An evaluation framework for assessing the impact of public bicycle share schemes

INTRODUCTION • Public bicycle share schemes have emerged as a method of increasing rates of bicycle riding. • The overwhelming majority of schemes have begun since 2005, taking advantage of various tracking and payment technologies making short term rental practical and affordable. • Very little research has been undertaken to determine their potentially broad impact on transport behaviour and consequently, it is difficult to understand the performance of these schemes in terms of reduced emissions and congestion, as well as possible increases in physical activity.

The legal framework for Australia's carbon pricing mechanism : a critique

As part of the Australian Government’s Clean Energy Plan, the Government has attempted to harness the legal innovation of the tradeable emissions unit, within a capped carbon trading system, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Such an approach promises to send a price signal to the market which will influence emitting behaviours and reduce our emissions in a cost-effective manner. However, if the carbon trading scheme is to successfully achieve cost-effective emissions reductions then the carbon market must be supported by an appropriate legal framework. This paper will consider the key features of the Australian Carbon Pricing Mechanism, including the Carbon Farming Initiative, and critique whether it has all the hallmarks of an effective legal framework to reduce Australia’s net greenhouse gas emissions. The likely future of the trading scheme, following the 2013 elections, will also be addressed.

Delegation framework for federated systems

It is not uncommon for enterprises today to be faced with the demand to integrate and incor- porate many different and possibly heterogeneous systems which are generally independently designed and developed, to allow seamless access. In effect, the integration of these systems results in one large whole system that must be able, at the same time, to maintain the local autonomy and to continue working as an independent entity. This problem has introduced a new distributed architecture called federated systems. The most challenging issue in federated systems is to find answers for the question of how to efficiently cooperate while preserving their autonomous characteristic, especially the security autonomy. This thesis intends to address this issue. The thesis reviews the evolution of the concept of federated systems and discusses the organisational characteristics as well as remaining security issues with the existing approaches. The thesis examines how delegation can be used as means to achieve better security, especially authorisation while maintaining autonomy for the participating member of the federation. A delegation taxonomy is proposed as one of the main contributions. The major contribution of this thesis is to study and design a mechanism to support dele- gation within and between multiple security domains with constraint management capability. A novel delegation framework is proposed including two modules: Delegation Constraint Man- agement module and Policy Management module. The first module is designed to effectively create, track and manage delegation constraints, especially for delegation processes which require re-delegation (indirect delegation). The first module employs two algorithms to trace the root authority of a delegation constraint chain and to prevent the potential conflict when creating a delegation constraint chain if necessary. The first module is designed for conflict prevention not conflict resolution. The second module is designed to support the first module via the policy comparison capability. The major function of this module is to provide the delegation framework the capability to compare policies and constraints (written under the format of a policy). The module is an extension of Lin et al.'s work on policy filtering and policy analysis. Throughout the thesis, some case studies are used as examples to illustrate the discussed concepts. These two modules are designed to capture one of the most important aspects of the delegation process: the relationships between the delegation transactions and the involved constraints, which are not very well addressed by the existing approaches. This contribution is significant because the relationships provide information to keep track and en- force the involved delegation constraints and, therefore, play a vital role in maintaining and enforcing security for transactions across multiple security domains.

An information accountability framework for shared eHealth policies

Privacy issues have hindered the evolution of e-health since its emergence. Patients demand better solutions for the protection of private information. Health professionals demand open access to patient health records. Existing e-health systems find it difficult to fulfill these competing requirements. In this paper, we present an information accountability framework (IAF) for e-health systems. The IAF is intended to address privacy issues and their competing concerns related to e-health. Capabilities of the IAF adhere to information accountability principles and e-health requirements. Policy representation and policy reasoning are key capabilities introduced in the IAF. We investigate how these capabilities are feasible using Semantic Web technologies. We discuss with the use of a case scenario, how we can represent the different types of policies in the IAF using the Open Digital Rights Language (ODRL).

Service delivery framework : an architectural strategy for next-generation service delivery in business network

The next-generation of service-oriented architecture (SOA) needs to scale for flexible service consumption, beyond organizational and application boundaries, into communities, ecosystems and business networks. In wider and, ultimately, global settings, new capabilities are needed so that business partners can efficiently and reliably enable, adapt and expose services. Those services can then be discovered, ordered, consumed, metered and paid for, through new applications and opportunities, driven by third-parties in the global “village”. This trend is already underway, in different ways, through different early adopter market segments. This paper proposes an architectural strategy for the provisioning and delivery of services in communities, ecosystems and business networks – a Service Delivery Framework (SDF). The SDF is intended to support multiple industries and deployments where a SOA platform is needed for collaborating partners and diverse consumers. Specifically, it is envisaged that the SDF allows providers to publish their services into network directories so that they can be repurposed, traded and consumed, and leveraging network utilities like B2B gateways and cloud hosting. To support these different facets of service delivery, the SDF extends the conventional service provider, service broker and service consumer of the Web Services Architecture to include service gateway, service hoster, service aggregator and service channel maker.

Feature-domain super-resolution framework for gabor-based face and iris recognition

The low resolution of images has been one of the major limitations in recognising humans from a distance using their biometric traits, such as face and iris. Superresolution has been employed to improve the resolution and the recognition performance simultaneously, however the majority of techniques employed operate in the pixel domain, such that the biometric feature vectors are extracted from a super-resolved input image. Feature-domain superresolution has been proposed for face and iris, and is shown to further improve recognition performance by capitalising on direct super-resolving the features which are used for recognition. However, current feature-domain superresolution approaches are limited to simple linear features such as Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA), which are not the most discriminant features for biometrics. Gabor-based features have been shown to be one of the most discriminant features for biometrics including face and iris. This paper proposes a framework to conduct super-resolution in the non-linear Gabor feature domain to further improve the recognition performance of biometric systems. Experiments have confirmed the validity of the proposed approach, demonstrating superior performance to existing linear approaches for both face and iris biometrics.

A software framework for risk-aware business process management

With the large diffusion of Business Process Managemen (BPM) automation suites, the possibility of managing process-related risks arises. This paper introduces an innovative framework for process-related risk management and describes a working implementation realized by extending the YAWL system. The framework covers three aspects of risk management: risk monitoring, risk prevention, and risk mitigation. Risk monitoring functionality is provided using a sensor-based architecture, where sensors are defined at design time and used at run-time for monitoring purposes. Risk prevention functionality is provided in the form of suggestions about what should be executed, by who, and how, through the use of decision trees. Finally, risk mitigation functionality is provided as a sequence of remedial actions (e.g. reallocating, skipping, rolling back of a work item) that should be executed to restore the process to a normal situation.

The Influence of work motivation on project success : towards a framework

The purpose of this paper is to suggest a framework to study the influence of 'Work motivation' on 'Project success' from a team members' perspective. Results from a literature review of 1345 articles on ' Project success' and 1063 articles of 'Work motivation' appearing in peer-reviewed journals between 1985 and 2005 are presented. We then propose a framework to study the impact of 'Work motivation' on 'Project success' by incorporating the key constructs pertaining to these variables derived from the literature review.

Development of an Innovative Hybrid-Composite Floor System

This paper discusses the research carried out towards the development of a hybrid-composite floor plate systems (HCFPS) using polyurethane (PU), glass-fibre reinforced cement (GRC) and thin perforated steel laminate. HCFPS is configured in such a way where positive inherent properties of individual component materials are combined to offset any weakness and achieve the optimum performance. Finite Element modeling of HCFPS with ABAQUS 6.9-1, comparative studies of HCFPS with the steel deck composite system and experimental investigations which will be carried out are briefly described in the paper.

Restrung new chamber festival : an exploration of contemporary string practice

The Restrung New Chamber Festival was a practice-led research project which explored the intricacies of musical relationships. Specifically, it investigated the nature of contemporary string practice, with "New music" at its core. For the purposes of this project, "New music" will be defined in terms of representing a "global sonorous space" (Nancy 2007:12), which Hulse describes as "a spectacular comingling of styles and an unprecedented explosion of creative possibilities" (Hulse n.d.:2). Approaches to staging such an event are contextualised through a comparative analysis with relevant Australian and European festivals. The Restrung model derived inspiration from both art music and popular music festival models, in several aspects. One strategy was to engage audiences through combinations of musical, visual and spatial features. Another strategy was to encourage interaction by audiences with installations, workshops and forums. Restrung represents a new and distinctive model which presented art music within an immersive environment. This exegesis presents an evaluation framework which investigates the relationship between curatorial input and the experiential qualities of the festival. The context of an overview of trends in arts festival curation informs the discussion, as well as approaches to identifying new and receptive audiences. It is expected that the evaluation framework will provide a useful and practical guide for curators working in contemporary string practice, hybrid arts, experimental and cross-art form festival design.

The implementation of performance based planning in Queensland under the integrated planning act 1997 : an evaluation of perceptions and planning schemes

Performance based planning is a form of planning regulation that is not well understood and the theoretical advantages of this type of planning are rarely achieved in practice. Normatively, this type of regulation relies on performance standards that are quantifiable and technically based which are designed to manage the effects of development, where performance standards provide certainty in respect of the level of performance and the means of achievement is flexible. Few empirical studies have attempted to examine how performance based planning has been conceptualised and implemented in practice. Existing literature is predominately anecdotal and consultant based (Baker et al. 2006) and has not sought to quantitatively examine how land use has been managed or determine how context influences implementation. The Integrated Planning Act 1997 (IPA) operated as Queensland’s principal planning legislation between March 1998 and December 2009. The IPA prevented Local Governments from prohibiting development or use and the term zone was absent from the legislation. While the IPA did not use the term performance based planning, the system is widely considered to be performance based in practice (e.g. Baker et al. 2006; Steele 2009a, 2009b). However, the degree to which the IPA and the planning system in Queensland is performance based is debated (e.g. Yearbury 1998; England 2004). Four research questions guided the research framework using Queensland as the case study. The questions sought to: determine if there is a common understanding of performance based planning; identify how performance based planning was expressed under the IPA; understand how performance based planning was implemented in plans; and explore the experiences of participants in the planning system. The research developed a performance adoption spectrum. The spectrum describes how performance based planning is implemented, ranging between pure and hybrid interpretations. An ex-post evaluation of seventeen IPA plans sought to determine plan performativity within the conceptual spectrum. Land use was examined from the procedural dimension of performance (Assessment Tables) and the substantive dimension of performance (Codes). A documentary analysis and forty one interviews supplemented the research. The analytical framework considered how context influenced performance based planning, including whether: the location of the local government affected land use management techniques; temporal variation in implementation exists; plan-making guidelines affected implementation; different perceptions of the concept exist; this type of planning applies to a range of spatial scales. Outcomes were viewed as the medium for determining the acceptability of development in Queensland, a significant departure from pure approaches found in the United States. Interviews highlighted the absence of plan-making direction in the IPA, which contributed to the confusion about the intended direction of the planning system and the myth that the IPA would guarantee a performance based system. A hybridised form of performance based planning evolved in Queensland which was dependent on prescriptive land use zones and specification of land use type, with some local governments going to extreme lengths to discourage certain activities in a predetermined manner. Context had varying degrees of influence on plan-making methods. Decision-making was found to be inconsistent and the system created a range of unforeseen consequences including difficulties associated with land valuation, increased development speculation, and the role of planners in court was found to be less critical than in the previous planning system.

SOA for business networks - service delivery framework

The next generation of SOA needs to scale for flexible service consumption, beyond organizational boundaries and current B2B applications, into communities, eco-systems, and business networks. In the wider and, ultimately, global settings, new capabilities are needed so that business partners can efficiently and reliably enable, adapt, and expose services where they can be discovered, ordered, consumed, metered, and paid for, through new applications and opportunities, driven by third parties in the global "village". This trend is already underway, in different ways, through various early adopter market segments. For the small medium enterprises segment, Google, Intuit-Microsoft, and others have launched appstores, through which an open-ended array of hosted applications are sourced from the development community and procured as maketplace commondities. In the corporate sector, the marketplace model and business network hubs are being put in place on top of connectivity and network orchestration investments for capitalizing services as tradable assets, seen in banking/finance (e.g. American Express Intelligent Marketplace), logistics (e.g., the E2open hub), and the public sector (e.g., UK DirectGov whole-of-government citizen services delivery).

A requirements framework for semantic business process modelling

The emergence of semantic technologies to deal with the underlying meaning of things, instead of a purely syntactical representation, has led to new developments in various fields, including business process modeling. Inspired by artificial intelligence research, technologies for semantic Web services have been proposed and extended to process modeling. However, the applicablility of semantic Web services for semantic business processes is limited because business processes encompass wider requirements of business than Web services. In particular, processes are concerned with the composition of tasks, that is, in which order activities are carried out, regardless of their implementation details; resources assigned to carry out tasks, such as machinery, people, and goods; data exchange; and security and compliance concerns.

Youth alcohol and drug good practice guide 1 : a framework for youth alcohol and other drug practice

This Guide outlines a framework for working with young people whose AOD use creates significant vulnerability to current or future harm. The target audience is practitioners who work with young people who have problematic AOD use and the managers of these practitioners. Areas of content include the elements of a framework for AOD practice, an appreciation of the developmental, social and institutional location of young people, key concepts and understandings regarding good youth centered context responsive practice, and key policy constructs and directions.

Enterprise information security policy assessment : an extended framework for metrics development utilising the goal-question-metric approach

Effective enterprise information security policy management requires review and assessment activities to ensure information security policies are aligned with business goals and objectives. As security policy management involves the elements of policy development process and the security policy as output, the context for security policy assessment requires goal-based metrics for these two elements. However, the current security management assessment methods only provide checklist types of assessment that are predefined by industry best practices and do not allow for developing specific goal-based metrics. Utilizing theories drawn from literature, this paper proposes the Enterprise Information Security Policy Assessment approach that expands on the Goal-Question-Metric (GQM) approach. The proposed assessment approach is then applied in a case scenario example to illustrate a practical application. It is shown that the proposed framework addresses the requirement for developing assessment metrics and allows for the concurrent undertaking of process-based and product-based assessment. Recommendations for further research activities include the conduct of empirical research to validate the propositions and the practical application of the proposed assessment approach in case studies to provide opportunities to introduce further enhancements to the approach.