| 1. |
- Acevedo Peña, Carlos Gonzalo
(författare)
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Developing Inclusive Innovation Processes and Co-Evolutionary Approaches in Bolivia
- 2015
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The concept of National Innovation Systems (NIS) has been widely adopted in developing countries, particularly in Latin American countries, for the last two decades. The concept is used mainly as an ex-ante framework to organize and increase the dynamics of those institutions linked to science, technology and innovation, for catching-up processes of development. In the particular case of Bolivia, and after several decades of social and economic crisis, the promise of a national innovation system reconciles a framework for collaboration between the university, the government and the socio-productive sectors. Dynamics of collaboration generated within NIS can be a useful tool for the pursuit of inclusive development ambitions. This thesis is focused on inclusive innovation processes and the generation of co-evolutionary processes between university, government and socio-productive sectors. This is the result of 8 years of participatory action research influenced by Mode 2 knowledge-production and Technoscientific approaches. The study explores the policy paths the Bolivian government has followed in the last three decades in order to organize science, technology and innovation. It reveals that Bolivia has an emerging national innovation system, where its demand-pulled innovation model presents an inclusive approach. Innovation policy efforts in Bolivia are led by the Vice-Ministry of Science and Technology (VCyT). Moreover, NIS involves relational and collaborative approaches between institutions, which imply structural and organizational challenges, particularly for public universities, as they concentrate most of the research capabilities in the country. These universities are challenged to participate in NIS within contexts of weak demanding sectors. This research focuses on the early empirical approaches and transformations at Universidad Mayor de San Simón (UMSS) in Cochabamba. The aim to strengthen internal innovation capabilities of the university and enhance the relevance of research activities in society by supporting socio-economic development in the framework of innovation systems is led by the Technology Transfer Unit (UTT) at UMSS. UTT has become a recognized innovation facilitator unit, inside and outside the university, by proposing pro-active initiatives to support emerging innovation systems. Because of its complexity, the study focuses particularly on cluster development promoted by UTT. Open clusters are based on linking mechanisms between the university research capabilities, the socio-productive actors and government. Cluster development has shown to be a practical mechanism for the university to meet the demanding sector (government and socio-productive actors) and to develop trust-based inclusive innovation processes. The experiences from cluster activities have inspired the development of new research policies at UMSS, with a strong orientation to foster research activities towards an increased focus on socio-economic development. The experiences gained at UMSS are discussed and presented as a “developmental university” approach. Inclusive innovation processes with co-evolutionary approaches seem to constitute an alternative path supporting achievement of inclusive development ambitions in Bolivia.
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| 2. |
- Ahmadi Mehri, Vida, 1980-
(författare)
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Towards Secure Collaborative AI Service Chains
- 2019
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- At present, Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems have been adopted in many different domains such as healthcare, robotics, automotive, telecommunication systems, security, and finance for integrating intelligence in their services and applications. The intelligent personal assistant such as Siri and Alexa are examples of AI systems making an impact on our daily lives. Since many AI systems are data-driven systems, they require large volumes of data for training and validation, advanced algorithms, computing power and storage in their development process. Collaboration in the AI development process (AI engineering process) will reduce cost and time for the AI applications in the market. However, collaboration introduces the concern of privacy and piracy of intellectual properties, which can be caused by the actors who collaborate in the engineering process. This work investigates the non-functional requirements, such as privacy and security, for enabling collaboration in AI service chains. It proposes an architectural design approach for collaborative AI engineering and explores the concept of the pipeline (service chain) for chaining AI functions. In order to enable controlled collaboration between AI artefacts in a pipeline, this work makes use of virtualisation technology to define and implement Virtual Premises (VPs), which act as protection wrappers for AI pipelines. A VP is a virtual policy enforcement point for a pipeline and requires access permission and authenticity for each element in a pipeline before the pipeline can be used. Furthermore, the proposed architecture is evaluated in use-case approach that enables quick detection of design flaw during the initial stage of implementation. To evaluate the security level and compliance with security requirements, threat modeling was used to identify potential threats and vulnerabilities of the system and analyses their possible effects. The output of threat modeling was used to define countermeasure to threats related to unauthorised access and execution of AI artefacts.
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| 3. |
- Andreasson, Eskil
(författare)
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Realistic Package Opening Simulations : An Experimental Mechanics and Physics Based Approach
- 2015
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- A finite element modeling strategy targeting package opening simulations is the final goal with this work. The developed simulation model will be used to proactively predict the opening compatibility early in the development process of a new opening device and/or a new packaging material. To be able to create such a model, the focus is to develop a combined and integrated physical/virtual test procedure for mechanical characterization and calibration of thin packaging materials. Furthermore, the governing mechanical properties of the materials involved in the opening performance needs to be identified and quantified with experiments. Different experimental techniques complemented with video recording equipment were refined and utilized during the course of work. An automatic or semi-automatic material model parameter identification process involving video capturing of the deformation process and inverse modeling is proposed for the different packaging material layers. Both an accurate continuum model and a damage material model, used in the simulation model, were translated and extracted from the experimental test results. The results presented show that it is possible to select constitutive material models in conjunction with continuum material damage models, adequately predicting the mechanical behavior of intended failure in thin laminated packaging materials. A thorough material mechanics understanding of individual material layers evolution of microstructure and the micro mechanisms involved in the deformation process is essential for appropriate selection of numerical material models. Finally, with a slight modification of already available techniques and functionalities in the commercial finite element software AbaqusTM it was possible to build the suitable simulation model. To build a realistic simulation model an accurate description of the geometrical features is important. Therefore, advancements within the experimental visualization techniques utilizing a combination of video recording, photoelasticity and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) of the micro structure have enabled extraction of geometries and additional information from ordinary standard experimental tests. Finally, a comparison of the experimental opening and the virtual opening, showed a good correlation with the developed finite element modeling technique. The advantage with the developed modeling approach is that it is possible to modify the material composition of the laminate. Individual material layers can be altered and the mechanical properties, thickness or geometrical shape can be changed. Furthermore, the model is flexible and a new opening device i.e. geometry and load case can easily be adopted in the simulation model. Therefore, this type of simulation model is a useful tool and can be used for decision support early in the concept selection of development projects.
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| 4. |
- Badampudi, Deepika, 1984-
(författare)
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Towards decision-making to choose among different component origins
- 2016
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Context: The amount of software in solutions provided in various domains is continuously growing. These solutions are a mix of hardware and software solutions, often referred to as software-intensive systems. Companies seek to improve the software development process to avoid delays or cost overruns related to the software development. Objective: The overall goal of this thesis is to improve the software development/building process to provide timely, high quality and cost efficient solutions. The objective is to select the origin of the components (in-house, outsource, components off-the-shelf (COTS) or open source software (OSS)) that facilitates the improvement. The system can be built of components from one origin or a combination of two or more (or even all) origins. Selecting a proper origin for a component is important to get the most out of a component and to optimize the development. Method: It is necessary to investigate the component origins to make decisions to select among different origins. We conducted a case study to explore the existing challenges in software development. The next step was to identify factors that influence the choice to select among different component origins through a systematic literature review using a snowballing (SB) strategy and a database (DB) search. Furthermore, a Bayesian synthesis process is proposed to integrate the evidence from literature into practice. Results: The results of this thesis indicate that the context of software-intensive systems such as domain regulations hinder the software development improvement. In addition to in-house development, alternative component origins (outsourcing, COTS, and OSS) are being used for software development. Several factors such as time, cost and license implications influence the selection of component origins. Solutions have been proposed to support the decision-making. However, these solutions consider only a subset of factors identified in the literature. Conclusions: Each component origin has some advantages and disadvantages. Depending on the scenario, one component origin is more suitable than the others. It is important to investigate the different scenarios and suitability of the component origins, which is recognized as future work of this thesis. In addition, the future work is aimed at providing models to support the decision-making process.
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| 5. |
- Britto, Ricardo
(författare)
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Knowledge Classification for Supporting Effort Estimation in Global Software Engineering Projects
- 2015
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Background: Global Software Engineering (GSE) has become a widely applied operational model for the development of software systems; it can increase profits and decrease time-to-market. However, there are many challenges associated with development of software in a globally distributed fashion. There is evidence that these challenges affect many process related to software development, such as effort estimation. To the best of our knowledge, there are no empirical studies to gather evidence on effort estimation in the GSE context. In addition, there is no common terminology for classifying GSE scenarios focusing on effort estimation.Objective: The main objective of this thesis is to support effort estimation in the GSE context by providing a taxonomy to classify the existing knowledge in this field.Method: Systematic literature review (to identify and analyze the state of the art), survey (to identify and analyze the state of the practice), systematic mapping (to identify practices to design software engineering taxonomies), and literature survey (to complement the states of the art and practice) were the methods employed in this thesis.Results: The results on the states of the art and practice show that the effort estimation techniques employed in the GSE context are the same techniques used in the collocated context. It was also identified that global aspects, e.g. time, geographical and social-cultural distances, are accounted for as cost drivers, although it is not clear how they are measured. As a result of the conducted mapping study, we reported a method that can be used to design new SE taxonomies. The aforementioned results were combined to extend and specialize an existing GSE taxonomy, for suitability for effort estimation. The usage of the specialized GSE effort estimation taxonomy was illustrated by classifying 8 finished GSE projects. The results show that the specialized taxonomy proposed in this thesis is comprehensive enough to classify GSE projects focusing on effort estimation.Conclusions: The taxonomy presented in this thesis will help researchers and practitioners to report new research on effort estimation in the GSE context; researchers and practitioners will be able to gather evidence, com- pare new studies and find new gaps in an easier way. The findings from this thesis show that more research must be conducted on effort estimation in the GSE context. For example, the way the cost drivers are measured should be further investigated. It is also necessary to conduct further research to clarify the role and impact of sourcing strategies on the effort estimates’ accuracies. Finally, we believe that it is possible to design an instrument based on the specialized GSE effort estimation taxonomy that helps practitioners to perform the effort estimation process in a way tailored for the specific needs of the GSE context.
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| 6. |
- Dasari, Siva Krishna, 1988-
(författare)
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Tree Models for Design Space Exploration in Aerospace Engineering
- 2019
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- A crucial issue in the design of aircraft components is the evaluation of a larger number of potential design alternatives. This evaluation involves too expensive procedures, consequently, it slows down the search for optimal design samples. As a result, scarce or small number of design samples with high dimensional parameter space and high non-linearity pose issues in learning of surrogate models. Furthermore, surrogate models have more issues in handling qualitative data (discrete) than in handling quantitative data (continuous). These issues bring the need for investigations of methods of surrogate modelling for the most effective use of available data. The thesis goal is to support engineers in the early design phase of development of new aircraft engines, specifically, a component of the engine known as Turbine Rear Structure (TRS). For this, tree-based approaches are explored for surrogate modelling for the purpose of exploration of larger search spaces and for speeding up the evaluations of design alternatives. First, we have investigated the performance of tree models on the design concepts of TRS. Second, we have presented an approach to explore design space using tree models, Random Forests. This approach includes hyperparameter tuning, extraction of parameters importance and if-then rules from surrogate models for a better understanding of the design problem. With this presented approach, we have shown that the performance of tree models improved by hyperparameter tuning when using design concepts data of TRS. Third, we performed sensitivity analysis to study the thermal variations on TRS and hence support robust design using tree models. Furthermore, the performance of tree models has been evaluated on mathematical linear and non-linear functions. The results of this study have shown that tree models fit well on non-linear functions. Last, we have shown how tree models support integration of value and sustainability parameters data (quantitative and qualitative data) together with TRS design concepts data in order to assess these parameters impact on the product life cycle in the early design phase.
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| 7. |
- Eivazzadeh, Shahryar
(författare)
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Health Information Systems Evaluation
- 2015
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- BackgroundHealth information systems have emerged as a major component in our response to the trends of rising demands in health care. The insight being gained from the evaluation of those systems can critically influence the shaping of the response. Summative or formative evaluation of health information systems assesses their quality, acceptance, and usefulness, creates insight for improvement, discriminates between options, and refines future development strategies. But the evaluation of health information systems can be challenging due to the propagation of their impacts through multiple socio-technological layers till the ultimate recipients, their heterogeneity and fast evolvement, and the complexity of health care settings and systems.AimThis thesis tries to explain the challenges of evaluation of health information systems with a narrow down on determining evaluation aspects and to propose relevant solutions. The thesis goes for solutions that mitigate heterogeneity and incomparability, recruit or extend available evaluation models, embrace a wide context of application, and promote automation.MethodThe literature on health information systems evaluation, methods of dealing with heterogeneity in other disciplines of information systems, and ontology engineering were surveyed. Based on the literature survey, the UVON method, based on ontology engineering, was first developed in study 1. The method was applied in FI-STAR, a European Union project in e-Health with 7 use-cases, for summative evaluation of the individual and whole e-health applications. Study 2, extended the UVON method for a formative evaluation during the design phase.ResultsApplication of the UVON method resulted in evaluation aspects that were delivered to the seven use-cases of the FI-STAR project in the form of questionnaires. The resulted evaluation aspects were considered sensible and with a confirming overlap with another highly used method in this field (MAST). No significant negative feedback from the FI-STAR use-case owners (n=7) or the respondents (n=87 patients and n=30 health professionals) was received or observed.ConclusionIn the evaluation of health information systems --possibly also in other similarly characterized systems-- ontology engineering methods, such as the proposed UVON method, can be applied to create a flexible degree of unification across a heterogeneous set of evaluation aspects, import evaluation aspects from other evaluation methods, and prioritize between quality aspects in design phase. Ontologies, through their semantic network structures, can capture the extracted knowledge required for evaluation, facilitate computation of that knowledge, promote automation of evaluation, and accommodate further extensions of the related evaluation methods by adding new features to their network structure.
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| 8. |
- Erman, Maria
(författare)
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Applications of Soft Computing Techniques for Wireless Communications
- 2019
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis presents methods and applications of Fuzzy Logic and Rough Sets in the domain of Telecommunications at both the network and physical layers. Specifically, the use of a new class of functions, the truncated π functions, for classifying IP traffic by matching datagram size histograms is explored. Furthermore, work on adapting the payoff matrix in multiplayer games by using fuzzy entries as opposed to crisp values that are hard to quantify, is presented.Additionally, applications of fuzzy logic in wireless communications are presented, comprised by a comprehensive review of current trends and applications, followed by work directed towards using it in spectrum sensing and power control in cognitive radio networks.This licentiate thesis represents parts of my work in the fields of Fuzzy Systems and Wireless Communications. The work was done in collaboration between the Departments of Applied Signal Processing and Mathematics at Blekinge Institute of Technology.
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| 9. |
- Falk, Anders
(författare)
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Sacred Games - Becoming Gods : Priming digital game ethics
- 2019
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The point of departure for my research is a perceived breach and resulting dissonance between how digital games and other parts of society that are similar in form, enact certain aspects of life. This shift was made especially clear in massive multiplayer games in 2004 with the release of World of Warcraft, the design of which panders to cultural weak points, rather than attempting to mimic them. Digital games are far-reaching. In February 2019, ‘Apex Legends’ reached over 10 million players in less than 72 hours. Nonetheless, the idea of games as separate from the ‘real’ is persisting. Digital games have become a cyclopean gathering of liminality, and there are still no form-based ethics emerging, from either industry or society. Even though society is now undergoing the same abstracting digitisation, that has been a base for game design for a long time, there is a continuing separation in the knowledge applying to games or ‘reality’. The purpose of this thesis is to explore different ontological, epistemological, and ethical understandings of digital games as media, technology, modes of experience, and form. This is undertaken by using the situated and reality producing grating1 of technoscience, together with an eclectic range of concepts such as media as a message, agential reality, liminal phases, anticipation, and ergon. The research delineates a primer for applied studies within the rhizomatic structure of digital games, digitisation, technoscience, and media-technology. In accordance with this aim, the thesis has a fragmented, non-linear, and mosaic approach. This licentiate thesis is a compilation of three papers with a complementary introduction and an epilogue.
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| 10. |
- Fotrousi, Farnaz
(författare)
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Quality-Impact Assessment of Software Products and Services in a Future Internet Platform
- 2015
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The idea of a Future Internet platform is to deliver reusable and common functionalities to facilitate making wide ranges of software products and services. The Future Internet platform, introduced by the Future Internet Public Private Partnership (FI-PPP) project, makes the common functionalities available through so-called Enablers to be instantly integrated into software products and services with less cost and complexity rather than a development from scratch.Quality assessment of software products and services and gaining insights into whether the quality fulfills users’ expectations within the platform are challenging. The challenges are due to the propagation of quality in the heterogeneous composite software that uses Enablers and infrastructure developed by third parties. The practical problem is how to assess the quality of such composite software as well as the impacts of the quality on users’ Quality of Experience (QoE).The research objective is to study an analytics-driven Quality-Impact approach identifying how software quality analytics together with their impact on QoE of users can be used for the assessment of software products and services in a Future Internet platform.The research was conducted with one systematic mapping study, two solution proposals, and one empirical study. The systematic mapping study is contributed to produce a map overviewing important analytics for managing a software ecosystem. The thesis also proposes a solution to introduce a holistic software-human analytics approach in a Future Internet platform. As the core of the solution, it proposes a Quality-Impact inquiry approach exemplified with a real practice. In the early validation of the proposals, a mixed qualitative-quantitative empirical research is conducted with the aim of designing a tool for the inquiry of user feedback. This research studies the effect of the instrumented feedback tool on QoE of a software product.The findings of the licentiate thesis show that satisfaction, performance, and freedom from risks analytics are important groups of analytics for assessing software products and services. The proposed holistic solution takes up the results by describing how to measure the analytics and how to assess them practically using a composition model during the lifecycle of products and services in a Future Internet platform. As the core of the holistic approach, the Quality-Impact assessment approach could elicit relationships between software quality and impacts of the quality on stakeholders. Moreover, the early validation of the Quality-Impact approach parameterized suitable characteristics of a feedback tool. We found that disturbing feedback tools have negligible impacts on the perceived QoE of software products.The Quality-Impact approach is helpful to acquire insight into the success of software products and services contributing to the health and sustainability of the platform. This approach was adopted as a part of the validation of FI-PPP project. Future works will address the validation of the Quality-Impact approach in the FI-PPP or other real practices.
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