Coupling 3D visualisation to qualitative assessment of built environment designs

Geographical information systems (GIS) coupled to 3D visualisation technology is an emerging tool for urban planning and landscape design applications. The utility of 3D GIS for realistically visualising the built environment and proposed development scenarios is much advocated in the literature. Planners assess the merits of proposed changes using visual impact assessment (VIA). We have used Arcview GIS and visualisation software: called PolyTRIM from the University of Toronto, Centre for Landscape Research (CLR) to create a 3D scene for the entrance to a University campus. The paper investigates the thesis that to facilitate VIA in planning and design requires not only visualisation, but also a structured evaluation technique (Delphi) to arbitrate the decision-making process. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Using a cartographic modeling language to manipulate spectral satellite imagery

Land related information about the Earth's surface is commonIJ found in two forms: (1) map infornlation and (2) satellite image da ta. Satellite imagery provides a good visual picture of what is on the ground but complex image processing is required to interpret features in an image scene. Increasingly, methods are being sought to integrate the knowledge embodied in mop information into the interpretation task, or, alternatively, to bypass interpretation and perform biophysical modeling directly on derived data sources. A cartographic modeling language, as a generic map analysis package, is suggested as a means to integrate geographical knowledge and imagery in a process-oriented view of the Earth. Specialized cartographic models may be developed by users, which incorporate mapping information in performing land classification. In addition, a cartographic modeling language may be enhanced with operators suited to processing remotely sensed imagery. We demonstrate the usefulness of a cartographic modeling language for pre-processing satellite imagery, and define two nerv cartographic operators that evaluate image neighborhoods as post-processing operations to interpret thematic map values. The language and operators are demonstrated with an example image classification task.

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

Static detection of anomalies in transactional memory programs

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

Information flow analysis using data-dependent logical propositions

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Engenharia Informática

Web Processing Services for Forestry and Environmental Applications

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

Scaling In-Memory databases on multicores

Current computer systems have evolved from featuring only a single processing unit and limited RAM, in the order of kilobytes or few megabytes, to include several multicore processors, o↵ering in the order of several tens of concurrent execution contexts, and have main memory in the order of several tens to hundreds of gigabytes. This allows to keep all data of many applications in the main memory, leading to the development of inmemory databases. Compared to disk-backed databases, in-memory databases (IMDBs) are expected to provide better performance by incurring in less I/O overhead. In this dissertation, we present a scalability study of two general purpose IMDBs on multicore systems. The results show that current general purpose IMDBs do not scale on multicores, due to contention among threads running concurrent transactions. In this work, we explore di↵erent direction to overcome the scalability issues of IMDBs in multicores, while enforcing strong isolation semantics. First, we present a solution that requires no modification to either database systems or to the applications, called MacroDB. MacroDB replicates the database among several engines, using a master-slave replication scheme, where update transactions execute on the master, while read-only transactions execute on slaves. This reduces contention, allowing MacroDB to o↵er scalable performance under read-only workloads, while updateintensive workloads su↵er from performance loss, when compared to the standalone engine. Second, we delve into the database engine and identify the concurrency control mechanism used by the storage sub-component as a scalability bottleneck. We then propose a new locking scheme that allows the removal of such mechanisms from the storage sub-component. This modification o↵ers performance improvement under all workloads, when compared to the standalone engine, while scalability is limited to read-only workloads. Next we addressed the scalability limitations for update-intensive workloads, and propose the reduction of locking granularity from the table level to the attribute level. This further improved performance for intensive and moderate update workloads, at a slight cost for read-only workloads. Scalability is limited to intensive-read and read-only workloads. Finally, we investigate the impact applications have on the performance of database systems, by studying how operation order inside transactions influences the database performance. We then propose a Read before Write (RbW) interaction pattern, under which transaction perform all read operations before executing write operations. The RbW pattern allowed TPC-C to achieve scalable performance on our modified engine for all workloads. Additionally, the RbW pattern allowed our modified engine to achieve scalable performance on multicores, almost up to the total number of cores, while enforcing strong isolation.

Global and local coordinates

This chapter described the global and local coordinate systems utilized in the formulation of spatial multibody systems. Global coordinate system is considered in the present work to denote the inertia frame. Additionally, body-fixed coordinate systems, also called local coordinate systems, are utilized to describe local properties of points that belong to a particular body. Furthermore, the process of transforming local coordinates into global coordinates is characterized by considering a transformation matrix. In the present work, Cartesian coordinates are utilized to locate the center of mass of each rigid body, as well as the location of any point that belongs to a body.

Euler angles, Bryant angles and Euler parameters

This chapter deals with the different approaches for describing the rotational coordinates in spatial multibody systems. In this process, Euler angles and Bryant angles are briefly characterized. Particular emphasis is given to Euler parameters, which are utilized to describe the rotational coordinates in the present work. In addition, for all the types of coordinates considered in this chapter, a characterization of the transformation matrix is fully described.

Angular velocity and acceleration

In this chapter, a complete characterization of the angular velocity and angular acceleration for rigid bodies in spatial multibody systems are presented. For both cases, local and global formulations are described taking into account the advantages of using Euler parameters. In this process, the transformation between global and local components of the angular velocity and time derivative of the Euler parameters are analyzed and discussed in this chapter.

Vector of coordinates, velocities and accelerations

This chapter describes the how the vector of coordinates are defined in the formulation of spatial multibody systems. For this purpose, the translational motion is described in terms of Cartesian coordinates, while rotational motion is specified using the technique of Euler parameters. This approach avoids the computational difficulties associated with the singularities in the case of using Euler angles or Bryant angles. Moreover, the formulation of the velocities vector and accelerations vector is presented and analyzed here. These two sets of vectors are defined in terms of translational and rotational coordinates.

Methods to solve the equations of motion

"Series title: Springerbriefs in applied sciences and technology, ISSN 2191-530X"

Asiakaslähtöisen paikkatiedon hyödyntäminen automaattisessa karttatuotantojärjestelmässä

In this work a system to add customers own geographic information on a map was developed. After the objects are added the map is produced completely automatically. Adding the objects does not add any extra work when maps are printed. Simple drawing tools to add the objects were implemented. Tools to import geometry data from some geographic information files were also added. The objects are stored in a spatial database so they can be viewed and edited later. The added objects are passed to the map production system as a SVG-file.