Assessing noise annoyance: an improvement-oriented approach

A concept for practice-oriented assessment of noise annoyance at the workplace is presented. Employees evaluated the noise situation at their workplace by characterizing the loudest noise event with respect to relevant noise characteristics. The results from a first use of the questionnaire for Subjective Evaluation of Noise Characteristics in Office Workplaces (SENO) show (1) a general need for an additional constructive measure of subjective noise annoyance, (2) that evaluation of the loudest noise event is representative for the overall workplace situation, and (3) that coping plays a crucial role and should be explicitly controlled. Finally, examples of how to use SENO for improving the workplace situation are given.     

The Psikharpax project: towards building an artificial rat

Drawing inspiration from biology, the Psikharpax project aims at endowing a robot with a sensory-motor equipment and a neural control architecture that will afford some of the capacities of autonomy and adaptation that are exhibited by real rats. The paper summarizes the current state of achievement of the project. It successively describes the robot's future sensors and actuators, and several biomimetic models of the anatomy and physiology of structures in the rat's brain, like the hippocampus and the basal ganglia, which have already been at work on various robots, and that make navigation and action selection possible. Preliminary results on the implementation of learning mechanisms in these structures are also presented. Finally, the article discusses the potential benefits that a biologically inspired approach affords to traditional autonomous robotics.     

Assessing noise annoyance: an improvement-oriented approach

A concept for practice-oriented assessment of noise annoyance at the workplace is presented. Employees evaluated the noise situation at their workplace by characterizing the loudest noise event with respect to relevant noise characteristics. The results from a first use of the questionnaire for Subjective Evaluation of Noise Characteristics in Office Workplaces (SENO) show (1) a general need for an additional constructive measure of subjective noise annoyance, (2) that evaluation of the loudest noise event is representative for the overall workplace situation, and (3) that coping plays a crucial role and should be explicitly controlled. Finally, examples of how to use SENO for improving the workplace situation are given.     

The European ADDSAFE project: Industrial and academic efforts towards advanced fault diagnosis

In this article a high-fidelity aircraft benchmark, developed by Airbus for advanced flight control related studies, is presented in relation to its evolution towards advanced fault diagnosis within a European 7th Framework Program project entitled “Advanced Fault Diagnosis for Sustainable Flight Guidance and Control (ADDSAFE)”. This European project was established to study and facilitate the transfer of model-based fault detection and diagnosis methods from Academia to Industry. The importance of the project arose on the one hand, due to the representativeness of the benchmark, and on the other hand, the industrial benchmarking and validation of the developed designs. The results presented in this article represent a quantitative measure of the success of the project since five of the developed designs were successfully validated in Airbus Verification and Validation (V&V) set-ups, and are currently undergoing further tests towards a possible real aircraft implementation.     

A European perspective towards online one-stop government: the eGOV project

e-Government reflects current visions for public administrations towards modernization and reorganization. Therefore, online one-stop Government targets the improvement of customer-to-government interactions. It provides electronic public services of distinct public authorities to citizens and businesses in a customer-oriented manner from a single point of access. The customer-oriented approach towards online one-stop Government further offers online public services 24 h a day from anywhere in an easy-to-use and simple way according to the customers’ needs. Structuring public services around citizens’ life-episodes and businesses’ specific situations represents such an approach. To speed up innovative developments in the field, the European Commission has provided substantial funding. eGOV is such an EC-funded project that aims at developing an integrated platform for realizing online one-stop Government. Key innovations of eGOV are: a global access point to enter different governmental services and information at distinct levels of public administration and with different devices; and the development of online one-stop Government process models. To develop an integrated one-stop Government platform, different requirements have to be fulfilled. Here, an holistic development approach provides an important guideline to address different aspects impacting advanced one-stop Government systems. With such an holistic approach, despite the technical developments, integrated process models for online public service delivery are put forward. Furthermore, the legal aspects framing one-stop Government developments and the social impacts of such developments for different user groups are investigated.     

System dynamics in software project management: towards the development of a formal integrated framework

Successful software development is becoming increasingly important to many companies. However, most projects fail to meet their targets, highlighting the inadequacies of traditional project management techniques in this unique setting. Despite breakthroughs in software engineering, management methodologies have not improved, and the major opportunities for better results are now in this area. Poor strategic management and related human factors have been cited as a major cause for failures, which traditional techniques cannot incorporate explicitly. System dynamics (SD) aims to model the behaviour of complex socio-economic systems; there has been a number of applications to software project management. SD provides an alternative view in which the major project influences are considered and quantified explicitly. Grounded on a holistic perspective it avoids consideration of the detail required by traditional tools, looking at the key aspects of the general project behaviour. However, if SD is to play a key role in software project management it needs to be embedded within the traditional decision-making framework. The authors developed a conceptual integrated model, the SYDPIM, which has been tested and improved within a large on-going software project. Such a framework specifies the roles of SD models, how they are to be used within the traditional management process, how they exchange information with the traditional models, and a general method to support model development.     

Proving Invariants of I/O Automata with TAME

This paper describes a specialized interface to PVS called TAME (Timed Automata Modeling Environment) which provides automated support for proving properties of I/O automata. A major goal of TAME is to allow a software developer to use PVS to specify and prove properties of an I/O automaton efficiently and without first becoming a PVS expert. To accomplish this goal, TAME provides a template that the user completes to specify an I/O automaton and a set of proof steps natural for humans to use for proving properties of automata. Each proof step is implemented by a PVS strategy and possibly some auxiliary theories that support that strategy. We have used the results of two recent formal methods studies as a basis for two case studies to evaluate TAME. In the first formal methods study, Romijn used I/O automata to specify and verify memory and remote procedure call components of a concurrent system. In the second formal methods study, Devillers et al. specified a tree identify protocol (TIP), part of the IEEE 1394 bus protocol, and provided hand proofs of TIP properties. Devillers also used PVS to specify TIP and to check proofs of TIP properties. In our first case study, the third author, a new TAME user with no previous PVS experience, used TAME to create PVS specifications of the I/O automata formulated by Romijn and Devillers et al. and to check their hand proofs. In our second case study, the TAME approach to verification was compared with an alternate approach by Devillers which uses PVS directly.     

Electronic portfolios revisited: The efolios project

Electronic portfolios show considerable pedagogical, student-outcomes, and program assessment promise but have been plagued by numerous logistical and implementation problems caused by the software and by students having to learn a great deal about electronic writing to put together a viable electronic portfolio. This article describes using an efolios project to solve these problems, enabling students to concentrate on writing rather than on technology and to create an electronic environment conducive to student-outcomes and program assessment.     

The Active XML project: an overview

This paper provides an overview of the Active XML project developed at INRIA over the past five years. Active XML (AXML, for short), is a declarative framework that harnesses Web services for distributed data management, and is put to work in a peer-to-peer architecture. The model is based on AXML documents, which are XML documents that may contain embedded calls to Web services, and on AXML services, which are Web services capable of exchanging AXML documents. An AXML peer is a repository of AXML documents that acts both as a client by invoking the embedded service calls, and as a server by providing AXML services, which are generally defined as queries or updates over the persistent AXML documents. The approach gracefully combines stored information with data defined in an intensional manner as well as dynamic information. This simple, rather classical idea leads to a number of technically challenging problems, both theoretical and practical. In this paper, we describe and motivate the AXML model and language, overview the research results obtained in the course of the project, and show how all the pieces come together in our implementation. The first and third authors were partially funded by the European Project Edos. Work done when the second and third authors were at INRIA. Work done when the second and third authors were at INRIA.     

The ALL-TIMES project: introduction and overview

Timing analysis is important when designing and verifying time-critical embedded systems. Tool support for timing analysis has existed for a number of years, but the tools have been mostly working in isolation resulting in less efficient timing analysis processes. The European FP7 project ALL-TIMES has addressed this issue by creating interface formats, tool chains, and integrated methodologies for timing analysis where the proper combination of tools and techniques can be used in a given situation. We give an introduction and overview of the ALL-TIMES project: its objectives, tools and partners, work done, and the results.     

The Globus project: a status report

The Globus project is a multi-institutional research effort that seeks to enable the construction of computational grids providing pervasive, dependable, and consistent access to high-performance computational resources, despite geographical distribution of both resources and users. Computational grid technology is being viewed as a critical element of future high-performance computing environments that will enable entirely new classes of computation-oriented applications, much as the World Wide Web fostered the development of new classes of information-oriented applications. In this paper, we report on the status of the Globus project as of early 1998. We describe the progress that has been achieved to date in the development of the Globus toolkit, a set of core services for constructing grid tools and applications. We also discuss the Globus Ubiquitous Supercomputing Testbed Organization (GUSTO) that we have constructed to enable large-scale evaluation of Globus technologies, and we review early experiences with the development of large-scale grid applications on the GUSTO testbed.     

Towards an integrated measurement of IS project performance: The project performance scorecard

Determining the contribution of information system (IS) projects is a difficult endeavour. This research presents a framework for evaluating and measuring IS project performance that seek to address this problem while moving away from the reliance on the traditional assessment method (time, cost, specifications). When IS projects fail or succeed is difficult to determine what conditions enabled the outcome. However, if we are to develop a higher level of IS project management competence we need frameworks that can help in assessing IS project outcomes while critically reflecting and learning from IS project management practices. The Project Performance Scorecard (PPS) recommended here is one framework that can help to advance our understanding IS project management and evaluation approaches. This framework integrates concepts from existing models of IS success, the Balanced Scorecard and project management practices. A case study approach is used to illustrate the use of the PPS, and offers insights into how it can be useful in assessing the performance of IS projects.

The ebridge project

In many organizations and government administrations, electronic documents are opening the way to faster and more efficient ways of doing business. In fact, electronic information exchange, far from being considered a luxury, is increasingly seen as a staple requirement for survival in today's competitive environment. The increasing use of EDI is a good example of this reality. Another is the development over the past few years of an increasing variety of pan-European information services. The growth in these services is being driven in part by the increasing globalization of trade and by the needs of the Single Market within the European Union. However, the provision of information services on a pan-European basis raises many issues from a security perspective. This article provides an overview of one of these pan-European information services and the steps that have been taken to improve its operational security within the context of the EC-sponsored ebridge project.     

The GANDALF project

The GANDALF project is concerned with the automated generation of software development environments. In particular, the project has considered project management environments, system version control environments, and incremental programming environments. The artifacts surrounding these environments are described. Later versions of these environments have been constructed as structure editors. The processes and tools involved in generating structure editors for software development environments are also discussed. Future plans of the project are briefly mentioned.     

The ERNET project

In order to further develop in Europe robot technology, which constitutes a key factor in the development of new production techniques in industry as well as of advanced solutions in non-traditional areas such as space, agriculture, underwater, service and personal operations, large efforts are required both from a technological and a methodological point of view, with a particular emphasis on integration of different fields. Moreover, promoting people's mobility, particularly at the post-doctoral level, in the context of trans-national laboratory networks is a very effective way to offer to young researchers the best possible education in a stimulating environment. In particular for Europe, but not exclusively, this approach constitutes also a necessary platform on which international industrial competitiveness can be durably based. Such networking and mobility concepts appear to be particularly appropriate in robotics, where many different technologies and complementary methodologies, which are unlikely to be developed in only one center, have to be integrated. The ERNET (European Robotics Network) project was established by the European Union Commission based on these concepts. The network includes 28 laboratories from 10 European countries. The article briefly reviews the main activities of ERNET, gives some technical results, and outlines a perspective for exploiting the ERNET initiative