The aim of the thesis is to design a web services architecture that shall support the automatic determination of a personalised sensor-system, which is embedded in smart garments, and which shall be used in self-care in order to allow a profane user to record himself a personal electrocardiogram (ECG), at anytime and anywhere. The main challenge consists in the intelligent and dynamic orchestration of context-aware business services that supply the user with an optimal personalised solution, while mastering the system's complexity: context dependent user and system interactions, knowledge extraction from subject-specific vital signs, services reconfiguration automation. The solution to this challenge is to create an Ambient Intelligence which goes beyond Ubiquitous Computing and is capable to replace an expert by proposing an Intelligent Assistance to any citizen. We propose a methodology expressed in terms of Data and Model driven Service Oriented Architecture (DM-SOA), which provides a framework for the production of context-aware intelligent business services. This architecture supports the automation of sophisticated and personalised expert activities, which apply professional knowledge to process an individual case. The proposed solution is based on a new dynamic business process modelling approach and in its implementation via automatically reconfigurable services. It consists in setting-up an intelligent environment based on a business process ontology of context-aware concepts and on related context handling rules for services orchestration. A core-ontology has been designed to support the automation of expert activities related to decision-making. The soundness of the method and of the underlying decision-making techniques has been demonstrated in the cardiology domain for selecting the most adequate subject-specific sensor-system, characterised by its ability to yield for an ECG signal of similar diagnostic content than a standard 12-lead ECG. We propose the design of a new three modalities sensor-system prototype as a response to the need of sensor-systems used on demand in self-care situations and ensuring diagnostic quality signals recordings. This prototype has been tested on a set of healthy volunteers presenting various characteristics in age, sex and morphology. In this context, Ambient Intelligence is demonstrated as an ensemble of professional quality services ready to use by profane users. These services are accessible pervasively, trough the objects people work with / wear on / use each day, and provide an appropriate guidance to the non-competent users. Such an Ambient Intelligence approach strongly supports the vision of an Information Society which corresponds to the long-term goal of the EU Information Society Technologies Research Programme that aims to ease knowledge access. The future healthcare will benefit from this approach and will significantly improve patient care.

No description available.

Workflow systems aim to provide automated support for the conduct of certain business processes. Workflow systems are driven by workflow specifications which among others, capture the execution interdependencies between various activities. These interdependencies are modelled by means of different control flow constructors, e.g., sequence, choice, parallelism and synchronisation. It has been shown in the research on workflow patterns that the support for and the interpretation of various control flow constructs varies substantially across workflow systems. Two of the most problematic patterns relate to the OR-join and to cancellation. An OR-join is used in situations when we need to model " wait and see" behaviour for synchronisation. Different approaches assign a different (often only intuitive) semantics to this type of join, though they do share the common theme that synchronisation is only to be performed for active paths. Depending on context assumptions this behaviour may be relatively easy to deal with, though in general its semantics is complicated, both from a definition point of view (in terms of formally capturing a desired intuitive semantics) and from a computational point of view (how does one determine whether an OR-join is enabled?). Many systems and languages struggle with the semantics and implementation of the OR-join because its non-local semantics require a synchronisation depending on an analysis of future execution paths. This may require some non-trivial reasoning. The presence of cancellation features and other OR-joins in a workflow further complicates the formal semantics of the OR-join. The cancellation feature is commonly used to model external events that can change the behaviour of a running workflow. It can be used to either disable activities in certain parts of a workflow or to stop currently running activities. Even though it is possible to cancel activities in workflow systems using some sort of abort function, many workflow systems do not provide direct support for this feature in the workflow language. Sometimes, cancellation affects only a selected part of a workflow and other activities can continue after performing a cancellation action. As cancellation occurs naturally in business scenarios, comprehensive support in a workflow language is desirable. We take on the challenge of providing formal semantics, verification techniques as well as an implementation for workflows with those features. This thesis addresses three interrelated issues for workflows with cancellation regions and OR-joins. The concept of the OR-join is examined in detail in the context of the workflow language YAWL, a powerful workflow language designed to support a collection of workflow patterns and inspired by Petri nets. The OR-join semantics has been redesigned to represent a general, formal, and decidable approach for workflows in the presence of cancellation regions and other OR-joins. This approach exploits a link that is proposed between YAWL and reset nets, a variant of Petri nets with a special type of arc that can remove all tokens from a place. Next, we explore verification techniques for workflows with cancellation regions and OR-joins. Four structural properties have been identified and a verification approach that exploits coverability and reachability notions from reset nets has been proposed. The work on verification techniques has highlighted potential problems with calculating state spaces for large workflows. Applying reduction rules before carrying out verification can decrease the size of the problem by cutting down the size of the workflow that needs to be examined while preserving some essential properties. Therefore, we have extended the work on verification by proposing reduction rules for reset nets and for YAWL nets with and without OR-joins. The proposed OR-join semantics as well as the proposed verification approach have been implemented in the YAWL environment.

Over the past decade, the ubiquity of business processes and their need for ongoing management in the same manner as other corporate assets has been recognized through the establishment of a dedicated research area: Business Process Management (or BPM). There are a wide range of potential software technologies on which a BPM o®ering can be founded. Although there is signi¯cant variation between these alternatives, they all share one common factor { their execution occurs on the basis of a business process model { and consequently, this ¯eld of technologies can be termed Process-Aware Information Systems (or PAIS). This thesis develops a conceptual foundation for PAIS based on the results of a detailed examination of contemporary o®erings including work°ow and case han- dling systems, business process modelling languages and web service composition languages. This foundation is based on 126 patterns that identify recurrent core constructs in the control-°ow, data and resource perspectives of PAIS. These patterns have been used to evaluate some of the leading systems and business process modelling languages. It also proposes a generic graphical language for de¯ning exception handling strategies that span these perspectives. On the basis of these insights, a comprehensive reference language { newYAWL { is developed for business process modelling and enactment. This language is formally de¯ned and an abstract syntax and operational semantics are provided for it. An assessment of its capabilities is provided through a comprehensive patterns-based analysis which allows direct comparison of its functionality with other PAIS. newYAWL serves as a reference language and many of the ideas embodied within it are also applicable to existing languages and systems. The ultimate goal of both the patterns and newYAWL is to improve the support and applicability of PAIS.

Thesis (MScEng)-- Stellenbosch University, 2013. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Organizations formally define and document their business processes in order to properly understand them and to subsequently enable their continuous development, improvement and management. In order to formally define and document their business processes, organizations can use Business Process Modelling, which represents the design of graphical models that portray the business processes of organizations. It is however noted that it is difficult to select a suitable Business Process Modelling Technique in support of a specific application of Business Process Modelling. This is due to the considerable amount of existing Business Process Modelling Techniques, the inherent impact of their varying capabilities and the lack of formal measures that are available to support evaluations regarding their suitability for specific modelling applications. It is therefore considered appropriate to execute a research study that is aimed at the development and validation of a measurement framework that can be used to evaluate the suitability of Business Process Modelling Techniques for specific modelling applications. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Organisasies definieer en dokumenteer hulle besigheidsprosesse op ʼn formele wyse om hulle ordentlik te verstaan en gevolglik hulle deurlopende ontwikkeling, verbetering en bestuur te bemagtig. Ten einde die uitvoering van hierdie aktiwiteit aan te spreek, kan organisasies Besigheidsproses Modellering gebruik om grafiese modelle van hulle besigheidsprosesse te ontwerp. Daar word egter kennis geneem dat dit moeilik is om ʼn geskikte Besigheidsproses Modellering Tegniek te kies tes ondersteuning van ʼn spesifieke toepassing van Besigheidsproses Modellering. Dit is weens die groot hoeveelheid bestaande Besigheidsproses Modellering Tegnieke, die impak van hulle variërende vermoëns asook die gebrek aan formele maatstawwe wat gebruik kan word om hulle geskiktheid vir spesifieke modellering toepassings te evalueer. Dit lei tot die besluit om ‘n studie te voltooi wat gefokus is op die ontwikkeling en validasie van ʼn metings raamwerk wat gebruik kan word om die geskiktheid van Besigheidsproses Modellering Tegnieke vir spesifieke toepassings van Besigheidproses Modellering te evalueer.

Requirements Engineering (RE) approaches are widely used in several domains such as telecommunications systems, information systems, and even regulatory compliance. However, they are rarely applied in healthcare beyond requirements elicitation. Healthcare is a multidisciplinary environment in which clinical processes are often performed across multiple units. Introducing a new Information Technology (IT) system or a new process in such an environment is a very challenging task, especially in the absence of recognized RE practices. Currently, many IT systems are not welcomed by caregivers and are considered to be failures because they change what caregivers are familiar with and bring new tasks that often consume additional time. This thesis introduces a new RE-based approach aiming to evaluate and estimate the potential impact of new system integrations on current practices, organizational goals,and user satisfaction using goal modelling and process modelling techniques. This approach is validated with two case studies conducted in real hospitals and a usability study involving healthcare practitioners. The contributions of the thesis are: • Major: a novel Activity-based Process Integration (AbPI) framework that enables the integration of a new process into existing practices incrementally, in a way that permits continuous analysis and evaluation. AbPI also provides several alternatives to a given integration to ensure effective flowing and minimal disturbance to current practices. AbPI has a Goal Integration Method to integrate new goals, an Integration Method to integrate new processes, and an Alternative Evaluation Method exploiting multi-criteria decision-making algorithms to select among strategies. The modelling concepts of AbPI are supported by a profile of the User Requirements Notation augmented with a new distance-based goal-oriented approach to alternative selection and a new data-quality-driven algorithm for the propagation of confidence levels in goal models. • Minor: a usability study of AbPI to investigate the usefulness of the framework in a healthcare context. This usability study is part of the validation and is also a minor contribution due to: 1) the lack of usability studies when proposing requirements engineering frameworks, and 2) an intent to discover the potential usefulness of the framework in a context where recognized RE practices are seldom used.

L'extraction du bore du silicium liquide est une étape d'une chaîne de procédés de purification de silicium de qualité suffisante pour les applications photovoltaïques. Cette thèse étudie en priorité le procédé dit "gaz froid" qui consiste en l'injection d'un mélange de gaz Ar-H2-H2O sur du silicium liquide chauffé électromagnétiquement. Une deuxième méthode similaire ("procédé plasma") où on injecte un plasma thermique issu d'un mélange Ar-H2-O2 a également été étudiée. Un modèle est nécessaire afin d'optimiser le procédé pour économiser de l'énergie.Les trois objectifs du modèle sont la prédiction du flux de silicium issu de la surface (vitesse d'oxydation), du flux de bore issu de la surface (pour avoir la vitesse de purification), et du seuil de passivation. Le seuil de passivation est la limite de concentration d'oxydant au-delà de laquelleil apparait une couche de silice passivante qui empêche la purification. Afin de minimiser la consommation d'énergie en accélérant le procédé, on cherche à injecter une concentration d'oxydant juste en dessous du seuil de passivation.De précédentes études ont montré que le facteur limitant pour les flux de bore et de silicium est le transport d'oxydant dans la phase gaz. Ainsi, nous avons fait un modèle monodimensionnel réactif-diffusif à l'équilibre thermodynamique de la couche limite gazeuse. Selon ce modèle, l'effet de la formation d'aérosols de silice est de diviser par deux le flux d'oxydant vers la surface, ce qui sert aux simulations CFD. Cet effet des aérosols de silice sur les flux d'oxydant peut aussi se retrouver si on enlève l'hypothèse d'équilibre thermodynamique des aérosols de silice avec la phase gaz, ce qui est confirmé par des simulations CFD et des expériences.Pour ce qui concerne l'estimation de la vitesse de purification, les données les plus réalistes concernant l'enthalpie de formation de HBO(g) et le coefficient d'activité du bore dans le silicium liquide ont été sélectionnées. Nous obtenons une bonne prédiction de la vitesse de purification à différentes températures et concentrations d'oxydant, y compris pour le cas plasma que nous avons étudié, en utilisant ces données thermodynamiques et en supposant que les produits de réaction de surface SiO(g) et HBO(g) diffusent de manière similaire. Ces coefficients de transfert identiques pour HBO(g) et SiO(g) peuvent s'expliquer par une précipitation simultanée et commune de HBO(g) et SiO(g), selon des mécanismes de germination et croissance restant à déterminer.Un dispositif expérimental de lévitation électromagnétique de silicium sous un jet oxydant a été monté. La mesure et le contrôle de température d'une bille de silicium ont été mis en oeuvre ce qui permettra la mesure sans contaminations de données thermodynamiques concernant les impuretés .Le seuil de passivation mesuré sur quelques expériences disponibles peut être prédit par notre modèle d'oxydation (associé au facteur deux représentant les aérosols de silice), si on l'associe à un critère proposé dans la littérature, qui couple la fraction du flux d'oxydant arrivant à la surface à une loi d'équilibre entre SiO(g), Si(l) et SiO2(s/l). Nous montrons dans cette thèse que la couche passivante n'est compatible avec des aérosols de silice que si ces aérosols ne sont pas en équilibre avec la phase gaz. La cinétique de formation des aérosols de silice doit donc être étudiée plus en détails. / Boron extraction from liquid silicon is a step within a new chain of processes aimed to purify silicon that meets purity requirements specific to photovoltaic applications. This thesis focuses mostly on cold gas processes that involve the injection of a mixture of Ar-H2-H2O gases onto electromagnetically stirred liquid silicon. A second similar method ("plasma processes") that involves the injection of thermal plasma made from an Ar-H2-H2O mixture has also been studied. A model is needed to minimize energy consumption by optimizing the process.We want to be able to predict the flow of silicon from the reactive surface (oxidation speed), the flow of boron from the surface (to have the purification speed) and the passivation threshold. For a given setting, the passivation threshold is the limit oxydant partial pressure at injection beyond which a passivating silica layer appears on the surface of the liquid silicon, which interrupts the purification. In order to minimize the energy consumption, and for that matter , in order to speed up the process, we want to inject oxydant in a quantity just below the passivation threshold.Previous studies have shown that the limiting factor for the oxidation and purification speed is the transport of oxidant in the gas phase. That's why we have made a 1D reactive-diffusive model at thermodynamical equilibrium of the gaseous boundary layer. According to this model the effect of the formation of silica aerosols is to divide by two the flow of oxydant towards the surface, which is useful for the simplification of CFD simulations. This effect of the formation of silica aerosols on oxidant flows can also be found without the hypothesis of thermodynamical equilibrium of silica aerosols with the gas phase, as confirmed by simulations and experiments.Regarding the estimation of the purification speed, we have selected the most realistic values of the enthalpy of formation of HBO(g) and of the activity coefficient of boron in liquid silicon.We could get good estimates of the purification speed at different temperatures and levels of oxidant concentrations at injection, by using the selected thermodynamical values and by supposing that the surface reaction products HBO(g) and SiO(g) diffuse similarly. A reason for this similar diffusion of SiO(g) and HBO(g) might be a common and simultaneous precipitation , due to specific dynamics of nucleation and growth that need to be investigated further. Those results for cold gas processed could also be obtained for a plasma experiment.However for the plasma experiment, silica aerosols can be formed only in a very thin layer near the surface and this result needs confirmation from other experiments.Temperature measurement and control for electromagnetically levitating liquid silicon under a flow of oxidant were achieved. With more time, quantitative results could be achieved to measure thermodynamical data on impurities without contaminations.Regarding the prediction of the passivation threshold, we justified a thermodynamical equilibrium at surface of SiO(g) with Si(l) and SiO2(s/l) at passivation threshold with the spreading of silica particles over the liquid silicon surface with the stirring. We show that the passivation layer is compatible with silica aerosols only if those aerosols are not in equilibrium with the gas phase. Therefore the kinetics of formation of silica aerosols should be studied further. A previous empirical formula on the prediction of the passivation threshold for experiments where H2O is the oxidant has been confirmed using our CFD model. A passivation experiment has shown the absence of impact of silica aerosols on oxidant transport when the oxidant is O2.

Abstract The aim of this work was to formulate separation process models with both predictive capabilities and robust solution strategies. Although all separation process models should have predictive capabilities, the current literature still has multiple applications in which predictive models having the combination of a clear phenomenon base and robust solving strategy are not available. The separation process models investigated in this work were liquid-liquid phase separation and membrane separation models. The robust solving of a liquid-liquid phase separation model typically demands the solution of a phase stability analysis problem. In addition, predicting the liquid-liquid phase compositions reliably depends on robust phase stability analysis. A phase stability analysis problem has multiple feasible solutions, all of which have to be sought to ensure both the robust solving of the model and predictive process model. Finding all the solutions with a local solving method is difficult and generally inexact. Therefore, the modified bounded homotopy methods, a global solving method, were further developed to solve the problem robustly. Robust solving demanded the application of both variables and homotopy parameter bounding features and the usage of the trivial solution in the solving strategy. This was shown in multiple liquid-liquid equilibrium cases. In the context of membrane separation models, predictive capabilities are achieved with the application of a Maxwell-Stefan based model. With the Maxwell-Stefan approach, multicomponent separation can be predicted based on pure component permeation data alone. On the other hand, the solving of the model demands a robust solving strategy with application-dependent knowledge. These issues were illustrated in the separation of a H2/CO2 mixture with a high-silica MFI zeolite membrane at high pressure and low temperature. Similarly, the prediction of mixture adsorption based on pure component adsorption data alone was successfully demonstrated. In the context of membrane separation models, predictive capabilities are achieved with the application of a Maxwell-Stefan based model. With the Maxwell-Stefan approach, multicomponent separation can be predicted based on pure component permeation data alone. On the other hand, the solving of the model demands a robust solving strategy with application-dependent knowledge. These issues were illustrated in the separation of a H2/CO2 mixture with a high-silica MFI zeolite membrane at high pressure and low temperature. Similarly, the prediction of mixture adsorption based on pure component adsorption data alone was successfully demonstrated. / Tiivistelmä Työn tavoitteena oli muotoilla prosessin käyttäytymisen ennustamiseen kykeneviä erotusprosessimalleja ja niiden ratkaisuun käytettäviä luotettavia strategioita. Vaikka kaikkien erotusprosessimallien tulisi olla ennustavia, on tällä hetkellä useita kohteita, joissa prosessin käyttäytymistä ei voida ennustaa siten, että käytettävissä olisi sekä ilmiöpohjainen malli että ratkaisuun soveltuva luotettava strategia. Tässä työssä erotusprosessimalleista kohteina tarkasteltiin neste-neste-erotuksen ja membraanierotuksen kuvaukseen käytettäviä malleja. Neste-neste-erotusmallien luotettava ratkaisu vaatii yleensä faasistabiilisuusongelman ratkaisua. Lisäksi faasien koostumusten luotettava ennustaminen pohjautuu faasistabiilisuusanalyysiin. Faasistabiilisuusongelmalla on useita mahdollisia ratkaisuja, jotka kaikki tulee löytää, jotta voitaisiin varmistaa luotettava mallin ratkaisu sekä prosessimallin ennustuskyvyn säilyminen. Kaikkien ratkaisujen löytäminen on sekä vaikeaa että epätarkkaa paikallisesti konvergoituvilla ratkaisumenetelmillä. Tämän vuoksi globaaleihin ratkaisumenetelmiin kuuluvia modifioituja rajoitettuja homotopiamenetelmiä kehitettiin edelleen, jotta faasistabiilisuusongelma saataisiin ratkaistua luotettavasti. Ratkaisun luotettavuus vaati sekä muuttujien että homotopiaparametrin rajoittamista ja ongelman triviaalin ratkaisun käyttöä ratkaisustrategiassa. Tämä käyttäytyminen todennettiin useissa neste-nestetasa-painoa kuvaavissa esimerkeissä. Membraanierotusta tarkasteltaessa ennustava malli voidaan muotoilla käyttämällä Maxwell-Stefan pohjaista mallia. Maxwell-Stefan lähestymistavalla voidaan ennustaa monikomponenttiseosten erotusta perustuen puhtaiden komponenttien membraanin läpäisystä saatuun mittausaineistoon. Toisaalta mallin ratkaisu vaatii luotettavan ratkaisustrategian, jossa hyötykäytetään kohteesta riippuvaa tietoa. Näitä kysymyksiä havainnollistettiin H2/CO2 seoksen erotuksessa MFI-zeoliitti-membraanilla korkeassa paineessa. Samoin seosten adsorboitumiskäyttäytymistä ennustettiin onnistuneesti pelkästään puhtaiden komponenttien adsorptiodatan pohjalta. Kokonaisuutena voidaan todeta, että tarkasteltujen erotusprosessimallien ennustavuutta voidaan parantaa yhdistämällä malli, jolla on selkeä ilmiöpohja ja luotettava ratkaisustrategia. Lisäksi mallien käytettävyys erotusprosessien suunnittelussa on parantunut työn tulosten pohjalta.

Le présent travail est réalisé dans le cadre de l’étude d’un procédé industriel de densification de matériaux composites carbone/carbone (C/C) destinés aux freins d’avion. Une préforme poreuse de fibres de carbone baigne dans un précurseur liquide et elle est chauffée par induction électromagnétique radio-fréquence. Le précurseur porté à ébullition dans l’espace poral crée un dépôt de carbone dans les zones les plus chaudes ; ce dépôt constitue la matrice du composite. On propose une modélisation physico-chimique de ce procédé afin d’en assurer le contrôle et l’optimisation. Le travail a consisté à développer un solveur couplant l’induction électromagnétique avec les transferts de masse, de chaleur, de mouvement et d’espèces chimiques, en incluant l’ébullition et le dépôt chimique. Le modèle inclut le circuit électrique complet permettant d’effectuer le chauffage : il permet donc de suivre en temps réel et de façon non destructive l’avancement de la densification par l’évolution des grandeurs électriques. Une formulation originale adaptée à la représentation simultanée du liquide, du gaz et de la zone en ébullition a été développée et implémentée avec succès dans un logiciel commercial d’éléments finis. Les résultats de la simulation sont comparés avec les données obtenues sur le moyen expérimental, avec un bon accord. Enfin, la simulation est utilisée pour proposer des pistes d’amélioration du procédé, en altérant la géométrie du dispositif de chauffage par induction et en modifiant la stratégie de pilotage en puissance. / This work has been carried out in the frame of the study of an industrial process for the manufacturing of carbon/carbon (C/C) composite aircraft brake discs. A porous preform made of carbon fibres is immersed in a liquid precursor and is heated by Radio-Frequency electromagnetic induction. The boiling precursor enters the porous preform and yields a carbon deposit in the hottest zones; this deposit will be the carbon matrix of the composite. A physico-chemical process model is proposed in the aim of ensuring its control and optimisation. The work consisted in developing a numerical solver coupling electromagnetic induction heating with heat, mass and species balances accounting for boiling, diffusion and chemical deposition reactions. The model includes the complete electrical circuit of the heating device: it therefore allows real-time, non-destructive monitoring of the infiltration progress through the evolution of the electrical properties. An original formulation has been designed to simultaneously describe the liquid, the gas and the boiling zone; it has been implemented in a commercial Finite Element software package and validated physically with respect to experimental data, with a good agreement. Finally, the simulation software has been used to propose directions for process improvements, through alterations of the inductive heating device geometry or of the heating power supply program.

This diploma thesis is focused on issues of positioning, licensing and fruition of civil engineering projects. The aim of this work is to analyze these matters and create subsequently single consecutions facilitating orientation in the construction law for the employers. First the elemental terms of procedure modelling and methodology are introduced to reader to be used further in the text for illustration of the processes. Furthermore particular types of construction positioning, planning permissions and fruition of constructions are analyzed to demonstrate the progression and essential inputs for gaining the authorization within the required moves. In the final part particular procedures giving instructions for the employers which steps to make for realization of their construction plan are elaborated. All the procedures are derived from the types of positioning, permissions and fruition of constructions as in the text described. Short presentation as an operative manual for employers assigning constructions to particular procedures is added.