| 1. |
- Larsson, Stefan
(författare)
-
Between Daring and Deliberating : 3G as a Sustainability Issue in Swedish Spatial Planning
- 2008
-
Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The thesis shows how different aspects of sustainable development have been handled or not handled in the third generation infrastructure development in Sweden. The difference between the design of the 3G development – emphazising competition, growth and regional access, based on a strong technological optimism - and the implementation, as the roll out struck the landscape, including the non-handled radiation issue and the legal changes in order to facilitate the roll out, is discussed and analyzed. The roll out formally started in late 2000 as the licence allocation process, the so called beauty contest, was finished. Four operators were to build partly competing systems within three years, each covering 8 860 000 persons, more than 99,98 percent of the populated areas. The Post and Telecommunications Agency can sanction operators not fulfilling licence conditions by a considerable fine. The coverage by the end of the period was between 66 and 74 percent of the promised 8 860 000, with only three remaining operators still participating. Not until 1 December 2006 did the first operator report the required coverage, followed by the two remaining operators by 1 June 2007. The municipal permit handling was blamed for the delay, a reason that “could not have been foreseen”, which helped the operators avoid sanctions from the PTA. The thesis shows that a slow municipal permit process can not explain the lack of coverage in some areas of Sweden. Environmental aspects were not handled at national level but assessed locally in the building permit handling, as well as the regional 12:6 consultations at the County Administrations. This is why the municipal permit process holds many of the keys regarding environmental management and planning. Therefore the permit processes regarding 3G masts has been charted as they developed in time and screened for main issues and conflicts. Public participation can be found in the local context tied to the legal concept of being a concerned party in the permit process, or the 12:6 consultation. In spite of this, the much debated radiation issue is lifted from the participative aspects and legally defined as not relevant. The theoretical basis of the analysis combines spatial planning and sociology of law, applying the sociological concept of norms as entities controlling action on the discussion of two different paradigms of governance derived from planning theory. The thesis project has been a part of a study within the MiSt programme, an interdisciplinary research programme on tools for environmental assessment in strategic decision making funded by the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency. Supervisors: professor Lars Emmelin, School of Planning, Blekinge Institute of Technology Karsten Åström, professor in sociology of law, Lund University
|
|
| 2. |
- Afzal, Wasif
(författare)
-
Search-based approaches to software fault prediction and software testing
- 2009
-
Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Software verification and validation activities are essential for software quality but also constitute a large part of software development costs. Therefore efficient and cost-effective software verification and validation activities are both a priority and a necessity considering the pressure to decrease time-to-market and intense competition faced by many, if not all, companies today. It is then perhaps not unexpected that decisions related to software quality, when to stop testing, testing schedule and testing resource allocation needs to be as accurate as possible. This thesis investigates the application of search-based techniques within two activities of software verification and validation: Software fault prediction and software testing for non-functional system properties. Software fault prediction modeling can provide support for making important decisions as outlined above. In this thesis we empirically evaluate symbolic regression using genetic programming (a search-based technique) as a potential method for software fault predictions. Using data sets from both industrial and open-source software, the strengths and weaknesses of applying symbolic regression in genetic programming are evaluated against competitive techniques. In addition to software fault prediction this thesis also consolidates available research into predictive modeling of other attributes by applying symbolic regression in genetic programming, thus presenting a broader perspective. As an extension to the application of search-based techniques within software verification and validation this thesis further investigates the extent of application of search-based techniques for testing non-functional system properties. Based on the research findings in this thesis it can be concluded that applying symbolic regression in genetic programming may be a viable technique for software fault prediction. We additionally seek literature evidence where other search-based techniques are applied for testing of non-functional system properties, hence contributing towards the growing application of search-based techniques in diverse activities within software verification and validation.
|
|
| 3. |
- Ankre, Rosemarie
(författare)
-
Understanding the visitor : A prerequisite for coastal zone planning
- 2007
-
Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Planning for tourism and outdoor recreation in coastal areas could be improved with knowledge of visitors´ attitudes, experiences, activities and geographical dispersion. The purpose of this thesis is to examine the knowledge of visitors in planning for tourism and outdoor recreation. The Luleå archipelago in Northern Sweden was used as a case study.
|
|
| 4. |
- Baca, Dejan
(författare)
-
Automated static code analysis : A tool for early vulnerability detection
- 2009
-
Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Software vulnerabilities are added into programs during its development. Architectural flaws are introduced during planning and design, while implementation faults are created during coding. Penetration testing is often used to detect these vulnerabilities. This approach is expensive because it is performed late in development and any correction would increase lead-time. An alternative would be to detect and correct vulnerabilities in the phase of development where they are the least expensive to correct and detect. Source code audits have often been suggested and used to detect implementations vulnerabilities. However, manual audits are time consuming and require extended expertise to be efficient. A static code analysis tool could achieve the same results as a manual audit but at fraction of the time. Through a set of cases studies and experiments at Ericsson AB, this thesis investigates the technical capabilities and limitations of using a static analysis tool as an early vulnerability detector. The investigation is extended to studying the human factor by examining how the developers interact and use the static analysis tool. The contributions of this thesis include the identification of the tools capabilities so that further security improvements can focus on other types of vulnerabilities. By using static analysis early in development possible cost saving measures are identified. Additionally, the thesis presents the limitations of static code analysis. The most important limitation being the incorrect warnings that are reported by static analysis tools. In addition, a development process overhead was deemed necessary to successfully use static analysis in an industry setting.
|
|
| 5. |
- Barney, Sebastian
(författare)
-
Perspectives on Software and their Priorities : Balancing Conflicting Stakeholder Views
- 2009
-
Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The sustainable development of a software product depends on a number of groups working together to achieve a common goal. However, each of the groups interacts with the product in different ways, and can have conflicting aims and objectives. For example, developers trying to correct issues in the software architecture, which will impact future releases of the product, can be stopped by a project manager who is charged with delivering a release on time and within budget. While the functional requirements of a software product are usually documented, there are a number of other investments in software development that are not always as explicitly agreed upon but are still essential to a product's long-term success. The major investment types include software product quality -- a main control variable in software development, and intellectual capital (IC) -- being the key input and tool used in software development. As management requires measurement, it is necessary understand the priorities placed on investment options by the various groups involved in the development of a software product. The objective of this thesis is to develop a method capable of both determining the priorities of different groups, and the level of alignment between these groups in terms of their priorities. Evolving the method from a study into the values used to select requirements for a release of software, Ericsson supported the development of a methodology to determine and compare the priorities of different groups for software product quality, and IC. The method elicited the required information from a series of case studies to build up a picture of the priorities placed on major investment options and constraints -- features, quality, IC, time and cost. The results highlight strengths, and areas for improvement -- through the identification of differing priorities and ambiguities in management of different aspects studied. In conducting this research, systematic biases in the selection of requirements appear to be occurring, adding an objective to understand how bias impacts decision making in a requirements engineering context. This thesis provides a method that determines the priorities on the level of investment on different options in the development of software products. It is concluded that people involved in the development of software need to be aligned on issues of software product quality as these priorities set expectations. The same was not found true for issues of IC, where groups can complete tasks without negatively impacting others, as long as the organisation works effectively as a single entity. On the issue of biases in the prioritisation of these aspects, prospect theory is found to apply to requirements selection in an academic experiment -- suggesting people will prefer functionality over software product quality, and to meet the known requirements of customers over predicting general market requirements.
|
|
| 6. |
- Bjarnadóttír, Hólmfríður
(författare)
-
SEA in the Context of Land-Use Planning : The application of the EU directive 2001/42/EC to Sweden, Iceland and England
- 2008
-
Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The thesis addresses the introduction of a supra-national instrument; a European directive on Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) into national contexts of land-use planning in three countries; Sweden, Iceland and England. The directive ”On the assessment of the effects of certain plans and programmes on the environment” was agreed upon by the European Commission on the 21st of June 2001 and was to be transposed to national legislation by 21st of June 2004. The introduction of these requirements meant that the countries needed to make legal adjustments and implement it at the different levels of planning. Many EU member countries, including those studied in the thesis, had some experience of environmental assessment of plans and programmes prior to the introduction of the SEA directive. SEA has as a concept and a tool in planning in national and international debate on Environmental Assessment and planning for the last two decades. Hence, the SEA directive was introduced to an existing context of environmental assessment in planning and the preparation of the directive has drawn on substantial conceptual development and practical experience of strategic environmental assessment in various forms. The aim of this research is to shed a light on the transposition of the SEA directive into a national legal framework and how the introduction relates to the countries’ planning contexts and previous application of SEA-like instruments. In the thesis an overview is given of the way the directive is transposed to the national legal system of the three countries and the existing planning framework is described. The results from the national reviews are analysed in relation to the contents of the directive and the international and Nordic academic debate regarding the purpose and role of SEA, related to the characteristics of the planning system. The research shows differences in the legal and planning contexts to which the SEA requirements have been introduced in the three countries. Despite of those, the legal requirements follow closely the contents of the directive. However, the expectations towards the directive expressed by national officials and politicians, the recommendations in the way the legal SEA requirements shall be implemented, differ between the countries as well as references to other processes; land-use planning and the practices of Environmental Impact Assessment and Sustainability Appraisal. The thesis is the result of a project within the interdisciplinary research programme MiSt, “Tools for environmental assessment in strategic decision making” at BTH funded by the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency. The project has been carried out at Nordregio, the Nordic Centre for Spatial Development, Stockholm.
|
|
| 7. |
- Boldt, Martin
(författare)
-
Privacy-Invasive Software : Exploring Effects and Countermeasures
- 2007
-
Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- As computers are increasingly more integrated into our daily lives, we need aiding mechanisms for separating legitimate software from their unwanted counterparts. We use the term Privacy-Invasive Software (PIS) to refer to such illegitimate software, sometimes loosely labelled as spyware. In this thesis, we include an introduction to PIS, and how it differs from both legitimate and traditionally malicious software. We also present empirical measurements indicating the effects that PIS have on infected computers and networks. An important contribution of this work is a classification of PIS in which we target both the level of user consent, as well as the degree of user consequences associated with PIS. These consequences, affecting both users and their computers, form a global problem that deteriorates a vast number of users’ computer experiences today. As a way to hinder, or at least mitigate, this development we argue for more user-oriented countermeasures that focus on informing users about the behaviour and consequences associated with using a particular software. In addition to current reactive countermeasures, we also need preventive tools dealing with the threat of PIS before it enters users’ computers. Collaborative reputation systems present an interesting way forward towards such preventive and user-oriented countermeasures against PIS. Moving the software reputations from old channels (such as computer magazines or friends’ recommendations) into an instantly fast reputation system would be beneficial for the users when distinguishing unwanted software from legitimate. It is important that such a reputation system is designed to address antagonistic intentions from both individual users and groups thereof, so that users could depend on the reputations. This would allow users to reach more informed decisions by taking the reported consequences into account when deciding whether they want a specific software to enter their computer or not.
|
|
| 8. |
- Chen, Jiandan
(författare)
-
A Multi Sensor System for a Human Activities Space : Aspects of Planning and Quality Measurement
- 2008
-
Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In our aging society, the design and implementation of a high-performance autonomous distributed vision information system for autonomous physical services become ever more important. In line with this development, the proposed Intelligent Vision Agent System, IVAS, is able to automatically detect and identify a target for a specific task by surveying a human activities space. The main subject of this thesis is the optimal configuration of a sensor system meant to capture the target objects and their environment within certain required specifications. The thesis thus discusses how a discrete sensor causes a depth spatial quantisation uncertainty, which significantly contributes to the 3D depth reconstruction accuracy. For a sensor stereo pair, the quantisation uncertainty is represented by the intervals between the iso-disparity surfaces. A mathematical geometry model is then proposed to analyse the iso-disparity surfaces and optimise the sensors’ configurations according to the required constrains. The thesis also introduces the dithering algorithm which significantly reduces the depth reconstruction uncertainty. This algorithm assures high depth reconstruction accuracy from a few images captured by low-resolution sensors. To ensure the visibility needed for surveillance, tracking, and 3D reconstruction, the thesis introduces constraints of the target space, the stereo pair characteristics, and the depth reconstruction accuracy. The target space, the space in which human activity takes place, is modelled as a tetrahedron, and a field of view in spherical coordinates is proposed. The minimum number of stereo pairs necessary to cover the entire target space and the arrangement of the stereo pairs’ movement is optimised through integer linear programming. In order to better understand human behaviour and perception, the proposed adaptive measurement method makes use of a fuzzily defined variable, FDV. The FDV approach enables an estimation of a quality index based on qualitative and quantitative factors. The suggested method uses a neural network as a tool that contains a learning function that allows the integration of the human factor into a quantitative quality index. The thesis consists of two parts, where Part I gives a brief overview of the applied theory and research methods used, and Part II contains the five papers included in the thesis.
|
|
| 9. |
- Chevul, Stefan
(författare)
-
On Application-Perceived Quality of Service in Wireless Networks
- 2006
-
Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Wireless and Mobile Internet have changed the way people and businesses operate. Communication from any Internet access point, including wireless networks such as UMTS, GPRS or WLAN has enabled organizations to have a mobile workforce. However, networked applications such as web, email, streaming multimedia etc. rely upon the ability of timely data delivery. The achievable throughput is a quality measure for the very task of a communication system, which is to transport data in time. Throughput is thus one of the most essential enablers for networked applications. While in general, throughput is defined on network or transport level, the application-perceived throughput reflects the Quality of Service from the viewpoints of the application and user. The focus of the thesis is on the influence of the network on the applicationperceived Quality of Service and thus the user perceived experience. An analysis of application based active measurements mimicking the needs of streaming applications is presented. The results reveal clear influence of the network on the application-perceived Quality of Service seen from variations of application-perceived throughput on small time scales. Results also indicate that applications have to cope with considerably large jitter when trying to use the nominal throughputs. It was observed that the GPRS network had considerable problems in delivering packets in the downstream direction even when the nominal capacity of the link was not reached. Finally, the thesis discusses the suitability of wireless networks for different mobile services, since the influence of the network on the application-perceived Quality of Service is of great significance when it comes to customer satisfaction. Therefore, application-perceived Quality of Service in wireless networks must also be considered by the mobile application programmer during the application development.
|
|
| 10. |
- Constantinescu, Doru
(författare)
-
Measurements and Models of One-Way Transit Time in IP Routers
- 2005
-
Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The main goals of this thesis are towards an understanding of the delay process in best-effort Internet for both non-congested and congested networks. A novel measurement system is reported for delay measurements in IP routers, which follows specifications of the IETF RFC 2679. The system employs both passive measurements and active probing and offers the possibility to measure and analyze different delay components of a router, e.g., packet processing delay, packet transmission time and queueing delay at the output link. Dedicated application-layer software is used to generate UDP traffic with TCP-like characteristics. Pareto traffic models are used to generate self-similar traffic in the link. The reported results are in form of several important statistics regarding processing and queueing delays of a router, router delay for a single data flow, router delay for multiple data flows as well as end-to-end delay for a chain of routers. They confirm results reported earlier about the fact that the delay in IP routers is generally influenced by traffic characteristics, link conditions and, to some extent, details in hardware implementation and different IOS releases. The delay in IP routers may also occasionally show extreme values, which are due to improper functioning of the routers. Furthermore, new results have been obtained that indicate that the delay in IP routers shows heavy-tailed characteristics, which can be well modeled with the help of several distributions, either in the form of a single distribution or as a mixture of distributions. There are several components contributing to the OWTT in routers, i.e., processing delay, queueing delay and service time. The obtained results have shown that, e.g., the processing delay in a router can be well modeled with the Normal distribution, and the queueing delay is well modeled with a mixture of Normal distribution for the body probability mass and Weibull distribution for the tail probability mass. Furthermore, OWTT has several component delays and it has been observed that the component delay distribution that is most dominant and heavy-tailed has a decisive influence on OWTT.
|
|
