Progettazione e sviluppo di applicazioni distribuite su Web: da JavaScript a TypeScript

Il Web nel corso della sua esistenza ha subito un mutamento dovuto in parte dalle richieste del mercato, ma soprattutto dall’evoluzione e la nascita costante delle numerose tecnologie coinvolte in esso. Si è passati da un’iniziale semplice diffusione di contenuti statici, ad una successiva collezione di siti web, dapprima con limitate presenze di dinamicità e interattività (a causa dei limiti tecnologici), ma successivamente poi evoluti alle attuali applicazioni web moderne che hanno colmato il gap con le applicazioni desktop, sia a livello tecnologico, che a livello di diffusione effettiva sul mercato. Tali applicazioni web moderne possono presentare un grado di complessità paragonabile in tutto e per tutto ai sistemi software desktop tradizionali; le tecnologie web hanno subito nel tempo un evoluzione legata ai cambiamenti del web stesso e tra le tecnologie più diffuse troviamo JavaScript, un linguaggio di scripting nato per dare dinamicità ai siti web che si ritrova tutt’ora ad essere utilizzato come linguaggio di programmazione di applicazioni altamente strutturate. Nel corso degli anni la comunità di sviluppo che ruota intorno a JavaScript ha prodotto numerose librerie al supporto del linguaggio dotando così gli sviluppatori di un linguaggio completo in grado di far realizzare applicazioni web avanzate. Le recenti evoluzioni dei motori javascript presenti nei browser hanno inoltre incrementato le prestazioni del linguaggio consacrandone la sua leadership nei confronti dei linguaggi concorrenti. Negli ultimi anni a causa della crescita della complessità delle applicazioni web, javascript è stato messo molto in discussione in quanto come linguaggio non offre le classiche astrazioni consolidate nel tempo per la programmazione altamente strutturata; per questo motivo sono nati linguaggi orientati alla programmazione ad oggetti per il web che si pongono come obiettivo la risoluzione di questo problema: tra questi si trovano linguaggi che hanno l’ambizione di soppiantare JavaScript come ad esempio Dart creato da Google, oppure altri che invece sfruttano JavaScript come linguaggio base al quale aggiungono le caratteristiche mancanti e, mediante il processo di compilazione, producono codice JavaScript puro compatibile con i motori JavaScript presenti nei browser. JavaScript storicamente fu introdotto come linguaggio sia per la programmazione client-side, che per la controparte server-side, ma per vari motivi (la forte concorrenza, basse performance, etc.) ebbe successo solo come linguaggio per la programmazione client; le recenti evoluzioni del linguaggio lo hanno però riportato in auge anche per la programmazione server-side, soprattutto per i miglioramenti delle performance, ma anche per la sua naturale predisposizione per la programmazione event-driven, paradigma alternativo al multi-threading per la programmazione concorrente. Un’applicazione web di elevata complessità al giorno d’oggi può quindi essere interamente sviluppata utilizzando il linguaggio JavaScript, acquisendone sia i suoi vantaggi che gli svantaggi; le nuove tecnologie introdotte ambiscono quindi a diventare la soluzione per i problemi presenti in JavaScript e di conseguenza si propongono come potenziali nuovi linguaggi completi per la programmazione web del futuro, anticipando anche le prossime evoluzioni delle tecnologie già esistenti preannunciate dagli enti standard della programmazione web, il W3C ed ECMAScript. In questa tesi saranno affrontate le tematiche appena introdotte confrontando tra loro le tecnologie in gioco con lo scopo di ottenere un’ampia panoramica delle soluzioni che uno sviluppatore web dovrà prendere in considerazione per realizzare un sistema di importanti dimensioni; in particolare sarà approfondito il linguaggio TypeScript proposto da Microsoft, il quale è nato in successione a Dart apparentemente con lo stesso scopo, ma grazie alla compatibilità con JavaScript e soprattutto con il vasto mondo di librerie legate ad esso nate in questi ultimi anni, si presenta nel mercato come tecnologia facile da apprendere per tutti gli sviluppatori che già da tempo hanno sviluppato abilità nella programmazione JavaScript.

Sharing Human-Generated Observations by Integrating HMI and the Semantic Sensor Web

Current “Internet of Things” concepts point to a future where connected objects gather meaningful information about their environment and share it with other objects and people. In particular, objects embedding Human Machine Interaction (HMI), such as mobile devices and, increasingly, connected vehicles, home appliances, urban interactive infrastructures, etc., may not only be conceived as sources of sensor information, but, through interaction with their users, they can also produce highly valuable context-aware human-generated observations. We believe that the great promise offered by combining and sharing all of the different sources of information available can be realized through the integration of HMI and Semantic Sensor Web technologies. This paper presents a technological framework that harmonizes two of the most influential HMI and Sensor Web initiatives: the W3C’s Multimodal Architecture and Interfaces (MMI) and the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) with its semantic extension, respectively. Although the proposed framework is general enough to be applied in a variety of connected objects integrating HMI, a particular development is presented for a connected car scenario where drivers’ observations about the traffic or their environment are shared across the Semantic Sensor Web. For implementation and evaluation purposes an on-board OSGi (Open Services Gateway Initiative) architecture was built, integrating several available HMI, Sensor Web and Semantic Web technologies. A technical performance test and a conceptual validation of the scenario with potential users are reported, with results suggesting the approach is sound

IRC 2.0. Medios para la información, la relación y la comunicación en la web 2.0

El ritmo acelerado al que llegan y desaparecen tendencias, novedades, herramientas, tecnologías, dispositivos, servicios, etc., en nuestra sociedad de la información exige a cualquier ciudadano cierta capacidad para interiorizar esa complejidad. En el artículo se presenta y desarrolla muy brevemente un modelo simplificado que nos ayudará en el análisis de tres fenómenos clave para entender el estadio evolutivo actual de la Web como parte más visible de la Red: el periodismo ciudadano, las redes sociales y la Web en tiempo real. Se basa en tres elementos (infotecnologías, personas y contenidos) y se articula sobre tres ejes (información, relación y comunicación). El modelo quiere servir al lector como herramienta intelectual y referencia conceptual para profundizar en cualquiera de sus dimensiones.

OntoTag - A Linguistic and Ontological Annotation Model Suitable for the Semantic Web

OntoTag - A Linguistic and Ontological Annotation Model Suitable for the Semantic Web 1. INTRODUCTION. LINGUISTIC TOOLS AND ANNOTATIONS: THEIR LIGHTS AND SHADOWS Computational Linguistics is already a consolidated research area. It builds upon the results of other two major ones, namely Linguistics and Computer Science and Engineering, and it aims at developing computational models of human language (or natural language, as it is termed in this area). Possibly, its most well-known applications are the different tools developed so far for processing human language, such as machine translation systems and speech recognizers or dictation programs. These tools for processing human language are commonly referred to as linguistic tools. Apart from the examples mentioned above, there are also other types of linguistic tools that perhaps are not so well-known, but on which most of the other applications of Computational Linguistics are built. These other types of linguistic tools comprise POS taggers, natural language parsers and semantic taggers, amongst others. All of them can be termed linguistic annotation tools. Linguistic annotation tools are important assets. In fact, POS and semantic taggers (and, to a lesser extent, also natural language parsers) have become critical resources for the computer applications that process natural language. Hence, any computer application that has to analyse a text automatically and ‘intelligently’ will include at least a module for POS tagging. The more an application needs to ‘understand’ the meaning of the text it processes, the more linguistic tools and/or modules it will incorporate and integrate. However, linguistic annotation tools have still some limitations, which can be summarised as follows: 1. Normally, they perform annotations only at a certain linguistic level (that is, Morphology, Syntax, Semantics, etc.). 2. They usually introduce a certain rate of errors and ambiguities when tagging. This error rate ranges from 10 percent up to 50 percent of the units annotated for unrestricted, general texts. 3. Their annotations are most frequently formulated in terms of an annotation schema designed and implemented ad hoc. A priori, it seems that the interoperation and the integration of several linguistic tools into an appropriate software architecture could most likely solve the limitations stated in (1). Besides, integrating several linguistic annotation tools and making them interoperate could also minimise the limitation stated in (2). Nevertheless, in the latter case, all these tools should produce annotations for a common level, which would have to be combined in order to correct their corresponding errors and inaccuracies. Yet, the limitation stated in (3) prevents both types of integration and interoperation from being easily achieved. In addition, most high-level annotation tools rely on other lower-level annotation tools and their outputs to generate their own ones. For example, sense-tagging tools (operating at the semantic level) often use POS taggers (operating at a lower level, i.e., the morphosyntactic) to identify the grammatical category of the word or lexical unit they are annotating. Accordingly, if a faulty or inaccurate low-level annotation tool is to be used by other higher-level one in its process, the errors and inaccuracies of the former should be minimised in advance. Otherwise, these errors and inaccuracies would be transferred to (and even magnified in) the annotations of the high-level annotation tool. Therefore, it would be quite useful to find a way to (i) correct or, at least, reduce the errors and the inaccuracies of lower-level linguistic tools; (ii) unify the annotation schemas of different linguistic annotation tools or, more generally speaking, make these tools (as well as their annotations) interoperate. Clearly, solving (i) and (ii) should ease the automatic annotation of web pages by means of linguistic tools, and their transformation into Semantic Web pages (Berners-Lee, Hendler and Lassila, 2001). Yet, as stated above, (ii) is a type of interoperability problem. There again, ontologies (Gruber, 1993; Borst, 1997) have been successfully applied thus far to solve several interoperability problems. Hence, ontologies should help solve also the problems and limitations of linguistic annotation tools aforementioned. Thus, to summarise, the main aim of the present work was to combine somehow these separated approaches, mechanisms and tools for annotation from Linguistics and Ontological Engineering (and the Semantic Web) in a sort of hybrid (linguistic and ontological) annotation model, suitable for both areas. This hybrid (semantic) annotation model should (a) benefit from the advances, models, techniques, mechanisms and tools of these two areas; (b) minimise (and even solve, when possible) some of the problems found in each of them; and (c) be suitable for the Semantic Web. The concrete goals that helped attain this aim are presented in the following section. 2. GOALS OF THE PRESENT WORK As mentioned above, the main goal of this work was to specify a hybrid (that is, linguistically-motivated and ontology-based) model of annotation suitable for the Semantic Web (i.e. it had to produce a semantic annotation of web page contents). This entailed that the tags included in the annotations of the model had to (1) represent linguistic concepts (or linguistic categories, as they are termed in ISO/DCR (2008)), in order for this model to be linguistically-motivated; (2) be ontological terms (i.e., use an ontological vocabulary), in order for the model to be ontology-based; and (3) be structured (linked) as a collection of ontology-based triples, as in the usual Semantic Web languages (namely RDF(S) and OWL), in order for the model to be considered suitable for the Semantic Web. Besides, to be useful for the Semantic Web, this model should provide a way to automate the annotation of web pages. As for the present work, this requirement involved reusing the linguistic annotation tools purchased by the OEG research group (http://www.oeg-upm.net), but solving beforehand (or, at least, minimising) some of their limitations. Therefore, this model had to minimise these limitations by means of the integration of several linguistic annotation tools into a common architecture. Since this integration required the interoperation of tools and their annotations, ontologies were proposed as the main technological component to make them effectively interoperate. From the very beginning, it seemed that the formalisation of the elements and the knowledge underlying linguistic annotations within an appropriate set of ontologies would be a great step forward towards the formulation of such a model (henceforth referred to as OntoTag). Obviously, first, to combine the results of the linguistic annotation tools that operated at the same level, their annotation schemas had to be unified (or, preferably, standardised) in advance. This entailed the unification (id. standardisation) of their tags (both their representation and their meaning), and their format or syntax. Second, to merge the results of the linguistic annotation tools operating at different levels, their respective annotation schemas had to be (a) made interoperable and (b) integrated. And third, in order for the resulting annotations to suit the Semantic Web, they had to be specified by means of an ontology-based vocabulary, and structured by means of ontology-based triples, as hinted above. Therefore, a new annotation scheme had to be devised, based both on ontologies and on this type of triples, which allowed for the combination and the integration of the annotations of any set of linguistic annotation tools. This annotation scheme was considered a fundamental part of the model proposed here, and its development was, accordingly, another major objective of the present work. All these goals, aims and objectives could be re-stated more clearly as follows: Goal 1: Development of a set of ontologies for the formalisation of the linguistic knowledge relating linguistic annotation. Sub-goal 1.1: Ontological formalisation of the EAGLES (1996a; 1996b) de facto standards for morphosyntactic and syntactic annotation, in a way that helps respect the triple structure recommended for annotations in these works (which is isomorphic to the triple structures used in the context of the Semantic Web). Sub-goal 1.2: Incorporation into this preliminary ontological formalisation of other existing standards and standard proposals relating the levels mentioned above, such as those currently under development within ISO/TC 37 (the ISO Technical Committee dealing with Terminology, which deals also with linguistic resources and annotations). Sub-goal 1.3: Generalisation and extension of the recommendations in EAGLES (1996a; 1996b) and ISO/TC 37 to the semantic level, for which no ISO/TC 37 standards have been developed yet. Sub-goal 1.4: Ontological formalisation of the generalisations and/or extensions obtained in the previous sub-goal as generalisations and/or extensions of the corresponding ontology (or ontologies). Sub-goal 1.5: Ontological formalisation of the knowledge required to link, combine and unite the knowledge represented in the previously developed ontology (or ontologies). Goal 2: Development of OntoTag’s annotation scheme, a standard-based abstract scheme for the hybrid (linguistically-motivated and ontological-based) annotation of texts. Sub-goal 2.1: Development of the standard-based morphosyntactic annotation level of OntoTag’s scheme. This level should include, and possibly extend, the recommendations of EAGLES (1996a) and also the recommendations included in the ISO/MAF (2008) standard draft. Sub-goal 2.2: Development of the standard-based syntactic annotation level of the hybrid abstract scheme. This level should include, and possibly extend, the recommendations of EAGLES (1996b) and the ISO/SynAF (2010) standard draft. Sub-goal 2.3: Development of the standard-based semantic annotation level of OntoTag’s (abstract) scheme. Sub-goal 2.4: Development of the mechanisms for a convenient integration of the three annotation levels already mentioned. These mechanisms should take into account the recommendations included in the ISO/LAF (2009) standard draft. Goal 3: Design of OntoTag’s (abstract) annotation architecture, an abstract architecture for the hybrid (semantic) annotation of texts (i) that facilitates the integration and interoperation of different linguistic annotation tools, and (ii) whose results comply with OntoTag’s annotation scheme. Sub-goal 3.1: Specification of the decanting processes that allow for the classification and separation, according to their corresponding levels, of the results of the linguistic tools annotating at several different levels. Sub-goal 3.2: Specification of the standardisation processes that allow (a) complying with the standardisation requirements of OntoTag’s annotation scheme, as well as (b) combining the results of those linguistic tools that share some level of annotation. Sub-goal 3.3: Specification of the merging processes that allow for the combination of the output annotations and the interoperation of those linguistic tools that share some level of annotation. Sub-goal 3.4: Specification of the merge processes that allow for the integration of the results and the interoperation of those tools performing their annotations at different levels. Goal 4: Generation of OntoTagger’s schema, a concrete instance of OntoTag’s abstract scheme for a concrete set of linguistic annotations. These linguistic annotations result from the tools and the resources available in the research group, namely • Bitext’s DataLexica (http://www.bitext.com/EN/datalexica.asp), • LACELL’s (POS) tagger (http://www.um.es/grupos/grupo-lacell/quees.php), • Connexor’s FDG (http://www.connexor.eu/technology/machinese/glossary/fdg/), and • EuroWordNet (Vossen et al., 1998). This schema should help evaluate OntoTag’s underlying hypotheses, stated below. Consequently, it should implement, at least, those levels of the abstract scheme dealing with the annotations of the set of tools considered in this implementation. This includes the morphosyntactic, the syntactic and the semantic levels. Goal 5: Implementation of OntoTagger’s configuration, a concrete instance of OntoTag’s abstract architecture for this set of linguistic tools and annotations. This configuration (1) had to use the schema generated in the previous goal; and (2) should help support or refute the hypotheses of this work as well (see the next section). Sub-goal 5.1: Implementation of the decanting processes that facilitate the classification and separation of the results of those linguistic resources that provide annotations at several different levels (on the one hand, LACELL’s tagger operates at the morphosyntactic level and, minimally, also at the semantic level; on the other hand, FDG operates at the morphosyntactic and the syntactic levels and, minimally, at the semantic level as well). Sub-goal 5.2: Implementation of the standardisation processes that allow (i) specifying the results of those linguistic tools that share some level of annotation according to the requirements of OntoTagger’s schema, as well as (ii) combining these shared level results. In particular, all the tools selected perform morphosyntactic annotations and they had to be conveniently combined by means of these processes. Sub-goal 5.3: Implementation of the merging processes that allow for the combination (and possibly the improvement) of the annotations and the interoperation of the tools that share some level of annotation (in particular, those relating the morphosyntactic level, as in the previous sub-goal). Sub-goal 5.4: Implementation of the merging processes that allow for the integration of the different standardised and combined annotations aforementioned, relating all the levels considered. Sub-goal 5.5: Improvement of the semantic level of this configuration by adding a named entity recognition, (sub-)classification and annotation subsystem, which also uses the named entities annotated to populate a domain ontology, in order to provide a concrete application of the present work in the two areas involved (the Semantic Web and Corpus Linguistics). 3. MAIN RESULTS: ASSESSMENT OF ONTOTAG’S UNDERLYING HYPOTHESES The model developed in the present thesis tries to shed some light on (i) whether linguistic annotation tools can effectively interoperate; (ii) whether their results can be combined and integrated; and, if they can, (iii) how they can, respectively, interoperate and be combined and integrated. Accordingly, several hypotheses had to be supported (or rejected) by the development of the OntoTag model and OntoTagger (its implementation). The hypotheses underlying OntoTag are surveyed below. Only one of the hypotheses (H.6) was rejected; the other five could be confirmed. H.1 The annotations of different levels (or layers) can be integrated into a sort of overall, comprehensive, multilayer and multilevel annotation, so that their elements can complement and refer to each other. • CONFIRMED by the development of: o OntoTag’s annotation scheme, o OntoTag’s annotation architecture, o OntoTagger’s (XML, RDF, OWL) annotation schemas, o OntoTagger’s configuration. H.2 Tool-dependent annotations can be mapped onto a sort of tool-independent annotations and, thus, can be standardised. • CONFIRMED by means of the standardisation phase incorporated into OntoTag and OntoTagger for the annotations yielded by the tools. H.3 Standardisation should ease: H.3.1: The interoperation of linguistic tools. H.3.2: The comparison, combination (at the same level and layer) and integration (at different levels or layers) of annotations. • H.3 was CONFIRMED by means of the development of OntoTagger’s ontology-based configuration: o Interoperation, comparison, combination and integration of the annotations of three different linguistic tools (Connexor’s FDG, Bitext’s DataLexica and LACELL’s tagger); o Integration of EuroWordNet-based, domain-ontology-based and named entity annotations at the semantic level. o Integration of morphosyntactic, syntactic and semantic annotations. H.4 Ontologies and Semantic Web technologies (can) play a crucial role in the standardisation of linguistic annotations, by providing consensual vocabularies and standardised formats for annotation (e.g., RDF triples). • CONFIRMED by means of the development of OntoTagger’s RDF-triple-based annotation schemas. H.5 The rate of errors introduced by a linguistic tool at a given level, when annotating, can be reduced automatically by contrasting and combining its results with the ones coming from other tools, operating at the same level. However, these other tools might be built following a different technological (stochastic vs. rule-based, for example) or theoretical (dependency vs. HPS-grammar-based, for instance) approach. • CONFIRMED by the results yielded by the evaluation of OntoTagger. H.6 Each linguistic level can be managed and annotated independently. • REJECTED: OntoTagger’s experiments and the dependencies observed among the morphosyntactic annotations, and between them and the syntactic annotations. In fact, Hypothesis H.6 was already rejected when OntoTag’s ontologies were developed. We observed then that several linguistic units stand on an interface between levels, belonging thereby to both of them (such as morphosyntactic units, which belong to both the morphological level and the syntactic level). Therefore, the annotations of these levels overlap and cannot be handled independently when merged into a unique multileveled annotation. 4. OTHER MAIN RESULTS AND CONTRIBUTIONS First, interoperability is a hot topic for both the linguistic annotation community and the whole Computer Science field. The specification (and implementation) of OntoTag’s architecture for the combination and integration of linguistic (annotation) tools and annotations by means of ontologies shows a way to make these different linguistic annotation tools and annotations interoperate in practice. Second, as mentioned above, the elements involved in linguistic annotation were formalised in a set (or network) of ontologies (OntoTag’s linguistic ontologies). • On the one hand, OntoTag’s network of ontologies consists of − The Linguistic Unit Ontology (LUO), which includes a mostly hierarchical formalisation of the different types of linguistic elements (i.e., units) identifiable in a written text; − The Linguistic Attribute Ontology (LAO), which includes also a mostly hierarchical formalisation of the different types of features that characterise the linguistic units included in the LUO; − The Linguistic Value Ontology (LVO), which includes the corresponding formalisation of the different values that the attributes in the LAO can take; − The OIO (OntoTag’s Integration Ontology), which  Includes the knowledge required to link, combine and unite the knowledge represented in the LUO, the LAO and the LVO;  Can be viewed as a knowledge representation ontology that describes the most elementary vocabulary used in the area of annotation. • On the other hand, OntoTag’s ontologies incorporate the knowledge included in the different standards and recommendations for linguistic annotation released so far, such as those developed within the EAGLES and the SIMPLE European projects or by the ISO/TC 37 committee: − As far as morphosyntactic annotations are concerned, OntoTag’s ontologies formalise the terms in the EAGLES (1996a) recommendations and their corresponding terms within the ISO Morphosyntactic Annotation Framework (ISO/MAF, 2008) standard; − As for syntactic annotations, OntoTag’s ontologies incorporate the terms in the EAGLES (1996b) recommendations and their corresponding terms within the ISO Syntactic Annotation Framework (ISO/SynAF, 2010) standard draft; − Regarding semantic annotations, OntoTag’s ontologies generalise and extend the recommendations in EAGLES (1996a; 1996b) and, since no stable standards or standard drafts have been released for semantic annotation by ISO/TC 37 yet, they incorporate the terms in SIMPLE (2000) instead; − The terms coming from all these recommendations and standards were supplemented by those within the ISO Data Category Registry (ISO/DCR, 2008) and also of the ISO Linguistic Annotation Framework (ISO/LAF, 2009) standard draft when developing OntoTag’s ontologies. Third, we showed that the combination of the results of tools annotating at the same level can yield better results (both in precision and in recall) than each tool separately. In particular, 1. OntoTagger clearly outperformed two of the tools integrated into its configuration, namely DataLexica and FDG in all the combination sub-phases in which they overlapped (i.e. POS tagging, lemma annotation and morphological feature annotation). As far as the remaining tool is concerned, i.e. LACELL’s tagger, it was also outperformed by OntoTagger in POS tagging and lemma annotation, and it did not behave better than OntoTagger in the morphological feature annotation layer. 2. As an immediate result, this implies that a) This type of combination architecture configurations can be applied in order to improve significantly the accuracy of linguistic annotations; and b) Concerning the morphosyntactic level, this could be regarded as a way of constructing more robust and more accurate POS tagging systems. Fourth, Semantic Web annotations are usually performed by humans or else by machine learning systems. Both of them leave much to be desired: the former, with respect to their annotation rate; the latter, with respect to their (average) precision and recall. In this work, we showed how linguistic tools can be wrapped in order to annotate automatically Semantic Web pages using ontologies. This entails their fast, robust and accurate semantic annotation. As a way of example, as mentioned in Sub-goal 5.5, we developed a particular OntoTagger module for the recognition, classification and labelling of named entities, according to the MUC and ACE tagsets (Chinchor, 1997; Doddington et al., 2004). These tagsets were further specified by means of a domain ontology, namely the Cinema Named Entities Ontology (CNEO). This module was applied to the automatic annotation of ten different web pages containing cinema reviews (that is, around 5000 words). In addition, the named entities annotated with this module were also labelled as instances (or individuals) of the classes included in the CNEO and, then, were used to populate this domain ontology. • The statistical results obtained from the evaluation of this particular module of OntoTagger can be summarised as follows. On the one hand, as far as recall (R) is concerned, (R.1) the lowest value was 76,40% (for file 7); (R.2) the highest value was 97, 50% (for file 3); and (R.3) the average value was 88,73%. On the other hand, as far as the precision rate (P) is concerned, (P.1) its minimum was 93,75% (for file 4); (R.2) its maximum was 100% (for files 1, 5, 7, 8, 9, and 10); and (R.3) its average value was 98,99%. • These results, which apply to the tasks of named entity annotation and ontology population, are extraordinary good for both of them. They can be explained on the basis of the high accuracy of the annotations provided by OntoTagger at the lower levels (mainly at the morphosyntactic level). However, they should be conveniently qualified, since they might be too domain- and/or language-dependent. It should be further experimented how our approach works in a different domain or a different language, such as French, English, or German. • In any case, the results of this application of Human Language Technologies to Ontology Population (and, accordingly, to Ontological Engineering) seem very promising and encouraging in order for these two areas to collaborate and complement each other in the area of semantic annotation. Fifth, as shown in the State of the Art of this work, there are different approaches and models for the semantic annotation of texts, but all of them focus on a particular view of the semantic level. Clearly, all these approaches and models should be integrated in order to bear a coherent and joint semantic annotation level. OntoTag shows how (i) these semantic annotation layers could be integrated together; and (ii) they could be integrated with the annotations associated to other annotation levels. Sixth, we identified some recommendations, best practices and lessons learned for annotation standardisation, interoperation and merge. They show how standardisation (via ontologies, in this case) enables the combination, integration and interoperation of different linguistic tools and their annotations into a multilayered (or multileveled) linguistic annotation, which is one of the hot topics in the area of Linguistic Annotation. And last but not least, OntoTag’s annotation scheme and OntoTagger’s annotation schemas show a way to formalise and annotate coherently and uniformly the different units and features associated to the different levels and layers of linguistic annotation. This is a great scientific step ahead towards the global standardisation of this area, which is the aim of ISO/TC 37 (in particular, Subcommittee 4, dealing with the standardisation of linguistic annotations and resources).

CoLogNetWS: the Colognet web-site

CoLogNetWS is a Web-site on Computational Logic systems, environments, and implementation technology. CoLogNetWS provides at the same time:A simple WWW interface which allows the users to access/modify the data stored in its database. An automatic data exchange between CoLogNetWS and the rest of Web-sites, in order to keep their databases up-to-date. This document constitutes an internals manual, providing information on how the different internal parts of CoLogNetWS are connected.

Prototipo para la Creación de un Sistema de Información Geográfica web, para la Gestión de Elementos Universitarios Localizados Espacialmente

RESUMEN Este trabajo nace con la necesidad de ofrecer un Sistema de Información Geográfico implantado en un entorno Web, para una comunidad de usuarios,que proporcione información sobre recursos, instalaciones y servicios que se ofrecen localizados espacialmente. Se trata de estudiar y seleccionar ciertos objetos de interés relevantes para una Comunidad universitaria, en concreto se ha utilizado el Campus Sur de la Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. Estos objetos serán representados en su localización geográfica, sobre el mapa de los exteriores del Campus o sobre planos digitalizados de los interiores de algunos de los edificios que lo componen. La Escuela Universitaria de Informática es la utilizada para el prototipo presentado en este trabajo. Además los objetos de interés llevarán asociada información temática con distintos formatos. Este sistema podrá aplicarse en la planificación de futuras obras, tanto nuevas como de remodelación, de los elementos que constituyen el Campus como, edificios,caminos, aparcamientos, etc. SUMMARY: This work comes with the need to provide a Geographic Information System,implanted in a web environment, for a user community, which gives information on resources, facilities and services offered at a university spatially located. That consists in to study and select some objects of interest, relevant for a University community; in particular the South Campus of the Polytechnic University of Madrid where it has been used. These objects will be represented in their geographic location, over the outside map of the Campus or over digitized maps which represent the interiors of some Campus buildings. The Computer Science University School is used in the prototype shown in this paper. Also, the interest objects will have associated thematic information in different formats. This system may be applied in the planning of future works, both new and remodeling, of the elements that constitute the Campus such as buildings,roads, car parks, etc.

Some reflections on the IT challenges for a multilingual semantic web

Many attempts have been made to provide multilinguality to the Semantic Web, by means of annotation properties in Natural Language (NL), such as RDFs or SKOS labels, and other lexicon-ontology models, such as lemon, but there are still many issues to be solved if we want to have a truly accessible Multilingual Semantic Web (MSW). Reusability of monolingual resources (ontologies, lexicons, etc.), accessibility of multilingual resources hindered by many formats, reliability of ontological sources, disambiguation problems and multilingual presentation to the end user of all this information in NL can be mentioned as some of the most relevant problems. Unless this NL presentation is achieved, MSW will be restricted to the limits of IT experts, but even so, with great dissatisfaction and disenchantment

Distributed Web Interface for Real-Time Spatial Audio Reproduction System

SSR es el acrónimo de SoundScape Renderer (tool for real-time spatial audio reproduction providing a variety of rendering algorithms), es un programa escrito en su mayoría en C++. El programa permite al usuario escuchar tanto sonidos grabados con anterioridad como sonidos en directo. El sonido o los sonidos se oirán, desde el punto de vista del oyente, como si el sonido se produjese en el punto que el programa decida, lo interesante de este proyecto es que el sonido podrá cambiar de lugar, moverse, etc. Todo en tiempo real. Esto se consigue sin modificar el sonido al grabarlo pero sí al emitirlo, el programa calcula las variaciones necesarias para que al emitir el sonido al oyente le llegue como si el sonido realmente se generase en un punto del espacio o lo más parecido posible. La sensación de movimiento no deja de ser el punto anterior cambiando de lugar. La idea era crear una aplicación web basada en Canvas de HTML5 que se comunicará con esta interfaz de usuario remota. Así se solucionarían todos los problemas de compatibilidad ya que cualquier dispositivo con posibilidad de visualizar páginas web podría correr una aplicación basada en estándares web, por ejemplo un sistema con Windows o un móvil con navegador. El protocolo debía de ser WebSocket porque es un protocolo HTML5 y ofrece las “garantías” de latencia que una aplicación con necesidades de información en tiempo real requiere. Nos permite una comunicación full-dúplex asíncrona sin mucho payload que es justo lo que se venía a evitar al no usar polling normal de HTML. El problema que surgió fue que la interfaz de usuario de red que tenía el programa no era compatible con WebSocket debido a un handshacking inicial y obligatorio que realiza el protocolo, por lo que se necesitaba otra interfaz de red. Se decidió entonces cambiar a JSON como formato para el intercambio de mensajes. Al final el proyecto comprende no sólo la aplicación web basada en Canvas sino también un servidor funcional y la definición de una nueva interfaz de usuario de red con su protocolo añadido. ABSTRACT. This project aims to become a part of the SSR tool to extend its capabilities in the field of the access. SSR is an acronym for SoundScape Renderer, is a program mostly written in C++ that allows you to hear already recorded or live sound with a variety of sound equipment as if the sound came from a desired place in the space. Like the web-page of the SSR says surely better explained: “The SoundScape Renderer (SSR) is a tool for real-time spatial audio reproduction providing a variety of rendering algorithms.” The application can be used with a graphical interface written in Qt but has also a network interface for external applications to use it. This network interface communicates using XML messages. A good example of it is the Android client. This Android client is already working. In order to use the application should be run it by loading an audio source and the wanted environment so that the renderer knows what to do. In that moment the server binds and anyone can use the network interface. Since the network interface is documented everyone can make an application to interact with this network interface. So the application can have as many user interfaces as wanted. The part that is developed in this project has nothing to do neither with audio rendering nor even with the reproduction of the spatial audio. The part that is developed here is about the interface used in the SSR application. As it can be deduced from the title: “Distributed Web Interface for Real-Time Spatial Audio Reproduction System”, this work aims only to offer the interface via web for the SSR (“Real-Time Spatial Audio Reproduction System”). The idea is not to make a new graphical interface for SSR but to allow more types of interfaces and communication. To accomplish the objective of allowing more graphical interfaces this project is going to use a new network interface. By now the SSR application is using only XML for data interchange but this new network interface support JSON. This project comprehends the server that launch the application, the user interface and the new network interface. It is done with these modules in order to allow creating new user interfaces that can communicate with the server or new servers that can communicate with the user interface by defining a complete network interface for data interchange.

Propuesta, implementación y evaluación de la biometría de firma en el aire como sistema de verificación en teléfonos móviles

En esta tesis doctoral se propone una técnica biométrica de verificación en teléfonos móviles consistente en realizar una firma en el aire con la mano que sujeta el teléfono móvil. Los acelerómetros integrados en el dispositivo muestrean las aceleraciones del movimiento de la firma en el aire, generando tres señales temporales que pueden utilizarse para la verificación del usuario. Se proponen varios enfoques para la implementación del sistema de verificación, a partir de los enfoques más utilizados en biometría de firma manuscrita: correspondencia de patrones, con variantes de los algoritmos de Needleman-Wusch (NW) y Dynamic Time Warping (DTW), modelos ocultos de Markov (HMM) y clasificador estadístico basado en Máquinas de Vector Soporte (SVM). Al no existir bases de datos públicas de firmas en el aire y con el fin de evaluar los métodos propuestos en esta tesis doctoral, se han capturado dos con distintas características; una con falsificaciones reales a partir del estudio de las grabaciones de usuarios auténticos y otra con muestras de usuarios obtenidas en diferentes sesiones a lo largo del tiempo. Utilizando estas bases de datos se han evaluado una gran cantidad de algoritmos para implementar un sistema de verificación basado en firma en el aire. Esta evaluación se ha realizado de acuerdo con el estándar ISO/IEC 19795, añadiendo el caso de verificación en mundo abierto no incluido en la norma. Además, se han analizado las características que hacen que una firma sea suficientemente segura. Por otro lado, se ha estudiado la permanencia de las firmas en el aire a lo largo del tiempo, proponiendo distintos métodos de actualización, basados en una adaptación dinámica del patrón, para mejorar su rendimiento. Finalmente, se ha implementado un prototipo de la técnica de firma en el aire para teléfonos Android e iOS. Los resultados de esta tesis doctoral han tenido un gran impacto, generando varias publicaciones en revistas internacionales, congresos y libros. La firma en el aire ha sido nombrada también en varias revistas de divulgación, portales de noticias Web y televisión. Además, se han obtenido varios premios en competiciones de ideas innovadoras y se ha firmado un acuerdo de explotación de la tecnología con una empresa extranjera. ABSTRACT This thesis proposes a biometric verification technique on mobile phones consisting on making a signature in the air with the hand holding a mobile phone. The accelerometers integrated in the device capture the movement accelerations, generating three temporal signals that can be used for verification. This thesis suggests several approaches for implementing the verification system, based on the most widely used approaches in handwritten signature biometrics: template matching, with a lot of variations of the Needleman- Wusch (NW) and Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) algorithms, Hidden Markov Models (HMM) and Supported Vector Machines (SVM). As there are no public databases of in-air signatures and with the aim of assessing the proposed methods, there have been captured two databases; one. with real falsification attempts from the study of recordings captured when genuine users made their signatures in front of a camera, and other, with samples obtained in different sessions over a long period of time. These databases have been used to evaluate a lot of algorithms in order to implement a verification system based on in-air signatures. This evaluation has been conducted according to the standard ISO/IEC 19795, adding the open-set verification scenario not included in the norm. In addition, the characteristics of a secure signature are also investigated, as well as the permanence of in-air signatures over time, proposing several updating strategies to improve its performance. Finally, a prototype of in-air signature has been developed for iOS and Android phones. The results of this thesis have achieved a high impact, publishing several articles in SCI journals, conferences and books. The in-air signature deployed in this thesis has been also referred in numerous media. Additionally, this technique has won several awards in the entrepreneurship field and also an exploitation agreement has been signed with a foreign company.

Desarrollo aplicación web y móvil para reservas en comedores

Este trabajo trata sobre el desarrollo de una “Start Up” de base tecnológica desde la universidad. La empresa creada comercializará un servicio software para comedores y restaurantes. La actualidad está marcada por la economía, y en estos momentos nos encontramos con una tasa de paro general del 26,7%, en ingenierías (la UPM) es del 31,2%. El sector de las TIC se salva por el momento (en informática la tasa de paro es del 4,8%), aunque el trabajo en muchos casos es precario y las oportunidades para desarrollar una carrera plena pasan por ir a trabajar a otros países que tienen una situación laboral más favorable. También tenemos la alternativa de trabajar como autónomos, creando empresas y, con suerte, generando un nuevo empleo. En España existen iniciativas de ayuda pública y privada que ayudan a convertir ideas en empresas, incubadoras, aceleradoras, ayudas públicas, ferias tecnológicas, concursos que ayudan a ganar visibilidad, etc. Este proyecto nació gracias a una de estas iniciativas, más en concreto a ACTUA UPM, iniciativa de la propia UPM a través de la unidad Creación de Empresas. Para crear una empresa no basta un buen servicio o un buen producto, es necesario poder venderlo. Por lo que el primer esfuerzo debe realizarse en comprobar que nuestro producto tiene características que pueden cubrir una necesidad que ya existe y que las condiciones indican que puede ser rentable. Esta es la primera fase, la creación de un plan de negocio y de marketing. A continuación basándonos en la manera en la que decidimos que venderemos nuestro producto, orientaremos el desarrollo para hacer hincapié en los puntos fuertes que pueden hacer nuestro producto diferente y deseado. La fase de desarrollo es mi caso es sobre todo una fase de aprendizaje, en la que aprenderé a fondo tecnologías web y móvil, y aplicaré los conocimientos adquiridos en mis estudios. A continuación, se ofrece mi experiencia desarrollando la empresa desde la idea hasta conseguir un producto preparado para ponerlo a prueba. ---ABSTRACT---This paper is about the development of a technological based “Start Up” from the college. The company will market a software service oriented to canteens and restaurants. Economy is what rules the world, and today we are facing a very strong crisis with a 26.7% of unemployment rate in Spain. However, the IT sector is less affected than others by this crisis (Informatics Engineers has a 4.8% unemployment rate). But in many cases jobs are precarious and young people have to leave our country for pursuing a decent career. Also we have the option of self-employment, launching a company, and with some luck, creating a new job. We have some tools for launching new technological base business. Many people hopes to create the new Facebook, and many investors are interested in being on the boat if that happens. Also at UPM we have ACTUA UPM, which promotes ideas into companies. My idea was born in it and managed to the final round. For launching a new company you need to do a business plan that studies the possible pitfalls of your idea and directs your development efforts to the way your product is going to be sold. So the first phase of this paper will talk about the development of the business plan. After it, the development phase is in essence a phase of learning in which I faced most problems in my own, giving the best solutions I could from my own experience and intuition. Then, we present the experience of developing a Start Up from the idea to the market testing.

eCOMMONtech: plataforma sofrware para monitorización del balance de Gases de Efecto Invernadero en el Marco de Mecanismos de Desarrollo Limpio Forestales y Proyectos REDD+

La monitorización de las condiciones que debe cumplir un área forestal en proyectos MDL o REDD de manera tradicional, es decir, mediante mediciones y controles in situ, conlleva unos costes difíciles de asumir. Por ello, se ha planteado el desarrollo de una metodología capaz de integrar tecnologías orientadas a la realización de inventarios de carbono en áreas forestales de países en vías de desarrollo, mediante la utilización de diferentes tecnologías (sensorización ambiental, teledetección espacial, técnicas forestales, internet, etc.) que permiten determinar aquellos procedimientos más eficaces desde el punto de vista de la calidad y fiabilidad de la información obtenida y del coste/beneficio; analizando, las mejoras que suponen frente a los métodos tradicionales. Para ello, se desarrollan algoritmos y métodos de análisis necesarios para extraer las variables e indicadores medioambientales con el fin de realizar la monitorización de los ciclos de carbono en ámbitos forestales atribuibles a proyectos de absorciones de CO2.El resultado es la creación de una plataforma web que permite la monitorización remota y en tiempo real de inventarios de carbono a través de la integración de datos provenientes de sistemas de sensorización, imágenes tratadas con tecnologías de observación de la tierra y datos de campo.

Registros electrónicos de planteamiento urbanístico en España: análisis de su transparencia, colaboración y participación

La comunicación tiene como objetivo analizar la «publicidad activa» de los registros electrónicos de planteamiento urbanístico de las diecisiete comunidades autónomas españolas y del Estado (Sistema de Información Urbana - SIU). Se plantea un análisis exploratorio, con un enfoque cuantitativo, para la elaboración de un diagnóstico del grado de desarrollo de los tres principios del Gobierno abierto (transparencia, participación y colaboración) en estos sitios web. Los resultados muestran un grado de desarrollo desigual entre la información disponible en los diferentes registros. En general, las comunidades autónomas disponen de portales específicos dedicados sólo a información a posteriori (de los documentos vigentes una vez que han sido aprobados y publicados en los boletines oficiales), aunque con bases de datos muy completas de documentos digitalizados y con consultas a demanda elaboradas. No obstante, los niveles de transparencia estipulados para la documentación en elaboración o tramitación, desde su fase inicial, así como las herramientas de colaboración y participación son excepcionales.

Aplicación web de gestión financiera personal desarrollada con MEAN.JS

En este trabajo de fin de grado se llevará a cabo la elaboración de una aplicación web de gestión de gastos personales desde sus inicios, hasta su completo funcionamiento. Estas aplicaciones poseen un crecimiento emergente en el mercado, lo cual implica que la competencia entre ellas es muy elevada. Por ello el diseño de la aplicación que se va a desarrollar en este trabajo ha sido delicadamente cuidado. Se trata de un proceso minucioso el cual aportará a cada una de las partes de las que va a constar la aplicación características únicas que se plasmaran en funcionalidades para el usuario, como son: añadir sus propios gastos e ingresos mensuales, confeccionar gráficos de sus principales gastos, obtención de consejos de una fuente externa, etc��� Estas funcionalidades de carácter único junto con otras más generalistas, como son el diseño gráfico en una amplia gama de colores, harán su manejo más fácil e intuitivo. Hay que destacar que para optimizar su uso, la aplicación tendrá la característica de ser responsive, es decir, será capaz de modificar su interfaz según el tamaño de la pantalla del dispositivo desde el que se acceda. Para su desarrollo, se va a utilizar una de las tecnologías más novedosas del mercado y siendo una de las más revolucionarias del momento, MEAN.JS. Con esta innovadora tecnología se creará la aplicación de gestión económica de gastos personales. Gracias al carácter innovador de aplicar esta tecnología novedosa, los retos que plantea este proyecto son muy variados, desde cómo estructurar las carpetas del proyecto y toda la parte de backend hasta como realizar el diseño de la parte de frontend. Además una vez finalizado su desarrollo y puesta en marcha se analizaran posibles mejoras para poder perfeccionarla en su totalidad. ABSTRACT In this final degree project will take out the development of a web application from its inception, until its full performance management. These applications have an emerging market growth, implying that competition between them is very high. Therefore the design of the application that will be developed in this work has been delicately care. It's a painstaking process which will provide each of the parties which will contain the application unique features that were translated into functionality for the user, such as: add their own expenses and monthly income, make graphs of your major expenses, obtaining advice from an external source, etc... These features of unique character together with other more general, such as graphic design in a wide range of colors, will make more easy and intuitive handling. It should be noted that to optimize its use, the application will have the characteristic of being responsive, will be able to modify your interface according to the size of the screen of the device from which are accessed. For its development, it is to use one of the newest technologies on the market and being one of the most revolutionary moment, MEAN. JS. The economic management of personal expenses application will be created with this innovative technology. Thanks to the innovative nature of applying this new technology, the challenges posed by this project are varied, from how to structure the folders of the project and all the backend part up to how to perform the part of frontend design. In addition once finished its development and commissioning possible improvements will analyze to be able to perfect it in its entirety.

Arquitectura y modelo de referencia para un ecosistema de intercambio de datos personales centrado en el usuario

Los servicios telemáticos han transformando la mayoría de nuestras actividades cotidianas y ofrecen oportunidades sin precedentes con características como, por ejemplo, el acceso ubicuo, la disponibilidad permanente, la independencia del dispositivo utilizado, la multimodalidad o la gratuidad, entre otros. No obstante, los beneficios que destacan en cuanto se reflexiona sobre estos servicios, tienen como contrapartida una serie de riesgos y amenazas no tan obvios, ya que éstos se nutren de y tratan con datos personales, lo cual suscita dudas respecto a la privacidad de las personas. Actualmente, las personas que asumen el rol de usuarios de servicios telemáticos generan constantemente datos digitales en distintos proveedores. Estos datos reflejan parte de su intimidad, de sus características particulares, preferencias, intereses, relaciones sociales, hábitos de consumo, etc. y lo que es más controvertido, toda esta información se encuentra bajo la custodia de distintos proveedores que pueden utilizarla más allá de las necesidades y el control del usuario. Los datos personales y, en particular, el conocimiento sobre los usuarios que se puede extraer a partir de éstos (modelos de usuario) se han convertido en un nuevo activo económico para los proveedores de servicios. De este modo, estos recursos se pueden utilizar para ofrecer servicios centrados en el usuario basados, por ejemplo, en la recomendación de contenidos, la personalización de productos o la predicción de su comportamiento, lo cual permite a los proveedores conectar con los usuarios, mantenerlos, involucrarlos y en definitiva, fidelizarlos para garantizar el éxito de un modelo de negocio. Sin embargo, dichos recursos también pueden utilizarse para establecer otros modelos de negocio que van más allá de su procesamiento y aplicación individual por parte de un proveedor y que se basan en su comercialización y compartición con otras entidades. Bajo esta perspectiva, los usuarios sufren una falta de control sobre los datos que les refieren, ya que esto depende de la voluntad y las condiciones impuestas por los proveedores de servicios, lo cual implica que habitualmente deban enfrentarse ante la disyuntiva de ceder sus datos personales o no acceder a los servicios telemáticos ofrecidos. Desde el sector público se trata de tomar medidas que protejan a los usuarios con iniciativas y legislaciones que velen por su privacidad y que aumenten el control sobre sus datos personales, a la vez que debe favorecer el desarrollo económico propiciado por estos proveedores de servicios. En este contexto, esta tesis doctoral propone una arquitectura y modelo de referencia para un ecosistema de intercambio de datos personales centrado en el usuario que promueve la creación, compartición y utilización de datos personales y modelos de usuario entre distintos proveedores, al mismo tiempo que ofrece a los usuarios las herramientas necesarias para ejercer su control en cuanto a la cesión y uso de sus recursos personales y obtener, en su caso, distintos incentivos o contraprestaciones económicas. Las contribuciones originales de la tesis son la especificación y diseño de una arquitectura que se apoya en un proceso de modelado distribuido que se ha definido en el marco de esta investigación. Éste se basa en el aprovechamiento de recursos que distintas entidades (fuentes de datos) ofrecen para generar modelos de usuario enriquecidos que cubren las necesidades específicas de terceras entidades, considerando la participación del usuario y el control sobre sus recursos personales (datos y modelos de usuario). Lo anterior ha requerido identificar y caracterizar las fuentes de datos con potencial de abastecer al ecosistema, determinar distintos patrones para la generación de modelos de usuario a partir de datos personales distribuidos y heterogéneos y establecer una infraestructura para la gestión de identidad y privacidad que permita a los usuarios expresar sus preferencias e intereses respecto al uso y compartición de sus recursos personales. Además, se ha definido un modelo de negocio de referencia que sustenta las investigaciones realizadas y que ha sido particularizado en dos ámbitos de aplicación principales, en concreto, el sector de publicidad en redes sociales y el sector financiero para la implantación de nuevos servicios. Finalmente, cabe destacar que las contribuciones de esta tesis han sido validadas en el contexto de distintos proyectos de investigación industrial aplicada y también en el marco de proyectos fin de carrera que la autora ha tutelado o en los que ha colaborado. Los resultados obtenidos han originado distintos méritos de investigación como dos patentes en explotación, la publicación de un artículo en una revista con índice de impacto y diversos artículos en congresos internacionales de relevancia. Algunos de éstos han sido galardonados con premios de distintas instituciones, así como en las conferencias donde han sido presentados. ABSTRACT Information society services have changed most of our daily activities, offering unprecedented opportunities with certain characteristics, such as: ubiquitous access, permanent availability, device independence, multimodality and free-of-charge services, among others. However, all the positive aspects that emerge when thinking about these services have as counterpart not-so-obvious threats and risks, because they feed from and use personal data, thus creating concerns about peoples’ privacy. Nowadays, people that play the role of user of services are constantly generating digital data in different service providers. These data reflect part of their intimacy, particular characteristics, preferences, interests, relationships, consumer behavior, etc. Controversy arises because this personal information is stored and kept by the mentioned providers that can use it beyond the user needs and control. Personal data and, in particular, the knowledge about the user that can be obtained from them (user models) have turned into a new economic asset for the service providers. In this way, these data and models can be used to offer user centric services based, for example, in content recommendation, tailored-products or user behavior, all of which allows connecting with the users, keeping them more engaged and involved with the provider, finally reaching customer loyalty in order to guarantee the success of a business model. However, these resources can be used to establish a different kind of business model; one that does not only processes and individually applies personal data, but also shares and trades these data with other entities. From that perspective, the users lack control over their referred data, because it depends from the conditions imposed by the service providers. The consequence is that the users often face the following dilemma: either giving up their personal data or not using the offered services. The Public Sector takes actions in order to protect the users approving, for example, laws and legal initiatives that reinforce privacy and increase control over personal data, while at the same time the authorities are also key players in the economy development that derives from the information society services. In this context, this PhD Dissertation proposes an architecture and reference model to achieve a user-centric personal data ecosystem that promotes the creation, sharing and use of personal data and user models among different providers, while offering users the tools to control who can access which data and why and if applicable, to obtain different incentives. The original contributions obtained are the specification and design of an architecture that supports a distributed user modelling process defined by this research. This process is based on leveraging scattered resources of heterogeneous entities (data sources) to generate on-demand enriched user models that fulfill individual business needs of third entities, considering the involvement of users and the control over their personal resources (data and user models). This has required identifying and characterizing data sources with potential for supplying resources, defining different generation patterns to produce user models from scattered and heterogeneous data, and establishing identity and privacy management infrastructures that allow users to set their privacy preferences regarding the use and sharing of their resources. Moreover, it has also been proposed a reference business model that supports the aforementioned architecture and this has been studied for two application fields: social networks advertising and new financial services. Finally, it has to be emphasized that the contributions obtained in this dissertation have been validated in the context of several national research projects and master thesis that the author has directed or has collaborated with. Furthermore, these contributions have produced different scientific results such as two patents and different publications in relevant international conferences and one magazine. Some of them have been awarded with different prizes.