This thesis covers database creation, system design and application development for wire line telecom infrastructure within Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and concentrates on spatial decision support applications and serving wire line subscriber coordinates for emergency calls in Ankara. The main mission of the Telecommunication in the past was to serve for voice communication activities. Currently voice, internet, data and video communications are available. These new services need better bandwidth capacity and/or renewal of infrastructure with Fiber Optical cables. Telecom has a complex wire line infrastructure, both in physical and logical topology. It is important to manage this complex infrastructure to give better services with new installation and update activities. Due to these requirements Telecom infrastructure needs to be managed with GIS, which visually provide physical and logical relationships. In this study it&rsquo / s aimed to build a GIS system for Turk Telekom (TT) including digitization of wire line cable infrastructure, geocoding subscribers and serving the coordinates of subscribers. The data layers are stored in Oracle Spatial Data Option (SDO) and spatial data information is kept in MapInfo MapCatalog. The data schemes for 81 provinces are created. The applications are developed with Borland Delphi version 7 and Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 .NET Framework. There are several GIS applications developed so far for the infrastructure of TT, since TT needs to know the location and quality of the infrastructure already present in the field and needs spatially to decide on areas that need maintenance including improvement, replacement, and new installations to improve the service. This study is presented as an alternative spatial decision support system for the improvement of the current infrastructure and services given to the customers, by using digitized network and geocoded subscriber data that is stored in GIS system. This study is carried out with customer participation and on site development with Telecom staff.

In this thesis, we propose a hierarchical level decision support system for workforce planning in medical equipment maintenance services. In strategic level, customer clusters and the total number of field engineers is determined via a mixed integer programming and simulation. In MIP, we aim to find the minimum number of field engineers. Afterwards, we analyze service measures such as response time via simulation. In tactical level, quarterly training program for the field engineers is determined via mixed integer programming and the results are interpreted in terms of service level via simulation.

<p>The aims of the practical work carried out for this thesis were to redesign a clinical decision support system for thoracic surgeons, called AssistMe, and to evaluate the concept behind this system. The main objective of the thesis is to give an account of the considerations that were found to be of key importance for designing a clinical decision support system for thoracic surgery. Another aim was to let future users test the system after it had been redesigned and evaluate the concept behind it. The thesis also investigates users’ experience of the system and their views on whether it would be applicable in their daily work practice. An account is also given of experience of using QOC-notation during the design space analysis in a real design project like this one.</p>

Procurement’s role in engineering and construction is changing. Procurement is evolving into a far more strategic discipline. Major equipment procurement in particular ties up a large proportion of construction cost, has long lead time, and is usually associated with the acquisition of complex or specialized technology. Selection of suppliers is a complex process which requires the evaluation of several suppliers and project targets. This analysis is usually performed manually, it is time consuming, and certain tradeoffs may be overlooked. This research advances state of the art to aid the commercial evaluation and selection of engineered equipment suppliers in the early stages of capital projects. A decision support system was developed in cooperation with several leading engineering-procurement-construction (EPC) and owner firms within industrial construction. The system integrates firms’ market and supplier performance data with a decision aid method to support rapid tradeoff analysis and evaluation of sourcing alternatives in the early stages of capital projects. The tool has been developed in Visual C#, in the form of simple and intuitive forms, with Microsoft Access as the back-end database. A supplier selection module uses the Aspiration Interactive Method (AIM) for providing rapid tradeoff analysis and points how each supplier is ranked in relation to the expected procurement targets. The system also includes a module for schedule analysis of the preferred supplier. Managers first need to assess unique project and supplier’s characteristics to estimate most likely durations. These durations are used to run a PERT analysis and provide initial feedback on probability of equipment delivery success. Therefore, managers are able to check whether their procurement master schedule milestones are feasible or not. Two actual selection cases were used to validate system’s usefulness, completeness, and deployability. According to experienced managers, this tool brings intelligence to the traditional selection process. The ability to quickly generate what-if scenarios and rapidly perform tradeoff analysis based on real data improves the quality of decision making, and supports commercial assessment and recommendation of suppliers in the early phases of capital projects. / text

In Lithuania, the real estate market has been growing fast in recent years. Such a speedy rise in the country‘s real estate market is being affected by several main factors: residents see the broad lending possibilities; the improving economic situation gives people greater hopes and expectations; the indices of available housing in Lithuania still lag behind the EU almost twice; once the demand well exceeds the supply, good conditions open to the construction companies and real estate agencies to sell their production; the expanding real estate market attracts investments from people who have free money; growing inflation in the country; etc. Due to the market expansion and higher competition, integration of information technologies to the real estate sector is more necessary today than ever before. The application of information technologies and telecommunications in the real estate sector ensures faster exchange of information among all interest groups, and allows more effective responding to market changes. Today we find internet as the field of applying information technologies and telecommunications in the real estate business. With the help of internet in any activity, the possibilities are provided to overcome time and space. By using internet, we can freely get a sufficiently big amount of exhaustive information about real estate. However, today‘s possibilities provided by internet are not limited to this. Frequently, different websites on real estate give us a... [to full text] / Pastaraisiais metais Lietuvoje nekilnojamojo turto rinka sparčiai auga. Toks spartus šalies nekilnojamojo turto rinkos augimas yra įtakojamas keleto pagrindinių veiksnių: gyventojams atsivėrė plačios skolinimosi galimybės, gerėjanti ekonominė situacija suteikia žmonėms didesnių vilčių ir lūkesčių, pagal apsirūpinimą būstu Lietuva vis dar atsilieka nuo Europos Sąjungos rodiklių beveik dvigubai, paklausai gerokai viršijant pasiūlą atsiveria geros sąlygos statybininkams bei jų produkciją pardavinėjančioms nekilnojamojo turto agentūroms, besiplečianti nekilnojamojo turto rinka traukte traukia investuoti žmones, turinčius laisvų pinigų, auganti infliacija šalyje ir kt. Dėl rinkos plėtros ir išaugusios konkurencijos, informacinių technologijų integracija į nekilnojamojo turto sektorių šiandiena yra reikalinga labiau nei bet kada anksčiau. Informacinių technologijų ir telekomunikacijų panaudojimas nekilnojamojo turto sektoriuje užtikrina spartesnį informacijos apsikeitimą tarp visų suinteresuotų grupių ir leidžia efektyviau reaguoti į rinkos pokyčius.

The growing development and use of pervasive systems, equipped with increasingly sophisticated functionalities and communication means, offer fantastic potentialities of services, particularly in the eHealth and Telemedicine domains, for the benifit of each citizen, patient or healthcare professional. One of the current societal challenges is to enable a better exploitation of the available services for all actors involved in a given domain. Nevertheless, the multiplicity of the offered services, the systems functional variety, and the heterogeneity of the needs require the development of knowledge models of these services, systems functions, and needs. In addition, the distributed computing environments heterogeneity, the availability and potential capabilities of various human and material resources (devices, services, data sources, etc.) required by the different tasks and processes, the variety of services providing users with data, the interoperability conflicts between schemas and data sources are all issues that we have to consider in our research works. Our contribution aims to empower the intelligent exploitation of ubiquitous resources and to optimize the quality of service in ambient environment. For this, we propose a knowledge meta-model of the main concepts of a pervasive environment, such as Actor, Task, Resource, Object, Service, Location, Organization, etc. This knowledge meta-model is based on ontologies describing the different aforementioned entities from a given domain and their interrelationships. We have then formalized it by using a standard language for knowledge description. After that, we have designed an architectural framework called ONOF-PAS (ONtology Oriented Framework for Pervasive Applications and Services) mainly based on ontological models, a set of rules, an inference engine, and object oriented components for tasks management and resources processing. Being generic, extensible, and applicable in different domains, ONOF-PAS has the ability to perform rule-based reasoning to handle various contexts of use and enable decision making in dynamic and heterogeneous environments while taking into account the availability and capabilities of the human and material resources required by the multiples tasks and processes executed by pervasive systems. Finally, we have instantiated ONOF-PAS in the telemedicine domain to handle the scenario of the transfer of persons victim of health problems during their presence in hostile environments such as high mountains resorts or geographically isolated areas. A prototype implementing this scenario, called T-TROIE (Telemedicine Tasks and Resources Ontologies for Inimical Environments), has been developed to validate our approach and the proposed ONOF-PAS framework.

Pastaraisiais metais Lietuvoje nekilnojamojo turto rinka sparčiai auga. Toks spartus šalies nekilnojamojo turto rinkos augimas yra įtakojamas keleto pagrindinių veiksnių: gyventojams atsivėrė plačios skolinimosi galimybės, gerėjanti ekonominė situacija suteikia žmonėms didesnių vilčių ir lūkesčių, pagal apsirūpinimą būstu Lietuva vis dar atsilieka nuo Europos Sąjungos rodiklių beveik dvigubai, paklausai gerokai viršijant pasiūlą atsiveria geros sąlygos statybininkams bei jų produkciją pardavinėjančioms nekilnojamojo turto agentūroms, besiplečianti nekilnojamojo turto rinka traukte traukia investuoti žmones, turinčius laisvų pinigų, auganti infliacija šalyje ir kt. Dėl rinkos plėtros ir išaugusios konkurencijos, informacinių technologijų integracija į nekilnojamojo turto sektorių šiandiena yra reikalinga labiau nei bet kada anksčiau. Informacinių technologijų ir telekomunikacijų panaudojimas nekilnojamojo turto sektoriuje užtikrina spartesnį informacijos apsikeitimą tarp visų suinteresuotų grupių ir leidžia efektyviau reaguoti į rinkos pokyčius. Informacinės technologijos ir telekomunikacijos, kaip priemonė leidžianti pasinaudoti elektroninės terpės privalumais, tapo vienu iš svarbiausių veiksnių nekilnojamojo turto verslui. / In Lithuania, the real estate market has been growing fast in recent years. Such a speedy rise in the country‘s real estate market is being affected by several main factors: residents see the broad lending possibilities; the improving economic situation gives people greater hopes and expectations; the indices of available housing in Lithuania still lag behind the EU almost twice; once the demand well exceeds the supply, good conditions open to the construction companies and real estate agencies to sell their production; the expanding real estate market attracts investments from people who have free money; growing inflation in the country; etc. Due to the market expansion and higher competition, integration of information technologies to the real estate sector is more necessary today than ever before. The application of information technologies and telecommunications in the real estate sector ensures faster exchange of information among all interest groups, and allows more effective responding to market changes. Today we find internet as the field of applying information technologies and telecommunications in the real estate business. With the help of internet in any activity, the possibilities are provided to overcome time and space. By using internet, we can freely get a sufficiently big amount of exhaustive information about real estate. However, today‘s possibilities provided by internet are not limited to this. Frequently, different websites on real estate give us a... [to full text]

A literature review of municipal solid waste landfill design was conducted to provide the knowledge base for development of an environmental decision support system (Landfill Advisor). Landfill Advisor integrates the current knowledge of barrier systems into a software program to assist in landfill design. The choices available for each liner component (e.g., drainage layer, geomembrane liner, compacted clay liner, geosynthetic clay liner) and their suitability for different situations (e.g., final cover, base liner, lagoon liner) are presented. Landfill Advisor covers both the design and related operational issues for municipal solid waste landfills, with consideration given to the interactions between components, operating conditions, and the natural environment with a view to maximization of long-term system performance. Unique to Landfill Advisor, the service life of each engineered component is estimated based on results from the latest research. Original research is also presented on the risk of geosynthetic clay liner (GCL) desiccation in low stress applications such as solar ponds. Numerical modelling was undertaken using a thermo-hydro-mechanical model with parameters that were developed and verified by comparison to previously reported laboratory data. A parametric study was performed to establish recommendations for future investigation. The water retention curve of the GCL was found to have a significant effect on the conditions that are expected to cause desiccation. The temperature coefficient of the water retention curve was also found to have a significant effect, yet this parameter is not well defined. Poisson’s ratio was found to affect the risk of desiccation in proportion to the applied stress. As reported by previous researchers, the initial degree of saturation of a GCL was found to be important to desiccation; however, the effect is diminished at low applied stress. / Thesis (Master, Civil Engineering) -- Queen's University, 2012-09-28 18:52:20.106

Referrals to the Halifax Infirmary Neurosurgery Department are submitted with regards to spinal conditions with different degrees of complications. Although there exists a Spinal Condition Consultation Protocol to standardize spinal referrals, the information provided from referring physicians is frequently inadequate to accurately triage the patient's condition, partly due to missing diagnostic therapies. The Neurosurgery Department receives a high volume of referrals each year, which imposes a significant administrative workload on the staff. We propose to develop a protocol-driven decision support system to: 1) Provide primary care physicians with timely access to condition specific consultation treatment protocols; and 2) Automate the referral assessment process to eliminate processing delays and administration burden. To this aim, we transformed the Consultation Protocol into a semantic knowledgebase. The decision support services are integrated within a standardized electronic referral system. We believe this system can significantly improve the referral process at the Neurosurgery Division.

Poor cost performance of construction projects has been a major concern for both contractors and clients. The effective management of risk is thus critical to the success of any construction project and the importance of risk management has grown as projects have become more complex and competition has increased. Contractors have traditionally used financial mark-ups to cover the risk associated with construction projects but as competition increases and margins have become tighter they can no longer rely on this strategy and must improve their ability to manage risk. Furthermore, the construction industry has witnessed significant changes particularly in procurement methods with clients allocating greater risks to contractors. Evidence shows that there is a gap between existing risk management techniques and tools, mainly built on normative statistical decision theory, and their practical application by construction contractors. The main reason behind the lack of use is that risk decision making within construction organisations is heavily based upon experience, intuition and judgement and not on mathematical models. This thesis presents a model for managing global risk factors affecting construction cost performance of construction projects. The model has been developed using behavioural decision approach, fuzzy logic technology, and Artificial Intelligence technology. The methodology adopted to conduct the research involved a thorough literature survey on risk management, informal and formal discussions with construction practitioners to assess the extent of the problem, a questionnaire survey to evaluate the importance of global risk factors and, finally, repertory grid interviews aimed at eliciting relevant knowledge. There are several approaches to categorising risks permeating construction projects. This research groups risks into three main categories, namely organisation-specific, global and Acts of God. It focuses on global risk factors because they are ill-defined, less understood by contractors and difficult to model, assess and manage although they have huge impact on cost performance. Generally, contractors, especially in developing countries, have insufficient experience and knowledge to manage them effectively. The research identified the following groups of global risk factors as having significant impact on cost performance: estimator related, project related, fraudulent practices related, competition related, construction related, economy related and political related factors. The model was tested for validity through a panel of validators (experts) and crosssectional cases studies, and the general conclusion was that it could provide valuable assistance in the management of global risk factors since it is effective, efficient, flexible and user-friendly. The findings stress the need to depart from traditional approaches and to explore new directions in order to equip contractors with effective risk management tools.