Most epidemiological systems described in the literature are built for evaluation and analysis of specific diseases, such as Influenza-like-illness. The modeling environments that support these systems are implemented for specific diseases and epidemiological models. Hence they are not reusable or extendable. This thesis focuses on the design and development of an integrated analytical environment with flexible data integration methodologies and multi-level web services for evaluation and forecasting of various epidemics in different regions of the world. The environment supports analysis of epidemics based on any combination of disease, surveillance sources, epidemiological models, geographic regions and demographic factors. The environment also supports evaluation and forecasting of epidemics when various policy-level and behavioral interventions are applied, that may inhibit the spread of an epidemic. First, we describe data integration methodologies and schema design, for flexible experiment design, storage and query retrieval mechanisms related to large scale epidemic data. We describe novel techniques for data transformation, optimization, pre-computation and automation that enable flexibility, extendibility and efficiency required in different categories of query processing. Second, we describe the design and engineering of adaptable middleware platforms based on service-oriented paradigms for interactive workflow, communication, and decoupled integration. This supports large-scale multi-user applications with provision for online analysis of interventions as well as analytical processing of forecast computations. Using a service-oriented architecture, we have provided a platform-as-a-service representation for evaluation and forecasting of epidemics. We demonstrate the applicability of our integrated environment through development of the applications, DISIMS and EpiCaster. DISIMS is an interactive web-based system for evaluating the effects of dynamic intervention strategies on epidemic propagation. EpiCaster is a situation assessment and forecasting tool for projecting the state of evolving epidemics such as flu and Ebola in different regions of the world. We discuss how our platform uses existing technologies to solve a novel problem in epidemiology, and provides a unique solution on which different applications can be built for analyzing epidemic containment strategies. / Ph. D.

No / Analysis of existing literature reveals the growing need to tackle the issue of unified data dissemination. Where this issue has been given some focus, the outreach has been more or less limited to similar systems (i.e. cross-instance collaboration) and no particular focus has been applied on the problem of exposing this data or knowledge to third parties (i.e. cross-vendor collaboration). This paper proposes an integration of semantic technologies within the Web of Things based on the concept and principles of the Service-Oriented Architecture to realize a distributed and semi-autonomous collaboration framework that is capable of offering cross-vendor information exchange and collaboration facilities. Powered by a semantic engine and exposed as a web application with a RESTful API, the generic framework realizes an extensible knowledge management and exchange system that accounts for the dynamic landscape in business-centric Web of Things applications. Disaster management is taken as a potential application scenario to critically analyse and evaluate the system prototype and show that the asset model for the proposed framework is sufficiently capable of meeting the modern-day and next-generation collaboration needs in a world of ever-increasing cross-vendor information sharing.

Bindings are used to make a software library accessible in languages other than those that the library was originally written for. However, creating and maintaining large amounts of bindings for every library is time-consuming and costly. An alternative approach to bringing functionality to more languages is to use a service-oriented architecture, where functionality is provided as services accessible from another process through message passing. Various middlewares exist to enable message passing between processes. In this thesis, some of the state of the art messaging middlewares are explored and evaluated them in terms of various criteria. Emphasis is given to their suitability for programmable built for industrial vehicles. Three of the most suitable middlewares are used to implement small systems based on a service-oriented architecture for further evaluation. The results indicate that the Data Distribution Service is the most promising candidate, owing to its interface description language, language support, and relatively low RAM and disk space usage. / Bindings används för att göra ett mjukvarubibliotek tillgängliga i andra språk än de som biblioteket till en början var gjort för. Att skapa och underhålla bindings för varje bibliotek är dock tidskrävande och kostsamt. Ett alternativt sätt att tillhandahålla funktionalitet till fler språk är att använda en tjänsteorienterad arkitektur där funktionalitet finns tillgänglig i tjänster som andra processer använder via meddelandeöverföring. Det finns flera mellanprogramvaror för meddelandeöverföring mellan processer. I denna uppsats undersöks några av de främsta mellanprogramvarorna i förhållande till en mängd kriterier, med fokus på hur lämpliga de är för programmerbara displays gjorda för industriella fordon. För ytterligare utvärdering används de tre mest lämpliga mellanprogramvarorna för att implementera små system baserade på en tjänstorienterad arkitektur. Resultaten tyder på att Data Distribution Service är den mest lovande kandidaten tack vare dess Interface Description Language, språkstöd och relativt låga användning av RAM och diskutrymme.

Over the last years, online learning has gained significant popularity, and this trend is expected to continue in the future. Online learning is a multi-dimensional activity where each dimension should be adequately supported by an online learning system to provide a fruitful learning experience to its users. Similar to online learning, a particular approach in the way systems are designed has gained increasing popularity over the last years as a result of the emergence of the computer network. Systems have started to be envisioned as integrated collections of components that are deployed over the network. This network-centric approach addresses some of the issues that are not directly addressed by the traditional architectural design approaches. We believe that such an approach can be employed for the architectural design of online learning environments (OLEs) where different dimensions of online learning are addressed by different components residing on the network. This thesis presents a network-centric system architecture for OLEs. The architecture is based on the Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) paradigm and web services. The proposed architecture is described using a number of Department of Defense Architecture Framework (DoDAF) representations. We also developed a quality model for OLEs and evaluated the architecture using this quality model. We believe that this research is an important first step in reconciling those two emerging ideas, namely online learning and network-centric architecture. This reconciliation is important as the flexible nature of SOA can be very useful in creating OLEs that address a wide variety of user needs. / Master of Science

This study investigates the feasibility and performance of SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) as a service (SLAM-as-a-Service) for outdoor augmented reality (AR) applications. Given the rapid advancements in AR technology, integrating lightweight AR glasses with real-time SLAM capabilities poses significant challenges, particularly due to the computational demands of SLAM algorithms and the limited hardware capacity of AR devices. This study proposes a scalable SLAM-as-a-Service framework that offloads intensive computational tasks to remote servers, leveraging cloud and edge computing resources. The ORB-SLAM3 algorithm, known for its robustness and real-time processing capabilities, was adapted and implemented in a service-oriented architecture. The framework was evaluated using the EuRoC dataset to benchmark processing speed, accuracy, and round trip time. The results indicate that while the proposed SLAM-as-a-Service model shows promise in handling high computational loads, several obstacles need to be addressed to achieve minimal round trip time and ensure a seamless AR experience. This thesis contributes to the development of scalable and efficient AR solutions by addressing the limitations of on device processing and highlighting the potential of cloud-based services in enhancing the performance and feasibility of AR applications in dynamic outdoor environments.

Le travail de recherche présenté dans ce mémoire s’intéresse aux problèmes d’interopérabilité dans le domaine du Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) et vise à proposer une méthodologie capable d’y remédier. Nous définissons l’objectif stratégique du PLM comme la maîtrise de la complexité qui caractérise le développement et le suivi des produits. Dans ce cadre, l’objectif de l’interopérabilité est le contrôle des interactions entre constituants de ce système complexe PLM. Nous montrons que cet objectif est atteint si on assure la continuité et la conservation du flux sémantique qui circule dans le système. Notre étude est restreinte aux seuls domaines de la conception et de la production, mais a l’ambition de pouvoir s’appliquer à d’autres domaines. La continuité du flux sémantique est assurée par une architecture que nous avons baptisée « médiation multi-échelle orientée services ». Le cœur de cette architecture, le médiateur, se charge d’orienter les flux sémantiques vers les systèmes concernés, et met en correspondance sémantique les informations échangées en s’appuyant sur un méta-modèle d’unification. Nous montrons que pour assurer la robustesse, la flexibilité et l’agilité du système ainsi constitué, il faut privilégier le choix d’un méta-modèle standard générique et extensible. A cet effet, nous proposons une cartographie du standard STEP permettant de choisir le méta-modèle pertinent. Nous illustrons le choix et la définition de ce méta-modèle dans le cas de deux problèmes d’interopérabilité des domaines de la conception et de la production : l’interopérabilité CAO/PDM et l’interopérabilité PDM/ERP. Nous expliquons notre démarche dans la mise en œuvre de la norme PLCS. Par ailleurs, nous introduisons un modèle d’annotations sémantiques du produit qui permet de reconstruire des vues multiples correspondant à différents besoins métiers. Un ensemble de démonstrateurs permet de valider nos propositions et nos résultats. / Research work presented in this manuscript deals with interoperability issues in the domain of Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) and aims at proposing a methodology able to remedy it. We define the objective of PLM as the control of the complexity that characterizes the development and monitoring of the product. In this context, the objective of the interoperability is to control the interactions between components of this PLM complex system. We demonstrate that this objective is reached if we ensure the continuity and the conservation of the semantic flow inside the system. Our study is restricted to design and production fields, but can be extended to other domains. The continuity of the semantic flow is guaranteed by an architecture that we entitled “service-oriented multi-layered mediation”. The main part of this architecture, the mediator, takes care to orientate the semantic flows towards the adequate systems, and semantically connect the exchanged information by relying on an unification meta-model. We demonstrate that, to ensure the robustness the flexibility and the agility of the so-constituted system, the choice of a generic and extensible standard meta-model should be favored. We thus proposed a mapping of STEP standard allowing to choose the adequate meta-model. We illustrate the choice and the definition of this meta-model in the case of two interoperability problems in the design and production domains: the interoperability CAD/PDM and the interoperability PDM/ERP. We illustrate our methodology in the implementation of the PLCS standard. Moreover, we introduce a model of product semantic tags that allows to rebuild the multiple product views corresponding to different actor needs. A set of demonstrators validate our propositions and our results.

Modern science relies on workflow technology to capture, process, and analyse data obtained from scientific instruments. Scientific workflows are precise descriptions of experiments in which multiple computational tasks are coordinated based on the dataflows between them. Orchestrating scientific workflows presents a significant research challenge: they are typically executed in a manner such that all data pass through a centralised computer server known as the engine, which causes unnecessary network traffic that leads to a performance bottleneck. These workflows are commonly composed of services that perform computation over geographically distributed resources, and involve the management of dataflows between them. Centralised orchestration is clearly not a scalable approach for coordinating services dispersed across distant geographical locations. This thesis presents a scalable decentralised service-oriented orchestration system that relies on a high-level data coordination language for the specification and execution of workflows. This system's architecture consists of distributed engines, each of which is responsible for executing part of the overall workflow. It exploits parallelism in the workflow by decomposing it into smaller sub-workflows, and determines the most appropriate engines to execute them using computation placement analysis. This permits the workflow logic to be distributed closer to the services providing the data for execution, which reduces the overall data transfer in the workflow and improves its execution time. This thesis provides an evaluation of the presented system which concludes that decentralised orchestration provides scalability benefits over centralised orchestration, and improves the overall performance of executing a service-oriented workflow.

Service-orientation and the underlying concept of service-oriented architectures are a means to successfully address the need for flexibility and interoperability of software applications, which in turn leads to improved IT support of business processes. With a growing level of diffusion, sophistication and maturity, the number of services and interdependencies is gradually rising. This increasingly requires companies to implement a systematic management of services along their entire lifecycle. Service lifecycle management (SLM), i.e., the management of services from the initiating idea to their disposal, is becoming a crucial success factor. Not surprisingly, the academic and practice communities increasingly postulate comprehensive IT support for SLM to counteract the inherent complexity. The topic is still in its infancy, with no comprehensive models available that help evaluating and designing IT support in SLM. This thesis presents a reference architecture for SLM and applies it to the evaluation and designing of SLM IT support in companies. The artifact, which largely resulted from consortium research efforts, draws from an extensive analysis of existing SLM applications, case studies, focus group discussions, bilateral interviews and existing literature. Formal procedure models and a configuration terminology allow adapting and applying the reference architecture to a company’s individual setting. Corresponding usage examples prove its applicability and demonstrate the arising benefits within various SLM IT support design and evaluation tasks. A statistical analysis of the knowledge embodied within the reference data leads to novel, highly significant findings. For example, contemporary standard applications do not yet emphasize the lifecycle concept but rather tend to focus on small parts of the lifecycle, especially on service operation. This forces user companies either into a best-of-breed or a custom-development strategy if they are to implement integrated IT support for their SLM activities. SLM software vendors and internal software development units need to undergo a paradigm shift in order to better reflect the numerous interdependencies and increasing intertwining within services’ lifecycles. The SLM architecture is a first step towards achieving this goal.:Content Overview List of Figures....................................................................................... xi List of Tables ...................................................................................... xiv List of Abbreviations.......................................................................xviii 1 Introduction .................................................................................... 1 2 Foundations ................................................................................... 13 3 Architecture Structure and Strategy Layer .............................. 57 4 Process Layer ................................................................................ 75 5 Information Systems Layer ....................................................... 103 6 Architecture Application and Extension ................................. 137 7 Results, Evaluation and Outlook .............................................. 195 Appendix ..........................................................................................203 References .......................................................................................... 463 Curriculum Vitae.............................................................................. 498 Bibliographic Data............................................................................ 499

Les spécificités du secteur de la construction engendrent un contexte de travail coopératif que nous pouvons qualifier d'incertain par nature. L'activité de chantier se caractérise par un mode de production in situ. Dès lors, nombreux sont les dysfonctionnements qui peuvent apparaître. Nous citerons, par exemple, les problèmes liés à la nature du sol, aux intempéries ou encore ceux qui sont propres aux interactions entre les intervenants (ex. fourniture en matériaux, interfaces entre les corps de métier...). Aussi, la coordination repose sur un mélange subtil entre interactions implicites et explicites, où l'organisation prend de multiples configurations (hiérarchique, adhocratique ou transversale), et où la qualité du processus collectif repose sur l'autonomie et le sens des responsabilités de chacun des intervenants. Nous faisons l'hypothèse qu'un tel contexte est largement fondé sur la notion de confiance, car celle-ci a la capacité de réduire la perception du risque et de permettre l'action dans un environnement marqué par de nombreuses incertitudes. En conséquence, nous suggérons un rapprochement entre les outils d'assistance à la coordination et la notion de confiance, et nous proposons une nouvelle approche du pilotage de l'activité collective à partir de la représentation de la confiance. Ce travail de doctorat se structure autour de la notion de «confiance dans le bon déroulement de l'activité». Nous suggérons que celle-ci est dépendante de chacune des dimensions de l'activité collective : sa progression, les acteurs chargés de son exécution, les ouvrages en résultant (et leur difficulté de mise en œuvre), ainsi que les documents nécessaires à sa réalisation. Aussi, notre méthode consiste d'abord en l'identification des divers critères de confiance, consolidés par une étude de terrain. Puis, nous établissons un modèle mathématique destiné à évaluer cette confiance à partir des informations issues d'un contexte de coopération. Sur base de ces éléments, s'en suit la proposition d'un prototype dénommé Bat'iTrust, reposant sur une architecture logicielle multi-vues et orientée services. Pour l'utilisateur, la navigation au sein de ce prototype est guidée par un tableau de bord centré sur le concept de confiance. Enfin, la validation de cette proposition repose sur des enquêtes et une phase d'expérimentation qui nous ont permis de confronter nos résultats à des sujets expérimentaux représentatifs du domaine.

Data exchange between different information systems is a complex issue. Each system, designed for a specific purpose, is defined using a vocabulary of the specific business. While Web services allow interoperations and data communications between multiple systems, the clients of the services must understand the vocabulary of the targeting data resources to select services or to construct queries. In this thesis we explore an ontology-based approach to facilitate clients’ queries in the vocabulary of the clients’ own domain, and to automate the query processing. A governmental inter-department data query process has been used to illustrate the capability of the semantic approach.