Many rural communities in arid areas of the world make extensive use of perennial water supplies retained within the sediment of a river channel. This naturally filtered water provides for their basic subsistence. A general term applied to the abstraction of water from river sediment is sand-abstraction. Ephemeral and seasonal rivers primarily drain the dryland regions of the world. These arid regions are typically subject to extensive environmental degradation with a consequent high degree of surface erosion. As a result, many of the rivers have become sand rivers, filled with copious amounts of sediment. Most arid areas are subject to occasional rainstorms and flash floods that immediately drain to waterways and saturate the sediment within the river channel. In larger rivers a perennial supply of water is maintained within the sediment. Despite a perceived potential for this water resource there has been little development of any small-scale technology that is suitable for use at a basic rural level. A research and study programme was instigated to assess fully, the potential of such a resource. Field research was undertaken to characterise typical sand rivers and to assess the water storage and water loss and retention factors within river sediment. A check list for identifying possible sand-abstraction sites was devised. In the process of this study the advantages of storing water in sand was fully appreciated and attention given to the development of initially less suitable sites in serious water deficit areas. Systems for efficient abstraction of water were reviewed and designs formulated for the fabrication of equipment to mechanically draw water from river sediment. A series of well-screens, well-points, infiltration galleries and caissons have been designed and initial tests have been conducted under field conditions. Simple technology handpumps that it was considered could be operated, maintained and repaired by rural communities using locally available materials have been developed in conjunction with the abstraction equipment. In consultation with rural people an analysis was made of the technical and sociological requirements that are considered essential for the sustainability of technology suitable for use by disadvantaged rural communities. Both practical and literature research has indicated the latent possibility of this technology. Interaction has been maintained with four communities throughout the research and development period and contributions and indications received are that there is a need to develop such a water source with an upgraded technology. The conclusion from the work undertaken is that development of the technology is worthwhile and that greater efforts should be made to promote it at a small-scale, rural level. In addition the potential to provide clean water in arid regions from such a lowtechnology application should be drawn to the attention of professional water engineers.

In market-driven requirements engineering requirements are elicited from various internal and external sources. These sources may include engineers, marketing teams, customers etc. This results in a collection of requirements at multiple levels of abstractions. The Requirements Abstraction Model (RAM) is a Market Driven Requirements Engineering (MDRE) model that helps in managing requirements by organizing them at four levels (product, feature, function and component) of abstraction. The model is adaptable and can be tailored to meet the needs of the various organizations e.g. number of abstraction levels can be changed according to the needs of the organization. Software requirements are an important source of information when developing high-level tests (acceptance and system level tests). In order to place a requirement on a suitable level, workup activities (producing abstraction or breaking down a requirement) can be performed on the requirement. Such activities on the requirements can affect the test cases designed from them. Organizations willing to adopt the RAM need to know the suitability of the RAM requirements for designing high-level tests. This master thesis analyzes the requirements at product, feature, function and component level to evaluate their suitability for supporting the creation of high-level system test. This analysis includes designing test cases from requirements at different levels and evaluating how much of the information needed in the test cases is available in the RAM requirements. Test cases are graded on a 5 to 1 scale according to the level of detail they contain, 5 for better detailed and 1 for very incomplete. Twenty requirements have been selected for this document analysis; twenty requirements contain five requirements from each level (product, feature, function and component). Organizations can utilize the results of this study, while making decision to adopt the RAM model. Decomposition of the tests developed from the requirements is another area that has been explored in this study. Test decomposition involves dividing tests into sub-tests. Some benefits of the test decomposition include better resource utilization, meet time-to-market and better test prioritization. This study explores how tests designed from the RAM requirements support test decomposition, and help in utilizing above listed benefits of the test decomposition.

As a result of Web 2.0 technologies such as Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (Ajax) web-based applications with rich contents are evolving to be more and more like normal applications in aspects, such as interactivity, functionality, and usability. This evolvement makes it possible to create web-based services, providing maps for users to search and browse geographic information. This thesis is an evaluation of functionality, usability and accuracy for the four web-based map APIs: Google Maps, Microsoft Virtual Earth, Multimap and ViaMichelin. The thesis explains how web-based mapping works, common functionality provided, and evaluates the functionality provided by each map service provider as well as the offered usability. In addition to this, it also includes the results of several tests, illustrating the APIs’ browser compatibility, performance and accuracy. After testing and evaluation of the four APIs, the conclusion is that none of them can be appointed as the winner. They all have benefits and drawbacks; differences in terms of functionality, compatibility, usability, geocoding and development support, and the choice of API is consequently dependent of the type of application. As a result of this, and the fact that the APIs are constantly changing in terms of functionality and coverage, it is important to create applications independent of the map service provider. This was successfully done during the internship at Amadeus by creating a map abstraction layer in-between the applications and the maps, creating the possibility to switch API, or map service provider, without changed the code.

Requirement engineering (RE) is an important phase in any project. Both functional and non-functional requirements are required to be elicited. Quality requirements (QRs) are usually catered at the end of software development process. Along with functional requirements, non-functional (QRs) also need to be handled and implemented through a structural way. It is observed that most organizations do not have proper management for quality requirements in their project life cycles. Especially if we consider the case of market driven requirement engineering (MDRE), it is a dire need to handle those QRs along with the functional requirement using a structural way. In this study we investigate Requirements Abstraction Model (RAM), which is basically designed for MDRE and is the case of continuous RE. The purpose was to analyze RAM specifications, which could be able to provide an effective way of manage QRs. RAM also deals with the specification of QRs, so it was required to investigate that how effective RAM can handle the creation of QRs.

Illustrative visualization is a term for visualization techniques inspired by traditional technical and medical illustration. These techniques are based on knowledge of the human perception and provide effective visual abstraction to make the visualizations more understandable. Within volume rendering these expressive visualizations can be achieved using non-photorealistic rendering that combines different levels of abstraction to convey the most important information to the viewer. In this thesis I will look at illustrative techniques and show how these can be used to visualize anatomical structures in a medical volume data. The result of the thesis is a prototype of an anatomy education application, that makes use of illustrative techniques to have a focus+context visualization with feature enhancement, tone shading and labels describing the anatomical structures. This results in an expressive visualization and interactive exploration of the human anatomy.

>Magister Scientiae - MSc / Assessing groundwater-surface water interaction as a decision-making tool licensing water use South Africa: Case study area of Gevonden Farm is the title of the current study with the context that arises from the use of GRAII methodology which uses quaternary catchment boundaries for groundwater abstraction water use licence application assessment during decision making. The problem is that the quaternary catchment scale approach does not provide the scientific bases for site specific scale. The current study argues that such approach provides realistic, practical information at site specific scale and therefore informs the issuing of licences more accurately. The aim of the current study is to improve understanding of how the assessment of groundwater abstraction water use licence should be carried out at a site specific scale to improve decision making during licence issuance. The objective of the study is to outline the scientific study and demonstrate how the investigation that leads to the decision making can be conducted. The study was carried out using hydraulic methods such as pumping test and geochemical analysis method. Hydraulic properties were determined and chemical elements were analysed for and compared with the SANS 241 water quality standards for domestic and agricultural use. Hydraulic properties such as hydraulic conductivity (K), transmissivity (T), yield and storativity (S) were determined. Major and minor ions that are required to be analysed for domestic and agricultural water use were analysed. Piper diagrams and FC method were used to analyse data. The piper diagrams plotted indicated that surface water is mixing with groundwater and that means there is connection between groundwater and surface water. The chemical elements analysed for were compared with SANS 241 water quality standards for domestic and agricultural use. The water quality on the investigated site can be categorized as having good water quality. A sustainable yield estimated from the two boreholes (BH03 and BH05) which was 1.02 Ɩ/s. The available drawdown estimated with reference to the boreholes water strikes that were determined by EC profiling were 135 mbgl from both boreholes. The study recommends the issuance of water use licence with conditions that chemistry of water should be analysed for once a quarter and boreholes water levels should be analysed for once a month.

Requirements Engineering (RE) is a crucial part of any product management and product development activity, and as such deficiencies in the RE process may have severe consequences. There are reports from industry that point towards inadequate requirements being one of the leading sources for project failure. Software Process Improvement (SPI) is generally seen as the main tool to address process deficiencies in general and within RE. Assessments lead to establishing plans for improvements that are subsequently implemented and evaluated, and then the SPI cycle starts again, in an optimal case being incremental and continuous. Most well known SPI frameworks, e.g. CMM, CMMI, SPICE and QIP, are based on these general principles. There are however several factors that can have a negative impact on SPI efforts in general, and in the case of SPI targeted at RE in particular. Time and cost are two fundamental factors that can effectively “raise the bar” for SPI efforts being initiated at all. This is the particular case for Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs) with limited resources, and a limited ability to wait for the return on their investment. Other issues include commitment and involvement in the SPI work by the ones affected by the changes, coverage of the RE area in SPI frameworks, and the ability to focus improvements to areas where they are needed the most. The research presented in this thesis is based on actual needs identified in industry, and all of the proposed solutions have also been validated in industry to address issues of applicability and usability. In general, the goal of the research is to “lower the bar”, i.e. enabling SMEs to initiate and perform SPI activities. It is accomplished through the presentation and validation of two assessment methods that targets RE, one aimed at both fast and low-cost benchmarking of current practices, and the other designed to produce tangible improvement proposals that can be used as input to an improvement activity, i.e. producing a relatively accurate assessment but taking limited time and resources into account. Further, to offer a structured way in which SMEs can focus their SPI efforts, a framework is introduced that can be used to package improvement proposals with regards to their relative priority taking dependencies into account. This enables SMEs to choose what to do first based on their needs, as well as a way to control time to return on their investment by controlling the size of the undertaking. As a result of industry validation of the assessment method and packaging framework, several improvement proposals were identified and prioritized/packaged. As a part of a process improvement effort (based on an improvement proposal package) an RE model was developed that was appropriate for SMEs faced with a market-driven product centered development situation. The model, called Requirements Abstraction Model (RAM), addresses the structuring and specification of requirements. The main feature of the model is that it not only offers a structured way in which requirements can be specified, but it also takes a requirement’s abstraction level into account, using abstraction for the work-up instead of putting all requirements in one repository independent of abstraction level. The RAM was developed to support primarily the product management effort, recognizing that RE from this perspective is not project initiated but rather project initiating. The model assists product managers to take requirements on varying abstraction levels and refining them to the point of being good-enough to offer decision support for management, and at the same time being good-enough for project initiation. The main contribution of the thesis is to present SMEs with “tools” that help them commit to and perform SPI activities. Moreover, the thesis introduces the RAM model that was developed based on needs identified in industry, and subsequently piloted in industry to assure usability.

This thesis explores the conditions of neoliberal power through the lens of finance as a specific form of social mediation. Based on the recognition that neoliberal financialisation is mediated by financial forms that are characterised by a high degree of abstraction, the conceptualisation proceeds through an immanent critique aimed at tracing out the social sources behind them. In doing so it seeks to uncover the deep structures that make neoliberal power possible yet which tend to remain misrecognised through the refraction produced by its apparent forms. The highly financialised economy of Sweden serves as the concrete case for examining this social phenomenon. Neoliberal power, it is argued, derives its strength from a deepening fetishism that naturalises the alienated condition of the globalised capital relation, ultimately rooted in the way that money absents its own social source. This absenting gives rise to the false but necessary narcissistic social consciousness upon which the process as a whole relies. The absence of a concept of money’s own absenting in theories of neoliberal power tends to reproduce the detotalizing abstraction that the process itself depends on, with implications for the possibility for transformative change.

La fenêtre transparente d’une oeuvre ouverte sur le monde a été érigée comme un modèle de la représentation zolienne par une critique qui, tout en dénonçant la transitivité comme une utopie littéraire naïve, n’en a pas moins validé la pertinence pour comprendre la démarche de Zola. La fenêtre condamnée interroge le passage de ce motif en un symbole métadiscursif validant la théorie de la transitivité, au regard de son actualisation dans le cycle romanesque des Rougon-Macquart. Celle-ci plaide contre toute attente pour un dysfonctionnement de ce « technème » de la description, et donc pour une esthétique beaucoup moins tournée vers la transparence qu’elle ne le prétend elle-même bien souvent. De cette idée naît l’examen d’une possible esthétique de l’opacité de la représentation zolienne, se plaisant à perturber tous lesrelais usuels de la fiction romanesque réaliste (miroirs, enquêteurs et autres artistes réalistes…). Le naturalisme zolien semble ainsi davantage commandé par le modèle de la perversion voyeuriste, consciente de l’inaccessibilité de son désir (rendre compte du réel), qu’elle entretiendrait afin d’en cacher la fatale déception. Cette réalité inatteignable illustréepar le cycle des Rougon-Macquart conforterait dès lors l’assimilation de l’oeuvre zolienne à des théories en apparence bien éloignées de l’image caricaturale du naturalisme, celle d’un réel conçu comme une illusion chez Taine et Schopenhauer, ou encore celle d’une oeuvre fétiche nécessairement subordonnée à l’artifice, refermée sur la projection subjective de l’artiste, dans une préfiguration étonnante des recherches de la poétique mallarméenne et despremiers tenants de l’abstraction picturale. / TTransparent panes of glass and wide-open windows are some of the common models Zola’s critics have set up to emphasise the will of transitivity in his art. Although they denounce this idea as a literary utopia, it is still used as a pertinent key to understand Zolian fictional processes. La fenêtre condamnée questions the promotion of the “transparent window” to a metadiscursive symbol of Zolian transitivity by analysing its actualization in the Rougon- Macquart cycle. The study points out an astonishing dysfunction of this supposed “adjunct” of description in the novels, pleading for a totally different aesthetic pattern : an aesthetic of opaqueness, attacking all means of depicting objective reality (windows panes, mirrors,investigators, realistic artists...). Therefore, Zolian naturalism benefits from being understood as a metaphoric voyeurist perversion. Like Peeping Tom, Zola’s fiction acknowledges its desire to be out of reach, but its maintains it in order to avoid disappointment. This idea of an inaccessible reality makes Zolian writing very close to theories apparently far from thecaricature of naturalism : world and reality as an illusion in Taine and Schopenhauer’s theses ; work of art as an artefact or a fetish, enclosed for the projection of a subjective mind, foreshadowing avant-gardist researches in Mallarmé’s poetry, or pioneering abstract paintings

La vérification en ligne de spécifications formelles permet de créer des détecteurs d'erreur dont le pouvoir de détection dépend en grande partie du formalisme vérifié à l'exécution. Plus le formalisme est puissant plus la séparation entre les exécutions correctes et erronées peut être précise. Cependant, l'utilisation des vérifieurs en-ligne dans le but de détecter des erreurs est entravée par deux problèmes récurrents : le coût à l'exécution de ces vérifications, et le flou entourant les propriétés sémantiques exactes des signaux d'erreur ainsi générés. L'objectif de cette thèse est de clarifier les conditions d'utilisation de tels détecteurs dans le cadre d'applications « temps réel » critiques. Dans ce but, nous avons donné l'interprétation formelle de la notion d'erreur comportementale « temps réel». Nous définissions la propriété de détection « au plus tôt » qui permet de d'identifier la classe des détecteurs qui optimisent la latence de détection. Pour illustrer cette classe de détecteurs, nous proposons un prototype qui vérifie un comportement décrit par un automate temporisé. La propriété de détection au plus tôt est atteinte en raisonnant sur l'abstraction temporelle de l'automate et non sur l'automate lui-même. Nos contributions se déclinent dans trois domaines, la formalisation de la détection au plus tôt, sa traduction pour la synthèse de détecteurs d'erreur à partir d'automate temporisés, puis le déploiement concret de ces détecteurs sur une plate-forme de développement temps réel, Xenomai. / Runtime verification of formal specifications provides the means to generate error detectors with detection capabilities depending mostly on the kind of formalism considered. The stronger the formalism is the easier the speration between correct and erroneous execution is. Nevertheless, two recurring issues have to be considered before using such error detection mechanisms. First, the cost, at run-time, of such error detector has to be assessed. Then, we have to ensure that the execution of such detectors has a well defined semantics. This thesis aims at better understanding the conditions of use of such detectors within critical real-time software application. Given formal behavioural specification, we defined the notion of "behavioural error". Then, we identify the class of early detectors that optimize the detection latency between the occurence of such errors and their signalling. The whole generation process has been implemented for specifications provided as timed automata. The prototype achieves early error detection thanks to a preprocessing of the automaton to generate its temporal abstraction. Our contributions are threefold : formalisation of early detection, algorithms for timed automata run-time verification, and prototyping of such detectors on a real-time kernel, Xenomai.