Massive interest in geo-referencing of personal resources is evident on the web. People are collaboratively digitising maps and building place knowledge resources that document personal use and experiences in geographic places. Understanding and discovering these place semantics can potentially lead to the development of a different type of place gazetteer that holds not only standard information of place names and geographic location, but also activities practiced by people in a place and vernacular views of place characteristics. The main contributions of this research are as follows. A novel framework is proposed for the analysis of geo-folksonomies and the automatic discovery of place-related semantics. The framework is based on a model of geographic place that extends the definition of place as defined in traditional gazetteers and geospatial ontologies to include the notion of place affordance. A method of clustering place resources to overcome the inaccuracy and redundancy inherent in the geo-folksonomy structure is developed and evaluated. Reference ontologies are created and used in a tag resolution stage to discover place-related concepts of interest. Folksonomy analysis techniques are then used to create a place ontology and its component type and activity ontologies. The resulting concept ontologies are compared with an expert ontology of place type and activities and evaluated through a user questionnaire. To demonstrate the utility of the proposed framework, an application is developed to illustrate the possible enrichment of search experience by exposing the derived semantics to users of web mapping abstract applications. Finally, the value of using the discovered place semantics is also demonstrated by proposing two semantic based similarity approaches; user similarity and place similarity. The validity of the approaches was confirmed by the results of an experiment conducted on a realistic folksonomy dataset.

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Recent growth in the number and quality of wireless network technologies has led to an increased interest in mobile computing. Furthermore, these technologies have now advanced sufficiently to allow 'advanced applications' to be engineered. Applications such as these are characterised by complex patterns of distribution and interaction, support for collaboration and multimedia data, and are typically required to operate over heterogeneous networks and end-systems. Given these operating requirements, it is the author's contention that advanced applications must adapt their behaviour in response to changes in their environment in order to operate effectively. Such applications are termed adaptive applications. This thesis investigates the support required by advanced applications to facilitate operation in heterogeneous networked environments. A set of generic techniques are presented that enable existing distributed systems platforms to provide support for adaptive applications. These techniques are based on the provision of a QoS framework and a supporting infrastructure comprising a new remote procedure call package and supporting services. The QoS framework centres on the ability to establish explicit bindings between objects. Explicit bindings enable application requirements to be specified and provide a handle through which they can exert control and, more significantly, be informed of violations in the requested QoS. These QoS violations enable the applications to discover changes in their underlying environment and offer them the opportunity to adapt. The proposed architecture is validated through an implementation of the framework based on an existing distributed systems platform. The resulting architecture is used to underpin a novel collaborative mobile application aimed at supporting field workers within the utilities industry. The application in turn is used as a measure to gauge the effectiveness of the support provided by the platform. In addition, the design, implementation and evaluation of the application is used throughout the thesis to illustrate various aspects of platform support.

Worldwide discussion has been initiated about the role of computers and information technology in schools. In Saudi Arabia, the introduction of computers into education institutes has been a feature of development planning since 1990, but many educationalists assert that the technology is underestimated and blame inadequate teacher preparation. The main purpose of this study was to investigate the computer experience, computer knowledge, computer training needs and attitude toward computers of Teacher College teaching staff and students in Saudi Arabia. It also examines the availability of human and physical resources for appropriate training in this area. The survey sample was 147 teaching staff and 472 students drawn from all departments and levels of study in five men's Teacher Colleges, one from each of the five regions of the country. In addition, a small number of policy- makers (e. g. college deans and ministry officials) were interviewed. Data were collected via a questionnaire survey, using an instrument adapted from Fodah (1990), containing multiple- choice questions on computer experience, knowledge and training needs, and a 5- part Likert-type attitude scale. Information on computer courses, resources and related policy were addressed by semi-structured interviews. Lack of access to computers, deficiencies in computer knowledge and low computer experience were found among staff and students. Lack of computer training appears to be one of the main causes of low utilization; inadequate material and human resources are another obstacle. Nevertheless, both groups had positive attitudes to computers. If Saudi Arabia is to keep abreast of the information revolution, Teacher Colleges need a high level of equipment and service infrastructure, and well-prepared computer teachers and staff capable of training their colleagues and students to integrate computers in teaching and learning.

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Thesis (M.S.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 96-97). / x, 97 leaves, bound ill. 29 cm

This thesis presents the innovative design of intelligent agent architectures specifically focusing on their human-agent teaming ability for use in a simulation environment. Agent teaming has gained popularity in recent years. It is believed that three important aspects, communication, co-ordination and co-operation play important roles in agent teaming. Multi agent teaming takes inspiration from human organisational models of team operation, where role playing such as leadership and communicative, co-operative and collaborative skills empower the success of the team. Additionally, the second major step in agent teaming is the “human-centric” nature of the agent. The current trend of agent development is very much concentrated on its agent only interaction within teams. This thesis contributes to the understanding of human-agent teaming within current agent architectures such as Belief Desire Intention (BDI) architectures. / Thesis (PhDComputerSystemsEng)--University of South Australia, 2006.