Development of open models and tools for seismic risk assessment: application to Portugal

The exponential growth of the world population has led to an increase of settlements often located in areas prone to natural disasters, including earthquakes. Consequently, despite the important advances in the field of natural catastrophes modelling and risk mitigation actions, the overall human losses have continued to increase and unprecedented economic losses have been registered. In the research work presented herein, various areas of earthquake engineering and seismology are thoroughly investigated, and a case study application for mainland Portugal is performed. Seismic risk assessment is a critical link in the reduction of casualties and damages due to earthquakes. Recognition of this relation has led to a rapid rise in demand for accurate, reliable and flexible numerical tools and software. In the present work, an open-source platform for seismic hazard and risk assessment is developed. This software is capable of computing the distribution of losses or damage for an earthquake scenario (deterministic event-based) or earthquake losses due to all the possible seismic events that might occur within a region for a given interval of time (probabilistic event-based). This effort has been developed following an open and transparent philosophy and therefore, it is available to any individual or institution. The estimation of the seismic risk depends mainly on three components: seismic hazard, exposure and vulnerability. The latter component assumes special importance, as by intervening with appropriate retrofitting solutions, it may be possible to decrease directly the seismic risk. The employment of analytical methodologies is fundamental in the assessment of structural vulnerability, particularly in regions where post-earthquake building damage might not be available. Several common methodologies are investigated, and conclusions are yielded regarding the method that can provide an optimal balance between accuracy and computational effort. In addition, a simplified approach based on the displacement-based earthquake loss assessment (DBELA) is proposed, which allows for the rapid estimation of fragility curves, considering a wide spectrum of uncertainties. A novel vulnerability model for the reinforced concrete building stock in Portugal is proposed in this work, using statistical information collected from hundreds of real buildings. An analytical approach based on nonlinear time history analysis is adopted and the impact of a set of key parameters investigated, including the damage state criteria and the chosen intensity measure type. A comprehensive review of previous studies that contributed to the understanding of the seismic hazard and risk for Portugal is presented. An existing seismic source model was employed with recently proposed attenuation models to calculate probabilistic seismic hazard throughout the territory. The latter results are combined with information from the 2011 Building Census and the aforementioned vulnerability model to estimate economic loss maps for a return period of 475 years. These losses are disaggregated across the different building typologies and conclusions are yielded regarding the type of construction more vulnerable to seismic activity.

Comuns: An Open-Data Provider, Explorer and Analytic Toolbox Based on FOSS

Contém resumo

Open Access Movement for Managing Intellectual Informatics

The present work focuses on various facets of open access movement for managing intellectual output that eventually becomes available and accessible in public domain. Thus, purpose of this paper is to document and share the real time experience of managing and sharing of intellectual wealth of academia of Cochin University of Science & Technology by using open source platforms. This paper is trying to explore different intellectual information resources in the current era and also aims to suggest cost effective strategy of implementing new open access tools and technology for effective managing ofintellectual informatics

Adaptive business intelligence for an open negotiation environment

Engineering of negotiation model allows to develop effective heuristic for business intelligence. Digital ecosystems demand open negotiation models. To define in advance effective heuristics is not compliant with the requirement of openness. The new challenge is to develop business intelligence in advance exploiting an adaptive approach. The idea is to learn business strategy once new negotiation model rise in the e-market arena. In this paper we present how recommendation technology may be deployed in an open negotiation environment where the interaction protocol models are not known in advance. The solution we propose is delivered as part of the ONE Platform, open source software that implements a fully distributed open environment for business negotiation

A Negotiation Style Recommender Based on Computational Ecology in Open Negotiation Environments

The system described herein represents the first example of a recommender system in digital ecosystems where agents negotiate services on behalf of small companies. The small companies compete not only with price or quality, but with a wider service-by-service composition by subcontracting with other companies. The final result of these offerings depends on negotiations at the scale of millions of small companies. This scale requires new platforms for supporting digital business ecosystems, as well as related services like open-id, trust management, monitors and recommenders. This is done in the Open Negotiation Environment (ONE), which is an open-source platform that allows agents, on behalf of small companies, to negotiate and use the ecosystem services, and enables the development of new agent technologies. The methods and tools of cyber engineering are necessary to build up Open Negotiation Environments that are stable, a basic condition for predictable business and reliable business environments. Aiming to build stable digital business ecosystems by means of improved collective intelligence, we introduce a model of negotiation style dynamics from the point of view of computational ecology. This model inspires an ecosystem monitor as well as a novel negotiation style recommender. The ecosystem monitor provides hints to the negotiation style recommender to achieve greater stability of an open negotiation environment in a digital business ecosystem. The greater stability provides the small companies with higher predictability, and therefore better business results. The negotiation style recommender is implemented with a simulated annealing algorithm at a constant temperature, and its impact is shown by applying it to a real case of an open negotiation environment populated by Italian companies

Part 1 - talk on using Creative Commons and opensource software to make Open Content (what is creative commons ?, what is open content ?)

This is the first part of a 2 part video from my talk in May 2008 on open source content creation.

Part 2 - talk on using Creative Commons and opensource software to make Open Content. (Making of Doljer)

This is the second part of a 2 part video from my talk in May 2008 on open source content creation. Here I am talking about the Making of Doljer

The Open Web of Things as a means to unlock the potential of the IoT

Abstract: There is a lot of hype around the Internet of Things along with talk about 100 billion devices within 10 years time. The promise of innovative new services and efficiency savings is fueling interest in a wide range of potential applications across many sectors including smart homes, healthcare, smart grids, smart cities, retail, and smart industry. However, the current reality is one of fragmentation and data silos. W3C is seeking to fix that by exposing IoT platforms through the Web with shared semantics and data formats as the basis for interoperability. This talk will address the abstractions needed to move from a Web of pages to a Web of things, and introduce the work that is being done on standards and on open source projects for a new breed of Web servers on microcontrollers to cloud based server farms. Speaker Biography -Dave Raggett : Dave has been involved at the heart of web standards since 1992, and part of the W3C Team since 1995. As well as working on standards, he likes to dabble with software, and more recently with IoT hardware. He has participated in a wide range of European research projects on behalf of W3C/ERCIM. He currently focuses on Web payments, and realising the potential for the Web of Things as an evolution from the Web of pages. Dave has a doctorate from the University of Oxford. He is a visiting professor at the University of the West of England, and lives in the UK in a small town near to Bath.

Supporting an open learning network

Stephen Downes, investigador del Canada's National Research Council, presenta su visión personal sobre la educación y los recursos libres. Los temas principales de su presentación son: Free and Open Source Software, Open Knowledge, Education and Technology

Open GeoGadget Framework. Entorno de explotación de geoservicios basados en EzWeb

El objetivo del proyecto Open Geogadget Framework es el desarrollo de una plataforma Software que posibilite la composición y compartición de Interfaces para obtener conocimiento de Servicios Web de Información Geográfica estándares, mediante componentes tipo gadget's inteligentes, de una manera sencilla y rápida para el usuario; permitiendo explotar geo-información, sin necesidad de programar complicadas aplicaciones Web tipo mash-up

Open Hardware

Presentació sobre la creació de la placa Arduino, i els projectes que s'han fet arreu amb aquesta placa

From free software to free culture: the emergence of open business

This paper provides an examination of the emergence of open business models — entrepreneurial strategies that take advantage of the ease of digital reproduction to distribute free content, while earning money from the sale of related products and services. Locating the origins of open business in the open source software phenomenon, the authors suggest that the business strategies innovated there have broader economic relevance. Through a case study of the tecnobrega music scene in Belém, the paper illustrates how open business models can be applied to the production of cultural materials more generally

AcMus: an Open, Integrated Platform for Room Acoustics Research

This article describes the design, implementation, and experiences with AcMus, an open and integrated software platform for room acoustics research, which comprises tools for measurement, analysis, and simulation of rooms for music listening and production. Through use of affordable hardware, such as laptops, consumer audio interfaces and microphones, the software allows evaluation of relevant acoustical parameters with stable and consistent results, thus providing valuable information in the diagnosis of acoustical problems, as well as the possibility of simulating modifications in the room through analytical models. The system is open-source and based on a flexible and extensible Java plug-in framework, allowing for cross-platform portability, accessibility and experimentation, thus fostering collaboration of users, developers and researchers in the field of room acoustics.

Cultura "Open" e nuovi modelli normativi per la gestione della conoscenza

L'obiettivo della ricerca è di compiere un'analisi dell'impatto della cosiddetta cultura "open" alla luce dell'attuale condizione del World Wide Web. Si prenderà in considerazione, in particolare, la genesi del movimento a partire dalle basi di cultura hacker e la relativa evoluzione nella filosofia del software libero, con il fine ultimo di identificare il ruolo attuale del modello open source nello scenario esistente. L'introduzione al concetto di Open Access completerà la ricerca anche considerando la recente riaffermazione della conoscenza come bene comune all'interno della Società dell'Informazione