Building Information Modelling in UK Construction Projects: A State of the Art Review

This paper aims to present a state-of-the-art review of the scope and practical implications of the Building Information Modelling (BIM) platform in the UK construction practice. Theoretical developments suggest that BIM is an integration of both product and process innovation, not just a disparate set of software tools. BIM provides effective collaboration, visual representation and data management, which enable the smooth flow of information throughout the project’s lifecycle. The most frequently reported benefits are related to Capital Cost (capex) and Operational costs (opex) and time savings. Key challenges, however, focus on the interoperability of software, capital installation costs, in-house experience, client preference and cultural issues within design teams and within the organisation. The paper concludes with a critical commentary on the changing roles and a process required to implement BIM in UK construction projects, and suggests areas for further research.

Sistemas curriculares para la gestión de información y conocimiento institucional. Estudio de caso

La organización del conocimiento en el contexto de las Ciencias de la Información tiene como esencia la información y el conocimiento debidamente documentado o registrado. La organización del conocimiento como proceso, envuelve tanto la descripción física como de los contenidos de los objetos informacionales. Y el producto de ese proceso descriptivo es la representación de los atributos de un objeto o conjunto de objetos. Las representaciones son construidas por lenguajes elaborados específicamente para los objetivos de la organización en los sistemas de información. Lenguajes que se subdividen en lenguajes que describen el documento (el soporte físico del objeto) y lenguajes que describen la información (los contenidos).A partir de esta premisa la siguiente investigación tiene como objetivo general analizarlos sistemas de Gestión de Información y Conocimiento Institucional principalmente los que proponen utilizar el Currículum Vitae del profesor como única fuente de información, medición y representación de la información y el conocimiento de una organización. Dentro delos principales resultados se muestra la importancia de usar el currículo personal como fuente de información confiable y normalizada; una síntesis de los principales sistemas curriculares que existen a nivel internacional y regional; así como el gráfico del modelo de datos del caso de estudio; y por último, la propuesta del uso de las ontologías como principal herramienta para la organización semántica de la información en un sistema de gestión de información y conocimiento.

RAGE Reusable Game Software Components and Their Integration into Serious Game Engines

This paper presents and validates a methodology for integrating reusable software components in diverse game engines. While conforming to the RAGE com-ponent-based architecture described elsewhere, the paper explains how the interac-tions and data exchange processes between a reusable software component and a game engine should be implemented for procuring seamless integration. To this end, a RAGE-compliant C# software component providing a difficulty adaptation routine was integrated with an exemplary strategic tile-based game “TileZero”. Implementa-tions in MonoGame, Unity and Xamarin, respectively, have demonstrated successful portability of the adaptation component. Also, portability across various delivery platforms (Windows desktop, iOS, Android, Windows Phone) was established. Thereby this study has established the validity of the RAGE architecture and its un-derlying interaction processes for the cross-platform and cross-game engine reuse of software components. The RAGE architecture thereby accommodates the large scale development and application of reusable software components for serious gaming.

DojoIBL: Nurturing Communities of Inquiry

Demo paper presented at EC-TEL 2016

The RAGE Software Asset Model and Metadata Model

Software assets are key output of the RAGE project and they can be used by applied game developers to enhance the pedagogical and educational value of their games. These software assets cover a broad spectrum of functionalities – from player analytics including emotion detection to intelligent adaptation and social gamification. In order to facilitate integration and interoperability, all of these assets adhere to a common model, which describes their properties through a set of metadata. In this paper the RAGE asset model and asset metadata model is presented, capturing the detail of assets and their potential usage within three distinct dimensions – technological, gaming and pedagogical. The paper highlights key issues and challenges in constructing the RAGE asset and asset metadata model and details the process and design of a flexible metadata editor that facilitates both adaptation and improvement of the asset metadata model.

Software Components for Serious Game Development

The large upfront investments required for game development pose a severe barrier for the wider uptake of serious games in education and training. Also, there is a lack of well-established methods and tools that support game developers at preserving and enhancing the games’ pedagogical effectiveness. The RAGE project, which is a Horizon 2020 funded research project on serious games, addresses these issues by making available reusable software components that aim to support the pedagogical qualities of serious games. In order to easily deploy and integrate these game components in a multitude of game engines, platforms and programming languages, RAGE has developed and validated a hybrid component-based software architecture that preserves component portability and interoperability. While a first set of software components is being developed, this paper presents selected examples to explain the overall system’s concept and its practical benefits. First, the Emotion Detection component uses the learners’ webcams for capturing their emotional states from facial expressions. Second, the Performance Statistics component is an add-on for learning analytics data processing, which allows instructors to track and inspect learners’ progress without bothering about the required statistics computations. Third, a set of language processing components accommodate the analysis of textual inputs of learners, facilitating comprehension assessment and prediction. Fourth, the Shared Data Storage component provides a technical solution for data storage - e.g. for player data or game world data - across multiple software components. The presented components are exemplary for the anticipated RAGE library, which will include up to forty reusable software components for serious gaming, addressing diverse pedagogical dimensions.

It's always been about the links

Abstract The World Wide Web Consortium, W3C, is known for standards like HTML and CSS but there's a lot more to it than that. Mobile, automotive, publishing, graphics, TV and more. Then there are horizontal issues like privacy, security, accessibility and internationalisation. Many of these assume that there is an underlying data infrastructure to power applications. In this session, W3C's Data Activity Lead, Phil Archer, will describe the overall vision for better use of the Web as a platform for sharing data and how that translates into recent, current and possible future work. What's the difference between using the Web as a data platform and as a glorified USB stick? Why does it matter? And what makes a standard a standard anyway? Speaker Biography Phil Archer Phil Archer is Data Activity Lead at W3C, the industry standards body for the World Wide Web, coordinating W3C's work in the Semantic Web and related technologies. He is most closely involved in the Data on the Web Best Practices, Permissions and Obligations Expression and Spatial Data on the Web Working Groups. His key themes are interoperability through common terminology and URI persistence. As well as work at the W3C, his career has encompassed broadcasting, teaching, linked data publishing, copy writing, and, perhaps incongruously, countryside conservation. The common thread throughout has been a knack for communication, particularly communicating complex technical ideas to a more general audience.

Utilização das normas de interoperabilidade do Open Geospatial Consortium nos organismos da Administração Pública em Portugal

Com o crescimento da Internet como plataforma global para partilha de informação, cresceu também a diversidade de tipologias de informação a ser partilhada e consultada, nomeadamente informação geográfica. Neste âmbito surge como preocupação a interoperabilidade entre sistemas permitindo que sistemas diferentes possam “comunicar”, partilhando informações e recursos. O presente trabalho propõe-se recolher informação sobre a utilização das normas de interoperabilidade do Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) na Administração Pública em Portugal, permitindo analisar e tirar conclusões relativamente a esta temática, tendo também em conta o seu enquadramento legal nacional.

Federated architecture for biomedical data integration

The last decades have been characterized by a continuous adoption of IT solutions in the healthcare sector, which resulted in the proliferation of tremendous amounts of data over heterogeneous systems. Distinct data types are currently generated, manipulated, and stored, in the several institutions where patients are treated. The data sharing and an integrated access to this information will allow extracting relevant knowledge that can lead to better diagnostics and treatments. This thesis proposes new integration models for gathering information and extracting knowledge from multiple and heterogeneous biomedical sources. The scenario complexity led us to split the integration problem according to the data type and to the usage specificity. The first contribution is a cloud-based architecture for exchanging medical imaging services. It offers a simplified registration mechanism for providers and services, promotes remote data access, and facilitates the integration of distributed data sources. Moreover, it is compliant with international standards, ensuring the platform interoperability with current medical imaging devices. The second proposal is a sensor-based architecture for integration of electronic health records. It follows a federated integration model and aims to provide a scalable solution to search and retrieve data from multiple information systems. The last contribution is an open architecture for gathering patient-level data from disperse and heterogeneous databases. All the proposed solutions were deployed and validated in real world use cases.

Architecture for IoT Node and Platform

Only recently, during the past five years, consumer electronics has been evolving rapidly. Many products have started to include “smart home” capabilities, enabling communication and interoperability of various smart devices. Even more devices and sensors can be remote controlled and monitored through cloud services. While the smart home systems have become very affordable to average consumer compared to the early solutions decades ago, there are still many issues and things that need to be fixed or improved upon: energy efficiency, connectivity with other devices and applications, security and privacy concerns, reliability, and response time. This paper focuses on designing Internet of Things (IoT) node and platform architectures that take these issues into account, notes other currently used solutions, and selects technologies in order to provide better solution. The node architecture aims for energy efficiency and modularity, while the platform architecture goals are in scalability, portability, maintainability, performance, and modularity. Moreover, the platform architecture attempts to improve user experience by providing higher reliability and lower response time compared to the alternative platforms. The architectures were developed iteratively using a development process involving research, planning, design, implementation, testing, and analysis. Additionally, they were documented using Kruchten’s 4+1 view model, which is used to describe the use cases and different views of the architectures. The node architecture consisted of energy efficient hardware, FC3180 microprocessor and CC2520 RF transceiver, modular operating system, Contiki, and a communication protocol, AllJoyn, used for providing better interoperability with other IoT devices and applications. The platform architecture provided reliable low response time control, monitoring, and initial setup capabilities by utilizing web technologies on various devices such as smart phones, tablets, and computers. Furthermore, an optional cloud service was provided in order to control devices and monitor sensors remotely by utilizing scalable high performance technologies in the backend enabling low response time and high reliability.

Knowledge Exchange Institutional Repository Workshop

The workshop took place on 16-17 January in Utrecht, with Seventy experts from eight European countries in attendance. The workshop was structured in six sessions: usage statistics research paper metadata exchanging information author identification Open Archives Initiative eTheses Following the workshop, the discussion groups were asked to continue their collaboration and to produce a report for circulation to all participants. The results can be downloaded below. The recommendations contained in the reports above have been reviewed by the Knowledge Exchange partner organisations and formed the basis for new proposals and the next steps in Knowledge Exchange work with institutional repositories. Institutional Repository Workshop - Next steps During April and May 2007 Knowledge Exchange had expert reviewers from the partner organisations go though the workshop strand reports and make their recommendations about the best way to move forward, to set priorities, and find possibilities for furthering the institutional repository cause. The KE partner representatives reviewed the reviews and consulted with their partner organisation management to get an indication of support and funding for the latest ideas and proposals, as follows: Pragmatic interoperability During a review meeting at JISC offices in London on 31 May, the expert reviewers and the KE partner representatives agreed that ‘pragmatic interoperability' is the primary area of interest. It was also agreed that the most relevant and beneficial choice for a Knowledge Exchange approach would be to aim for CRIS-OAR interoperability as a step towards integrated services. Within this context, interlinked joint projects could be undertaken by the partner organisations regarding the areas that most interested them. Interlinked projects The proposed Knowledge Exchange activities involve interlinked joint projects on metadata, persistent author identifiers, and eTheses which are intended to connect to and build on projects such as ISPI, Jisc NAMES and the Digital Author Identifier (DAI) developed by SURF. It is important to stress that the projects are not intended to overlap, but rather to supplement the DRIVER 2 (EU project) approaches. Focus on CRIS and OAR It is believed that the focus on practical interoperability between Current Research Information Systems and Open Access Repository systems will be of genuine benefit to research scientists, research administrators and librarian communities in the Knowledge Exchange countries; accommodating the specific needs of each group. Timing June 2007: Write the draft proposal by KE Working Group members July 2007: Final proposal to be sent to partner organisations by KE Group August 2007: Decision by Knowledge Exchange partner organisations.

On the application of contextual IoT service discovery in Information Centric Networks

The continuous flow of technological developments in communications and electronic industries has led to the growing expansion of the Internet of Things (IoT). By leveraging the capabilities of smart networked devices and integrating them into existing industrial, leisure and communication applications, the IoT is expected to positively impact both economy and society, reducing the gap between the physical and digital worlds. Therefore, several efforts have been dedicated to the development of networking solutions addressing the diversity of challenges associated with such a vision. In this context, the integration of Information Centric Networking (ICN) concepts into the core of IoT is a research area gaining momentum and involving both research and industry actors. The massive amount of heterogeneous devices, as well as the data they produce, is a significant challenge for a wide-scale adoption of the IoT. In this paper we propose a service discovery mechanism, based on Named Data Networking (NDN), that leverages the use of a semantic matching mechanism for achieving a flexible discovery process. The development of appropriate service discovery mechanisms enriched with semantic capabilities for understanding and processing context information is a key feature for turning raw data into useful knowledge and ensuring the interoperability among different devices and applications. We assessed the performance of our solution through the implementation and deployment of a proof-of-concept prototype. Obtained results illustrate the potential of integrating semantic and ICN mechanisms to enable a flexible service discovery in IoT scenarios.

HEALTHCARE INFORMATION SYSTEMS INTEGRATION USING SOA

The growing pressure to increase the quality of health services, as well as reducing costs, has caused healthcare organizations to increase the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) through the development and adoption of Healthcare Information Systems (HIS). However, the need for exchange of information between HIS and between organizations has also increased, resulting in the problem of interoperability. This problem is considered complex, but the use of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) appears as a good way to address this issue. This paper presents a systematic review, performed in order to find out how and in which contexts SOA is being used to ensure the interoperability of HIS.

Procedimentos de informação portuária electrónica

A integração de sistemas é uma necessidade cada vez mais necessária face à exigência e competitividade dos negócios. Uma forma de respondermos a estes factos é através da tecnologia, acompanhando-a e aprofundando-a. O presente documento apresenta uma proposta de solução tecnológica a estes factos. O caso que iremos abordar trata-se da necessidade de renovar o sistema de gestão portuária a nível nacional, garantido uma continuidade de negócio, assim como a implementação de novas funcionalidades que permitam a esta plataforma ser totalmente independente e integrável com outros sistemas e/ou adaptável a outras organizações no futuro. SOA, Service Oriented Architecture, foi a filosofia adoptada para garantir a facilitação do tráfego marítimo através da harmonização de processos e procedimentos entre os vários portos, fundamentalmente no referente à interconexão e interoperabilidade, e a partilha e troca electrónica de informação processual entre os vários membros da comunidade marítima e portuária. ABSTRACT; System integration is a necessity progressively more required due to the business demand and competitiveness. It is possible to respond to the latter facts with technology, by following it and developing it. This study proposes a technological solution for the abovementioned facts. The case to be addressed is the need to renovate the port management system in a nationwide scale, assuring simultaneously the continuity of the business and the implementation of new functionalities that allow for this platform to be utterly independent and applicable to other systems and/or adaptable to other organizations in the future. SOA, Service Oriented Architecture, was the theory adopted to guarantee the simplification of the maritime traffic, by harmonizing the processes and the procedures among the several ports, especially concerning the interconnection and interoperability, and the electronic sharing and exchange of information referent to processes amongst the numerous members of the maritime and port community.

Interoperabilidade e integração de sistemas de informação

Num mundo em que cada vez mais se recorre aos sistemas de informação para suporte às actividades das empresas e instituições a necessidade de troca de informação, de participação em processos conjuntos, de partilha de dados assume uma importância vital nas organizações. Como resposta à crescente necessidade de integração dos sistemas de informação, começaram a surgir um sem número de soluções e conceitos que têm como objectivo dar resposta a esta problemática. Assim, e de forma a contribuir como um elemento facilitador na interoperabilidade e integração de sistemas, este trabalho tem como propósito a construção de uma framework de integração conceptual, framework esta construída através de uma sistematização de conceitos, que embora conhecidos, existem de uma forma dispersa. Potencia-se assim como uma ferramenta orientadora, principalmente para aqueles que não possuem os conhecimentos adequados ou suficientes para colocar um modelo de integração em prática de forma consciente. Como tal, será uma ferramenta indispensável para dar a conhecer soluções, etapas, vantagens, desvantagens, diferentes modelos e será, sem dúvida, uma mais-valia em futuras integrações. ABSTRACT; ln a world where the use of information systems increases daily, the growing demand for data exchange, data sharing and processes integration assumes a vital role in organizations life. ln order to answer to the growing needs of information systems integration, many solutions and concepts start to emerge with the goal to answer those needs. ln a way to contribute to the information systems interoperability and integration, this thesis presents an conceptual integration systems framework built by using a set of well known concepts, which exist in a sparse way. This conceptual framework appears mainly for those that for some reason don’t have sufficient knowledge to implement integration model in a sensible way. Such framework will be the perfect tool to provide the knowledge about solutions, stages, advantages, disadvantages and existent models, being a tool to consider in future integrations.