Thesis (PhD) - Swinburne University of Technology, Faculty of Engineering and Industrial Sciences, Centre for Complex Software Systems and Services, 2009. / A thesis submitted to CS3 - Centre for Complex Software Systems and Services, Faculty of Engineering and Industrial Sciences, Swinburne University of Technology for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, 2009. Typescript. "June 2009". Bibliography: p. 122-135.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 125-136).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oklahoma, 1997. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 135-144).

Cloud computing is here to stay and is the natural progression in the evolution of our computing and collaboration needs. The easy availability of computing infrastructures is motivating a new breed of entrepreneurs to realize their ideas and deliver innovations to masses. These innovations, however, have some serious security weaknesses. If not taken into account, these weaknesses could prove fatal for an organization’s reputation and existence. This thesis explains the potential risks associated with various types of cloud computing technologies and recommends methods to mitigate them. / text

The proliferation of mobile computing devices with powerful sensing and communication capabilities has created an immense social landscape of awareness and connectedness. Social media applications have been largely designed for asynchronous expression and collaboration among individuals. Though these models have served as suitable surrogates for social interaction in a rapidly evolving digital age, they have been insufficient at connecting people spatially and temporally. This report describes Revolver: an appli- cation utilizing the state-of-the-art in mobile and distributed computing to provide users with a shared sense of time and space. Revolver allows users to synchronously capture image data of their surroundings with the ability to virtually reconstruct an event from the separate sources. We present the ratio- nale for the project, design considerations, implementation details, results of the prototyping effort, and conclusions to carry this project to future phases of development for viable deployment. / text

The poor representation of cloud processes in general circulation models (GMCs) has been recognized for decades as one of the major sources of uncertainties in weather and climate predictions. Because of the coarse spatial resolution of GCMs, subgrid- scale cloud and convection processes are modelled by parameterization schemes that provide a statistical representation of the subgrid-scale processes in terms of the large- scale, gridbox fields. This thesis focuses on the stochastic multicloud parameterization of Khouider et al. (2010), which is based on the three cloud types (congestus, deep, and stratiform) that are most observed in tropical convective systems. A rigorous parameter estimation model based on the Bayesian paradigm is developed to infer from data a set of seven convective timescales that determine the transition rates from one cloud type to another in the multicloud framework. The Bayesian posterior is given in terms of a costly model likelihood function that must be approximated numerically using high-performance linear algebra routines for parallel distributed computing. The Bayesian procedure is applied to the Giga-LES dataset of Khairout- dinov et al. (2009), a large-eddy simulation of tropical deep convection that covers a physical domain comparable to that of a typical horizontal grid cell in a GCM. The stochastic multicloud model and its deterministic version are then coupled to a zonally iv symmetric atmospheric model to study the meridional Hadley circulation and mon- soon dynamics. The main model is based on the hydrostatic Boussinesq equations on a rotating sphere, and is composed of a deep convective troposphere and a dynamical planetary boundary layer to sustain shallow convection. The resulting equations form a system of nonconservative partial different equations, which is solved numerically using high order non-oscillatory finite volume methods. Results from deterministic and stochastic simulations reveal a mean local Hadley cell structure with some fea- tures of organized convection. In the stochastic case, the Giga-LES parameter regime best captures the Hadley-type circulation and monsoon trough features, compared to a parameter regime used in a different study. / Graduate / mdelachev@gmail.com

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Online news sites are some of the most useful and popular information retrieval systems in use today. Thousands of articles in different languages and on a variety of subjects are posted every day and updated every hour. Most articles are uninteresting and unimportant to a particular individual, and individuals may not want to review entire websites for stories of interest. Systems have been developed that provide summaries from online news websites but finding a means to rapidly scan stories of potential interest remains an open problem. In this thesis, we introduce a novel visualization system that uses geographical location combined with image collages and tag clouds to provide a tool for rapidly reviewing news stories. Tag clouds are arrangements of tags with the most important tags allocated a bigger font size or otherwise more prominent visual properties; and image collages provide a compact, effective and attractive representation for photos on one page. Bringing these media representations together over a geographic map offers a new style of interaction for online news browsing. The usability of our application was evaluated with two user studies. We aimed to determine how best to configure our visualization to communicate more information in less time to users than traditional feed-based news aggregators. We were particularly interested in knowing whether users interpret text/image size and placement as indications of a news item’s prominence. We also wanted to establish whether users understand the semantic relationship between zoom level on the map and the regional relevance (municipal, provincial, national) of news items displayed at that zoom level. The results of user feedback and data analysis (e.g., eye tracking logs) were examined to improve the usability of the system. Data analysis from the second user study suggests that, in general, the system is highly effective in helping users achieve an immediate and effortless bird’s-eye-view of news summaries within a large geographic region. However, users had varying opinions about the level of detail in the user interface (e.g., the number of images).

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