Civil engineers are increasingly called upon to design according to codes of practice which are foreign, or otherwise unfamiliar to the engineer. Some form of 'tool' to aid such engineers in the safe and effective use of unfamiliar codes, is therefore highly desirable. The argument presented in this thesis, is that a specialised 'knowledge-based system' (KBS) can be successfully constructed in order to provide various sons of insights into the design methods used in certain codes of practice. Three key ideas were used in the implementation produced during the research: the development of a novel set of complementary 'facilities' for examining the design methods used in codes; the support of comparison between the examination of two different codes; and ensuring the system's representation of codes and their examination, could be made readily comprehensible to engineers by using familiar human language phrases. Seven different facilities were developed in the research, including: the ability to view the codes installed in the system in a form close to a human language (such as English or French); the ability to perform parts of a code-based design procedure to various levels of detail; and the ability to inspect the interdependences of design parameters within codes. Use of these symbolic and numerical methods could provide the engineer with the information required to understand how and why an unfamiliar code would specify surprising, or otherwise unusual design parameters in some particular situation. They could also be used in a more exploratory fashion, with t1ie same broad aim of greater understanding of an unfamiliar code. A KBS is a sophisticated computer program that uses the idea of processiilg knowledge information. A characteristic feature of KBSs is that one of their primary components is a 'knowledge base' - a store of human expertise. The KBS built in this research, 'COPES' used an existing abbreviated form of the reinforced concrete (RC) beam design codes as its knowledge base. In particular, it contained 'procedural knowledge'. COPES was implemented using conventional computer systems and progranuning languages (pascal and FORTRAN on a Sun workstation). This is in contrast to most contemporary KBSs, which are often built using a 'shell', or an unconventional declarative programming language such as Prolog. One reason for this choice was that COPES used parts of previous computing work done with RC beam design codes, that had also used conventional computing techniques. However, our research did cover an investigation into the prospects for an alternative approach using a modem expert system shell. (It was confirmed that such an approach was generally less suitable in this particular application.) The COPES system proved to be a useful prototype 'toolbox' of various procedural knowledge extraction operations, which could help an engineer's understanding of an unfamiliar code of practice. To provide a practical system, the various explanatory methods developed could potentially be incorporated into an overall CAD (Computer-Aided Design) environment, or alternatively, wrapped up in a more sophisticated interactive program.

This thesis presents the concept of hybrid semantic-document models to aid information management when using standards for complex technical domains such as military data communication. These standards are traditionally text based documents for human interpretation, but prose sections can often be ambiguous and can lead to discrepancies and subsequent implementation problems. Many organisations produce semantic representations of the material to ensure common understanding and to exploit computer aided development. In developing these semantic representations, no relationship is maintained to the original prose. Maintaining relationships between the original prose and the semantic model has key benefits, including assessing conformance at a semantic level, and enabling original content authors to explicitly define their intentions, thus reducing ambiguity and facilitating computer aided functionality. Through the use of a case study method based on the military standard MIL-STD-6016C, a framework of relationships is proposed. These relationships can integrate with common document modelling techniques and provide the necessary functionality to allow semantic content to be mapped into document views. These relationships are then generalised for applicability to a wider context. Additionally, this framework is coupled with a templating approach which, for repeating sections, can improve consistency and further enhance quality. A reflective approach to model driven web rendering is presented and evaluated. This reflective approach uses self-inspection at runtime to read directly from the model, thus eliminating the need for any generative processes which result in data duplication across source used for different purpose.

M.Tech. / South African government is one of the countries in the world that has delivered the highest number of houses to the poor through various delivery mechanisms to fulfill her vision to adequate housing for all as reflected in the National Housing Policy framework. Since 1994, about One Million Eight Hundred and Seventy Seven Thousand Nine Hundred and Fifty Eight (1 877 958) houses has been delivered. People’s Housing Process is a state-assisted, self help housing programme and about 3% of the total houses built were delivered through the PHP housing delivery programme. The Government’s goal is, subject to fiscal affordability, to increase housing delivery on a sustainable basis to a peak level of 350 000 units per annum until the housing backlog is overcome (South Africa’s National Housing code policy, 2000:5). The government focused on quantitative housing delivery with qualitative shortcomings. However the focus has now shifted to the quality of the end product delivered. Defects in houses manifest themselves primarily through cracking, dampness, detachment, and water leakages. Defects may be patent or latent, and could be discovered through checking, observations and tests. This research work is a study of structural qualities of houses delivered through PHP. The study investigated the causes of structural inadequacies in PHP houses focusing in the Gauteng Province of South Africa. The findings show that different types of structural defects occurred in houses delivered through PHP scheme, these defects include roof leakages, cracks in walls, wall not being straight and defects in roof trusses. The cause of these defects was as a result of poor quality control mechanism put in place by the Department of Housing.

Thesis (MTech (Electrical Engineering))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2016. / Electricity substation monitoring and control systems have evolved over the years from simple systems capable of achieving minimalistic functions to autonomous, self-healing smart grid schemes (Farhangi, 2010). The migration of technology to networked smart grid systems was driven by the need for standardisation of communication networks, system configuration and also the reduction of system implementation costs and engineering time. Before the introduction of a uniform communication standard, legacy (non-standardised) communication protocols, for example, the Distributed Network Protocol (DNP3) were used by Remote Terminal Units (RTUs) for information exchange (Luwaca, 2014). These communication protocols could not provide a standard naming convention or data semantics since the data/information was accessed using an address-based system. The implementation of automation systems based on legacy protocols and RTUs was expensive because of parallel copper wiring required to connect instrument transformers and circuit breakers to multiple RTUs for protection and monitoring functions (Iloh et al., 2014). Legacy systems refer to Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems implemented using RTUs and legacy communication protocols. Legacy systems tended to be vendor specific because devices from different vendors did not support the same communication protocol. These issues led to the introduction of the IEC 61850 standard. The IEC 61850 standard for “communication networks and systems in a substation” provides standardised naming convention, data semantics, standardised device configuration and also device interoperability and interchangeability in some instances. The IEC 61850 standard provides a solution to expensive parallel copper wiring and standardisation issues experienced with legacy protocols. In as much as the introduction of the IEC 61850 standard addresses problems experienced with legacy system there is still a need to provide inexpensive access to IEC 61850-compliant devices and effective knowledge transfer to facilitate implementation of automation systems based on this standard. The development of an IEC 61850-compliant device requires a specialised skillset and financial investment for research and industrialisation therefore only a few vendors manufacture these devices resulting in an increase in production and manufacturing costs. For this reason this research project develops VHDL modules for mapping IEC 61850-9-2 Sampled Value (SV) messages and IEC 61850-8-1 Generic Object Oriented Substation Event (GOOSE) messages on a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) platform. Sampled values are used for transmitting current and voltage transformer (CT and VT) measurements to protection devices while GOOSE messages exchange information/commands between primary equipment (CT, VT and circuit breaker) and protection devices over an Ethernet network known as the process bus.

Au cours de cette thèse, nous avons examinée les pratiques actuelles en matière d'éducation en IS. Nous avons proposé une approche centrée sur l'utilisation des processus normalisés en IS, tout en faisant en sorte que le scénario d'apprentissage soit très adaptable et qu'il puisse être piloté par les compétences d'IS acquises ou à acquérir. Ensuite, une plateforme Web a été développée pour soutenir cette nouvelle approche d'apprentissage. En utilisant cette approche, les étudiants ne seront pas seulement en mesure de bien concevoir le système demandé de manière distante et collaborative, mais ils seront aussi capables de l'élaborer de manière appropriée. Cela leur permettra d'apprendre les principes et processus fondamentaux de l'IS, à mieux communiquer dans un environement de travail, la gestion d'équipe, la collaboration et les compétences techniques connexes. Les formateurs d'un autre côté pourront mieux gérer leur parcours d'apprentissage, les ressources pédagogiques, et les résultats escomptés. En utilisant cette solution, les organisations de ces formateurs et étudiants, c'est-à-dire les universités et collèges, pourront gérer et normaliser les compétences acquises par leurs futurs ingénieurs systèmes à tous les niveaux. / This thesis surveys the current practices and advancements in SE education. We ended up proposing a novel solution for SE education (an approach with its supporting web-based platform). The proposed approach is based on the recommendations of academic and industrial communities. It is centered around the use of SE standardized processes and at the same time very adaptive, with learning scenarios that can be driven by the acquired or to-be-taught SE competencies. The proposed solution is a web based platform that has been developed to support this novel approach within a distant Project Based Learning (PBL) environment. The solution aims to ease the learning at the same time of fundamental principles and processes of systems engineering, along with communication, team management, collaboration, and related soft skills. On the other hand, educators will be able to better manage their learning scenarios, training resources, and the expected outcomes. Last, educators and students' organizations using this solution will be able to manage and normalize the competencies to be acquired by their future systems engineers at every level.