Due to the multiplicity of computer-aided engineering applications present in industry today, interoperability between programs has become increasingly important. A survey conducted among top engineering companies found that 82% of respondents reported using 3 or more CAD formats during the design process. A 1999 study by the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) estimated that inadequate interoperability between the OEM and its suppliers cost the US automotive industry over $1 billion per year, with the majority spent fixing data after translations. The Neutral Parametric Canonical Form (NPCF) prototype standard developed by the NSF Center for e-Design, BYU Site offers a solution to the translation problem by storing feature data in a CAD-neutral format to offer higher-fidelity parametric transfer between CAD systems. This research has focused on expanding the definitions of the NPCF to enforce data integrity and to support associativity between features to preserved design intent through the neutralization process. The NPCF data structure schema was defined to support associativity while maintaining data integrity. Neutral definitions of new features was added including multiple types of coordinate systems, planes and axes. Previously defined neutral features were expanded to support new functionality and the software architecture was redefined to support new CAD systems. Complex models have successfully been created and exchanged by multiple people in real-time to validated the approach of preserving associativity and support for a new CAD system, PTC Creo, was added.

This paper seeks to break down how a large scale Electronic Health Records system could improve quality of care and reduce monetary waste in the healthcare system. The paper further explores issues regarding regulations to data exchange and data interoperability. Due to the massive size of healthcare data, the exponential increase in the speed of data generation through innovative technologies, and the complexity of healthcare data types, the widespread of a large-scale EHR system has hit barriers. Much of the data available is unstructured or contained within a singular healthcare provider’s systems. To fully utilize all the data available, methods for making data interoperable and regulations for data exchange to protect and support patients must be made. Through angles addressing data exchange and interoperability, we seek to break down the constraints and issues that EHR systems still face and gain an understanding of the regulatory landscape.

In advent of the Semantic Web and recent standardization efforts, Ontology has quickly become a popular and core semantic technology. Ontology is seen as a solution provider to knowledge based systems. It facilitates tasks such as knowledge sharing, reuse and intelligent processing by computer agents. A key problem addressed by Ontology is the semantic interoperability problem. Interoperability in general is a common problem in different domain applications and semantic interoperability is the hardest and an ongoing research problem. It is required for systems to exchange knowledge and having the meaning of the knowledge accurately and automatically interpreted by the receiving systems. The innovation is to allow knowledge to be consumed and used accurately in a way that is not foreseen by the original creator. While Ontology promotes semantic interoperability across systems by unifying their knowledge bases through consensual understanding, common engineering and processing practices, it does not solve the semantic interoperability problem at the global level. As individuals are increasingly empowered with tools, ontologies will eventually be created more easily and rapidly at a near individual scale. Global semantic interoperability between heterogeneous ontologies created by small groups of individuals will then be required. Ontology mapping is a mechanism for providing semantic bridges between ontologies. While ontology mapping promotes semantic interoperability across ontologies, it is seen as the solution provider to the global semantic interoperability problem. However, there is no single ontology mapping solution that caters for all problem scenarios. Different applications would require different mapping techniques. In this thesis, we analyze the relations between ontology, semantic interoperability and ontology mapping, and promote an ontology-based semantic interoperability solution. We propose a novel ontology mapping approach namely, OntoMogic. It is based on first order logic and model theory. OntoMogic supports approximate mapping and produces structures (approximate entity correspondence) that represent alignment results between concepts. OntoMogic has been implemented as a coherent system and is applied in different application scenarios. We present case studies in the network configuration, security intrusion detection and IT governance & compliance management domain. The full process of ontology engineering to mapping has been demonstrated to promote ontology-based semantic interoperability.

<p>Interoperabilitet blir viktigare och viktigare för Sveriges del, även för funktionen sjukvård. Denna uppsats kommer att behandla likheter och skillnader mellan sjukvårdsdoktriner, handböcker och reglementen med NATO:s och framförallt Norges motsvarigheter, för att undersöka om den svenska Försvarsmakten sjukvårdsorganisation är interoperabel, och för att finna saker som kan förändras för att öka effektiviteten och interoperabiliteten. Under uppsatsen dras slutsatser som att svenska Försvarsmakten tagit åt sig stora delar av de kunskaper som NATO tidigare har gjort. Sverige ”kopierar” delar av NATO:s doktrin för sjukvård, NATO AJP-4,10 Allied joint medical support doctrine. Saker som skulle kunna påverka samarbete med andra länder på ett negativt sätt, t.ex. att alla länder har egna nationella regler samt vissa olikheter i doktriner och handböcker som hur vi i Sverige sätter färger på skadade vid olyckor med en stor mängd skadade, medan detta inte nämns i NATO:s doktrin diskuteras också i uppsatsen. Vi i Sverige har även vid dessa stora olyckor satt tidpunkter för när patienterna kan behövas vård, vilket inte heller går att finna i NATO:s doktrin. Väldigt få skillnader har hittats mellan Sveriges och NATO:s sjukvårdsorganisationer och arbetssätt. Däremot är likheterna väldigt många, vilket gör att samarbete mellan Sverige och NATO länder kan vara mycket effektivt. Detta gör att man i slutsatserna och diskussionen kan läsa om hur svenska Försvarsmaktens sjukvård är interoperabel, men självklart finns saker att förbättra för att öka effektiviteten.</p> / <p>Interoperability becomes more and more important for Sweden, also for the medical. This paper will discuss the similarities and differences between medical doctrines, manuals, regulations, etc. with NATO and particularly the Norwegian similarities, to investigate if the Swedish Armed Forces health care organization are interoperable, and to find things that can be changed to increase efficiency and to be more interoperable. In this paper the author’s conclusions that the Swedish Armed Forces have access to large parts of the knowledge that NATO had done. Sweden "copy" part of NATO's doctrine for medical care, NATO AJP-4, 10 Allied joint medical support doctrine. The author also sees things that could affect the cooperation with other countries in a negative way. Things like that all countries have their own national rules and some differences in doctrine and manuals like how we in Sweden puts colour on damaged in accidents with a large number wounded, while this is not mentioned in the NATO doctrine. We in Sweden have also set times for when patients may need treatment in major accidents, which again can be found in the NATO doctrine. Very few differences have existed between Sweden and NATO's healthcare organizations and practices. However, many similarities, which makes cooperation between Sweden and NATO countries can be very effective. This means that the conclusions and the discussion can be read on the Swedish Armed Forces' medical care is quite interoperable, but obviously there are things to improve in order to increase efficiency.</p>

This research is concerned with theoretical and methodological aspects of geographic information transformation between different user contexts. In this dissertation I present theories and methodological approaches that enable a context sensititve use and reuse of geographic data in geographic information systems. A primary motive for the reported research is that the patrons interested in answering environmental questions have increased in number and been diversified during the last 10-15 years. The interest from international, national and regional authorities together with multinational and national corporations embrace a range of spatial and temporal scales from global to local, and from many-year/-decade perspectives to real time applications. These differences in spatial and temporal detail will be expressed as rather different questions towards existing data. It is expected that geographic information systems will be able to integrate a large number of diverse data to answer current and future geographic questions and support spatial decision processes. However, there are still important deficiencies in contemporary theories and methods for geographic information integration Literature studies and preliminary experiments suggested that any transformation between different users’ contexts would change either the thematic, spatial or temporal detail, and the result would include some amount of semantic uncertainty. Consequently, the reported experiments are separated into studies of change in either spatial or thematic detail. The scope concerned with thematic detatil searched for approaches to represent indiscernibility between categories, and the scope concerned with spatial detail studied semantic effects caused by changing spatial granularity. The findings make several contributions to the current knowledge about transforming geographic information between users’ contexts. When changing the categorical resolution of a geographic dataset, it is possible to represent cases of indiscernibility using novel methods of rough classification described in the thesis. The use of rough classification methods together with manual landscape interpretations made it possible to evaluate semantic uncertainty in geographic data. Such evaluations of spatially aggregated geographic data sets show both predictable and non-predictable effects. and these effects may vary for different environmental variables. Development of methods that integrate crisp, fuzzy and rough data enables spatial decision support systems to consider various aspects of semantic uncertainty. By explicitly representing crisp, fuzzy and rough relations between datasets, a deeper semantic meaning is given to geographic databasses. The explicit representation of semantic relations is called a Geographic Concept Topology and is held as a viable tool for context transformation and full integration of geographic datasets.

Interoperabilitet blir viktigare och viktigare för Sveriges del, även för funktionen sjukvård. Denna uppsats kommer att behandla likheter och skillnader mellan sjukvårdsdoktriner, handböcker och reglementen med NATO:s och framförallt Norges motsvarigheter, för att undersöka om den svenska Försvarsmakten sjukvårdsorganisation är interoperabel, och för att finna saker som kan förändras för att öka effektiviteten och interoperabiliteten. Under uppsatsen dras slutsatser som att svenska Försvarsmakten tagit åt sig stora delar av de kunskaper som NATO tidigare har gjort. Sverige ”kopierar” delar av NATO:s doktrin för sjukvård, NATO AJP-4,10 Allied joint medical support doctrine. Saker som skulle kunna påverka samarbete med andra länder på ett negativt sätt, t.ex. att alla länder har egna nationella regler samt vissa olikheter i doktriner och handböcker som hur vi i Sverige sätter färger på skadade vid olyckor med en stor mängd skadade, medan detta inte nämns i NATO:s doktrin diskuteras också i uppsatsen. Vi i Sverige har även vid dessa stora olyckor satt tidpunkter för när patienterna kan behövas vård, vilket inte heller går att finna i NATO:s doktrin. Väldigt få skillnader har hittats mellan Sveriges och NATO:s sjukvårdsorganisationer och arbetssätt. Däremot är likheterna väldigt många, vilket gör att samarbete mellan Sverige och NATO länder kan vara mycket effektivt. Detta gör att man i slutsatserna och diskussionen kan läsa om hur svenska Försvarsmaktens sjukvård är interoperabel, men självklart finns saker att förbättra för att öka effektiviteten. / Interoperability becomes more and more important for Sweden, also for the medical. This paper will discuss the similarities and differences between medical doctrines, manuals, regulations, etc. with NATO and particularly the Norwegian similarities, to investigate if the Swedish Armed Forces health care organization are interoperable, and to find things that can be changed to increase efficiency and to be more interoperable. In this paper the author’s conclusions that the Swedish Armed Forces have access to large parts of the knowledge that NATO had done. Sweden "copy" part of NATO's doctrine for medical care, NATO AJP-4, 10 Allied joint medical support doctrine. The author also sees things that could affect the cooperation with other countries in a negative way. Things like that all countries have their own national rules and some differences in doctrine and manuals like how we in Sweden puts colour on damaged in accidents with a large number wounded, while this is not mentioned in the NATO doctrine. We in Sweden have also set times for when patients may need treatment in major accidents, which again can be found in the NATO doctrine. Very few differences have existed between Sweden and NATO's healthcare organizations and practices. However, many similarities, which makes cooperation between Sweden and NATO countries can be very effective. This means that the conclusions and the discussion can be read on the Swedish Armed Forces' medical care is quite interoperable, but obviously there are things to improve in order to increase efficiency.

The emergence of Grid computing infrastructures enables researchers to shareresources and collaborate in more efficient ways than before, despite belongingto different organizations and being geographically distributed. While the Gridcomputing paradigm offers new opportunities, it also gives rise to newdifficulties. This thesis investigates methods, architectures, and algorithmsfor a range of topics in the area of Grid resource management. One studiedtopic is how to automate and improve resource selection, despite heterogeneityin Grid hardware, software, availability, ownership, and usage policies.Algorithmical difficulties for this are, e.g., characterization of jobs andresources, prediction of resource performance, and data placementconsiderations. Investigated Quality of Service aspects of resource selectioninclude how to guarantee job start and/or completion times as well as how tosynchronize multiple resources for coordinated use through coallocation.Another explored research topic is architectural considerations for frameworksthat simplify and automate submission, monitoring, and fault handling for largeamounts of jobs. This thesis also investigates suitable Grid interactionpatterns for scientific workflows, studies programming models that enable dataparallelism for such workflows, as well as analyzes how workflow compositiontools should be designed to increase flexibility and expressiveness. We today have the somewhat paradoxical situation where Grids, originally aimed tofederate resources and overcome interoperability problems between differentcomputing platforms, themselves struggle with interoperability problems causedby the wide range of interfaces, protocols, and data formats that are used indifferent environments. This thesis demonstrates how proof-of-concept softwaretools for Grid resource management can, by using (proposed) standard formatsand protocols as well as leveraging state-of-the-art principles fromservice-oriented architectures, be made independent of current Gridinfrastructures. Further interoperability contributions include an in-depthstudy that surveys issues related to the use of Grid resources in scientificworkflows. This study improves our understanding of interoperability amongscientific workflow systems by viewing this topic from three differentperspectives: model of computation, workflow language, and executionenvironment. A final contribution in this thesis is the investigation of how the design ofGrid middleware tools can adopt principles and concepts from softwareengineering in order to improve, e.g., adaptability and interoperability.

In this thesis, the study mainly focuses on the current trends in development of compact multi-media mobile phone and provides a wideband monopole antenna design suitable for application in wireless communicating system in the near future. By utilizing the planar monopole antenna structure, the proposed antenna design is easy to be embedded into the mobile phone. Further, by using a shielding metal cover, we create a zone with low surface current distribution. This effect will reduce the electromagnetic coupling between the antenna and the electronic elements and make it possible to integrate more related elements into the mobile phones. Finally, we use the simulation software to analyze the dielectric effect caused by the casing of mobile phone and human body on the proposed antenna.

In 21st century, the development strategy and the management policy of Information Communication Technology (ICT) is a key issue to a nation¡¦s competitiveness. Particularly, the development of telecommunication liberalization, governance in the telecommunications regime and the relevant science and technology policies of the telecommunication industry is the most important factor for creating a leading knowledge-based economy for Information Communication Technology related industries. Looking forward to the future, the trends and developments of the convergence of telecommunication, broadcasting and internet services will drive the demand for the telecommunication and broadcasting industries to look for cost-efficient provisioning of converged multimedia services. The emerging technology of next generation network (NGN) infrastructure enables the convergence of multi-access networks to deliver the multimedia contents and application services seamlessly. Therefore, the consumers, government, and industry can obtain the benefits because of technology development and industrial cooperation. In addition, the converged broadcasting and telecommunication services as well as Fixed-Mobile Converged applications over the internets results in the needs for the improvement in network interconnectivity and service interoperability. No matter it is telecommunication, broadcasting or information, to converge as common info-communication services, such as telephony, data and multimedia will eventually run over the all IP networks. Therefore, IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) becomes one of the promising technologies to drive it happen. However, existing policy and regulations must cope with the changes of this development. The liberalization of broadband and communication market allows the participation of the private companies to create new investment and revenue. This research studies the possible evolution of an IP-based communication infrastructure from today's networks toward a converged next generation network and proposes an Inter-Exchange Center of Converged Network Architecture (IEXCNA), applying to VoIP service. The IEXCNA model shows more efficient in the transmission, interconnectivity and reducing implementation cost of network infrastructure. Thus the consumers are able to enjoy better quality of service and cheaper rate of use for multimedia services.

The delivery of quality healthcare to all citizens at reasonable costs is an important challenge. With the increase in the aging population, the costs of managing chronic diseases increase. Today, healthcare services tend to shift from recovery to prevention. Remote healthcare monitoring is crucial for prevention and monitoring of chronic diseases since they require continuous and long-term monitoring. The advances in networking, mobile communications and medical device technologies offer a great potential to realize remote healthcare monitoring. However, seamless integration of multi-modal medical devices to the existing healthcare information systems is necessary for the automated use of medical device observations in related applications. The thesis addresses the automatic acquisition and use of multi-modal medical device observations in healthcare information systems. The interoperability of medical devices with healthcare information systems requires both physical connectivity and application level interoperability. Therefore, the thesis concentrates on both the medical device domain and the interoperability efforts on the existing healthcare information systems. It provides an interoperability solution based on ISO/IEEE 11073 and HL7 standards. This work is also realized the automatic acquisition and use of multi-modal medical device observations in an intelligent healthcare monitoring and decision support system which is developed as a part of the IST-027074 SAPHIRE project funded by the European Commission.