<p> In the past decade, the role of data has increased exponentially from being the output of a process, to becoming a true corporate asset. As the business landscape becomes increasingly complex and the pace of change increasingly faster, companies need a clear awareness of their data assets, their movement, and how they relate to the organization in order to make informed decisions, reduce cost, and identify opportunity. The increased complexity of corporate technology has also created a high level of risk, as the data moving across a multitude of systems lends itself to a higher likelihood of impacting dependent processes and systems, should something go wrong or be changed. The result of this increased difficulty in managing corporate data assets is poor enterprise data quality, the impacts of which, range in the billions of dollars of waste and lost opportunity to businesses. </p><p> Tools and processes exist to help companies manage this phenomena, however often times, data projects are subject to high amounts of scrutiny as senior leadership struggles to identify return on investment. While there are many tools and methods to increase a companies&rsquo; ability to govern data, this research stands by the fact that you can&rsquo;t govern that which you don&rsquo;t know. This lack of awareness of the corporate data landscape impacts the ability to govern data, which in turn impacts overall data quality within organizations. </p><p> This research seeks to propose a means for companies to better model the landscape of their data, processes, and organizational attributes through the use of linked data, via the Resource Description Framework (RDF) and ontology. The outcome of adopting such techniques is an increased level of data awareness within the organization, resulting in improved ability to govern corporate data assets. It does this by primarily addressing corporate leadership&rsquo;s low tolerance for taking on large scale data centric projects. The nature of linked data, with it&rsquo;s incremental and de-centralized approach to storing information, combined with a rich ecosystem of open source or low cost tools reduces the financial barriers to entry regarding these initiatives. Additionally, linked data&rsquo;s distributed nature and flexible structure help foster maximum participation throughout the enterprise to assist in capturing information regarding data assets. This increased participation aids in increasing the quality of the information captured by empowering more of the individuals who handle the data to contribute. </p><p> Ontology, in conjunction with linked data, provides an incredibly powerful means to model the complex relationships between an organization, its people, processes, and technology assets. When combined with the graph based nature of RDF the model lends itself to presenting concepts such as data lineage to allow an organization to see the true reach of it&rsquo;s data. This research further proposes an ontology that is based on data governance standards, visualization examples and queries against data to simulate common data governance situations, as well as guidelines to assist in its implementation in a enterprise setting. </p><p> The result of adopting such techniques will allow for an enterprise to accurately reflect the data assets, stewardship information and integration points that are so necessary to institute effective data governance.</p>

Sweden is dependent on secure sea transport. Shorter disruption of imports of fuel and crude oil can be managed with an emergency stock, but a prolonged halt in imports creates problems. For industry, the vulnerability is greater. Fragmented production chains in combination with expenditure reductions in inventory causes a dependency on proper transport of intermediate goods in the manufacturing industry. A lengthy disruption thus involves disruption of production for both domestic consumption and for export goods containing imported parts.In order to secure shipping routes with a limited number of vessels, Mine Counter Measures (MCM) capacity is required, and according to the Armed Forces, developed with new sensors and autonomous vehicles. Sweden has acquired small AUV systems for MCM, and has plans to acquire larger and more advanced. Before any acquisition is implemented, a number of considerations have to be made. How does advanced AUV inflict on existing methods and systems? Is the result is better, is it faster, do we need to make adjustments? The essay aims to examine the military technology influence an AUV have on today's MCM operations. The results of the study can serve as part of the decision support for the Armed Forces and FMV before a purchase of an advanced AUV.The results of the thesis show that Advanced AUV:s, with the qualities they have , can affect the way the Armed Forces are conducting MCM today.

This study examines the growth, need for and demands on university-industry collaborative (UIC) partnerships as a vehicle for the nation‟s development through technological innovation. In Malaysia, gaps and weaknesses exist when compared to best practices, these limit the establishment and overall effectiveness of UICs. In the Malaysian context, UICs are by no means a new phenomenon, however the approaches adopted, the success stories and related issues have not received significant academic attention. Thus, this study aims to provide an insight into collaborative endeavours in Malaysia. This study adopted an exploratory interpretative case study approach via semi-structured interviews and self-administered questionnaire survey to collect data from university researchers, industry players and research agencies. This data, along with the findings from an extensive literature review were used to benchmark best practices and define the requirements that are placed on a PMM designed specifically for use in the Malaysian UIC project environment. Based on this analysis, a novel and appropriate PMM was developed and subsequently evaluated by an expert panel and iteratively refined. The primary outcome of this study is a PMM guidebook for use in the initiation, planning, execution, monitoring and closing of UIC research projects. The PMM developed aims to make project management best practices accessible and appropriate for the needs of UIC researchers and also encourages academic researchers to embrace project management knowledge which in turn helps them to understand industrial needs and wants. The PMM developed is customisable for project size and nature. It consists of a set of processes, templates, tools and techniques to assist in the planning and management of the project throughout the entire life cycle. The components of the PMM are (1) project management processes such as initiating, planning, executing and monitoring project progress with (2) a selection of tools and techniques to communicate delivery to the satisfaction of all stakeholders; (3) consolidated and integrated set of appropriate best practices and values of project management and (4) a list of references of terminology as a common denominator and language for us in the project environment. NB Please note that the online version does not include volume 2 of the printed thesis:Project management methodology [PMM] guidebook.

<p>VPN (Virtual Private Network) is a method of providing a secure connection between a source (computer/server) and a destination host. The connection is secured not on the basis of employing a dedicated channel between the source and destination host, but instead the connection is secured over the public internet. </p><p> VPN is implemented in a hospital&rsquo;s network to meet the Health Insurance Protection and Accountability Act (HIPAA) regulations. HIPAA is a directive that compels the medical centers and clinics to handle an individual&rsquo;s electronic medical record securely; free from any nature of breaching. </p><p> In an effort to execute the VPN on a hospital&rsquo;s network that complies with HIPAA, this project is focused on creating a network simulation with the VPN including other networking features. The VPN enabled network is accomplished using the GNS3 network simulation software. The data through the VPN tunnel are encoded and observed in Wireshark Software. </p><p> In the conclusion we will observe the state, unencrypted and encrypted, of the packets before and after, respectively, applying the VPN to the border routers through which the IP packets are traveling via the insecure Public Internet. </p>

<p> Although there is a large investment made in technology in our public and private schools each year, there has been comparatively little effort made into understanding the impact of that technology on our students. This study examines the relationship between student boredom, media multitasking, and distraction in an effort to understand the impact of media multitasking on our students. To examine this, a mixed methods design was utilized, consisting of a memory recall experiment, student interviews, and a survey instrument. This study found that laptops are preferred over iPads for both focus and academic reasons, and it discovered classroom environments and teaching methodologies that caused distraction to occur as well as strategies employed by students to attempt to overcome distraction. Ultimately, this study did not find an impact on academic performance as assessed by a memory recall experiment. As a result, this study contributes significant knowledge into technology distraction at the high school level as well as modifications that can help improve student focus.</p>

The development of multi-agent software systems is considered a complex task due to (a) the large number and heterogeneity of documents generated during the development of these systems, (b) the lack of support for the whole development life-cycle by existing agent-oriented methodologies requiring the use of different methodologies, and (c) the possible incompleteness of the documents and models generated during the development of the systems. In order to alleviate the above problems, in this thesis, a traceability framework is described to support the development of multi-agent systems. The framework supports automatic generation of traceability relations and identification of missing elements (i.e., completeness checking) in the models created during the development life-cycle of multi-agent systems using the Belief-Desire-Intention (BDI) architecture. Traceability has been recognized as an important activity in the software development process. Traceability relations can guarantee and improve software quality and can help with several tasks such as the evolution of software systems, reuse of parts of the system, validation that a system meets its requirements, understanding of the rationale for certain design decisions, identification of common aspects of the system, and analysis of implications of changes in the system. The traceability framework presented in this thesis concentrates on multi-agent software systems developed using i* framework, Prometheus methodology, and JACK language. Here, a traceability reference model is presented for software artefacts generated when using i* framework, Prometheus methodology, and JACK language. Different types of relations between the artefacts are identified. The framework is based on a rule-based approach to support automatic identification of traceability relations and missing elements between the generated artefacts. Software models represented in XML were used to support the heterogeneity of models and tools used during the software development life-cycle. In the framework, the rules are specified in an extension of XQuery to support (i) representation of the consequence part of the rules, i.e. the actions to be taken when the conditions are satisfied, and (ii) extra functions to cover some of the traceability relations being proposed and completeness checking of the models. A prototype tool has been developed to illustrate and evaluate the work. The work has been evaluated in terms of recall and precision measurements in three different case studies. One small case study of an Automatic Teller Machine application, one medium case study of an Air Traffic Control Environment application, and one large case study of an Electronic Bookstore application.

In recent years that has been a worldwide increase in the utilisation of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) for many diverse subsea applications. This has given rise to an increase in the research and development of these vehicles, with a particular focus on extending operational capability and longevity. Consequently, this activity has resulted in the design of many different types of AUVs that employ a variety of different propulsion and manoeuvring mechanisms. One particular area that has yielded promising results involves the vehicles designs that are biologically inspired or biomimetic. This class of AUV replicates the anatomical features of aquatic species in order to exploit some of the benefits associated with this type of swimming e.g. higher efficiency at low speeds, improved manoeuvrability. The study presented in this thesis considers the design and performance analysis of a unique biomimetic AUV design based on the physiology of an adult Atlantic salmon. This vehicle, called RoboSalmon, is equipped with a multiple jointed, fully actuated tail that is used to replicate the undulatory swimming gait of a real fish. The initial stage of this design process involves the development of a mathematical model to describe the fusion of the dynamics and electro-mechanics of this vehicle. This model provides the design specifications for a prototype vehicle, which has been used in water tank trials to collect data. Forward swimming and manoeuvring experiments, e.g. cruise in turning and turning circle swimming patterns, have been conducted for performance analysis and validation purposes. This part of the study has illustrated the relationship between the vehicle surge velocity, tail amplitude and tail beat frequency. It was found that the maximum surge velocity has been measured at 0.143 ms-1. Also, the vehicle has been shown to accomplish turning circle manoeuvres with turning radius just over the half of its body length. The final stage of this study involved the design of a heading control system, which changes the course of the vehicle by altering the tail centreline. This study allowed the course changing performance of the vehicle to be analysed. Furthermore, a line of sight guidance system has been used to navigate the vehicle through a multiple waypoint course in order to show autonomous operation within a simulated environment. Moreover, the vehicle has demonstrated satisfactory performance in course changing and tracking operations. It is concluded that the RoboSalmon biomimetic AUV exhibits higher propulsive efficiency and manoeuvrability than propeller based underwater vehicles at low speeds. Thus the results of this study show that mimicking biology can improve the propulsive and manoeuvring efficiencies of AUVs.

The immense power of the sea presents many life-threatening dangers to humans, and many fall foul of its unforgiving nature. Since manned rescue operations at sea (and indeed other search and rescue operations) are also inherently dangerous for rescue workers, it is common to introduce a level of autonomy to such systems. This thesis investigates via simulations the application of various search algorithms to an autonomous air-sea rescue system, which consists of an unmanned surface vessel as the main hub, and four unmanned helicopter drones. The helicopters are deployed from the deck of the surface vessel and are instructed to search certain areas for survivors of a stricken ship. The main aim of this thesis is to investigate whether common search algorithms can be applied to the autonomous air-sea rescue system to carry out an efficient search for survivors, thus improving the present-day air-sea rescue operations. Firstly, the mathematical model of the helicopter is presented. The helicopter model consists of a set of differential equations representing the translational and rotational dynamics of the whole body, the flapping dynamics of the main rotor blades, the rotor speed dynamics, and rotational transformations from the Earth-fixed frame to the body frame. Next, the navigation and control systems are presented. The navigation system consists of a line-of-sight autopilot which points each vehicle in the direction of its desired waypoint. Collision avoidance is also discussed using the concept of a collision cone. Using the mathematical models, controllers are developed for the helicopters: Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) and Sliding Mode controllers are designed and compared. The coordination of the helicopters is carried out using common search algorithms, and the theory, application, and analysis of these algorithms is presented. The search algorithms used are the Random Search, Hill Climbing, Simulated Annealing, Ant Colony Optimisation, Genetic Algorithms, and Particle Swarm Optimisation. Some variations of these methods are also tested, as are some hybrid algorithms. As well as this, three standard search patterns commonly used in maritime search and rescue are tested: Parallel Sweep, Sector Search, and Expanding Square. The effect of adding to the objective function a probability distribution of target locations is also tested. This probability distribution is designed to indicate the likely locations of targets and thus guide the search more effectively. It is found that the probability distribution is generally very beneficial to the search, and gives the search the direction it needs to detect more targets. Another interesting result is that the local algorithms perform significantly better when given good starting points. Overall, the best approach is to search randomly at the start and then hone in on target areas using local algorithms. The best results are obtained when combining a Random Search with a Guided Simulated Annealing algorithm.

An injury to the cervical region of the spinal cord can cause paralysis affecting all four limbs, termed tetraplegia. People with tetraplegia also have paralysis or impaired function of the major respiratory muscles, namely the diaphragm and intercostal and abdominal muscles. This often reduces respiratory function, with associated respiratory complications a leading cause of morbidity and mortality for this population. Abdominal Functional Electrical Stimulation (AFES), the application of electrical pulses to the abdominal muscles causing them to contract, has been shown to improve respiratory function in tetraplegia. Despite these positive results, further work is needed to establish AFES as a standard clinical treatment. The aim of this thesis is to support the clinical introduction of AFES. This was achieved by addressing two primary objectives. Firstly, the development of new technologies and protocols to optimise AFES for use in a clinical setting. Secondly, the clinical evaluation of these technologies and protocols with tetraplegic patients. For research purposes, AFES has typically been applied manually, requiring an operator to synchronise stimulation with respiratory activity. One important step necessary for the clinical introduction of AFES is the development of an automated AFES device that can apply stimulation in synchrony with the users respiratory activity, with different stimulation parameters applied for different breath types such as a quiet breath and a cough. In this thesis, the signal from a non-intrusive respiratory effort belt, worn around the chest, was used to develop a statistical classifcation algorithm capable of classifying respiratory activity in real-time, and applying AFES in synchrony with the user's respiratory activity. The effectiveness of AFES can also be enhanced by stimulating at the abdominal muscle motor points. In this thesis the positions of the abdominal motor points were located systematically for the frst time, in ten able bodied and five tetraplegic participants. To aid the clinical introduction of AFES it is necessary to establish the patient groups who would benefit most from this intervention, and to develop appropriate clinical protocols. This is addressed in two clinical studies, where the feasibility and effectiveness of AFES to improve the respiratory function of the acute ventilator dependant and sub-acute tetraplegic populations was demonstrated. In the first study, conducted with 10 acute ventilator dependant tetraplegics, AFES was applied on alternate weeks for a total duration of eight weeks. This resulted in acute improvements in breathing and led to a longitudinal increase in respiratory function over the study duration. It was found that participants weaned from mechanical ventilation on average 11 days faster than matched historic controls. Previous work, which investigated the effect of a three week AFES training programme on the respiratory function of people with sub-acute tetraplegia, suggested that an extended AFES training programme may be more effective. In the second clinical study in this thesis, a continuous eight week AFES training protocol (combined with a six week control period) was evaluated with three sub-acute tetraplegic participants. The application of AFES led to an acute increase in respiratory function, with a longitudinal improvement in respiratory function observed throughout the study. In a single participant case study, the feasibility of combining AFES with assisted coughing delivered by mechanical insufflation-exsufflation was demonstrated for the first time. This was shown to lead to an acute improvement in respiratory function at six of the eight assessment sessions, indicating that this technique could be used to aid secretion removal. This thesis highlights the feasibility and effectiveness of AFES to improve the respiratory function of the acute ventilator dependant and sub-acute tetraplegic populations. The clinical protocols that enable AFES to be used with these patient groups, and the technological developments detailed throughout this thesis, are an important step towards the introduction of AFES as a regular treatment modality.

Ranked the third biggest cyber security threats of 2013 by Forbes, Internal Identity Theft-Related Crimes (IIDTRC) leave countless victims in their wake, including online retail companies and consumers. With the rapid growth in the use of credit and debit cards in e-commerce, the online retail has been a key target for the IIDTRC perpetrators. IIDTRC involve the misuse of information systems (IS) by the dishonest employees to steal victims’ personal identifiable data. The crimes pose significant socio-economic impact and data security risks. In the context of online retail, relatively little research has been done to prevent IIDTRC. A few studies focus on situational-based IIDTRC prevention approach built on an independent use of software security. Others develop IIDTRC prevention frameworks in the context of generic e-businesses. The majority of the frameworks have little or no grounded empirical research. This research entitled the ‘The Prevention of Internal Identity Theft-Related Crimes: A Case Study Research of the UK Online Retail Companies’, attempts to bridge this research gap. It provides answers to two questions – what is the nature of IIDTRC in online retail companies and what framework can be used for IIDTRC prevention. This research set out three aims to answer the two questions. First, it provides understanding of causes, methods of carrying out and prevention of IIDTRC. Second, it extends a role-based framework (RBF) for the prevention of IIDTRC. Third, it evaluates the extent the RBF can be applied in the prevention of IIDTRC in online retail companies. A qualitative case study was used to achieve these aims. The empirical data were collected in the northwest of UK from 2011 to 2013. The field study was carried through archival analysis, semi-structured interview and participant observation. Organisational role theory (ORT) was used to guide the concept of a role-based framework (RBF) – a collaborative approach where the key components of management work in unison is required to prevent IIDTRC. The attributes of RBF were synthesised from the recommended IIDTRC prevention practices. The empirical evidence suggests that IIDTRC perpetrators in online retail companies are likely to be the top management and call centre employees. The findings suggest that online retail consumers’ credits/debits cards details are as much vulnerable to IIDTRC as the companies’ identities such as trade secrets and trademarks. Furthermore, the common methods used by the IIDTRC perpetrators include collaboration, collusion, infiltration and social engineering. Some of the IIDTRC prevention practices, of which the majority is software security, are implemented without considering the contribution of human-centred security based on management roles. In examining the contribution of the management roles in implementing Information Systems security practices, major challenges that are faced by online retail companies were identified. They include lack of resources, lack of management support and lack of IIDTRC prevention awareness training. This research concludes that an application of RBF can reduce the impact of the identified challenges. This was suggested by applying RBF in conducting IS security auditing in three online retail companies. The finding from the selected companies suggests that the RBF approach can maximise management performance in providing effective IIDTRC prevention practices. It provides better returns on cost, quality and time in the IS security auditing. It has an impact on management attitudes on preventing IIDTRC by clarifying and aligning their roles in implementing effective IS security auditing. There is heterogeneity of this effect across the companies suggesting that some are utilising the RBF approach while others are not. The finding confirms the plausibility of the RBF attributes. It suggests that the human-centred security play an integral role for effective internal data security in preventing IIDTRC. It suggests that it pays to use the collaborative management roles approach for implementing IIDTRC prevention practices. Furthermore, the use of the RBF approach can improve the effectiveness of the online retail companies in preventing IIDTRC. The findings suggest that benefits may accrue from the RBF approach when supplemented with a collaborative IS auditing. The benefits depend on the level of management IT skills, their perception of their roles, top management support and the organisational operations. This research contributes to the literature in identity theft prevention in online retail. To IS security practitioners, it identifies the data security challenges and IIDTRC prevention practices. To theory, it extends a role-based framework for IIDTRC prevention. To the emerging research in the digital economy, it puts forward as a robust starting point for further related works in cyber security, cybercrimes prevention and criminology.