AALUMO: a user model ontology for ambient assisted living services supported in next-generation networks

Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) services are emerging as context-awareness solutions to support elderly people?s autonomy. The context-aware paradigm makes applications more user-adaptive. In this way, context and user models expressed in ontologies are employed by applications to describe user and environment characteristics. The rapid advance of technology allows creating context server to relieve applications of context reasoning techniques. Specifically, the Next Generation Networks (NGN) provides by means of the presence service a framework to manage the current user's state as well as the user's profile information extracted from Internet and mobile context. This paper propose a user modeling ontology for AAL services which can be deployed in a NGN environment with the aim at adapting their functionalities to the elderly's context information and state.

Towards a systematic benchmarking of ontology-based query rewriting systems

Query rewriting is one of the fundamental steps in ontologybased data access (OBDA) approaches. It takes as inputs an ontology and a query written according to that ontology, and produces as an output a set of queries that should be evaluated to account for the inferences that should be considered for that query and ontology. Different query rewriting systems give support to different ontology languages with varying expressiveness, and the rewritten queries obtained as an output do also vary in expressiveness. This heterogeneity has traditionally made it difficult to compare different approaches, and the area lacks in general commonly agreed benchmarks that could be used not only for such comparisons but also for improving OBDA support. In this paper we compile data, dimensions and measurements that have been used to evaluate some of the most recent systems, we analyse and characterise these assets, and provide a unified set of them that could be used as a starting point towards a more systematic benchmarking process for such systems. Finally, we apply this initial benchmark with some of the most relevant OBDA approaches in the state of the art.

Onyx: describing emotions on the web of data

There are several different standardised and widespread formats to represent emotions. However, there is no standard semantic model yet. This paper presents a new ontology, called Onyx, that aims to become such a standard while adding concepts from the latest Semantic Web models. In particular, the ontology focuses on the representation of Emotion Analysis results. But the model is abstract and inherits from previous standards and formats. It can thus be used as a reference representation of emotions in any future application or ontology. To prove this, we have translated resources from EmotionML representation to Onyx. We also present several ways in which developers could benefit from using this ontology instead of an ad-hoc presentation. Our ultimate goal is to foster the use of semantic technologies for emotion Analysis while following the Linked Data ideals.

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.

Marco de caracterización y cálculo de las métricas de calidad de los componentes web para el desarrollo de aplicaciones de usuario final

En la Web 2.0, donde usuarios finales sin grandes conocimientos de programación pueden interactuar y crear aplicaciones web utilizando componentes publicados en Internet, ofrecidos por una gran variedad de proveedores de servicio. La selección de estos componentes requiere de un análisis exhaustivo por parte de los usuarios sobre las propiedades de estos componentes en referencia a su calidad. En este proyecto, se presentan dos modelos de calidad según una estructura jerárquica, uno para componentes web como elementos autónomos y otro para componentes utilizados en aplicaciones de mashup, basado en un análisis de la emergente Web 2.0. Además, se define una herramienta de medición y anotación de calidad para los distintos niveles de los modelos. Estas herramientas pretenden ser un útil instrumento para los desarrolladores y usuarios de componentes y mashups.---ABSTRACT---In the Web 2.0, where end users without a technical programming background can interact and develop web applications leveraging web components published on the Internet, offered by a great diversity of service providers. This component selection requires an exhaustive analysis by these end users based on the requirements of these components related to their quality. In this work, two quality models are presented according to a hierarchical structure, one for web components as independent elements and another one for web components as parts of web mashup applications, based on an analysis of the emerging Web 2.0. In addition, a measuring and write down quality framework is defined to weigh the quality of all the levels of the models. These tools intend to provide a useful instrument to components and mashup developers and end users.

Desarrollo de una aplicación Web empresarial de ayuda a la producción de campañas publicitarias

La creación de esta aplicación web empresarial surge con la necesidad de optimizar el tiempo en el proceso de creación de una campaña publicitaria de email marketing. El objetivo principal de este trabajo es automatizar el proceso de validación de los campos de un formulario web. Un formulario web [6] es un documento digital en el que los usuarios introducen sus datos personales como nombre, apellido, dirección, documento de identidad, entre otros. Estos datos posteriormente serán procesados y almacenados en un base de datos para luego ser enviados al anunciante. El proceso de validación se refiere a la programación del formulario web en la parte del cliente usando tecnologías web como JavaScript y HTML5, para controlar que los datos introducidos por el usuario en el formulario, sean correctos. Cada campo de un formulario web tiene una validación específica que depende de varios factores, como son el país de lanzamiento de la campaña y el campo a validar. De esta forma dependiendo del tipo de validación se genera un fichero JavaScript con todas las validaciones de dicho formulario. Una de las finalidades de este trabajo es que cualquier usuario de la empresa pueda programar un formulario web, sin tener conocimientos previos de programación, ya que la programación se realiza de forma transparente al usuario. Este es un resumen básico de la aplicación web, sin embargo se debe tener en cuenta una serie de requisitos y parámetros para hacerlo más eficiente y personalizable dependiendo de las necesidades del producto final de cada campaña publicitaria. Todos estos aspectos se explicaran en detalle en los siguientes apartados. Este trabajo se realizó en el corporativo Media Response Group, para la empresa Canalmail S.L, situada en Alcobendas, supervisado por los tutores profesionales Daniel Paz y Jorge Lázaro Molina y por el tutor académico Rafael Fernández Gallego de la Universidad Politécnica de Madrid.---ABSTRACT---The creation of this enterprise Web application arises from the need to optimize the time in the process of creating an online advertising campaign. The main objective of this work is to automate the process of validating fields in a web form. A web form [6] is a digital document that users enter data such as name, surname, address, ID number among others. These data will subsequently be processed and stored in a database and then be sent to the client. These data will subsequently be processed and stored in a database and then be sent to the advertiser. This validation process refers to programming the online form on the client‟s side using web technologies such as JavaScript, HTML5 to control that the data entered by the user in this form are correct. Each field in a web form has a specific validation that depends on several factors; like being a nationwide launch of the campaign and validating data, thus depending on the type of validation a JavaScript file is generated with all validation web form. This file is integrated into the web form by calling the service. One purpose of this work is that any business user can program a web form, without prior knowledge of web programming, since programming is transparent to the user. This is a basic summary of the web application; however we must consider a number of requirements and parameters to make it more efficient and customizable depending on the needs of the end product of each advertising campaign. All these aspects are explained in detail in the following sections. This work was performed in the corporate Media Response Group, for the company Canalmail S.L, located in Alcobendas, supervised by professional tutors Daniel Paz and Jorge Lázaro Molina and PhD Assistant Lecturer at Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. Rafael Fernández Gallego.

Modelo de arquitectura para gestión cooperativa de sistemas y servicios distribuidos basado en agentes autónomos

La creciente complejidad, heterogeneidad y dinamismo inherente a las redes de telecomunicaciones, los sistemas distribuidos y los servicios avanzados de información y comunicación emergentes, así como el incremento de su criticidad e importancia estratégica, requieren la adopción de tecnologías cada vez más sofisticadas para su gestión, su coordinación y su integración por parte de los operadores de red, los proveedores de servicio y las empresas, como usuarios finales de los mismos, con el fin de garantizar niveles adecuados de funcionalidad, rendimiento y fiabilidad. Las estrategias de gestión adoptadas tradicionalmente adolecen de seguir modelos excesivamente estáticos y centralizados, con un elevado componente de supervisión y difícilmente escalables. La acuciante necesidad por flexibilizar esta gestión y hacerla a la vez más escalable y robusta, ha provocado en los últimos años un considerable interés por desarrollar nuevos paradigmas basados en modelos jerárquicos y distribuidos, como evolución natural de los primeros modelos jerárquicos débilmente distribuidos que sucedieron al paradigma centralizado. Se crean así nuevos modelos como son los basados en Gestión por Delegación, en el paradigma de código móvil, en las tecnologías de objetos distribuidos y en los servicios web. Estas alternativas se han mostrado enormemente robustas, flexibles y escalables frente a las estrategias tradicionales de gestión, pero continúan sin resolver aún muchos problemas. Las líneas actuales de investigación parten del hecho de que muchos problemas de robustez, escalabilidad y flexibilidad continúan sin ser resueltos por el paradigma jerárquico-distribuido, y abogan por la migración hacia un paradigma cooperativo fuertemente distribuido. Estas líneas tienen su germen en la Inteligencia Artificial Distribuida (DAI) y, más concretamente, en el paradigma de agentes autónomos y en los Sistemas Multi-agente (MAS). Todas ellas se perfilan en torno a un conjunto de objetivos que pueden resumirse en alcanzar un mayor grado de autonomía en la funcionalidad de la gestión y una mayor capacidad de autoconfiguración que resuelva los problemas de escalabilidad y la necesidad de supervisión presentes en los sistemas actuales, evolucionar hacia técnicas de control fuertemente distribuido y cooperativo guiado por la meta y dotar de una mayor riqueza semántica a los modelos de información. Cada vez más investigadores están empezando a utilizar agentes para la gestión de redes y sistemas distribuidos. Sin embargo, los límites establecidos en sus trabajos entre agentes móviles (que siguen el paradigma de código móvil) y agentes autónomos (que realmente siguen el paradigma cooperativo) resultan difusos. Muchos de estos trabajos se centran en la utilización de agentes móviles, lo cual, al igual que ocurría con las técnicas de código móvil comentadas anteriormente, les permite dotar de un mayor componente dinámico al concepto tradicional de Gestión por Delegación. Con ello se consigue flexibilizar la gestión, distribuir la lógica de gestión cerca de los datos y distribuir el control. Sin embargo se permanece en el paradigma jerárquico distribuido. Si bien continúa sin definirse aún una arquitectura de gestión fiel al paradigma cooperativo fuertemente distribuido, estas líneas de investigación han puesto de manifiesto serios problemas de adecuación en los modelos de información, comunicación y organizativo de las arquitecturas de gestión existentes. En este contexto, la tesis presenta un modelo de arquitectura para gestión holónica de sistemas y servicios distribuidos mediante sociedades de agentes autónomos, cuyos objetivos fundamentales son el incremento del grado de automatización asociado a las tareas de gestión, el aumento de la escalabilidad de las soluciones de gestión, soporte para delegación tanto por dominios como por macro-tareas, y un alto grado de interoperabilidad en entornos abiertos. A partir de estos objetivos se ha desarrollado un modelo de información formal de tipo semántico, basado en lógica descriptiva que permite un mayor grado de automatización en la gestión en base a la utilización de agentes autónomos racionales, capaces de razonar, inferir e integrar de forma dinámica conocimiento y servicios conceptualizados mediante el modelo CIM y formalizados a nivel semántico mediante lógica descriptiva. El modelo de información incluye además un “mapping” a nivel de meta-modelo de CIM al lenguaje de especificación de ontologías OWL, que supone un significativo avance en el área de la representación y el intercambio basado en XML de modelos y meta-información. A nivel de interacción, el modelo aporta un lenguaje de especificación formal de conversaciones entre agentes basado en la teoría de actos ilocucionales y aporta una semántica operacional para dicho lenguaje que facilita la labor de verificación de propiedades formales asociadas al protocolo de interacción. Se ha desarrollado también un modelo de organización holónico y orientado a roles cuyas principales características están alineadas con las demandadas por los servicios distribuidos emergentes e incluyen la ausencia de control central, capacidades de reestructuración dinámica, capacidades de cooperación, y facilidades de adaptación a diferentes culturas organizativas. El modelo incluye un submodelo normativo adecuado al carácter autónomo de los holones de gestión y basado en las lógicas modales deontológica y de acción.---ABSTRACT---The growing complexity, heterogeneity and dynamism inherent in telecommunications networks, distributed systems and the emerging advanced information and communication services, as well as their increased criticality and strategic importance, calls for the adoption of increasingly more sophisticated technologies for their management, coordination and integration by network operators, service providers and end-user companies to assure adequate levels of functionality, performance and reliability. The management strategies adopted traditionally follow models that are too static and centralised, have a high supervision component and are difficult to scale. The pressing need to flexibilise management and, at the same time, make it more scalable and robust recently led to a lot of interest in developing new paradigms based on hierarchical and distributed models, as a natural evolution from the first weakly distributed hierarchical models that succeeded the centralised paradigm. Thus new models based on management by delegation, the mobile code paradigm, distributed objects and web services came into being. These alternatives have turned out to be enormously robust, flexible and scalable as compared with the traditional management strategies. However, many problems still remain to be solved. Current research lines assume that the distributed hierarchical paradigm has as yet failed to solve many of the problems related to robustness, scalability and flexibility and advocate migration towards a strongly distributed cooperative paradigm. These lines of research were spawned by Distributed Artificial Intelligence (DAI) and, specifically, the autonomous agent paradigm and Multi-Agent Systems (MAS). They all revolve around a series of objectives, which can be summarised as achieving greater management functionality autonomy and a greater self-configuration capability, which solves the problems of scalability and the need for supervision that plague current systems, evolving towards strongly distributed and goal-driven cooperative control techniques and semantically enhancing information models. More and more researchers are starting to use agents for network and distributed systems management. However, the boundaries established in their work between mobile agents (that follow the mobile code paradigm) and autonomous agents (that really follow the cooperative paradigm) are fuzzy. Many of these approximations focus on the use of mobile agents, which, as was the case with the above-mentioned mobile code techniques, means that they can inject more dynamism into the traditional concept of management by delegation. Accordingly, they are able to flexibilise management, distribute management logic about data and distribute control. However, they remain within the distributed hierarchical paradigm. While a management architecture faithful to the strongly distributed cooperative paradigm has yet to be defined, these lines of research have revealed that the information, communication and organisation models of existing management architectures are far from adequate. In this context, this dissertation presents an architectural model for the holonic management of distributed systems and services through autonomous agent societies. The main objectives of this model are to raise the level of management task automation, increase the scalability of management solutions, provide support for delegation by both domains and macro-tasks and achieve a high level of interoperability in open environments. Bearing in mind these objectives, a descriptive logic-based formal semantic information model has been developed, which increases management automation by using rational autonomous agents capable of reasoning, inferring and dynamically integrating knowledge and services conceptualised by means of the CIM model and formalised at the semantic level by means of descriptive logic. The information model also includes a mapping, at the CIM metamodel level, to the OWL ontology specification language, which amounts to a significant advance in the field of XML-based model and metainformation representation and exchange. At the interaction level, the model introduces a formal specification language (ACSL) of conversations between agents based on speech act theory and contributes an operational semantics for this language that eases the task of verifying formal properties associated with the interaction protocol. A role-oriented holonic organisational model has also been developed, whose main features meet the requirements demanded by emerging distributed services, including no centralised control, dynamic restructuring capabilities, cooperative skills and facilities for adaptation to different organisational cultures. The model includes a normative submodel adapted to management holon autonomy and based on the deontic and action modal logics.

Modelling of chloride penetration into non-saturated concrete: case study application for real marine offshore structures

The aim of this paper is to explain the chloride concentration profiles obtained experimentally from control samples of an offshore platform after 25 years of service life. The platform is located 12 km off the coast of the Brazilian province Rio Grande do Norte, in the north-east of Brazil. The samples were extracted at different orientations and heights above mean sea level. A simple model based on Fick’s second law is considered and compared with a finite element model which takes into account transport of chloride ions by diffusion and convection. Results show that convective flows significantly affect the studied chloride penetrations. The convection velocity is obtained by fitting the finite element solution to the experimental data and seems to be directly proportional to the height above mean sea level and also seems to depend on the orientation of the face of the platform. This work shows that considering solely diffusion as transport mechanism does not allow a good prediction of the chloride profiles. Accounting for capillary suction due to moisture gradients permits a better interpretation of the material’s behaviour

A component- and connector-based approach for end-user composite web applications development

Enabling real end-user development is the next logical stage in the evolution of Internet-wide service-based applications. Successful composite applications rely on heavyweight service orchestration technologies that raise the bar far above end-user skills. This weakness can be attributed to the fact that the composition model does not satisfy end-user needs rather than to the actual infrastructure technologies. In our opinion, the best way to overcome this weakness is to offer end-to-end composition from the user interface to service invocation, plus an understandable abstraction of building blocks and a visual composition technique empowering end users to develop their own applications. In this paper, we present a visual framework for end users, called FAST, which fulfils this objective. FAST implements a novel composition model designed to empower non-programmer end users to create and share their own self-service composite applications in a fully visual fashion. We projected the development environment implementing this model as part of the European FP7 FAST Project, which was used to validate the rationale behind our approach.

The relationship between young people's transit use and their perceptions of equity concepts in transit service provision

This study investigates the effect of price and travel mode fairness and spatial equity in transit provision on the perceived transit service quality, willingness to pay, and habitual frequency of use. Based on the theory of planned behavior, we developed a web-based questionnaire for revealed preferences data collection. The survey was administered among young people in Copenhagen and Lisbon to explore the transit perceptions and use under different economic and transit provision conditions. The survey yielded 499 questionnaires, analyzed by means of structural equation models. Results show that higher perceived fairness relates positively to higher perceived quality of transit service and higher perceived ease of paying for transit use. Higher perceived spatial equity in service provision is associated with higher perceived service quality. Higher perceived service quality relates to higher perceived ease of payment, which links to higher frequency of transit use.

Data consistency management in an open smart home management platform

In this paper, the authors introduce a novel mechanism for data management in a middleware for smart home control, where a relational database and semantic ontology storage are used at the same time in a Data Warehouse. An annotation system has been designed for instructing the storage format and location, registering new ontology concepts and most importantly, guaranteeing the Data Consistency between the two storage methods. For easing the data persistence process, the Data Access Object (DAO) pattern is applied and optimized to enhance the Data Consistency assurance. Finally, this novel mechanism provides an easy manner for the development of applications and their integration with BATMP. Finally, an application named "Parameter Monitoring Service" is given as an example for assessing the feasibility of the system.

Developing ontologies for representing data about key performance indicators

Multiple indicators are of interest in smart cities at different scales and for different stakeholders. In open environments, such as The Web, or when indicator information has to be interchanged across systems, contextual information (e.g., unit of measurement, measurement method) should be transmitted together with the data and the lack of such information might cause undesirable effects. Describing the data by means of ontologies increases interoperability among datasets and applications. However, methodological guidance is crucial during ontology development in order to transform the art of modeling in an engineering activity. In the current paper, we present a methodological approach for modelling data about Key Performance Indicators and their context with an application example of such guidelines.

Building an ontology catalogue for smart cities

Apart from providing semantics and reasoning power to data, ontologies enable and facilitate interoperability across heterogeneous systems or environments. A good practice when developing ontologies is to reuse as much knowledge as possible in order to increase interoperability by reducing heterogeneity across models and to reduce development effort. Ontology registries, indexes and catalogues facilitate the task of finding, exploring and reusing ontologies by collecting them from different sources. This paper presents an ontology catalogue for the smart cities and related domains. This catalogue is based on curated metadata and incorporates ontology evaluation features. Such catalogue represents the first approach within this community and it would be highly useful for new ontology developments or for describing and annotating existing ontologies.

Ontology-driven legal support-system in air transport passenger domain

This paper aims to present a preliminary version of asupport-system in the air transport passenger domain. This system relies upon an underlying on-tological structure representing a normative framework to facilitatethe provision of contextualized relevant legal information.This information includes the pas-senger's rights and itenhances self-litigation and the decision-making process of passengers.Our contribution is based in the attempt of rendering a user-centric-legal informationgroundedon case-scenarios of the most pronounced incidents related to the consumer complaints in the EU.A number ofadvantages with re-spect to the current state-of-the-art services are discussed and a case study illu-strates a possible technological application.

Social tags and linked data for ontology development: a case study in the financial domain

We describe a domain ontology development approach that extracts domain terms from folksonomies and enrich them with data and vocabularies from the Linked Open Data cloud. As a result, we obtain lightweight domain ontologies that combine the emergent knowledge of social tagging systems with formal knowledge from Ontologies. In order to illustrate the feasibility of our approach, we have produced an ontology in the financial domain from tags available in Delicious, using DBpedia, OpenCyc and UMBEL as additional knowledge sources.