cultivates and fully utilizes local resources for the development of products or services unique to a certain "village." Selected examples of OVOP and Michino Eki from Japan and developing countries are introduced.

Extending ASSERT for HW/SW Co-design

Embedded systems are commonly designed by specifying and developing hardware and software systems separately. On the contrary, the hardware/software (HW/SW) co-development exploits the trade-offs between hardware and software in a system through their concurrent design. HW/SW Codevelopment techniques take advantage of the flexibility of system design to create architectures that can meet stringent performance requirements with a shorter design cycle. This paper presents the work done within the scope of ESA HWSWCO (Hardware-Software Co-design) study. The main objective of this study has been to address the HW/SW co-design phase to integrate this engineering task as part of the ASSERT process (refer to [1]) and compatible with the existing ASSERT approach, process and tool, Advances in the automation of the design of HW and SW and the adoption of the Model Driven Architecture (MDA) [9] paradigm make possible the definition of a proper integration substrate and enables the continuous interaction of the HW and SW design paths.

Sensitivity of a distributed temperature-radiation index melt model based on AWS observations and surface energy balance fluxes, Hurd Peninsula glaciers, Livingston Island, Antarctica

We use an automatic weather station and surface mass balance dataset spanning four melt seasons collected on Hurd Peninsula Glaciers, South Shetland Islands, to investigate the point surface energy balance, to determine the absolute and relative contribution of the various energy fluxes acting on the glacier surface and to estimate the sensitivity of melt to ambient temperature changes. Long-wave incoming radiation is the main energy source for melt, while short-wave radiation is the most important flux controlling the variation of both seasonal and daily mean surface energy balance. Short-wave and long-wave radiation fluxes do, in general, balance each other, resulting in a high correspondence between daily mean net radiation flux and available melt energy flux. We calibrate a distributed melt model driven by air temperature and an expression for the incoming short-wave radiation. The model is calibrated with the data from one of the melt seasons and validated with the data of the three remaining seasons. The model results deviate at most 140 mm w.e. from the corresponding observations using the glaciological method. The model is very sensitive to changes in ambient temperature: a 0.5 ◦ C increase results in 56 % higher melt rates.

Semantic Service Discovery Techniques for the composable web

This PhD thesis contributes to the problem of resource and service discovery in the context of the composable web. In the current web, mashup technologies allow developers reusing services and contents to build new web applications. However, developers face a problem of information flood when searching for appropriate services or resources for their combination. To contribute to overcoming this problem, a framework is defined for the discovery of services and resources. In this framework, three levels are defined for performing discovery at content, discovery and agente levels. The content level involves the information available in web resources. The web follows the Representational Stateless Transfer (REST) architectural style, in which resources are returned as representations from servers to clients. These representations usually employ the HyperText Markup Language (HTML), which, along with Content Style Sheets (CSS), describes the markup employed to render representations in a web browser. Although the use of SemanticWeb standards such as Resource Description Framework (RDF) make this architecture suitable for automatic processes to use the information present in web resources, these standards are too often not employed, so automation must rely on processing HTML. This process, often referred as Screen Scraping in the literature, is the content discovery according to the proposed framework. At this level, discovery rules indicate how the different pieces of data in resources’ representations are mapped onto semantic entities. By processing discovery rules on web resources, semantically described contents can be obtained out of them. The service level involves the operations that can be performed on the web. The current web allows users to perform different tasks such as search, blogging, e-commerce, or social networking. To describe the possible services in RESTful architectures, a high-level feature-oriented service methodology is proposed at this level. This lightweight description framework allows defining service discovery rules to identify operations in interactions with REST resources. The discovery is thus performed by applying discovery rules to contents discovered in REST interactions, in a novel process called service probing. Also, service discovery can be performed by modelling services as contents, i.e., by retrieving Application Programming Interface (API) documentation and API listings in service registries such as ProgrammableWeb. For this, a unified model for composable components in Mashup-Driven Development (MDD) has been defined after the analysis of service repositories from the web. The agent level involves the orchestration of the discovery of services and contents. At this level, agent rules allow to specify behaviours for crawling and executing services, which results in the fulfilment of a high-level goal. Agent rules are plans that allow introspecting the discovered data and services from the web and the knowledge present in service and content discovery rules to anticipate the contents and services to be found on specific resources from the web. By the definition of plans, an agent can be configured to target specific resources. The discovery framework has been evaluated on different scenarios, each one covering different levels of the framework. Contenidos a la Carta project deals with the mashing-up of news from electronic newspapers, and the framework was used for the discovery and extraction of pieces of news from the web. Similarly, in Resulta and VulneraNET projects the discovery of ideas and security knowledge in the web is covered, respectively. The service level is covered in the OMELETTE project, where mashup components such as services and widgets are discovered from component repositories from the web. The agent level is applied to the crawling of services and news in these scenarios, highlighting how the semantic description of rules and extracted data can provide complex behaviours and orchestrations of tasks in the web. The main contributions of the thesis are the unified framework for discovery, which allows configuring agents to perform automated tasks. Also, a scraping ontology has been defined for the construction of mappings for scraping web resources. A novel first-order logic rule induction algorithm is defined for the automated construction and maintenance of these mappings out of the visual information in web resources. Additionally, a common unified model for the discovery of services is defined, which allows sharing service descriptions. Future work comprises the further extension of service probing, resource ranking, the extension of the Scraping Ontology, extensions of the agent model, and contructing a base of discovery rules. Resumen La presente tesis doctoral contribuye al problema de descubrimiento de servicios y recursos en el contexto de la web combinable. En la web actual, las tecnologías de combinación de aplicaciones permiten a los desarrolladores reutilizar servicios y contenidos para construir nuevas aplicaciones web. Pese a todo, los desarrolladores afrontan un problema de saturación de información a la hora de buscar servicios o recursos apropiados para su combinación. Para contribuir a la solución de este problema, se propone un marco de trabajo para el descubrimiento de servicios y recursos. En este marco, se definen tres capas sobre las que se realiza descubrimiento a nivel de contenido, servicio y agente. El nivel de contenido involucra a la información disponible en recursos web. La web sigue el estilo arquitectónico Representational Stateless Transfer (REST), en el que los recursos son devueltos como representaciones por parte de los servidores a los clientes. Estas representaciones normalmente emplean el lenguaje de marcado HyperText Markup Language (HTML), que, unido al estándar Content Style Sheets (CSS), describe el marcado empleado para mostrar representaciones en un navegador web. Aunque el uso de estándares de la web semántica como Resource Description Framework (RDF) hace apta esta arquitectura para su uso por procesos automatizados, estos estándares no son empleados en muchas ocasiones, por lo que cualquier automatización debe basarse en el procesado del marcado HTML. Este proceso, normalmente conocido como Screen Scraping en la literatura, es el descubrimiento de contenidos en el marco de trabajo propuesto. En este nivel, un conjunto de reglas de descubrimiento indican cómo los diferentes datos en las representaciones de recursos se corresponden con entidades semánticas. Al procesar estas reglas sobre recursos web, pueden obtenerse contenidos descritos semánticamente. El nivel de servicio involucra las operaciones que pueden ser llevadas a cabo en la web. Actualmente, los usuarios de la web pueden realizar diversas tareas como búsqueda, blogging, comercio electrónico o redes sociales. Para describir los posibles servicios en arquitecturas REST, se propone en este nivel una metodología de alto nivel para descubrimiento de servicios orientada a funcionalidades. Este marco de descubrimiento ligero permite definir reglas de descubrimiento de servicios para identificar operaciones en interacciones con recursos REST. Este descubrimiento es por tanto llevado a cabo al aplicar las reglas de descubrimiento sobre contenidos descubiertos en interacciones REST, en un nuevo procedimiento llamado sondeo de servicios. Además, el descubrimiento de servicios puede ser llevado a cabo mediante el modelado de servicios como contenidos. Es decir, mediante la recuperación de documentación de Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) y listas de APIs en registros de servicios como ProgrammableWeb. Para ello, se ha definido un modelo unificado de componentes combinables para Mashup-Driven Development (MDD) tras el análisis de repositorios de servicios de la web. El nivel de agente involucra la orquestación del descubrimiento de servicios y contenidos. En este nivel, las reglas de nivel de agente permiten especificar comportamientos para el rastreo y ejecución de servicios, lo que permite la consecución de metas de mayor nivel. Las reglas de los agentes son planes que permiten la introspección sobre los datos y servicios descubiertos, así como sobre el conocimiento presente en las reglas de descubrimiento de servicios y contenidos para anticipar contenidos y servicios por encontrar en recursos específicos de la web. Mediante la definición de planes, un agente puede ser configurado para descubrir recursos específicos. El marco de descubrimiento ha sido evaluado sobre diferentes escenarios, cada uno cubriendo distintos niveles del marco. El proyecto Contenidos a la Carta trata de la combinación de noticias de periódicos digitales, y en él el framework se ha empleado para el descubrimiento y extracción de noticias de la web. De manera análoga, en los proyectos Resulta y VulneraNET se ha llevado a cabo un descubrimiento de ideas y de conocimientos de seguridad, respectivamente. El nivel de servicio se cubre en el proyecto OMELETTE, en el que componentes combinables como servicios y widgets se descubren en repositorios de componentes de la web. El nivel de agente se aplica al rastreo de servicios y noticias en estos escenarios, mostrando cómo la descripción semántica de reglas y datos extraídos permiten proporcionar comportamientos complejos y orquestaciones de tareas en la web. Las principales contribuciones de la tesis son el marco de trabajo unificado para descubrimiento, que permite configurar agentes para realizar tareas automatizadas. Además, una ontología de extracción ha sido definida para la construcción de correspondencias y extraer información de recursos web. Asimismo, un algoritmo para la inducción de reglas de lógica de primer orden se ha definido para la construcción y el mantenimiento de estas correspondencias a partir de la información visual de recursos web. Adicionalmente, se ha definido un modelo común y unificado para el descubrimiento de servicios que permite la compartición de descripciones de servicios. Como trabajos futuros se considera la extensión del sondeo de servicios, clasificación de recursos, extensión de la ontología de extracción y la construcción de una base de reglas de descubrimiento.

A Metadirectory of Web Components for Mashup Composition

Because of the growing availability of third-party APIs, services, widgets and any other reusable web component, mashup developers now face a vast amount of candidate components for their developments. Moreover, these components quite often are scattered in many different repositories and web sites, which makes difficult their selection or discovery. In this paper, we discuss the problem of component selection in Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA) and Mashup-Driven Development, and introduce the Linked Mashups Ontology (LiMOn), a model that allows describing mashups and their components for integrating and sharing mashup information such as categorization or dependencies. The model has allowed the building of an integrated, centralized metadirectory of web components for query and selection, which has served to evaluate the model. The metadirectory allows accessing various heterogeneous repositories of mashups and web components while using external information from the Linked Data cloud, helping mashup development.

A model to develop a platform for personalised health applications

Antecedentes Europa vive una situación insostenible. Desde el 2008 se han reducido los recursos de los gobiernos a raíz de la crisis económica. El continente Europeo envejece con ritmo constante al punto que se prevé que en 2050 habrá sólo dos trabajadores por jubilado [54]. A esta situación se le añade el aumento de la incidencia de las enfermedades crónicas, relacionadas con el envejecimiento, cuyo coste puede alcanzar el 7% del PIB de un país [51]. Es necesario un cambio de paradigma. Una nueva manera de cuidar de la salud de las personas: sustentable, eficaz y preventiva más que curativa. Algunos estudios abogan por el cuidado personalizado de la salud (pHealth). En este modelo las prácticas médicas son adaptadas e individualizadas al paciente, desde la detección de los factores de riesgo hasta la personalización de los tratamientos basada en la respuesta del individuo [81]. El cuidado personalizado de la salud está asociado a menudo al uso de las tecnologías de la información y comunicación (TICs) que, con su desarrollo exponencial, ofrecen oportunidades interesantes para la mejora de la salud. El cambio de paradigma hacia el pHealth está lentamente ocurriendo, tanto en el ámbito de la investigación como en la industria, pero todavía no de manera significativa. Existen todavía muchas barreras relacionadas a la economía, a la política y la cultura. También existen barreras puramente tecnológicas, como la falta de sistemas de información interoperables [199]. A pesar de que los aspectos de interoperabilidad están evolucionando, todavía hace falta un diseño de referencia especialmente direccionado a la implementación y el despliegue en gran escala de sistemas basados en pHealth. La presente Tesis representa un intento de organizar la disciplina de la aplicación de las TICs al cuidado personalizado de la salud en un modelo de referencia, que permita la creación de plataformas de desarrollo de software para simplificar tareas comunes de desarrollo en este dominio. Preguntas de investigación RQ1 >Es posible definir un modelo, basado en técnicas de ingeniería del software, que represente el dominio del cuidado personalizado de la salud de una forma abstracta y representativa? RQ2 >Es posible construir una plataforma de desarrollo basada en este modelo? RQ3 >Esta plataforma ayuda a los desarrolladores a crear sistemas pHealth complejos e integrados? Métodos Para la descripción del modelo se adoptó el estándar ISO/IEC/IEEE 42010por ser lo suficientemente general y abstracto para el amplio enfoque de esta tesis [25]. El modelo está definido en varias partes: un modelo conceptual, expresado a través de mapas conceptuales que representan las partes interesadas (stakeholders), los artefactos y la información compartida; y escenarios y casos de uso para la descripción de sus funcionalidades. El modelo fue desarrollado de acuerdo a la información obtenida del análisis de la literatura, incluyendo 7 informes industriales y científicos, 9 estándares, 10 artículos en conferencias, 37 artículos en revistas, 25 páginas web y 5 libros. Basándose en el modelo se definieron los requisitos para la creación de la plataforma de desarrollo, enriquecidos por otros requisitos recolectados a través de una encuesta realizada a 11 ingenieros con experiencia en la rama. Para el desarrollo de la plataforma, se adoptó la metodología de integración continua [74] que permitió ejecutar tests automáticos en un servidor y también desplegar aplicaciones en una página web. En cuanto a la metodología utilizada para la validación se adoptó un marco para la formulación de teorías en la ingeniería del software [181]. Esto requiere el desarrollo de modelos y proposiciones que han de ser validados dentro de un ámbito de investigación definido, y que sirvan para guiar al investigador en la búsqueda de la evidencia necesaria para justificarla. La validación del modelo fue desarrollada mediante una encuesta online en tres rondas con un número creciente de invitados. El cuestionario fue enviado a 134 contactos y distribuido en algunos canales públicos como listas de correo y redes sociales. El objetivo era evaluar la legibilidad del modelo, su nivel de cobertura del dominio y su potencial utilidad en el diseño de sistemas derivados. El cuestionario incluía preguntas cuantitativas de tipo Likert y campos para recolección de comentarios. La plataforma de desarrollo fue validada en dos etapas. En la primera etapa se utilizó la plataforma en un experimento a pequeña escala, que consistió en una sesión de entrenamiento de 12 horas en la que 4 desarrolladores tuvieron que desarrollar algunos casos de uso y reunirse en un grupo focal para discutir su uso. La segunda etapa se realizó durante los tests de un proyecto en gran escala llamado HeartCycle [160]. En este proyecto un equipo de diseñadores y programadores desarrollaron tres aplicaciones en el campo de las enfermedades cardio-vasculares. Una de estas aplicaciones fue testeada en un ensayo clínico con pacientes reales. Al analizar el proyecto, el equipo de desarrollo se reunió en un grupo focal para identificar las ventajas y desventajas de la plataforma y su utilidad. Resultados Por lo que concierne el modelo que describe el dominio del pHealth, la parte conceptual incluye una descripción de los roles principales y las preocupaciones de los participantes, un modelo de los artefactos TIC que se usan comúnmente y un modelo para representar los datos típicos que son necesarios formalizar e intercambiar entre sistemas basados en pHealth. El modelo funcional incluye un conjunto de 18 escenarios, repartidos en: punto de vista de la persona asistida, punto de vista del cuidador, punto de vista del desarrollador, punto de vista de los proveedores de tecnologías y punto de vista de las autoridades; y un conjunto de 52 casos de uso repartidos en 6 categorías: actividades de la persona asistida, reacciones del sistema, actividades del cuidador, \engagement" del usuario, actividades del desarrollador y actividades de despliegue. Como resultado del cuestionario de validación del modelo, un total de 65 personas revisó el modelo proporcionando su nivel de acuerdo con las dimensiones evaluadas y un total de 248 comentarios sobre cómo mejorar el modelo. Los conocimientos de los participantes variaban desde la ingeniería del software (70%) hasta las especialidades médicas (15%), con declarado interés en eHealth (24%), mHealth (16%), Ambient Assisted Living (21%), medicina personalizada (5%), sistemas basados en pHealth (15%), informática médica (10%) e ingeniería biomédica (8%) con una media de 7.25_4.99 años de experiencia en estas áreas. Los resultados de la encuesta muestran que los expertos contactados consideran el modelo fácil de leer (media de 1.89_0.79 siendo 1 el valor más favorable y 5 el peor), suficientemente abstracto (1.99_0.88) y formal (2.13_0.77), con una cobertura suficiente del dominio (2.26_0.95), útil para describir el dominio (2.02_0.7) y para generar sistemas más específicos (2_0.75). Los expertos también reportan un interés parcial en utilizar el modelo en su trabajo (2.48_0.91). Gracias a sus comentarios, el modelo fue mejorado y enriquecido con conceptos que faltaban, aunque no se pudo demonstrar su mejora en las dimensiones evaluadas, dada la composición diferente de personas en las tres rondas de evaluación. Desde el modelo, se generó una plataforma de desarrollo llamada \pHealth Patient Platform (pHPP)". La plataforma desarrollada incluye librerías, herramientas de programación y desarrollo, un tutorial y una aplicación de ejemplo. Se definieron cuatro módulos principales de la arquitectura: el Data Collection Engine, que permite abstraer las fuentes de datos como sensores o servicios externos, mapeando los datos a bases de datos u ontologías, y permitiendo interacción basada en eventos; el GUI Engine, que abstrae la interfaz de usuario en un modelo de interacción basado en mensajes; y el Rule Engine, que proporciona a los desarrolladores un medio simple para programar la lógica de la aplicación en forma de reglas \if-then". Después de que la plataforma pHPP fue utilizada durante 5 años en el proyecto HeartCycle, 5 desarrolladores fueron reunidos en un grupo de discusión para analizar y evaluar la plataforma. De estas evaluaciones se concluye que la plataforma fue diseñada para encajar las necesidades de los ingenieros que trabajan en la rama, permitiendo la separación de problemas entre las distintas especialidades, y simplificando algunas tareas de desarrollo como el manejo de datos y la interacción asíncrona. A pesar de ello, se encontraron algunos defectos a causa de la inmadurez de algunas tecnologías empleadas, y la ausencia de algunas herramientas específicas para el dominio como el procesado de datos o algunos protocolos de comunicación relacionados con la salud. Dentro del proyecto HeartCycle la plataforma fue utilizada para el desarrollo de la aplicación \Guided Exercise", un sistema TIC para la rehabilitación de pacientes que han sufrido un infarto del miocardio. El sistema fue testeado en un ensayo clínico randomizado en el cual a 55 pacientes se les dio el sistema para su uso por 21 semanas. De los resultados técnicos del ensayo se puede concluir que, a pesar de algunos errores menores prontamente corregidos durante el estudio, la plataforma es estable y fiable. Conclusiones La investigación llevada a cabo en esta Tesis y los resultados obtenidos proporcionan las respuestas a las tres preguntas de investigación que motivaron este trabajo: RQ1 Se ha desarrollado un modelo para representar el dominio de los sistemas personalizados de salud. La evaluación hecha por los expertos de la rama concluye que el modelo representa el dominio con precisión y con un balance apropiado entre abstracción y detalle. RQ2 Se ha desarrollado, con éxito, una plataforma de desarrollo basada en el modelo. RQ3 Se ha demostrado que la plataforma es capaz de ayudar a los desarrolladores en la creación de software pHealth complejos. Las ventajas de la plataforma han sido demostradas en el ámbito de un proyecto de gran escala, aunque el enfoque genérico adoptado indica que la plataforma podría ofrecer beneficios también en otros contextos. Los resultados de estas evaluaciones ofrecen indicios de que, ambos, el modelo y la plataforma serán buenos candidatos para poderse convertir en una referencia para futuros desarrollos de sistemas pHealth. ABSTRACT Background Europe is living in an unsustainable situation. The economic crisis has been reducing governments' economic resources since 2008 and threatening social and health systems, while the proportion of older people in the European population continues to increase so that it is foreseen that in 2050 there will be only two workers per retiree [54]. To this situation it should be added the rise, strongly related to age, of chronic diseases the burden of which has been estimated to be up to the 7% of a country's gross domestic product [51]. There is a need for a paradigm shift, the need for a new way of caring for people's health, shifting the focus from curing conditions that have arisen to a sustainable and effective approach with the emphasis on prevention. Some advocate the adoption of personalised health care (pHealth), a model where medical practices are tailored to the patient's unique life, from the detection of risk factors to the customization of treatments based on each individual's response [81]. Personalised health is often associated to the use of Information and Communications Technology (ICT), that, with its exponential development, offers interesting opportunities for improving healthcare. The shift towards pHealth is slowly taking place, both in research and in industry, but the change is not significant yet. Many barriers still exist related to economy, politics and culture, while others are purely technological, like the lack of interoperable information systems [199]. Though interoperability aspects are evolving, there is still the need of a reference design, especially tackling implementation and large scale deployment of pHealth systems. This thesis contributes to organizing the subject of ICT systems for personalised health into a reference model that allows for the creation of software development platforms to ease common development issues in the domain. Research questions RQ1 Is it possible to define a model, based on software engineering techniques, for representing the personalised health domain in an abstract and representative way? RQ2 Is it possible to build a development platform based on this model? RQ3 Does the development platform help developers create complex integrated pHealth systems? Methods As method for describing the model, the ISO/IEC/IEEE 42010 framework [25] is adopted for its generality and high level of abstraction. The model is specified in different parts: a conceptual model, which makes use of concept maps, for representing stakeholders, artefacts and shared information, and in scenarios and use cases for the representation of the functionalities of pHealth systems. The model was derived from literature analysis, including 7 industrial and scientific reports, 9 electronic standards, 10 conference proceedings papers, 37 journal papers, 25 websites and 5 books. Based on the reference model, requirements were drawn for building the development platform enriched with a set of requirements gathered in a survey run among 11 experienced engineers. For developing the platform, the continuous integration methodology [74] was adopted which allowed to perform automatic tests on a server and also to deploy packaged releases on a web site. As a validation methodology, a theory building framework for SW engineering was adopted from [181]. The framework, chosen as a guide to find evidence for justifying the research questions, imposed the creation of theories based on models and propositions to be validated within a scope. The validation of the model was conducted as an on-line survey in three validation rounds, encompassing a growing number of participants. The survey was submitted to 134 experts of the field and on some public channels like relevant mailing lists and social networks. Its objective was to assess the model's readability, its level of coverage of the domain and its potential usefulness in the design of actual, derived systems. The questionnaires included quantitative Likert scale questions and free text inputs for comments. The development platform was validated in two scopes. As a small-scale experiment, the platform was used in a 12 hours training session where 4 developers had to perform an exercise consisting in developing a set of typical pHealth use cases At the end of the session, a focus group was held to identify benefits and drawbacks of the platform. The second validation was held as a test-case study in a large scale research project called HeartCycle the aim of which was to develop a closed-loop disease management system for heart failure and coronary heart disease patients [160]. During this project three applications were developed by a team of programmers and designers. One of these applications was tested in a clinical trial with actual patients. At the end of the project, the team was interviewed in a focus group to assess the role the platform had within the project. Results For what regards the model that describes the pHealth domain, its conceptual part includes a description of the main roles and concerns of pHealth stakeholders, a model of the ICT artefacts that are commonly adopted and a model representing the typical data that need to be formalized among pHealth systems. The functional model includes a set of 18 scenarios, divided into assisted person's view, caregiver's view, developer's view, technology and services providers' view and authority's view, and a set of 52 Use Cases grouped in 6 categories: assisted person's activities, system reactions, caregiver's activities, user engagement, developer's activities and deployer's activities. For what concerns the validation of the model, a total of 65 people participated in the online survey providing their level of agreement in all the assessed dimensions and a total of 248 comments on how to improve and complete the model. Participants' background spanned from engineering and software development (70%) to medical specialities (15%), with declared interest in the fields of eHealth (24%), mHealth (16%), Ambient Assisted Living (21%), Personalized Medicine (5%), Personal Health Systems (15%), Medical Informatics (10%) and Biomedical Engineering (8%) with an average of 7.25_4.99 years of experience in these fields. From the analysis of the answers it is possible to observe that the contacted experts considered the model easily readable (average of 1.89_0.79 being 1 the most favourable scoring and 5 the worst), sufficiently abstract (1.99_0.88) and formal (2.13_0.77) for its purpose, with a sufficient coverage of the domain (2.26_0.95), useful for describing the domain (2.02_0.7) and for generating more specific systems (2_0.75) and they reported a partial interest in using the model in their job (2.48_0.91). Thanks to their comments, the model was improved and enriched with concepts that were missing at the beginning, nonetheless it was not possible to prove an improvement among the iterations, due to the diversity of the participants in the three rounds. From the model, a development platform for the pHealth domain was generated called pHealth Patient Platform (pHPP). The platform includes a set of libraries, programming and deployment tools, a tutorial and a sample application. The main four modules of the architecture are: the Data Collection Engine, which allows abstracting sources of information like sensors or external services, mapping data to databases and ontologies, and allowing event-based interaction and filtering, the GUI Engine, which abstracts the user interface in a message-like interaction model, the Workow Engine, which allows programming the application's user interaction ows with graphical workows, and the Rule Engine, which gives developers a simple means for programming the application's logic in the form of \if-then" rules. After the 5 years experience of HeartCycle, partially programmed with pHPP, 5 developers were joined in a focus group to discuss the advantages and drawbacks of the platform. The view that emerged from the training course and the focus group was that the platform is well-suited to the needs of the engineers working in the field, it allowed the separation of concerns among the different specialities and it simplified some common development tasks like data management and asynchronous interaction. Nevertheless, some deficiencies were pointed out in terms of a lack of maturity of some technological choices, and for the absence of some domain-specific tools, e.g. for data processing or for health-related communication protocols. Within HeartCycle, the platform was used to develop part of the Guided Exercise system, a composition of ICT tools for the physical rehabilitation of patients who suffered from myocardial infarction. The system developed using the platform was tested in a randomized controlled clinical trial, in which 55 patients used the system for 21 weeks. The technical results of this trial showed that the system was stable and reliable. Some minor bugs were detected, but these were promptly corrected using the platform. This shows that the platform, as well as facilitating the development task, can be successfully used to produce reliable software. Conclusions The research work carried out in developing this thesis provides responses to the three three research questions that were the motivation for the work. RQ1 A model was developed representing the domain of personalised health systems, and the assessment of experts in the field was that it represents the domain accurately, with an appropriate balance between abstraction and detail. RQ2 A development platform based on the model was successfully developed. RQ3 The platform has been shown to assist developers create complex pHealth software. This was demonstrated within the scope of one large-scale project, but the generic approach adopted provides indications that it would offer benefits more widely. The results of these evaluations provide indications that both the model and the platform are good candidates for being a reference for future pHealth developments.