Le cerveau humain est constitué d'un grand nombre de neurones inter-connectés formant des faisceaux de fibres de matière blanche permettant de transmettre des influx nerveux entre différentes régions. Dans cette thèse, divers aspects de la connectivité anatomique cérébrale ont été étudiés en utilisant l'Imagerie par Résonance Magnétique (IRM) et la tractographie. La tractographie est aujourd'hui la seule méthode permettant de reconstruire, en partie, les faisceaux de fibres de matière blanche in vivo et de manière non-invasive. (1) Une première étude visait à caractériser de manière quantitative les faisceaux d'association courts fronto-pariétaux reconstruits par tractographie dans la région centrale chez vingt sujets sains. (2) Une deuxième étude visait à définir une nouvelle méthode de parcellisation (i.e., subdiviser le cerveau en différentes régions macroscopiques) en utilisant comme critère structurel de base des motifs de connectivité reconstruits par tractographie. (3) Enfin, une troisième étude avait pour objectif de créer une ontologie neuroanatomique afin de représenter des régions de matière grise macroscopiques connectées par des faisceaux de fibres reconstruits par tractographie et d'annoter automatiquement des données de la connectomique humaine. L'utilisation de raisonneurs DL (Description Logic) usuels permettait de générer automatiquement des inférences relatives aux relations partie-tout, de connectivité ou enfin de voisinage spatial. / Human brain contains a great number of neurons interconnected forming white matter fiber bundles that can transmit information between different regions. In this thesis, different aspects of anatomical connectivity were studied using Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and tractography. Tractography is currently the only tool that allow to reconstruct white matter fiber bundles in the living human brain and in a non invasive way. (1) A first study aimed to characterize quantitatively the white matter fiber bundles reconstructed by tractography between the precentral and postcentral gyri in twenty healthy subjects. (2) A second study aimed to define a new parcellation scheme (i.e., subdivide the brain into different macroscopic regions) using connectivity patterns reconstructed by tractography as the main structural criteria. (3) Lastly, a third study aimed to create a new ontology in order to represent gray matter regions connected by white matter fiber bundles reconstructed by tractography and to annotate automatically connectomics datasets. The use of common DL (Description Logic) reasoners allowed to infer automatically some new axioms concerning especially part-whole, connectivity or spatial relationships.

Le secteur médical est un domaine dynamique en constante évolution, nécessitant des améliorations continues de ses processus métier et une assistance intelligente aux acteurs impliqués. Ce travail de thèse se focalise sur le processus de soins nécessitant l’implantation d’une prothèse. La particularité de ce processus est qu’il met en interaction deux cycles de vie appartenant respectivement au domaine médical et celui de l’ingénierie. Ceci implique plusieurs actions de collaboration entre des acteurs métier très variés. Cependant, des problèmes de communication et de partage de connaissances peuvent exister en raison de l’hétérogénéité de la sémantique utilisée et des pratiques métiers propres à chaque domaine.Dans ce contexte, ce travail de thèse s’intéresse aux apports des approches d’ingénierie des connaissances et de gestion du cycle de vie du produit pour répondre aux problématiques sous-jacentes au processus de soins médicaux nécessitant l’implantation d’une prothèse. Pour se faire, un cadre conceptuel est proposé pour analyser les connexions entre les cycles de vie de maladie (domaine Médical)et de la prothèse (domaine d’ingénierie). Sur la base de cette analyse, un modèle sémantique sous forme d’une ontologie pour le domaine médical est définit dans le cadre de la construction d’une approche PLM à base de connaissances. L’application de cette proposition est démontrée à travers l’implémentation de quelques fonctions utiles dans un outil PLM du marché nommé AUDROS. / Medical sector is a dynamic domain that requires continuous improvement of its business processes and assistance to the actors involved. This research focuses on the medical treatment process requiring prosthesis implantation. The specificity of such a process is that it makes in connection two lifecyclesbelonging to medical and engineering domains respectively. This implies several collaborative actions between stake holders from heterogeneous disciplines. However, several problems of communication and knowledge sharing may occur because of the variety of semantic used and the specific business practices in each domain. In this context, this PhD work is interested in the potential of knowledge engineering and product lifecycle management approaches to cope with the above problems. To do so, a conceptual framework is proposed for the analysis of links between the disease (medicaldomain) and the prosthesis (engineering domain) lifecycles. Based on this analysis, a semantic ontology model for medical domain is defined as part of a global knowledge-based PLM approach proposition. The application of the proposition is demonstrated through an implementation of useful function in the AUDROS PLM software.

In earth observation and climatological sciences, data and their data services grow on a daily basis in a large spatial extent due to the high coverage rate of satellite sensors, model calculations, but also by continuous meteorological in situ observations. In order to reuse such data, especially data fragments as well as their data services in a collaborative and reproducible manner by citing the origin source, data analysts, e.g., researchers or impact modelers, need a possibility to identify the exact version, precise time information, parameter, and names of the dataset used. A manual process would make the citation of data fragments as a subset of an entire dataset rather complex and imprecise to obtain. Data in climate research are in most cases multidimensional, structured grid data that can change partially over time. The citation of such evolving content requires the approach of "dynamic data citation". The applied approach is based on associating queries with persistent identifiers. These queries contain the subsetting parameters, e.g., the spatial coordinates of the desired study area or the time frame with a start and end date, which are automatically included in the metadata of the newly generated subset and thus represent the information about the data history, the data provenance, which has to be established in data repository ecosystems. The Research Data Alliance Data Citation Working Group (RDA Data Citation WG) summarized the scientific status quo as well as the state of the art from existing citation and data management concepts and developed the scalable dynamic data citation methodology of evolving data. The Data Centre at the Climate Change Centre Austria (CCCA) has implemented the given recommendations and offers since 2017 an operational service on dynamic data citation on climate scenario data. With the consciousness that the objective of this topic brings a lot of dependencies on bibliographic citation research which is still under discussion, the CCCA service on Dynamic Data Citation focused on the climate domain specific issues, like characteristics of data, formats, software environment, and usage behavior. The current effort beyond spreading made experiences will be the scalability of the implementation, e.g., towards the potential of an Open Data Cube solution.

Databases and database technology have become an essential component of everyday life in modern society. As databases are widely used in every organization with a computer system, control of data resources and management of data are very important. Database Management System (DBMS) is the most significant tool developed to serve multiple users in a database environment consisting of programs that enable users to create and maintain a database. Windows Distributed Internet Applications (DNA) architecture describes a framework of building software technologies together in an integrated web and client-server model of computing. This thesis focuses on development of a general database management system, for small and medium sized manufacturing enterprises, by using Windows DNA technology. Defining, constructing and manipulating institutional, commercial and operational data of the company is the main frame of the work. And also by integrating &ldquo / Optimization&rdquo / and &ldquo / Agent&rdquo / system components which were previously developed in Middle East Technical University, Mechanical Engineering Department, Computer Integrated Manufacturing Laboratory (METUCIM) into the SME DBMS, a unified information system is developed. &ldquo / Optimization&rdquo / system was developed in order to calculate optimum cutting conditions for turning and milling operations. &ldquo / Agent&rdquo / system was implemented to control and send work orders to the available manufacturing cell in METUCIM. The components of these systems are redesigned to share a unique database together with the newly developed &ldquo / SME Information System&rdquo / application program in order to control data redundancy and to provide data sharing and data integrity.

This diploma thesis deals with the use of the cloud in a particular company. The main objective is to select a system that enables sharing and synchronizing data between employees and to prepare a proposal to deploy the system with regard to specific needs of the analyzed company. As part of the work is also the situation analysis, opportunity study and risk analysis.

Address data within geographic information systems (GIS) is used as reference data to link personal and administrative information, thus making it possible to locate and deliver goods and services to eligible persons. Preferably, every country must develop and maintain a single national address database (NAD) to eliminate data redundancy and provide a common point of reference across the board. In South Africa, the challenge is that there are separate address databases, which are developed and maintained by various public and private organizations – with little or no cooperation on data sharing. Currently, the establishment of a Committee for Spatial Information (CSI) which is tasked with the implementation of the South African Spatial Data Infrastructure (SASDI) and the publication of the South African Address Standard (SANS 1883) offer organizations an opportunity to collaborate towards the creation of a single address dataset. This research posits that the implementation of a successful data sharing initiative depends on the understanding of motivators and barriers of organizations participating in it. The research applied the case study method – with a semi-structured questionnaire – to assess the issues that motivate or obstruct GIS data sharing among three address organizations in South Africa. The results identified significant motivators that underlie the data sharing activities, e.g. reduced cost of data collection, improved data quality; and equally identified significant barriers that make organizations reluctant to enter into a data sharing initiative, e.g. data copyright and ownership, high staff-turnover, and lack of financial and technical resources. Although the case studies focused on address data in South Africa, the research findings can equally apply to other spatial datasets and are relevant for the successful implementation of the South African Spatial Data Infrastructure (SASDI). / Dissertation (MIT)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Computer Science / Unrestricted

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Parking is an old concept, which fundamentally involves leaving a vehicle at a place. Parking has been considered as a subsidiary activity to owning a car. However, these days owning a car has become the norm, which leads to a greater demand for parking. Unregulated parking demand often leads to increased traffic congestion, when there are not enough parking spaces to keep up with the demand. Congestion itself has a negative impact on the environment and causes safety issues. A common solution to reduce congestion have been by influencing the demand for parking spaces through parking prices. During recent years, the existing pricing strategies have not been able to keep up with the daily changes in demand. Therefore, stakeholders in the parking industry have started to shift towards working for dynamic pricing. Dynamic pricing utilizes a pricing strategy that sets the price according to the current demand and occupancy. However, the parking industry is missing a key feature to fully enable dynamic pricing. There is no communication standard in the parking industry. Thus, there is no efficient communication mean for the stakeholders to share their parking-related information (such as location, occupancy, and tariff data). This thesis has developed and proposes a protocol for sharing such parking-related information. The aim is that the protocol will be used as a communication standard in the parking industry. Due to limited time, the most focus was put on completing the protocol for tariff data. However, the developed protocol can be considered as a partial solution towards dynamic pricing. Because the protocol can still be used to properly share tariff data. Based on the evaluation, the protocol could express a variety of tariffs. The tariffs that are expressible have use cases such as early bird, residential, or on-street parking. To make integration easier, for the parking industry, the protocol includes tools to aid integrations of the protocol. A future work will be to complete the support of location and occupancy related data. Additionally, it has been discussed that the protocol will onwards be developed as open-source. / Parkering har sedan länge varit ett stort område, vilket enkelt innebär att ett fordon lämnas på en plats. Parkering har för det mesta haft ett sekundärt syfte från att äga en bil. Men eftersom antalet bilägare ökar, ökar även parkeringsbehovet. Om det inte finns tillräckligt med parkeringar för att kunna tillfredsställa behovet, leder det till en ökad trafikträngsel. Trafikträngsel skapar både miljöproblem och säkerhetsproblem. Den huvudsakliga metoden för att påverka parkeringsbehovet har varit genom att skapa lägre en efterfrågan. Efterfrågan har sänkts genom att justeringar av parkeringsavgifter. Då efterfrågan på senaste tiden har ökat markant, räcker de traditionella parkeringsavgifterna inte längre till. För att lösa problemen, har många bolag och organisationer börjat jobba mot en dynamisk prissättning. Dynamisk prissättning använder sig av en prisstrategi som sätter parkeringsavgifterna i realtid baserat på den nuvarande efterfrågan och tillgång. Däremot har parkeringsindustrin i nuläget inte de nödvändiga kommunikationskanalerna som krävs för att anta en dynamisk prissättning. Examensarbetets huvudsyfte har varit att utveckla ett protokoll som gör det möjligt att dela parkeringsrelaterade data så som: plats-, ockuperings- och tariffdata. Huvudmålet med protokollet är att det senare ska kunna bli en standard i parkeringsindustrin. På grund av tidsbegränsningar, har den största fokusen av utvecklingen lagt på stöd för tariffdata. Därmed kan inte protokollet antas som den fullständiga lösningen för dynamisk prissättning. Dock, kan protokollet ses som en delvis lösning, då det med protokollet är möjligt att korrekt dela med sig av tariffdata. Evalueringen visade att det gick, med hjälp av det utvecklade protokollet, att beskriva flera sorters tariffer utan att förlora någon viktig information. Tariffer som gick att beskriva används för bland annat: gatu-, infarts- och boendeparkeringar. Ett framtida projekt blir att utveckla och färdigställa protokollet för fullt stöd av plats- och ockuperingsdata. Ytterligare har det diskuterats om att den fortsatta utvecklingen av protokollet, ske som öppen källkod (open-source).

The productivity and competitiveness of companies fundamentally depend on their ability to handle information. With the available technology, the opportunities to collect and utilise information are better than ever. One of the industries that has proven to benefit significantly from analysing large quantities of information is the retail industry. However, before information can be analysed it has to be obtained. This often means that information has to flow between members in a supply chain. The purpose of this study was to investigate which methods that are suitable for sharing information in different contexts between suppliers and retailers. The research was conducted as a case study within the Swedish sporting goods industry, where the information sharing relationship between one supplier and seven of its customers was investigated. The studied methods for information sharing were manual document handling, web portals and through a third-party EDI service provider. The third-party EDI solution benefits both parties. However, this method is not always applicable. If resources are scarce for both communicating parties and no technological solution for information sharing is in place, the manual document handling method is a suitable short-term solution. If one party with lots of resources frequently share information with parties that cannot afford to invest in technological information sharing solutions, a portal can be a suitable compromise to let the company that invests in the portal gain efficiency benefits while the other parties continue to manually provide information. / Ett företags produktivitet och konkurrenskraft beror på dess förmåga att hantera information. Med den teknik som finns tillgänglig är möjligheterna att samla in och behandla information bättre än någonsin. En av de branscher som har visat sig ha stor nytta av att analysera stora mängder av information är detaljhandeln. Hur som helst måste informationen tas emot innan den kan analyseras. Detta innebär ofta att informationen måste flöda mellan medlemmar i en distributionskedja. Syftet med denna studie var att undersöka vilka metoder som är lämpliga för att dela information mellan leverantörer och återförsäljare. Undersökningen genomfördes som en fallstudie inom den svenska sportvaruindustrin, där informationsdelningsförhållandet mellan en leverantör och sju av dess kunder undersöktes. De studerade metoderna för informationsdelning var manuell dokumenthantering, webbportaler och genom en tredjeparts EDI-tjänst. EDI-lösningen gynnar båda parter, men är inte alltid tillämplig. Om resurserna är knappa för båda kommunicerande parter och ingen teknisk lösning för att dela information finns på plats är den manuella metoden en lämplig lösning på kort sikt. Om en part med stora resurser ofta delar information med parter som inte har möjlighet att investera i informationsdelningslösningar kan en portal vara en lämplig kompromiss. Den lösningen ger ffektivitetsvinster till företaget som investerar i portalen medan de andra parterna kan fortsätta att manuellt tillhandahålla information.

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