A Web-Based geographical information system prototype on Portuguese traditional food products

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Geospatial Technologies

Reliability and availability in reconfigurable computing: a basis for a common solution

Dynamically reconfigurable SRAM-based field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) enable the implementation of reconfigurable computing systems where several applications may be run simultaneously, sharing the available resources according to their own immediate functional requirements. To exclude malfunctioning due to faulty elements, the reliability of all FPGA resources must be guaranteed. Since resource allocation takes place asynchronously, an online structural test scheme is the only way of ensuring reliable system operation. On the other hand, this test scheme should not disturb the operation of the circuit, otherwise availability would be compromised. System performance is also influenced by the efficiency of the management strategies that must be able to dynamically allocate enough resources when requested by each application. As those resources are allocated and later released, many small free resource blocks are created, which are left unused due to performance and routing restrictions. To avoid wasting logic resources, the FPGA logic space must be defragmented regularly. This paper presents a non-intrusive active replication procedure that supports the proposed test methodology and the implementation of defragmentation strategies, assuring both the availability of resources and their perfect working condition, without disturbing system operation.

Autonomic Activities in the Execution of Scientific Workflows: Evaluation of the AWARD Framework

Workflows have been successfully applied to express the decomposition of complex scientific applications. However the existing tools still lack adequate support to important aspects namely, decoupling the enactment engine from tasks specification, decentralizing the control of workflow activities allowing their tasks to run in distributed infrastructures, and supporting dynamic workflow reconfigurations. We present the AWARD (Autonomic Workflow Activities Reconfigurable and Dynamic) model of computation, based on Process Networks, where the workflow activities (AWA) are autonomic processes with independent control that can run in parallel on distributed infrastructures. Each AWA executes a task developed as a Java class with a generic interface allowing end-users to code their applications without low-level details. The data-driven coordination of AWA interactions is based on a shared tuple space that also enables dynamic workflow reconfiguration. For evaluation we describe experimental results of AWARD workflow executions in several application scenarios, mapped to the Amazon (Elastic Computing EC2) Cloud.

Real time mobile system for support in firefighting environments

Dissertação apresentada na Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade Nova de Lisboa para a obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia Electrotécnica e de Computadores

Designing a user interface for repositories of learning objects

This paper presents the design of a user interface for repositories of learning objects. It integrates several tasks, such as submission, browse, search, and comment/review of learning objects, on a single screen layout. This design is being implemented on the web front-end of crimsonHex, a repository of specialized learning objects, developed as part of the EduJudge, a European project that aims to bring automatic evaluation of programming problems to eLearning systems.

Is ambient intelligence a truly human-centric paradigm in industry? Current research and application scenario

Based on the paper presented at the International Conference “Autonomous Systems: inter-relations of technical and societal issues”, organized by IET with the support of the Portuguese-German collaboration project on “Technology Assessment of Autonomous Robotics” (DAAD/CRUP) at FCT-UNL, Biblioteca da UNL, Campus de Caparica on 5-6 November 2009.

Consumo inteligente de energia elétrica

Trabalho Final de Mestrado para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia de Redes de Comunicação e Multimédia

Aplicação informática para dimensionamento de barramentos em subestações

Trabalho Final de Mestrado para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia de Electrónica e Telecomunicações

RemoteLabs Platform

This paper reports on a first step towards the implementation of a framework for remote experimentation of electric machines ? the RemoteLabs platform. This project was focused on the development of two main modules: the user Web-based and the electric machines interfaces. The Web application provides the user with a front-end and interacts with the back-end ? the user and experiment persistent data. The electric machines interface is implemented as a distributed client server application where the clients, launched by the Web application, interact with the server modules located in platforms physically connected the electric machines drives. Users can register and authenticate, schedule, specify and run experiments and obtain results in the form of CSV, XML and PDF files. These functionalities were successfully tested with real data, but still without including the electric machines. This inclusion is part of another project scheduled to start soon.

Creating and optimizing client-server applications on mobile devices

Mobile devices are embedded systems with very limited capacities that need to be considered when developing a client-server application, mainly due to technical, ergonomic and economic implications to the mobile user. With the increasing popularity of mobile computing, many developers have faced problems due to low performance of devices. In this paper, we discuss how to optimize and create client-server applications for in wireless/mobile environments, presenting techniques to improve overall performance.

Estudo de usabilidade das aplicações mobile: caso prático o Meethub

Relatório de estágio apresentado à Escola Superior de Comunicação Social como parte dos requisitos para obtenção de grau de mestre em Audiovisual e Multimédia.

Integrated Management of Cloud Computing Resources

Lunacloud is a cloud service provider with offices in Portugal, Spain, France and UK that focus on delivering reliable, elastic and low cost cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) solutions. The company currently relies on a proprietary IaaS platform - the Parallels Automation for Cloud Infrastructure (PACI) - and wishes to expand and integrate other IaaS solutions seamlessly, namely open source solutions. This is the challenge addressed in this thesis. This proposal, which was fostered by Eurocloud Portugal Association, contributes to the promotion of interoperability and standardisation in Cloud Computing. The goal is to investigate, propose and develop an interoperable open source solution with standard interfaces for the integrated management of IaaS Cloud Computing resources based on new as well as existing abstraction libraries or frameworks. The solution should provide bothWeb and application programming interfaces. The research conducted consisted of two surveys covering existing open source IaaS platforms and PACI (features and API) and open source IaaS abstraction solutions. The first study was focussed on the characteristics of most popular open source IaaS platforms, namely OpenNebula, OpenStack, CloudStack and Eucalyptus, as well as PACI and included a thorough inventory of the provided Application Programming Interfaces (API), i.e., offered operations, followed by a comparison of these platforms in order to establish their similarities and dissimilarities. The second study on existing open source interoperability solutions included the analysis of existing abstraction libraries and frameworks and their comparison. The approach proposed and adopted, which was supported on the conclusions of the carried surveys, reuses an existing open source abstraction solution – the Apache Deltacloud framework. Deltacloud relies on the development of software driver modules to interface with different IaaS platforms, officially provides and supports drivers to sixteen IaaS platform, including OpenNebula and OpenStack, and allows the development of new provider drivers. The latter functionality was used to develop a new Deltacloud driver for PACI. Furthermore, Deltacloud provides a Web dashboard and REpresentational State Transfer (REST) API interfaces. To evaluate the adopted solution, a test bed integrating OpenNebula, Open- Stack and PACI nodes was assembled and deployed. The tests conducted involved time elapsed and data payload measurements via the Deltacloud framework as well as via the pre-existing IaaS platform API. The Deltacloud framework behaved as expected, i.e., introduced additional delays, but no substantial overheads. Both the Web and the REST interfaces were tested and showed identical measurements. The developed interoperable solution for the seamless integration and provision of IaaS resources from PACI, OpenNebula and OpenStack IaaS platforms fulfils the specified requirements, i.e., provides Lunacloud with the ability to expand the range of adopted IaaS platforms and offers a Web dashboard and REST API for the integrated management. The contributions of this work include the surveys and comparisons made, the selection of the abstraction framework and, last, but not the least, the PACI driver developed.

A middleware for service oriented computing in dynamic environments

Dissertação apresentada na Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade Nova de Lisboa para a obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Engenharia Informática

Video-­‐monitorization system for a realistic driving simulator

Nos últimos anos, o ISEP em colaboração com a FEUP e outras Universidades, criou um simulador realista de condução chamado DRIS, que tem como objectivo ajudar em trabalhos de investigação de diferentes áreas, como engenharia civil, computação gráfica, psicologia, educação, etc. O resultado deste trabalho pretende ajudar os profissionais a analisarem os dados recolhidos em cada experiência de condução, a fim de permitir o estudo das reações do motorista em diferentes obstáculos durante um percurso. O simulador DRIS é constituído por uma tela branca, onde os ambientes de simulação são projetados; um carro real, onde é feita a experiência de condução e quatro câmaras colocadas no carro. Destas quatro câmaras, três estão dentro do carro e uma fora do carro. Cada câmara está focada estrategicamente, em partes críticas da condução: a estrada, o motorista, os pedais e os controles (mudança de marcha, volante, os comandos do limpador, etc). Cada uma das câmaras grava um vídeo, que é guardado em um computador colocado em uma das salas de controlo, dentro do Laboratório de Análise de Tráfego na FEUP. Além disso, um arquivo de texto é guardado no mesmo computador. Este arquivo de texto contém algumas informações sobre a experiência do motorista, como as coordenadas do carro, a velocidade do carro, o tempo, etc O trabalho desta Tese surge com a finalidade de melhorar a forma de os profissionais analisar e interpretar os dados recolhidos a partir de uma experiência de condução no DRIS. Para o efeito, foi criado um sistema de vídeo-­‐monitorização, que consiste em uma aplicação de vídeo, que permite a visualização de quatro vídeos simultaneamente, e ler um arquivo de texto, que contém todos os dados recolhidos na experiência. Ambos (vídeo e texto) têm de estar sincronizados com o mesmo tempo de forma a permitir ao utilizador, navegar backward e forward com a ajuda de um cursor. Além disso, como qualquer reprodutor de vídeo básico, contém alguns botões para controlar o status do vídeo (Play, Stop, Pause) e permiti que os profissionais analisem com detalhe os dados dos quatro vídeos. Aproveitando os avanços no desenvolvimento de software, a aplicação foi feita em C++ usando a biblioteca Qt, em ambiente de desenvolvimento integrado do Qt Creator, o que tornou mais fácil a implementação. No fim deste relatório (capítulo 4) é anexado um manual do usuário, a fim de explicar e ajudar os profissionais a usar a aplicação.

Brokerage Platform for Media Content Recommendation

Near real time media content personalisation is nowadays a major challenge involving media content sources, distributors and viewers. This paper describes an approach to seamless recommendation, negotiation and transaction of personalised media content. It adopts an integrated view of the problem by proposing, on the business-to-business (B2B) side, a brokerage platform to negotiate the media items on behalf of the media content distributors and sources, providing viewers, on the business-to-consumer (B2C) side, with a personalised electronic programme guide (EPG) containing the set of recommended items after negotiation. In this setup, when a viewer connects, the distributor looks up and invites sources to negotiate the contents of the viewer personal EPG. The proposed multi-agent brokerage platform is structured in four layers, modelling the registration, service agreement, partner lookup, invitation as well as item recommendation, negotiation and transaction stages of the B2B processes. The recommendation service is a rule-based switch hybrid filter, including six collaborative and two content-based filters. The rule-based system selects, at runtime, the filter(s) to apply as well as the final set of recommendations to present. The filter selection is based on the data available, ranging from the history of items watched to the ratings and/or tags assigned to the items by the viewer. Additionally, this module implements (i) a novel item stereotype to represent newly arrived items, (ii) a standard user stereotype for new users, (iii) a novel passive user tag cloud stereotype for socially passive users, and (iv) a new content-based filter named the collinearity and proximity similarity (CPS). At the end of the paper, we present off-line results and a case study describing how the recommendation service works. The proposed system provides, to our knowledge, an excellent holistic solution to the problem of recommending multimedia contents.