From F energy rating to Nearly ZEB: project of energy retrofit and architectural upgrade of a brick terraced house in Co. Dublin, Ireland

Questo progetto è stato sviluppato durante un periodo di ricerca presso il Dipartimento di Ingegneria Civile del Trinity College e continuato presso l’Università di Bologna. Il progetto ha l’obiettivo di analizzare le soluzioni per l’ampliamento, la sostituzione degli impianti e l’ottimizzazione energetica di un tipico edificio residenziale Irlandese, una end of terrace in mattoni costruita negli anni ’20, collocata a Blackrock (Dublino). Diversi studi sostengono che lo stock abitativo irlandese è il peggiore del nord Europa per quanto riguarda la performance energetica. Questa tesi consta di una prima parte di studio del contesto e delle tecniche costruttive tradizionali irlandesi; è presente un capitolo di approfondimento sulle leggi riguardanti le costruzioni e gli incentivi forniti dal governo irlandese per interventi di retrofit energetico. Il terzo capitolo è un’analisi dell'esistente, con disegni del rilievo geometrico, immagini dell’edificio originale, termogrammi e dati riguardanti l’attuale performance energetica. Vengono poi mostrate diverse ipotesi di progetto e, una volta determinata la disposizione degli spazi interni, vengono considerate due soluzioni simili, ma costruite con pacchetti costruttivi diversi. Nel Progetto A l’involucro dell’addizione ha una struttura in muratura, nel Progetto B la struttura è in X-lam. Le performance energetiche delle due proposte vengono confrontate tramite una simulazione attuata grazie all'utilizzo del software dinamico IES-VE. Viene valutata l’applicazione di energie rinnovabili, quali l’energia solare e eolica e l’apporto che queste possono dare al bilancio energetico. Infine viene fatta un’analisi dei costi, valutando possibili suddivisioni dei lavori e ipotizzando un piano di ritorno dell’investimento, anche in combinazione con l’applicazione di energie rinnovabili. Alla fine del progetto si trova una valutazione quantitativa dei miglioramenti dell’edificio e un’analisi critica dei limiti del progetto.

Online Alpha Wave detector: an Embedded hardware-software implementation

The recent trend on embedded system development opens a new prospect for applications that in the past were not possible. The eye tracking for sleep and fatigue detection has become an important and useful application in industrial and automotive scenarios since fatigue is one of the most prevalent causes of earth-moving equipment accidents. Typical applications such as cameras, accelerometers and dermal analyzers are present on the market but have some inconvenient. This thesis project has used EEG signal, particularly, alpha waves, to overcome them by using an embedded software-hardware implementation to detect these signals in real time

A Scalable Design Framework for Variability Management in Large-Scale Software Product Lines

Variability management is one of the major challenges in software product line adoption, since it needs to be efficiently managed at various levels of the software product line development process (e.g., requirement analysis, design, implementation, etc.). One of the main challenges within variability management is the handling and effective visualization of large-scale (industry-size) models, which in many projects, can reach the order of thousands, along with the dependency relationships that exist among them. These have raised many concerns regarding the scalability of current variability management tools and techniques and their lack of industrial adoption. To address the scalability issues, this work employed a combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods to identify the reasons behind the limited scalability of existing variability management tools and techniques. In addition to producing a comprehensive catalogue of existing tools, the outcome form this stage helped understand the major limitations of existing tools. Based on the findings, a novel approach was created for managing variability that employed two main principles for supporting scalability. First, the separation-of-concerns principle was employed by creating multiple views of variability models to alleviate information overload. Second, hyperbolic trees were used to visualise models (compared to Euclidian space trees traditionally used). The result was an approach that can represent models encompassing hundreds of variability points and complex relationships. These concepts were demonstrated by implementing them in an existing variability management tool and using it to model a real-life product line with over a thousand variability points. Finally, in order to assess the work, an evaluation framework was designed based on various established usability assessment best practices and standards. The framework was then used with several case studies to benchmark the performance of this work against other existing tools.

Draft Project Management Update to the Iowa DOT Project Development Manual, 2016

This work supported drafting project management guidance for the Iowa Department of Transportation (DOT). The goal is to incorporate a greater focus on project management in their project development process. A technical advisory committee (TAC) was assembled to accomplish this effort. The TAC took into consideration the current status of project management with the Iowa DOT, their experience during the demonstration workshop held in Iowa as part of the implementation assistance they received, the project management peer exchange hosted by the Iowa DOT, and additional examples of project management that were presented. With this basis, the TAC participated in a number of discussions to develop draft guidance for the foundation of a Project Management Office (PMO) within the Iowa DOT. The final report describes the process that was used in establishing this guidance. The report details the decisions and decision process that the TAC employed in this endeavor and provides additional thoughts and insight into the draft guidance. Appendix A includes the draft guidance in the form of PMO function details and detailed lists of project management roles and responsibilities. Appendix B includes a starter list of project management resources for the PMO.

Experience with the use of Acrobat in the CAJUN publishing project

Adobe's Acrobat software, released in June 1993, is based around a new Portable Document Format (PDF) which offers the possibility of being able to view and exchange electronic documents, independent of the originating software, across a wide variety of supported hardware platforms (PC, Macintosh, Sun UNIX etc.). The fact that Acrobat's imageable objects are rendered with full use of Level 2 PostScript means that the most demanding requirements can be met in terms of high-quality typography and device-independent colour. These qualities will be very desirable components in future multimedia and hypermedia systems. The current capabilities of Acrobat and PDF are described; in particular the presence of hypertext links, bookmarks, and yellow sticker annotations (in release 1.0) together with article threads and multi-media plugins in version 2.0, This article also describes the CAJUN project (CD-ROM Acrobat Journals Using Networks) which has been investigating the automated placement of PDF hypertextual features from various front-end text processing systems. CAJUN has also been experimenting with the dissemination of PDF over e-mail, via World Wide Web and on CDROM.

Evaluating conservation and fisheries management strategies by linking spatial prioritization software and ecosystem and fisheries modelling tools

Well-designed marine protected area (MPA) networks can deliver a range of ecological, economic and social benefits, and so a great deal of research has focused on developing spatial conservation prioritization tools to help identify important areas. However, whilst these software tools are designed to identify MPA networks that both represent biodiversity and minimize impacts on stakeholders, they do not consider complex ecological processes. Thus, it is difficult to determine the impacts that proposed MPAs could have on marine ecosystem health, fisheries and fisheries sustainability. Using the eastern English Channel as a case study, this paper explores an approach to address these issues by identifying a series of MPA networks using the Marxan and Marxan with Zones conservation planning software and linking them with a spatially explicit ecosystem model developed in Ecopath with Ecosim. We then use these to investigate potential trade-offs associated with adopting different MPA management strategies. Limited-take MPAs, which restrict the use of some fishing gears, could have positive benefits for conservation and fisheries in the eastern English Channel, even though they generally receive far less attention in research on MPA network design. Our findings, however, also clearly indicate that no-take MPAs should form an integral component of proposed MPA networks in the eastern English Channel, as they not only result in substantial increases in ecosystem biomass, fisheries catches and the biomass of commercially valuable target species, but are fundamental to maintaining the sustainability of the fisheries. Synthesis and applications. Using the existing software tools Marxan with Zones and Ecopath with Ecosim in combination provides a powerful policy-screening approach. This could help inform marine spatial planning by identifying potential conflicts and by designing new regulations that better balance conservation objectives and stakeholder interests. In addition, it highlights that appropriate combinations of no-take and limited-take marine protected areas might be the most effective when making trade-offs between long-term ecological benefits and short-term political acceptability.

Journal publishing with Acrobat: the CAJUN project

The publication of material in electronic form should ideally preserve, in a unified document representation, all of the richness of the printed document while maintaining enough of its underlying structure to enable searching and other forms of semantic processing. Until recently it has been hard to find a document representation which combined these attributes and which also stood some chance of becoming a de facto multi-platform standard. This paper sets out experience gained within the Electronic Publishing Research Group at the University of Nottingham in using Adobe Acrobat software and its underlying PDF (Portable Document Format) notation. The CAJUN project1 (CD-ROM Acrobat Journals Using Networks) began in 1993 and has used Acrobat software to produce electronic versions of journal papers for network and CD-ROM dissemination. The paper describes the project's progress so far and also gives a brief assessment of PDF's suitability as a universal document interchange standard.

Efectividad de los lineamientos del Project Management Institute, en la implementación del sistema de Relacionamiento con el Cliente (CRM) Siebel, caso UNE Telecomunicaciones sede Medellín

En la actualidad, las empresas de telecomunicaciones, con el gran avance de la tecnología, son conscientes de que la mejor manera de cautivar y retener a los clientes es proporcionando productos y servicios que satisfagan las necesidades de éstos de una manera rápida y oportuna -- En consecuencia, estas empresas, centran su atención en los sistemas de relacionamiento con el cliente (CRM) que están enfocados en gestionar y conservar a los clientes de una manera eficiente -- En atención a lo expuesto, se vuelve fundamental que la implementación de este tipo de sistemas se realice cumpliendo con los alcances propuestos, con el costo estipulado y en el tiempo establecido -- Esto con el fin de desarrollar ventajas competitivas en el mercado -- El objetivo principal de esta investigación, es medir la efectividad de los lineamientos propuestos por el Project Management Institute (PMI) de gestión de proyectos, en la implementación del sistema de relacionamiento con el cliente (CRM) en la compañía colombiana de telecomunicaciones UNE EPM Telecomunicaciones

Development of project management procedures for customer project business

Objective of the thesis is to develop project management procedure for chilled beam projects. In organization is recognized that project management techniques could help in large and complex projects. Information sharing have been challenging in projects, so improvement of information sharing is one key topic of the thesis. Academic researches and literature are used to find suitable project management theories and methods. Main theories are related to phases of the project and project management tools. Practical knowledge of project management is collected from two project business oriented companies. Project management tools are chosen and modified to fulfill needs of the beam projects. Result of the thesis is proposed project management procedure, which includes phases of the chilled beam projects and project milestones. Project management procedure helps to recognize the most critical phases of the project and tools help to manage information of the project. Procedure increases knowledge of the project management techniques and tools. It also forms coherent project management working method among the chilled beam project group.

O papel do software educativo na aprendizagem da matemática

Tese de Doutoramento, Educação (Tecnologia Educativa), 26 de Julho de 2013, Universidade dos Açores.

A future dynamically reconfigurable automotive software system

Embedded software systems in vehicles are of rapidly increasing commercial importance for the automotive industry. Current systems employ a static run-time environment; due to the difficulty and cost involved in the development of dynamic systems in a high-integrity embedded control context. A dynamic system, referring to the system configuration, would greatly increase the flexibility of the offered functionality and enable customised software configuration for individual vehicles, adding customer value through plug-and-play capability, and increased quality due to its inherent ability to adjust to changes in hardware and software. We envisage an automotive system containing a variety of components, from a multitude of organizations, not necessarily known at development time. The system dynamically adapts its configuration to suit the run-time system constraints. This paper presents our vision for future automotive control systems that will be regarded in an EU research project, referred to as DySCAS (Dynamically Self-Configuring Automotive Systems). We propose a self-configuring vehicular control system architecture, with capabilities that include automatic discovery and inclusion of new devices, self-optimisation to best-use the processing, storage and communication resources available, self-diagnostics and ultimately self-healing. Such an architecture has benefits extending to reduced development and maintenance costs, improved passenger safety and comfort, and flexible owner customisation. Specifically, this paper addresses the following issues: The state of the art of embedded software systems in vehicles, emphasising the current limitations arising from fixed run-time configurations; and the benefits and challenges of dynamic configuration, giving rise to opportunities for self-healing, self-optimisation, and the automatic inclusion of users’ Consumer Electronic (CE) devices. Our proposal for a dynamically reconfigurable automotive software system platform is outlined and a typical use-case is presented as an example to exemplify the benefits of the envisioned dynamic capabilities.

Problem-Based SRS: método para especificação de requisitos de software baseado em problemas

Requirements specification has long been recognized as critical activity in software development processes because of its impact on project risks when poorly performed. A large amount of studies addresses theoretical aspects, propositions of techniques, and recommended practices for Requirements Engineering (RE). To be successful, RE have to ensure that the specified requirements are complete and correct what means that all intents of the stakeholders in a given business context are covered by the requirements and that no unnecessary requirement was introduced. However, the accurate capture the business intents of the stakeholders remains a challenge and it is a major factor of software project failures. This master’s dissertation presents a novel method referred to as “Problem-Based SRS” aiming at improving the quality of the Software Requirements Specification (SRS) in the sense that the stated requirements provide suitable answers to real customer ́s businesses issues. In this approach, the knowledge about the software requirements is constructed from the knowledge about the customer ́s problems. Problem-Based SRS consists in an organization of activities and outcome objects through a process that contains five main steps. It aims at supporting the software requirements engineering team to systematically analyze the business context and specify the software requirements, taking also into account a first glance and vision of the software. The quality aspects of the specifications are evaluated using traceability techniques and axiomatic design principles. The cases studies conducted and presented in this document point out that the proposed method can contribute significantly to improve the software requirements specification.