bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Collaboration in Risk Markets
Authors: Rummler Scott
Published: May 2010

Collaboration can be an effective tool for managing risk. A structured environment for sharing critical risk information can improve decision-making. The business environment currently in place makes it difficult to collaborate, due to complex and overlapping regulatory schemes. In addition, the computing framework used in risk-based sectors is not integrated, resulting in a patchwork of ad-hoc systems that make it difficult to collaborate in an efficient or transparent way. This chapter will present an example of a business framework in which organizations collaborate by trading risk-based products. This arrangement mitigates risk by allocating it to those organizations that can best handle it. A computing framework utilizing Web Services is presented that can help facilitate these types of transactions. Several challenges recur in knowledge management of risk, including trust, information filtering, connecting information (‘connecting the dots’), and fluid information exchange. Examples from the insurance and financial industries are presented. Knowledge management of risk information can be facilitated by the development of an Ontology used to describe Web Semantics. A user interface for knowledge management that incorporates collaborative mapping, filtering, and community discussion is presented. Collaboration is being used more frequently to handle core business processes (deep collaboration) as opposed to generic communications such as Wikis (shallow collaboration). A structured environment for collaboration is risk environments can improve security, transparency, and effectiveness. This type of environment might have been used to mitigate the impact risk-based problems such as the current financial emergency. In conclusion, it is posited that a new type of product can emerge which incorporates the social-computing value of risk.
Fulfilling the Promise
Authors: Repman Judi , Zinskie Cordelia , Downs Elizabeth
Published: May 2010

As online learning continues to expand and evolve, new challenges emerge regarding the implementation of Web 2.0 tools and technologies in online pedagogy. The business model approach to online learning being embraced by many institutions may actually work against faculty who want to utilize Web 2.0 technologies to create e-learning 2.0 experiences for their students. Faculty and administrators need to recognize that differences in perspectives may significantly impact future directions of online courses and programs.
Designing Dynamic Learning Environment for Web 2.0 Application
Authors: Zheng Robert Z.
Published: May 2010

The growth of online resources and the advancement of Web 2.0 technology are changing the instructional landscape and have significantly impacted the practices in education. With its ill-structured learning and rapid incrementation of information in a non-linear fashion, Web 2.0 learning poses enormous challenges to online instructional designers and teachers. The traditional ID models are deemed less fit for Web 2.0 learning due to their linear, well-structured design approach. This chapter proposes a new ID model that specifically addresses the cognitive demands involved in Web 2.0 learning, promotes learning that focuses on metacognitive thinking and self-regulation, facilitates knowledge integration and construction of schemas-of-the-moment for ill-structured learning, and delivers an environment by connecting activities with behavior to form a dynamic learning environment in Web 2.0 application.
Instructional Strategies for Teaching in Synchronous Online Learning Environments (SOLE)
Authors: Jones Marshall G. , Harmon Stephen W.
Published: May 2010

This chapter deals centrally with one emerging aspect of Web 2.0 for education, that of the increasing demand for real time and near real-time interaction among users. Whereas most online learning has, to date, taken place in an asynchronous format, there is a growing need for an ability to provide learning opportunities in a synchronous setting. This chapter discusses synchronous online learning environments (SOLEs) and the affordances they present for teaching and learning. Particularly it focuses on a capability of these environments known as ancillary communications. It discusses ancillary communications as an intentional instructional strategy and presents guidelines for its implementation. And, in the spirit of Web 2.0, this chapter was written using the Web 2.0 application Google Docs.
Use of Wikis to Support Collaboration among Online Students
Authors: Alden Jay
Published: May 2010

The emergence of Web 2.0 technologies with its emphasis on social networking has presented an opportunity for academic institutions to take advantage of new tools to support educational courses. One of these tools is a Wiki. This chapter discusses the merits and challenges of using a Wiki to support the activities of students during group projects. It shows the importance of student collaboration in online courses by fostering deeper learning, producing higher quality team products, and preparing students for today’s collaborative workplace. The chapter focuses on the best practices of faculty from setting up the Wiki at the onset through the final phase of evaluating the group product and the individual contribution of individual team members. It also discusses a number of ways in which Wiki-supported collaborative activities can be introduced into online courses and the criteria for selecting particular Wiki products for an institution.
From Information Literacy to Scholarly Identity
Authors: Everhart Deborah , Shelton Kaye
Published: May 2010

Collaborative research teaches students critical knowledge management skills, whether they are undergraduates learning the basics of Web research or advanced scholars defining their own knowledge domains. Instructors can benefit from practical examples and strategies to initiate social bookmarking activities. This chapter provides best practice examples for effective pedagogical applications of social bookmarking in undergraduate and graduate courses as well as insights into how these activities change the way students think and learn.
Empirical Evidence and Practical Cases for Using Virtual Worlds in Educational Contexts
Authors: Park Hyung Sung , Baek Young Kyun
Published: May 2010

The purpose of this chapter is to offer practical ideas and cases for educational use of the Second Life® virtual world with Web 2.0 based technology. Virtual worlds with Web 2.0 technologies have many methods for testing users’ experiences about and mutual understanding of other people, extending limited human capacities, and improving valuable skills in educational contexts. Through these activities, learners may receive positive feedback and beneficial learning experiences. In this chapter, the authors introduce three cases and provide empirical evidence for effective usage within three educational contexts: 1, offering a field trip in virtual space, 2 switching gender roles in the Second Life® virtual world to understand opposite genders, and 3. Object-making and manipulation activities to improve spatial reasoning.
Agile Software Engineering
Authors: Mnkandla Ernest
Published: May 2010

This chapter aims to reveal agile techniques that have been applied to software development and have resulted in meaningful improvements in software productivity. Available literature generally state some claims on the gains associated with the use of particular agile methodologies in software development. What lacks however, is a comprehensive analysis of how the application of agile techniques as a family will lead to improvement in software productivity. This chapter therefore provides such details. Software productivity techniques provide ways of measuring three things in order to determine the productivity of software; software products, software production processes and structures, and software production setting. Agile methodologies improve software productivity by focusing on the software production process and structures. The fundamental concern of this chapter is to show that agile methodologies measure the production process activities in a different but effective way from the more traditional approaches. For example, time-to-market is reduced by use of an iterative incremental development approach.
Theory of Ontology and Meta-Modeling and the Standard
Authors: He Keqing , Wang Chong , He Yangfan , Ma Yutao , Liang Peng
Published: May 2010

With the continuous development and rapid progress of information techniques, complexity and scale of information systems are expanding increasingly, which consequently brings our research focus on how to ensure the effective exchange of information and efficient interconnection between each part of a information system. However, different modeling paradigm, languages and platforms cause grammatical and semantic diversity to the existing information resources, a challenging approach to information resources management is needed to promote deep sharing of those information resources and implement rapid integration based on them. To realize semantic interoperation between diverse information systems and resources, the authors combine meta-modeling methodology in software engineering and ontology from philosophy to exploit a novel methodology named Theory of Ontology & Meta-modeling. Based on the methodology, the authors contributed to an international standard project ISO/IEC 19763- 3: Metamodel for ontology registration since 2003, which was officially published as an international standard in Dec, 2007. Furthermore, we developed a Management and Service platform for Semantic Interoperability on Manufacturing Informationalization Software Component Repository (SCR). It can support ontology-based software component attributes classification, registration and management using ISO/IEC 19763-3 standard, and implement semantic (ontology) based software component query and retrieval. Based on above mentioned techniques, this platform can facilitate the management of semantic interoperability, which provides the reliable infrastructure for the reusing and sharing of heterogeneous software component resources.
Requirements Traceability
Authors: Genvigir Elias Canhadas , Vijaykumar Nandamudi Lankalapalli
Published: May 2010

This chapter presents a research about the Software Requirements Traceability. The main elements of traceability, definitions, problems and prospects are presented. The chapter is organized by topics and its beginning is a review about requirements engineering, its categories (Elicitation, Analysis and Negotiation, Documentation, Validation, and Management) and its role in software development. Afterwards, the requirements management and its elements (Identification, Change Management and Traceability) are described. Traceability is discussed; its aspects and problems are exploited as well as its classifications, techniques, links, metrics and models. Finally the Conclusion presents the main points that can be explored in future researches.
Software Product Lines to Faster Achieving Productivity
Authors: Ganeshan Sathya , Ramachandran Muthu
Published: May 2010

Software Product Lines have been in the scene of software development since the 1970s. Throughout this time, it has changed from a hot topic that was discussed in universities and seminar halls as future goal of companies, to an everyday reality. There are many crucial aspects that decide the success of a software product line. One among them is the identification, development and maintenance of core assets. This chapter aims at providing a brief introduction to this area of software product lines and ways to improve productivity through efficient core asset management.
Comprehensive Software Industry Analysis Model (CSIAM)
Authors: Nair T.R.Gopalakrishnan , Selvarani R. , Ramachandran Muthu
Published: May 2010

This chapter discusses a comprehensive analysis model of the concurrent software industry which is a collection of different sub-models interacting and communicating objectively with a cause-effect relationship. This model is not merely process centric but it also deals with the resources, skills and methods with an entity model which forms an important factor of the comprehensive approach. Process is considered as an activity performed over the resources with a particular level of skill set transforming the input. In this comprehensive model, the factors associated with various sub models like process, technology, business, risk and multi domain are considered and integrated through communication links, threading all the models in transforming the system specification into the product within the cycle time with an active cost. The final model will be able to accept a spectrum of input from the industry, ranging from finances, human resources, business practices, technology and software production process and come out with metrics correlated to the observables of that particular company or group.
Software Metrics Evaluation Based on Entropy
Authors: Selvarani R. , Nair T.R.Gopalakrishnan , Ramachandran Muthu , Prasad Kamakshi
Published: May 2010

The complexity of modern software, the commercial constraints and the expectation for high quality product demands the accurate fault prediction based on OO design metrics in the class level in the early stages of software development. The object oriented class metrics are used as quality predictors in the entire OO software development life cycle even when a highly iterative, incremental model or agile software process is employed. Recent research has shown some of the OO design metrics are useful for predicting fault-proneness of classes. In this chapter the empirical validation of a set of metrics proposed by Chidamber and Kemerer is performed to assess their ability in predicting the software quality in terms of fault proneness and degradation. The authors have also proposed the design complexity of object-oriented software with Weighted Methods per Class metric (WMC-CK metric) expressed in terms of Shannon entropy, and error proneness.
Model-Driven Exception Management Case Study
Authors: Entwisle Susan , Ramakrishnan Sita , Kendall Elizabeth
Published: May 2010

Programming languages provide exception handling mechanisms to structure fault tolerant activities within software systems. However, the use of exceptions at this low level of abstraction can be errorprone and complex, potentially leading to new programming errors. To address this we have developed a model-driven exception management framework (DOVE). This approach is a key enabler to support global distributed solution delivery teams. The focus of this paper is the evaluation of the feasibility of this approach through a case study, known as Project Tracker. The case study is used to demonstrate the feasibility and to perform an assessment based on quality and productivity metrics and testing of the DOVE framework. The results of the case study are presented to demonstrate the feasibility of our approach.
A Software Tool and a Network Simulation for Improving Quality of Service Performance in Distributed Database Management Systems
Authors: Hababeh Ismail Omar , Ramachandran Muthu
Published: May 2010

The efficiency and effectiveness of Quality of Service QoS performance methods in a Distributed Database Management System DDBMS environment are measured by their successfully simulation on the real world applications. To achieve the goals of the simulation modules and to analyze the behaviour of the distributed database network system and the QoS performance methods of fragmentation, clustering and allocation, an integrated software tool for a DDBMS supported by the OPNET is designed and presented. It is developed to wisely distribute the data among several sites on a database network system, effectively enhance the QoS performance at lower cost, successfully provide reliability to the DDBMS in case of site failure, and efficiently increase the data availability where multiple copies of the same data are allocated to different sites. The integrated software tool supply the database administrators with a software that is friendly use, easy to navigate, comprehensive, and expandable that simulate the techniques of database fragmentation, clustering network sites, and fragment allocation and replication in a DDBMS. The tool performs the database transactions operations efficiently and effectively through reliable forms that allow the database administrators to control over their operations and follow up the system improvements and QoS enhancements. The performance evaluation and simulation results indicate that the proposed methods significantly improves the QoS performance in the DDBMS even with manageable extra information, network sites, communication and processing cost functions.
Commonality Analysis
Authors: Ganeshan Sathya , Ramachandran Muthu
Published: May 2010

The success of initiating a software product line based approach on an organization depends on a few critical factors. Among them is a thoroughly performed commonality analysis process. This can be imagined as a collecting the supplies and road map required to reach a particular destination. This chapter analyses this critical process and presents our own views and methods of conducting commonality analysis.
Enterprise Resource Planning Systems for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises
Authors: de Carvalho Rogério Atem , Johansson Björn
Published: May 2010

After the implementation peak of ERPs that occurred during the pre- and post-Y2K periods, the high-end ERP market started to saturate and major ERP vendors started to seek for new business opportunities, in special towards Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs). On the buyer side, demands for becoming more competitive in a globalized market, have been pushing SMEs to adopt ERP too. Additionally, influenced by the free/open source movement, new types of ERP licensing appeared by the beginning of the decade, creating a classification according to the basic licensing model: free/open source ERP (FOS-ERP) and proprietary ERP (P-ERP). Therefore, this paper aims at exploring the merge between SMEs, P-ERP, and FOS-ERP, by analyzing the differences between the two proposals and offering guidance for prospective adopters.
Directed Basic Research in Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
Authors: Parthasarathy S.
Published: May 2010

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) covers the techniques and concepts employed for the integrated management of businesses as a whole, from the viewpoint of the effective use of management resources, to improve the efficiency of an enterprise. One way of looking at ERP is as a combination of business processes and information technology. The objective of this chapter is to highlight the research challenges in ERP projects from the viewpoint of software engineering and draw round the solutions in hand. This chapter on the directed basic research in ERP systems gives us two outputs: (1) A comprehensive framework presenting the current research problems in the ERP systems from the viewpoint of software engineering and (2) The channel to solve these problems. The outcome is a high quality, reliable and complete ERP software solution.
Open Source Software Systems
Authors: Lenin R. B. , Ramaswamy S. , Yu Liguo , Govindan R. B.
Published: May 2010

Complex software systems and the huge amounts of data they produce are becoming an integral part of our organizations. We are also becoming increasingly dependent on high quality software products in our everyday lives. These systems ‘evolve’ as we identify and correct existing defects, provide new functionalities, or increase their nonfunctional qualities - such as security, maintainability, performance, etc. Simultaneously, more software development projects are distributed over multiple locations (often globally) and are often several millions of dollars in development costs. Consequently, as the Internet continually eliminates geographic boundaries, the concept of doing business within a single country has given way to companies focusing on competing in an international marketplace. The digitalization of work and the reorganization of work processes across many organizations have resulted in routine and/or commodity components being outsourced.
Collaborative Learning
Authors: Cooper Lesley , Burford Sally
Published: May 2010

This chapter examines the concept of collaborative learning and its theoretical and practical foundations. Collaborative learning takes place in a structured social situation where a group of students work as a team to assist each other with learning tasks. The instructional strategies encourage student to student interactions. Drawing on group work skills, collaborative learning has been demonstrated to be effective in a variety of learning situations. Development of a variety of Internet technologies such as communication tools, emails, discussion forums, video and audio tools together with webcasting allow collaborative teaching strategies to be used creatively in online learning. The authors have trialed the use of various technologies in the human services and several case examples of online collaborative learning are provided. These case studies cover activities such as supervision and controversial issues in social work ethics. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the future directions and the challenges this poses for traditional classroom teaching.
Asynchronous Online Role-Plays Using a Blended Learning Design
Authors: Johnson Belinda , Douglas Kathy
Published: May 2010

The use of online role-plays has grown in university education as an increasing number of teachers in a variety of discipline areas utilise role-play simulations in the online environment. The focus of this chapter is on design options for asynchronous online role-plays that may assist students to integrate theory and practice and develop skills in reflexive practice. The design options discussed in this chapter adopt a “blended” learning approach where online learning is used to complement face-to-face learning. Five models of online role-plays are discussed and various learning and teaching strategies canvassed to assist those teaching in the human services area to adopt and adapt these design options to meet their curriculum objectives.
Virtual Situated Learning Environments
Authors: Jones Sandra
Published: May 2010

This chapter explores how ICT can be used to create environments in which students engage in workrelated learning opportunities through virtual situated learning environments. These VSLEs are created digitally as real-life learning opportunities. Situating students of human services in these environments presents the opportunity for learning opportunities that are authentic, apply adult learning principles and are learner centred. They enable participants to develop inter-professional skills by presenting scenarios that require inter-professional engagement in a safe and secure environment in which participants can experiment with different approaches to problem-solutions. They provide a safe-fail environment in which students can experiment with different approaches and see the consequences of not working appropriately without negatively affecting real clients. The chapter presents an example of a VSLE used to engage students in a related field of employment relations and outlines an example of how a virtual community centre may be used to develop employability skills for students in human services.
Electronic Classroom, Electronic Community
Authors: Harris Lisa
Published: May 2010

The capacity for online learning environments to provide good quality learning experiences for students has been the focus of speculation and debate in the higher education sector from the late 1990s to the present day. In this area, “quality” has become synonymous with engaging students in a learning community. This chapter reports on a qualitative research project designed to explore the significance of community for students studying online. Using three fundamentally different types of online learning environments as case studies, this research explored the relationship between the constructed online learning environment and the development of learning communities or what the author has termed social learning support networks (SLSN). Exploring the common themes to emerge from these three case studies, this research provides new evidence of the benefit of community for students studying online and argues that future online learning environments should be shaped by five key principles designed to foster a sense of social connection between students.
Intelligent Control of the Energy Generation Systems
Authors: Bizon Nicu
Published: May 2010

In this book chapter are analyzed the Energy Generation System (EGS) topologies, used in automotive systems, and the grid inverter systems, with intelligent control algorithms (fuzzy logic controller, genetic algorithm, etc.). The EGS blocks are modelled using Matlab & Simulink ® program. A necessary block is the EGS power interface between the fuel cell stack and the batteries stack, usually a boost converter that uses a Peak Current Controller (PCC) with a Boundary Control with Current Taper (BCCT). The control law is a function of fuel cell current and battery voltage, which prevents the “boiling” of the batteries. The control objective for this power interface is also the fuel cell current ripple minimization, used in order to improve the fuel cell stack life cycle. Clocked and non-clocked control methods are tested in order to obtain a small fuel cell current ripple, better a dynamic response, and robustness against system uncertainty disturbances. The EGS behaviour is tested by bifurcation diagrams. It is shown that performances increase if the control law is a function that depends by the fuel cell current ripple and battery voltage. The clocked PCC using the BCCT 2-D law is implemented by a fuzzy logic controller. The power load dynamic is compensated using an ultracapacitors stack as a dynamic energy compensator, connected by a bi-directional converter to the batteries stack bus. Small fuel cell current ripple using compact batteries and ultracapacitors stacks will be obtained by the appropriate design of the control surface, using an Integrated Fuzzy Control (IFC) for both power interfaces.
Knowledge Management for Electric Power Utility Companies
Authors: Booth Campbell
Published: May 2010

This chapter will present an overview of the challenges presented to modern power utility companies and how many organizations are facing particularly pressing problems with regards to an ageing workforce and a general shortage of skills; a situation that is anticipated to worsen in the future. It is proposed that knowledge management (KM) and decision support (DS) may contribute to a solution to these challenges. The chapter describes the end-to-end processes associated with KM and DS in a power utility context and attempts to provide guidance on effective practices for each stage of the described processes. An overview of one particular power utility company that has embraced KM is presented, and it is proposed that the function of asset management within power utilities in particular may benefit from KM. The chapter focuses not only on KM techniques and implementation, but, equally, if not more importantly, on the various cultural and behavioural aspects that are critical to the success of any KM/DS initiative.
Doubly Fed Induction Generators
Authors: Kumar Vinod , Kong Steven , Mishra Yateendra , Dong Z.Y. , Bansal Ramesh C.
Published: May 2010

Adjustable speed induction generators, especially the Doubly-Fed Induction Generators (DFIG) are becoming increasingly popular due to its various advantages over fixed speed generator systems. A DFIG in a wind turbine has ability to generate maximum power with varying rotational speed, ability to control active and reactive by integration of electronic power converters such as the back-to-back converter, low rotor power rating resulting in low cost converter components, etc, DFIG have become very popular in large wind power conversion systems. This chapter presents an extensive literature survey over past 25 years on the different aspects of DFIG. Application of H8 Controller for enhanced DFIG-WT performance in terms of robust stability and reference tracking to reduce mechanical stress and vibrations is also demonstrated in the chapter.
Use of Nerual Networks for Modeling Energy Consumption in the Residential Sector
Authors: Aydinalp Koksal Merih
Published: May 2010

This chapter investigates the use of neural networks (NN) for modeling of residential energy consumption. Currently, engineering and conditional demand analysis (CDA) approaches are mainly used for residential energy modeling. The studies on the use of NN for residential energy consumption modeling are limited to estimating the energy use of individual or a group of buildings. Development of a national residential end-use energy consumption model using NN approach is presented in this chapter. The comparative evaluation of the results of the model shows NN approach can be used to accurately predict and categorize the energy consumption in the residential sector as well as the other two approaches. Based on the specific advantages and disadvantages of three models, developing a hybrid model consisting of NN and engineering models is suggested.
Setting Technology Transfer Priorities with CDM-SET
Authors: Flamos Alexandros , Karakosta Charikleia , Doukas Haris , Psarras John
Published: May 2010

There is no much meaning in separating “good” and “bad” technologies. A definitely more critical issue is to identify “good” and “bad” technological options for a specific country & region based on its specific needs and special characteristics. In this framework, aim of this chapter is the presentation of the CDM-SET3 tool that incorporates the potential host country’s priority areas in terms of energy services and the suitable sustainable energy technologies to fulfil these needs and priorities, taking into consideration several criteria that examine the benefits in the economic, environmental and social dimension and through a MCDA approach facilitates the identification of the most proper technology alternatives to be implemented under the umbrella of CDM to a specific host country. The application of CDM-SET3 in representative case study countries is also presented and the results are discussed. Finally, in the last section are the conclusions, which summarize the main points, arisen in this chapter.
Comprehensive Energy Systems Analysis Support Tools for Decision Making
Authors: Cosmi C. , Di Leo S. , Loperte S. , Pietrapertosa F. , Salvia M. , Macchiato M. , Cuomo V.
Published: May 2010

Sustainability of energy systems is a common priority that involves key issues such as security of energy supply, mitigation of environmental impacts - the energy sector is currently responsible for 80% of all EU greenhouse gas emissions (European Environment Agency, 2007), contributing heavily to the overall emissions of local air pollutants - and energy affordability. In this framework, energy planning and decision making processes can be supported at different stages and spatial scales (regional, national, pan-European, etc.) by the use of comprehensive models in order to manage the large complexity of energy systems and to define multi-objective strategies on the medium-long term. This Chapter is aimed to outline the value of model-based decision support systems in addressing current challenges aimed to carry out sustainable energy systems and to diffuse the use of strategic energy-environmental planning methods based on the use of partial equilibrium models. The proposed methodology, aimed to derive cost-effective strategies for a sustainable resource management, is based on the experiences gathered in the framework of the IEA-ETSAP program and under several national and international projects.
Developing an Energy Risk Assessment System
Authors: Flamos Alexandros , Roupas Christos V. , Psarras John
Published: May 2010

Throughout the last two decades many attempts took place in order policy makers and researchers to be able to measure the energy security of supply of a particular country, region and corridor. This chapter is providing an overview presentation of the Energy Security Risk Assessment System (E.S.R.A.S.) which comprises the Module of Robust Decision Making (RDM) and the Module of Energy Security Indices Calculation (ESIC). Module 1 & 2 are briefly presented throughout section 2 and the application of Module 2 in nine case study countries is discussed at section 3. Finally, in the last section are the conclusions, which summarize the main points, arisen in this chapter.
Formulating National Action Plans for Energy Business Environment
Authors: Patlitzianas Kostas
Published: May 2010

The penetration of the Renewable Energy Sources (RES) and the development of the Energy Efficiency (EE) is related to the synthesis of an appropriate action plan by each state for its energy business environment (companies such as “clean” energy producers, energy services companies etc.). The aim of this chapter is to present an information intelligent system which consists of an expert subsystem, as well as a Multi Criteria subsystem. The system supports the state towards the formulation of a modern business environment, since it incorporates the increasing needs for energy reform, successful energy planning, rational use of energy as well as climate change. The system was successfully applied to the thirteen “new” member states of the EU.
An Intelligent Motor-Pump System
Authors: Kini P. Giridhar
Published: May 2010

Process industries are energy intensive in nature and are one of the largest consumers of electrical energy that is commercially generated for utilization. Motor driven systems consume more than two-thirds of the total energy consumed by the industrial sector; among which, centrifugal pumps are the most widely used equipment mainly for the purpose of fluid transportation. The efficiency of pumping units is around 40 to 50%, hence they offer tremendous opportunities of not only improving the efficiency of the process, but also ensure effective energy utilisation and management. With the increasing use of power electronics equipment, power quality (PQ) has become a very serious issue of consideration. On account of the random switching of single-phase loads in addition to time varying operations of industrial loads, PQ problem of voltage variation and unbalance is inevitable across three-phase systems. Application of varying or unbalanced voltages across the three-phase motor terminals results in performance variations leading to inefficient operation. For the purpose of study, the performance of a motor-pump system can be separately analyzed from the motor and pump points of view. The motor efficiency may vary in a very narrow band, pump efficiency depends upon the system head and flow rate but the system efficiency is a combination of the two; hence, necessary to analyze separately. As centrifugal pumps are classified under variable torque-variable speed load category, variation on the input side has a significant effect on the output side. Therefore the system efficiency now becomes an important index for ensuring efficient energy utilisation and efficiency. The main objective of the chapter is to put forward a methodology to analyze the working performance of a three-phase induction motor driven centrifugal pump under conditions of voltage and load variations by, defining additional factors for correct interpretation about the nature and extent of voltage unbalance that can exist in a power system network; define induction motor derating factors for safe and efficient operation based on operational requirements and devise energy management strategies for efficient utilization of electrical energy by the motor-pump system considering the voltage and load conditions.
Effective Mining of Weighted Fuzzy Association Rules
Authors: Muyeba Maybin , Khan M. Sulaiman , Coenen Frans
Published: May 2010

A novel approach is presented for effectively mining weighted fuzzy association rules (ARs). The authors address the issue of invalidation of downward closure property (DCP) in weighted association rule mining where each item is assigned a weight according to its significance wrt some user defined criteria. Most works on weighted association rule mining do not address the downward closure property while some make assumptions to validate the property. This chapter generalizes the weighted association rule mining problem with binary and fuzzy attributes with weighted settings. Their methodology follows an Apriori approach but employs T-tree data structure to improve efficiency of counting itemsets. The authors’ approach avoids pre and post processing as opposed to most weighted association rule mining algorithms, thus eliminating the extra steps during rules generation. The chapter presents experimental results on both synthetic and real-data sets and a discussion on evaluating the proposed approach.
Rare Class Association Rule Mining with Multiple Imbalanced Attributes
Authors: Zhang Huaifeng , Zhao Yanchang , Cao Longbing , Zhang Chengqi , Bohlscheid Hans
Published: May 2010

In this chapter, the authors propose a novel framework for rare class association rule mining. In each class association rule, the right-hand is a target class while the left-hand may contain one or more attributes. This algorithm is focused on the multiple imbalanced attributes on the left-hand. In the proposed framework, the rules with and without imbalanced attributes are processed in parallel. The rules without imbalanced attributes are mined through a standard algorithm while the rules with imbalanced attributes are mined based on newly defined measurements. Through simple transformation, these measurements can be in a uniform space so that only a few parameters need to be specified by user. In the case study, the proposed algorithm is applied in the social security field. Although some attributes are severely imbalanced, rules with a minority of imbalanced attributes have been mined efficiently.
Filtering Association Rules by Their Semantics and Structures
Authors: Marukatat Rangsipan
Published: May 2010

Association rule mining produces a large number of rules but many of them are usually redundant ones. When a data set contains infrequent items, the authors need to set the minimum support criterion very low; otherwise, these items will not be discovered. The downside is that it leads to even more redundancy. To deal with this dilemma, some proposed more efficient, and perhaps more complicated, rule generation methods. The others suggested using simple rule generation methods and rather focused on the post-pruning of the rules. This chapter follows the latter approach. The classic Apriori is employed for the rule generation. Their goal is to gain as much insight as possible about the domain. Therefore, the discovered rules are filtered by their semantics and structures. An individual rule is classified by its own semantic, or by how clear its domain description is. It can be labelled as one of the following: strongly meaningless, weakly meaningless, partially meaningful, and meaningful. In addition, multiple rules are compared. Rules with repetitive patterns are removed, while those conveying the most complete information are retained. They demonstrate an application of our techniques to a real case study, an analysis of traffic accidents in Nakorn Pathom, Thailand.
X-WACoDa
Authors: Mahboubi Hadj , Ralaivao Jean-Christian , Loudcher Sabine , Boussaïd Omar , Bentayeb Fadila
Published: May 2010

Data warehousing and OLAP applications must nowadays handle complex data that are not only numerical or symbolic. The XML language is well-suited to logically and physically represent complex data. However, its usage induces new theoretical and practical challenges at the modeling, storage and analysis levels; and a new trend toward XML warehousing has been emerging for a couple of years. Unfortunately, no standard XML data warehouse architecture emerges. In this chapter, the authors propose a unified XML warehouse reference model that synthesizes and enhances related work, and fits into a global XML warehousing and analysis approach we have developed. They also present a software platform that is based on this model, as well as a case study that illustrates its usage.
View Selection and Materialization
Authors: Bellahsene Zohra
Published: May 2010

There are many motivations for investigating the view selection problem. At first, materialized views are increasingly being supported by commercial database systems and are used to speed up query response time. Therefore, the problem of choosing an appropriate set of views to materialize in the database is crucial in order to improve query processing cost. Another application of the view selection issue is selecting views to materialize in data warehousing systems to answer decision support queries. The problem addressed in this paper is similar to that of deciding which views to materialize in data warehousing. However, most existing view selection methods are static. Moreover, none of these methods have considered the problem of de-materializing the already materialized views. Yet it is a very important issue since the size of storage space is usually restricted. This chapter deals with the problem of dynamic view selection and with the pending issue of removing materialized views in order to replace less beneficial views with more beneficial ones. We propose a view selection method for deciding which views to materialize according to statistic metadata. More precisely, we have designed and implemented our view selection method, including a polynomial algorithm, to decide which views to materialize.
QoS-Oriented Grid-Enabled Data Warehouses
Authors: de Carvalho Costa Rogério Luís , Furtado Pedro
Published: May 2010

Globally accessible data warehouses are useful in many commercial and scientific organizations. For instance, research centers can be put together through a grid infrastructure in order to form a large virtual organization with a huge virtual data warehouse, which should be transparently and efficiently queried by grid participants. As it is frequent in the grid environment, in the Grid-based Data Warehouse one can both have resource constraints and establish Service Level Objectives (SLOs), providing some Quality of Service (QoS) differentiation for each group of users, participant organizations or requested operations. In this work, we discuss query scheduling and data placement in the grid-based data warehouse, proposing the use of QoS-aware strategies. There are some works on parallel and distributed data warehouses, but most do not concern the grid environment and those which do so, use best-effort oriented strategies. Our experimental results show the importance and effectiveness of proposed strategies.
On Querying Data and Metadata in Multiversion Data Warehouse
Authors: Leja Wojciech , Wrembel Robert , Ziembicki Robert
Published: May 2010

Methods of designing a data warehouse (DW) usually assume that its structure is static. In practice, however, a DW structure changes among others as the result of the evolution of external data sources, the changes of the real world represented in a DW, and new user requirements. The most advanced research approaches to managing the evolution of DWs are based on temporal extensions and versioning techniques. An important feature of a DW system supporting evolution is its ability to query different DW states. Such querying is challenging since different DW states may differ with respect to their schemas. As a consequence, a system may not be able to execute a query for some DW states. Our approach to managing the evolution of DWs is based on the so-called Multiversion Data Warehouse (MVDW) that is composed of the sequence of DW versions. In this chapter, we contribute a query language called MVDWQL for querying the MVDW. The MVDWQL supports two types of queries, namely content queries and metadata queries. A content query is used for analyzing the content (i.e., data) of multiple DW versions. A metadata query is used for analyzing the history of evolution of the MVDW. The results of both types of queries are graphically visualized in a user interface.
Ontology-Based Database Approach for Handling Preferences
Authors: Tapucu Dilek , Diallo Gayo , Ameur Yamine Ait , Ünalir Murat Osman
Published: May 2010

Information systems now manage huge amount of data. Users are overwhelmed by the numerous results provided in response to their requests. These results must often be sorted and filtered in order to be usable. Moreover, the “one size fits all” approach has shown its limitation for information searching in many applications, particularly in the e-commerce domain. The capture and exploitation of user preferences have been proposed as a solution to overcome this problem. However, the existing approaches usually define preferences for a particular application. Thus, it is difficult to share and reuse the handled preferences in other contexts. In this chapter, we propose a sharable, formal and generic model to represent user‘s preferences. The model gathers several preferences models proposed in the Database and Semantic Web communities. The novelty of our approach is that the defined preferences are attached to the ontologies which describe the semantic of the data manipulated by the applications. Moreover, the proposed model offers a persistence mechanism and a dedicated language; it is implemented using Ontology-Based Databases (OBDB) system extended in order to take into account preferences. OBDB manage both ontologies and the data instances. The preference model is formally defined using theEXPRESS data modelling language which ensures us a free ambiguity definition and the approach is illustrated through a case study in the tourism domain.
Constraint-Based Techniques for Software Testing
Authors: Kosmatov Nikolai
Published: May 2010

In this chapter, the authors discuss some innovative applications of artificial intelligence techniques to software engineering, in particular, to automatic test generation. Automatic testing tools translate the program under test, or its model, and the test criterion, or the test objective, into constraints. Constraint solving allows then to find a solution of the constraint solving problem and to obtain test data. The authors focus on two particular applications: model-based testing as an example of black-box testing, and all-paths test generation for C programs as a white-box testing strategy. Each application is illustrated by a running example showing how constraint-based methods allow to automatically generate test data for each strategy. They also give an overview of the main difficulties of constraint-based software testing and outline some directions for future research.
Computational Intelligence for Functional Testing
Authors: Lam C. Peng
Published: May 2010

Software testing is primarily a technique for achieving some degree of software quality and to gain consumer confidence. It accounts for 50% -75% of development cost. Test case design supports effective testing but is still a human centered and labour-intensive task. The Unified Modelling language (UML) is the de-facto industrial standard for specifying software system and techniques for automatic test case generation from UML models are very much needed. While extensive research has explored the use of meta-heuristics in structural testing, few have involved its use in functional testing, particularly with respect to UML. This chapter details an approach that incorporates an anti-Ant Colony Optimisation algorithm for the automatic generation of test scenarios directly from UML Activity Diagrams, thus providing a seamless progression from design to generation of test scenarios. Owing to its anti-ant behaviour, the approach generates non-redundant test scenarios.