From Water Poverty to Water Prosperity—A More Participatory Approach to Studying Local Water Resources Management

The Water Poverty Index (WPI), a tool designed for integrated analysis of water issues, was set-up in a community in Madhya Pradesh, India through a transparent and participatory process. Though the aim of the WPI is to primarily use existing statistical data, quantitative information from census and local records was combined with qualitative data from community interviews and participatory exercises. The inclusion of community chosen indicators and the adjustment of values so that higher numbers represent water prosperity rather than water poverty, led to the Water Prosperity Index (WPI⁺). The WPI?⁺?score was contrasted with the WPI at community level. It was also calculated for two community areas with different caste and socio-economic characteristics and weighted separately according to water issues prioritized by men and women. The WPI?⁺?revealed a great difference in water access between the two areas and in prioritized issues between men and women illustrating the importance of appropriate spatial representation and gender sensitive assessments for revealing important disparities. Results also showed that highly aggregated data hide these differences making it more difficult to target the most vulnerable groups when planning measures to increase equitable water allocation. While quantitative data reveal an important perspective of the water situation, qualitative data about adequacy of resources, services or institutions, improve understanding of which issues to prioritize. A valid and useful community water index must be based on representative participation, transparency and local influence on the methodology and subsequent results.     

Information systems for enhancing social experience in a conference context: A sensor based approach

We combine Auto Identification and Web technologies in an extensible on-site event support system for enhancing experience of conference organizers as well as participants. Our system enables users to authenticate themselves using RFID badges and to access interactive, Web-based services via a touchscreen PC. The developed services aim at supporting social interactions of participants, and thus validate the promising usage directions of the combination of offline social networks and the online social Web. The main hypothesis of our work is that: ??A sensor based information system can truly enhance social conference experience.?? Technically, we have investigated employment of Web 2.0 technologies in social, sensor and mobile technologies enabled systems at conferences and events. This article gives an overview of the overall system and its evaluation via a user survey and usage log data collected during the Extended Semantic Web Conference (ESWC) 2010 and similar international conferences, altogether with several hundred participants.     

Modeling broad-scale patterns of avian species richness across the Midwestern United States with measures of satellite image texture

Avian biodiversity is threatened, and in order to prioritize limited conservation resources and conduct effective conservation planning a better understanding of avian species richness patterns is needed. The use of image texture measures, as a proxy for the spatial structure of land cover and vegetation, has proven useful in explaining patterns of avian abundance and species richness. However, prior studies that modeled habitat with texture measures were conducted over small geographical extents and typically focused on a single habitat type. Our goal was to evaluate the performance of texture measures over broad spatial extents and across multiple habitat types with varying levels of vertical habitat structure. We calculated a suite of texture measures from 114 Landsat images over a study area of 1,498,000 km² in the Midwestern United States, which included habitats ranging from grassland to forest. Avian species richness was modeled for several functional guilds as a function of image texture. We subsequently compared the explanatory power of texture-only models with models fitted using landscape composition metrics derived from the National Land Cover Dataset, as well as models fitted using both texture and composition metrics. Measures of image texture were effective in modeling spatial patterns of avian species richness in multiple habitat types, explaining up to 51% of the variability in species richness of permanent resident birds. In comparison, landscape composition metrics explained up to 56% of the variability in permanent resident species richness. In the most heavily forested ecoregion, texture-measures outperformed landscape metrics, and the two types of measurements were complementary in multivariate models. However, in two out of three ecoregions examined, landscape composition metrics consistently performed slightly better than texture measures, and the variance explained by the two types of measures overlapped considerably. These results show that image texture measures derived from satellite imagery can be an important tool for modeling patterns of avian species richness at broad spatial extents, and thus assist in conservation planning. However, texture measures were slightly inferior to landscape composition metrics in about three-fourths of our models. Therefore texture measures are best considered in conjunction with landscape metrics (if available) and are best used when they show explanatory ability that is complementarity to landscape metrics.     

面向调度主站一体化的数据网格设计与实现

高性能电力应用致力于搭建用于调度数据的统一管理、集中处理平台。数据网格易于海量数据共享的特点使其适用于实现调度主站一体化。构建了调度主站数据网格的基本架构,利用网格软件Globus Toolkit建立网格环境,在此基础上配置数据库访问中间件OGSA-DAI来建立面向调度主站一体化的数据网格实验平台。     

Cooperation and Competition in ALIAS: A Logic Framework for Agents that Negotiate

This paper presents ALIAS, an agent architecture based on intelligent logic agents, where the main form of agent reasoning is abduction. The system is particularly suited for solving problems where knowledge is incomplete, where agents may need to make reasonable hypotheses about the problem domain and other agents, and where the raised hypotheses have to be consistent for the overall set of agents. ALIAS agents are pro-active, exhibiting a goal-directed behavior, and autonomous, since each one can solve problems using its own private knowledge base. ALIAS agents are also social, because they are able to interact with other agents, in order to cooperatively solve problems. The coordination mechanisms are modeled by means of LAILA, a logic-based language which allows to express intra-agent reasoning and inter-agent coordination. As an application, we show how LAILA can be used to implement inter-agent dialogues, e.g., for negotiation. In particular, LAILA is well-suited to coordinate the process of negotiation aimed at exchanging resources between agents, thus allowing them to execute the plans to achieve their goals.     

Formal methods integration for the specification of dependable distributed systems

This paper describes a real-world case study in the specification and analysis of dependable distributed systems. The case study is an automated transport system with safety requirements. In order to manage the complexity of the problem of specifying the dynamic behavior of the whole system, a compositional approach is used, based on the integration of the trace logic of the Communicating Sequential Processes (CSP) theory, and stochastic Petri nets (SPNs). It is argued that the integration of different formal methods is a useful approach in the definition of practical engineering methodologies for the specification, design and analysis of complex dependable distributed systems.     

Tropos: An Agent-Oriented Software Development Methodology

Our goal in this paper is to introduce and motivate a methodology, called Tropos,¹ for building agent oriented software systems. Tropos is based on two key ideas. First, the notion of agent and all related mentalistic notions (for instance goals and plans) are used in all phases of software development, from early analysis down to the actual implementation. Second, Tropos covers also the very early phases of requirements analysis, thus allowing for a deeper understanding of the environment where the software must operate, and of the kind of interactions that should occur between software and human agents. The methodology is illustrated with the help of a case study. The Tropos language for conceptual modeling is formalized in a metamodel described with a set of UML class diagrams.     

Inverse Analysis of Impact Test Data: Experimental Study on Polymeric Materials Displaying Brittle Behaviour

This paper deals with the influence of the testing equipment on impact load measurements. A previously developed method of analysis and processing of the experimental data based on a refined analogical model of the impact event and inverse problem techniques is used. This method makes it possible to obtain the mechanical response of the material, notwithstanding the disturbance of the dynamic effects associated to the test. Results from tests carried out both on falling weight and swing pendulum instrumented testing machines are compared. It is shown that this method can give an accurate estimation of the actual bending force in impact testing independent of the testing equipment.