In twentieth century we have witnessed an extensive growth of internet based services in our every sphere of life. The use of information technology has been a core element using by the government as a communication way to its citizen. E-services delivery is present in developing countries but the erudition is still in immaturity level. Most local governments only provide published information and downloadable forms. Most local government sites provide only one way communications. All are still at the basic level of publishing information online. Before implementing and developing any e-services, the authorities should know the expectation to the service from the users and it is also important to know the usability of the e-service in order to develop it with more usability function so that the users will satisfy by using the service. This study is designed to take descriptive look at whether three e-services of Bangladesh government are perceived usable by the citizens. The studies focused on the current usability level of the three e-services and also find out the citizens expectation from those services. The overall conclusion is about the usability level of the e-services, expectations from the citizens, and suggesting the usability criteria to make the e-service more usable. / Program: Magisterutbildning i informatik

Endocrine disruption and high occurrences of intersex have been observed in wild fish associated with wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) effluents in the urbanized reaches of the Grand River watershed located in southern Ontario, Canada. WWTP effluent is a complex matrix with diverse aquatic environmental contaminants and stressors. This study aimed to: (1) characterize the spatio-temporal distribution and fate of antiandrogenic personal care products (triclosan, chlorophene, and dichlorophene), along with selected pharmaceuticals (carbamazepine, ibuprofen, naproxen, and venlafaxine) and the herbicide, atrazine in the Grand River watershed and (2) model the behaviour of these contaminants in the aquatic environment. Water sampling of 29 sites which covered six municipal WWTPs and ~100 km of river length was completed during summer low flows (July 2012). Monthly samples were also collected immediately upstream and downstream of a major WWTP (Kitchener) from August to November 2012. Many of the target pharmaceuticals and triclosan were detected in WWTP effluents in the Grand River watershed, especially those that did not nitrify (minimal treatment with high ammonia). Chlorophene was either undetected or was only found at trace levels in the effluents. Under low flow conditions, triclosan and several other pharmaceuticals exhibited a spatial pattern where concentrations increased directly downstream of the WWTPs, then decreased with distance downstream (dilution and/or degradation). Chlorophene, in contrast, was not found downstream of most of the WWTP outfalls but was first detected at a site 5 km upstream of a WWTP and then continued with relatively constant concentrations for approximately 29 km downstream. It was also only found during the summer sampling period. Atrazine was consistently found in all sampling locations which reflected the agricultural non-point source nature of this compound. The WASP 7.5 model (US Environmental Protection Agency) was adapted and calibrated to a reach of the Grand River associated with the Kitchener WWTP. The simulation of the fate and transport of the target compounds revealed that flow-driven transport processes (advection and dispersion) greatly influence their behaviour in the aquatic environment. However, fate mechanisms such as biodegradation and photolysis also potentially play an important role in the attenuation of most compounds. The exception was carbamazepine where it was shown to act as a conservative tracer compound for wastewater specific contaminants in the water phase. The fate model developed can be applied in the future to predict the fate of a wide variety of contaminants of emerging concern across the watershed to help define the exposure of these biologically active chemicals to sensitive ecosystems.

No description available.

Endocrine disruption and high occurrences of intersex have been observed in wild fish associated with wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) effluents in the urbanized reaches of the Grand River watershed located in southern Ontario, Canada. WWTP effluent is a complex matrix with diverse aquatic environmental contaminants and stressors. This study aimed to: (1) characterize the spatio-temporal distribution and fate of antiandrogenic personal care products (triclosan, chlorophene, and dichlorophene), along with selected pharmaceuticals (carbamazepine, ibuprofen, naproxen, and venlafaxine) and the herbicide, atrazine in the Grand River watershed and (2) model the behaviour of these contaminants in the aquatic environment. Water sampling of 29 sites which covered six municipal WWTPs and ~100 km of river length was completed during summer low flows (July 2012). Monthly samples were also collected immediately upstream and downstream of a major WWTP (Kitchener) from August to November 2012. Many of the target pharmaceuticals and triclosan were detected in WWTP effluents in the Grand River watershed, especially those that did not nitrify (minimal treatment with high ammonia). Chlorophene was either undetected or was only found at trace levels in the effluents. Under low flow conditions, triclosan and several other pharmaceuticals exhibited a spatial pattern where concentrations increased directly downstream of the WWTPs, then decreased with distance downstream (dilution and/or degradation). Chlorophene, in contrast, was not found downstream of most of the WWTP outfalls but was first detected at a site 5 km upstream of a WWTP and then continued with relatively constant concentrations for approximately 29 km downstream. It was also only found during the summer sampling period. Atrazine was consistently found in all sampling locations which reflected the agricultural non-point source nature of this compound. The WASP 7.5 model (US Environmental Protection Agency) was adapted and calibrated to a reach of the Grand River associated with the Kitchener WWTP. The simulation of the fate and transport of the target compounds revealed that flow-driven transport processes (advection and dispersion) greatly influence their behaviour in the aquatic environment. However, fate mechanisms such as biodegradation and photolysis also potentially play an important role in the attenuation of most compounds. The exception was carbamazepine where it was shown to act as a conservative tracer compound for wastewater specific contaminants in the water phase. The fate model developed can be applied in the future to predict the fate of a wide variety of contaminants of emerging concern across the watershed to help define the exposure of these biologically active chemicals to sensitive ecosystems.

Chemical and biological contaminants can enter a drinking water distribution system through one of the many access points to the network and can spread quickly affecting a very large area. This is of great concern, and water utilities need to consider effective tools and mitigation strategies to improve water network security. This work presents two components that have been integrated into EPA’s Water Security Toolkit, an open-source software package that includes a set of tools to help water utilities protect the public against potential contamination events. The first component is a novel water quality modeling framework referred to as Merlion. The linear system describing contaminant spread through the network at the core of Merlion provides several advantages and potential uses that are aligned with current emerging water security applications. This computational framework is able to efficiently generate an explicit mathematical model that can be easily embedded into larger mathematical system. Merlion can also be used to efficiently simulate a large number of scenarios speeding up current water security tools by an order of magnitude. The last component is a pair of mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) formulations for efficient source inversion and optimal sampling. The contaminant source inversion problem involves determining the source of contamination given a small set of measurements. The source inversion formulation is able to handle discrete positive/negative measurements from manual grab samples taken at different sampling cycles. In addition, sensor/sample placement formulations are extended to determine the optimal locations for the next manual sampling cycle. This approach is enabled by a strategy that significantly reduces the size of the Merlion water quality model, giving rise to a much smaller MILP that is solvable in a real-time setting. The approach is demonstrated on a large-scale water network model with over 12,000 nodes while considering over 100 timesteps. The results show the approach is successful in finding the source of contamination remarkably quickly, requiring a small number of sampling cycles and a small number of sampling teams. These tools are being integrated and tested with a real-time response system.

No description available.

Embedded systems, including critical embedded systems (CES) are increasingly present in the modern society, providing specific solutions from small to large complex systems, such as in cars, airplanes, and healthcare equipment. Failures in these systems can result in damage to human beings, and to the environment, or can represent an unrecoverable financial loss. In this sense, it is very important to ensure they are built with quality. To provide such quality, it is necessary to consider their software architecture, which impacts on the quality of the systems. This way, the main objective of this Masters project is to propose a quality model concerning the most important quality attributes for CES, which may be used to support (but not limited to) architectural activities such as analysis and evaluation in the context of CES. / Sistemas embarcados, incluindo sistemas embarcados críticos (SEC), estão cada vez mais presentes na sociedade moderna, provendo soluções específicas que variam de sistemas pequenos até sistemas grandes e complexos, como é possível encontrar em carros, aviões e equipamentos médicos. Falhas nesses sistemas podem resultar em danos à seres humanos e ao meio ambiente, ou então em uma perda financeira irrecuperável. Sendo assim, é muito importante garantir que os SEC sejam construídos e apresentem um nível adequado de qualidade. Para garantir que esses sistemas alcancem tal qualidade, é necessário considerar sua arquitetura de software, já que esta impacta de maneira significativa na qualidade do software enquanto artefato ou produto. Deste modo, o objetivo deste projeto de mestrado é de propor um modelo de qualidade que contém os atributos de qualidade mais importantes para SEC, servindo como artefato para apoiar a execução de atividades arquiteturais (além de outras que possam se beneficiar) tais como análise e avaliação, no contexto de SEC.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-12T15:49:28Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 license.txt: 1748 bytes, checksum: 8a4605be74aa9ea9d79846c1fba20a33 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Um grande desafio da Engenharia de Software Baseada em Componentes (ESBC) é a qualidade dos componentes utilizados em um sistema. A confiabilidade de um sistema baseado em componentes depende da confiabilidade dos componentes dos quais ele é composto. Na ESBC, a busca, seleção e avaliação de componentes de software é considerado um ponto chave para o efetivo desenvolvimento de sistemas baseado em componentes. Até agora a indústria de software tem se concentrado nos aspectos funcionais dos componentes de software, deixando de lado uma das tarefas mais árduas, que é a avaliação de sua qualidade. Se a garantia de qualidade de componentes desenvolvidos in-house é uma tarefa custosa, a garantia da qualidade utilizando componentes desenvolvidos externamente os quais frequentemente não se tem acesso ao código fonte e documentação detalhada se torna um desafio ainda maior. Assim, esta Tese introduz um Framework de Qualidade de Componentes de Software, baseado em módulos bem definidos que se complementam a fim de garantir a qualidade dos componentes de software. Por fim, um estudo experimental foi desenvolvido e executado de modo que se possa analisar a viabilidade do framework proposto

Business Intelligence Systems are becoming more and more popular in recent years. It is caused by the need of reusing data in order to gain some potentially useful business information about. Those systems are advanced set of tools, which causes high prices of purchase and licensing. Therefore, it is important to choose the system which fits the best particular business needs. The aim of this thesis is to elaborate a method for comparison of existing Business Intelligence Systems that are supporting data mining. The method consist of a quality model, build according to existing standards, and set of steps which should be taken to choose a Business Intelligence System according to particular requirements of its future user. The first part of the thesis focuses on the analysis of existing works providing a way for comparison of those software products. It is shown here that there is no existing systematic approach resolving this problem. However, criteria presented in those works along with the description of quality model standards were used for creating the quality model and proposing a set of basic measures. Also the phrases for the evaluation process were identified. The next part of the research is a case study which purpose is to show the usefulness of proposed evaluation method. The example is simple, but has proven that the method can be easily modified for specific needs and used for comparison of real Business Intelligence Systems. The quality level measured in the case study turned out to be very similar for each system. The evaluation method may be extended in future work with more advanced measures or additional characteristic which were not taken into account in this research.

Ontologies are formal knowledge models that describe concepts and relationships and enable data integration, information search, and reasoning. Ontology Design Patterns (ODPs) are reusable solutions intended to simplify ontology development and support the use of semantic technologies by ontology engineers. ODPs document and package good modelling practices for reuse, ideally enabling inexperienced ontologists to construct high-quality ontologies. Although ODPs are already used for development, there are still remaining challenges that have not been addressed in the literature. These research gaps include a lack of knowledge about (1) which ODP features are important for ontology engineering, (2) less experienced developers' preferences and barriers for employing ODP tooling, and (3) the suitability of the eXtreme Design (XD) ODP usage methodology in non-academic contexts. This dissertation aims to close these gaps by combining quantitative and qualitative methods, primarily based on five ontology engineering projects involving inexperienced ontologists. A series of ontology engineering workshops and surveys provided data about developer preferences regarding ODP features, ODP usage methodology, and ODP tooling needs. Other data sources are ontologies and ODPs published on the web, which have been studied in detail. To evaluate tooling improvements, experimental approaches provide data from comparison of new tools and techniques against established alternatives. The analysis of the gathered data resulted in a set of measurable quality indicators that cover aspects of ODP documentation, formal representation or axiomatisation, and usage by ontologists. These indicators highlight quality trade-offs: for instance, between ODP Learnability and Reusability, or between Functional Suitability and Performance Efficiency. Furthermore, the results demonstrate a need for ODP tools that support three novel property specialisation strategies, and highlight the preference of inexperienced developers for template-based ODP instantiation---neither of which are supported in prior tooling. The studies also resulted in improvements to ODP search engines based on ODP-specific attributes. Finally, the analysis shows that XD should include guidance for the developer roles and responsibilities in ontology engineering projects, suggestions on how to reuse existing ontology resources, and approaches for adapting XD to project-specific contexts.