Performance management of engineering education emerges from the need to assure proper training of future engineers in order to meet the constantly evolving expectations and challenges for the engineering profession. The process of accreditation ensures that engineering graduates are adequately prepared for their professional careers and responsibilities by ensuring that they possess an expected set of mandatory graduate attributes. Engineering programs are required by accreditation bodies to have systematic performance management of their programs that informs a continuous improvement process. Unfortunately, the vast diversity of engineering disciplines, varieties of information systems, and the large number of actors involved in the process makes this task challenging and complex. We performed a systematic literature review of jurisdictions around the world who are doing accreditation and examined how universities across Canada, US and other countries, have addressed tool support for performance management of engineering education. Our initial systematic approach for tool supported performance management evolved from this, and then we refined it through an iterative process of combined action research and design science research. We developed a prototype, Graduate Attribute Information Analysis (GAIA) in collaboration with the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Ottawa, to support a systematic approach for accreditation of three engineering programs. This thesis contributes to research on the problem by developing a systematic approach, a tool that supports it, a set of related data transformations, and a tool-assessment checklist. Our systematic approach for tool-supported performance management addresses system architecture, a common continuous improvement process, a common set of key performance indicators, and identifies the performance management forms and reports needed to analyze graduate attribute data. The data transformation and analysis techniques we demonstrate ensure the accurate analysis of statistical and historical trends.

Distributed systems can be seen in a variety of applications that is in use today. Tritech provides several systems that to some extent consist of distributed systems of nodes. These nodes collect data and the data have to be processed. A problem that often appears when designing these systems, is deciding where the data should be processed, i.e., which architecture is the most suitable one for the system. Decide the architecture for these systems are not simple, especially since it changes rather quickly due to the development in these areas. The thesis aims to perform a study regarding which factors affect the choice of architecture in a distributed system and how these factors relate to each other. To be able to analyze which factors do affect the choice of architecture and to what extent, a simulator was implemented. The simulator received information about the factors as input, and return one or several architecture configurations as output. By performing qualitative interviews, the input factors to the simulator were chosen. The factors that were analyzed in the thesis was: security, storage, working memory, size of data, number of nodes, data processing per data set, robust communication, battery consumption, and cost. From the qualitative interviews as well as from the prestudy five architecture configuration was chosen. The chosen architectures were: thin-client server, thick-client server, three-tier client-server, peer-to-peer, and cloud computing. The simulator was validated regarding the three given use cases: agriculture, the train industry, and industrial Internet of Things. The validation consisted of five existing projects from Tritech. From the results of the validation, the simulator produced correct results for three of the five projects. By using the simulator results, it could be seen which factors affect the choice of architecture more than others and are hard to provide in the same architecture since they are conflicting factors. The conflicting factors were security together with working memory and robust communication. The factor working memory together with battery consumption also showed to be conflicting factors and is hard to provide within the same architecture. Therefore, according to the simulator, it can be seen that the factors that affect the choice of architecture were working memory, battery consumption, security, and robust communication. By using the results of the simulator, a decision matrix was designed whose purpose was to facilitate the choice of architecture. The evaluation of the decision matrix consisted of four projects from Tritech including the three given use cases: agriculture, the train industry, and industrial Internet of Things. The evaluation of the decision matrix showed that the two architectures that received the most points, one of the architectures were used in the validated project. / Distribuerade system kan ses i en mängd olika applikationer som används idag. Tritech jobbar med flera produkter som till viss del består av distribuerade system av noder. Det dessa system har gemensamt är att noderna samlar in data och denna data kommer på ett eller ett annat sätt behöva bearbetas. En fråga som ofta behövs besvaras vid uppsättning av arkitekturen för sådana projekt är huruvida datan ska bearbetas, d.v.s. vilken arkitektkonfiguration som är mest lämplig för systemet. Att ta dessa beslut har visat sig inte alltid vara helt simpelt, och det ändrar sig relativt snabbt med den utvecklingen som sker på dessa områden. Denna uppsats syftar till att utföra en studie om vilka faktorer som påverkar valet av arkitektur för ett distribuerat system samt hur dessa faktorer förhåller sig mot varandra. För att kunna analysera vilka faktorer som påverkar valet av arkitektur och i vilken utsträckning, implementerades en simulator. Simulatorn tog faktorerna som input och returnerade en eller flera arkitekturkonfigurationer som output. Genom att utföra kvalitativa intervjuer valdes faktorerna till simulatorn. Faktorerna som analyserades i denna uppsats var: säkerhet, lagring, arbetsminne, storlek på data, antal noder, databearbetning per datamängd, robust kommunikation, batteriförbrukning och kostnad. Från de kvalitativa intervjuerna och från förstudien valdes även fem stycken arkitekturkonfigurationer. De valda arkitekturerna var: thin-client server, thick-client server, three-tier client-server, peer-to-peer, och cloud computing. Simulatorn validerades inom de tre givna användarfallen: lantbruk, tågindustri och industriell IoT. Valideringen bestod av fem befintliga projekt från Tritech. Från resultatet av valideringen producerade simulatorn korrekta resultat för tre av de fem projekten. Utifrån simulatorns resultat, kunde det ses vilka faktorer som påverkade mer vid valet av arkitektur och är svåra att kombinera i en och samma arkitekturkonfiguration. Dessa faktorer var säkerhet tillsammans med arbetsminne och robust kommunikation. Samt arbetsminne tillsammans med batteriförbrukning visade sig också vara faktorer som var svåra att kombinera i samma arkitektkonfiguration. Därför, enligt simulatorn, kan det ses att de faktorer som påverkar valet av arkitektur var arbetsminne, batteriförbrukning, säkerhet och robust kommunikation. Genom att använda simulatorns resultat utformades en beslutsmatris vars syfte var att underlätta valet av arkitektur. Utvärderingen av beslutsmatrisen bestod av fyra projekt från Tritech som inkluderade de tre givna användarfallen: lantbruk, tågindustrin och industriell IoT. Resultatet från utvärderingen av beslutsmatrisen visade att de två arkitekturerna som fick flest poäng, var en av arkitekturerna den som användes i det validerade projektet

Since their creation, CubeSats have become a valuable educational tool for university science and engineering programs. Unfortunately, while aerospace companies invest resources to develop verification and validation methodologies based on larger-scale aerospace projects, university programs tend to focus resources on spacecraft development. This paper looks at two different types of methodologies in an attempt to improve CubeSat reliability: generating software requirements and utilizing system and software architecture modeling. Both the Consortium Requirements Engineering (CoRE) method for software requirements and the Monterey Phoenix modeling language for architecture modeling were tested for usability in the context of PolySat, Cal Poly's CubeSat research program. In the end, neither CoRE nor Monterey Phoenix provided the desired results for improving PolySat's current development procedures. While a modified version of CoRE discussed in this paper does allow for basic software requirements to be generated, the resulting specification does not provide any more granularity than PolySat's current institutional knowledge. Furthermore, while Monterey Phoenix is a good tool to introduce students to model-based systems engineering (MBSE) concepts, the resulting graphs generated for a PolySat specific project were high-level and did not find any issues previously discovered through trial and error methodologies. While neither method works for PolySat, the aforementioned results do provide benefits for university programs looking to begin developing CubeSats.

With the increasing popularity of blockchain - the cryptocurrency technology, the decentralized potential of the Blockchain technique is driving a new wave across the manufacturing industry. This paper introduce how to use the blockchain technique as a tool for solving supply chain related tasks in manufacture industry, and drive quantum leaps in efficiency, agility and innovation comparing with traditional centralized management system. This paper introduces the blockchain technique with its value properties and the requirement of this technique from manufacture industry. It also presents a clear blockchain architecture based on manufacture industry supply chain management mechanism describing its characteristics, unique consensus algorithms, smart contracts, network, scalability, databases. The paper also gives out a practical supply chain Dapp upon this architecture. / I och med det ökande intresset för kryptovaluta-teknologin Blockchain, går decentraliseringen av Blockchain-tekniken som en ny våg över tillverkningsindustrin. Denna uppsats syftar till att introducera hur tekniken av blockchain kan användas som ett verktyg för att lösa problem relaterade till leverantörskedjan i tillverkningen. Den belyser även vilka fördelar tekniken har gällande effektivitet, flexibilitet och förnyelse jämfört med traditionella centraliserade styrningssystem. Arbetet presenterar fördelarna med blockchain och hur industrin är i behov av denna teknik. Uppsatsen presenterar även en tydlig blockchain konstruerad struktur baserad på tillverkningskedjans mekanism som består av unika algoritmer, nätverk och databaser. Ett praktiskt exempel på en decentraliserad applikation baserat på denna struktur ges även.

Объектом настоящего исследования являются алгоритмы и методы машинного обучения, и их применение в задачах прогнозирования временных рядов и анализа текста. В данном исследовании предложено применить модифицированную архитектуру рекуррентной нейронной сети (LSTM) для предсказания цены закрытия криптовалютных котировок на следующий день от текущего, а также, применить алгоритмы классификации, такие как: логистическая регрессия, Linear SVC, Gradient Boosting, для определения эмоциональной метки новостной записи для разработки стратегии прогнозирования точек входа и выхода из торговых позиций на рынке криптовалют. Исследование фокусируется на доказательстве того, что применение методов и алгоритмов машинного обучения для создания торговой стратегии для определения точек входа и выхода из торговой позиции, повысит эффективность процесса торговли, а также, ускорит процесс сбора и обработки аналитических данных для технического анализа рынка. Для обучения используемых моделей, разработаны и использованы программные средства (парсеры), с помощью которых извлекаются данные с криптовалютной торговой биржи Binance, а также, криптовалютной социальной сети CryptoPanic. Экспериментальные результаты показывают, что среднем автоматизированный процесс определения точек входа и выхода из торговых позиций быстрее в 2 раза чем при ручном определении, а количество сделок увеличится примерно на 17.5%. В итоге можно сделать вывод о том, что, используя передовые технологии возможно разработать инструмент для повышения эффективности торговли криптовалютой. / The object of this study is the algorithms and methods of machine learning, and their application in the problems of time series forecasting and text analysis. In this study, it is proposed to apply a modified architecture of a recurrent neural network (LSTM) to predict the closing price of cryptocurrency quotes the next day from the current one, and also to apply classification algorithms, such as: logistic regression, Linear SVC, Gradient Boosting, to determine the emotional label of a news entry to develop a strategy for predicting entry and exit points for trading positions in the cryptocurrency market. The study focuses on proving that the use of machine learning methods and algorithms to create a trading strategy to determine entry and exit points from a trading position will increase the efficiency of the trading process, as well as speed up the process of collecting and processing analytical data for technical market analysis. To train the models used, software tools (parsers) were developed and used, with the help of which data is extracted from the Binance cryptocurrency trading exchange, as well as the CryptoPanic cryptocurrency social network. Experimental results show that, on average, the automated process of determining entry and exit points from trading positions is 2 times faster than with manual determination, and the number of transactions will increase by about 17.5%. As a result, we can conclude that, using advanced technologies, it is possible to develop a tool to improve the efficiency of cryptocurrency trading.

Knowledge management has roots in a variety of disciplines, such as philosophy, psychology, social sciences, management sciences and computing. As a result, a wide variety of theories and definitions of knowledge and knowledge management is used in the literature. Irrespective of the theory or definition used, is it recognised that expert knowledge and insight are gained through experience and practice and that it is a key differentiator as an organisational asset. This shift to knowledge as the primary source of value results in the new economy being led by those who manage knowledge effectively. Today’s organisations are creating and leveraging knowledge, data and information at an unprecedented pace – a phenomenon that makes the use of technology not an option, but a necessity. It enables employees to deal with multifaceted environments and problems and make it possible for organisations to expand their knowledge creation capacity. Software tools in knowledge management are a collection of technologies and are not necessarily acquired as a single software solution. Furthermore, these knowledge management software tools have the advantage of using the organisation’s existing information technology infrastructure. Organisations and business decision makers spend a great deal of resources and make significant investments in the latest technology, systems and infrastructure to support knowledge management. It is imperative that these investments are validated properly, made wisely and that the most appropriate technologies and software tools are selected or combined to facilitate knowledge management. The purpose of this interpretive case study is to consider these issues and to focus on an understanding of the key characteristics of a knowledge management system architecture by exploring and describing the nature of knowledge management. Based on the findings of this study, a list of key characteristics that a knowledge management solution must comply with was collated, which expanded the existing knowledge management model towards describing a knowledge management system architecture. / Computing / M.Sc. (Information Systems)

Since the use of social media has evolved, the ability of its users to bully others has increased. One of the prevalent forms of bullying is Cyberbullying, which occurs on the social media sites such as Facebook©, WhatsApp©, and Twitter©. The past decade has witnessed a growth in cyberbullying – is a form of bullying that occurs virtually by the use of electronic devices, such as messaging, e-mail, online gaming, social media, or through images or mails sent to a mobile. This bullying is not only limited to English language and occurs in other languages. Hence, it is of the utmost importance to detect cyberbullying in multiple languages. Since current approaches to identify cyberbullying are mostly focused on English language texts, this thesis proposes a new approach (called Multilingual Cyberbullying Detection System) for the detection of cyberbullying in multiple languages (English, Hindi, and Marathi). It uses two techniques, namely, Machine Learning-based and Lexicon-based, to classify the input data as bullying or non-bullying. The aim of this research is to not only detect cyberbullying but also provide a distributed infrastructure to detect bullying. We have developed multiple prototypes (standalone, collaborative, and cloud-based) and carried out experiments with them to detect cyberbullying on different datasets from multiple languages. The outcomes of our experiments show that the machine-learning model outperforms the lexicon-based model in all the languages. In addition, the results of our experiments show that collaboration techniques can help to improve the accuracy of a poor-performing node in the system. Finally, we show that the cloud-based configurations performed better than the local configurations.

O trabalho apresenta um estudo com a finalidade de verificar a aplicabilidade do Modelo do Sistema Viável (VSM Viable System Model) no projeto de uma arquitetura robusta de um Sistema de Informação voltado à área naval nuclear. A ênfase do estudo está em avaliar uma modelagem alternativa para a especificação da arquitetura do Sistema de Informação, incorporando o conjunto de funcionalidades especificadas pelo VSM, com o objetivo de fortalecer esta arquitetura. A estratégia desta pesquisa baseia-se em uma revisão bibliográfica relacionada ao VSM, aos Sistemas de Informação e a sua arquitetura, e às influências destes elementos na sobrevivência das organizações diante das mudanças constantes no ambiente. É apresentado um estudo de caso onde são mostrados os elementos teóricos do VSM e da arquitetura de SI aplicados na elaboração da arquitetura de um SI. O Sistema escolhido para esta aplicação é o Sistema de informação de incidentes nucleares (SIN) nas instalações onde são feitas pesquisas e desenvolvimento de tecnologia nuclear a ser aplicada na propulsão de um submarino. / The present work presents a study aiming to verify the applicability of the Viable System Model (VSM) in a robust architecture for an Information System targeting nuclear naval area. The emphasis of the study is in assessing an alternative modeling for the Information System (IS) architecture specification, incorporating a set of functionalities defined by the VSM, with the purpose of strengthening this architecture. The strategy of this research is based on a bibliographic revision on VSM, Information System and its architecture, and the influence of those elements in the survival of the organizations in a ever changing environment. It is presented one case study where it is showed the theoretical elements of the VSM and IS architecture applied on the development of a IS architecture. The selected system for this application is the IS for nuclear incidents (SIN) on the installations dedicated to research and development on nuclear technology applied to submarine propulsion system.

Tese de mestrado. Mestrado integrado em Engenharia Electrotécnica e de Computadores. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Porto. 2012

近年來，速度已經成為企業全球化競爭的關鍵要素，但企業無法單憑一己之力，及時地突破技術或市場上的瓶頸，因此，企業需專注於對自身具競爭優勢之價值活動，並集中力量維持與強化企業生存之核心資源，建立不易被取代之優勢，再透過產業間的分工，將產品從研發、設計、製造、組裝、行銷、售後服務，藉由分佈全球不同區域與不同國家的公司分別進行，共同塑造出具備彈性、速度與競爭力的合作方式，而此也就是全球運籌模式(Global Logistics)。其中資訊系統更為全球運籌模式的中樞，擁有完整的資訊系統，才可將分散全球的銷售、生產、庫存、出貨等資訊加以蒐集及整合，並提供做為迅速分析、預測、反應的依據。 　　筆記型電腦產業是目前台灣最具發展潛力的產業之一，而且台灣筆記型電腦產業所面臨的是國際化的競爭，業者一定要具備優良之全球運籌管理能力才可能接獲國際系統大廠之訂單，所以全球運籌管理對於筆記型電腦代工業者而言是非常重要的課題。因此，本研究將先藉由相關文獻的深入探討，分析目前國內外學者已經提出來之全球運籌管理模式資訊系統架構，接著歸納整理出全球運籌管理運作模式，再針對國內筆記型電腦產業現存問題的分析、現況觀察後，提出符合國內筆記型電腦產業之一般性全球運籌模式(General Global Logistics Models)，並將依循著此模式，提出一個可行的全球運籌管理模式之資訊系統架構，最後利用雛型系統之建置，驗證其可行性。希望透過此資訊系統架構，使資訊流能跨越組織藩籬順暢地在供應鏈中往返，使整個供應鏈就像是一個虛擬企業，縮短產品上市時間，以最少成本、最低存貨，提供顧客最大的滿意度。 / In recent years, ”Speed” is a critical factor determining the competitive edge of globalized enterprises. For this reason, a successful manufacturer must first carefully maintain its competitive edge and do its best to increase its core resources for existence before seeking for cooperation of other companies in different areas of different countries to carry out R&D activity, design, manufacturing, assembling, marketing and after-sales service. When these companies cooperatively achieved the complete process of production based on a world industrial labor division system, they created a cooperative method with features of flexibility, speediness and competitiveness. And this is a start of global logistics models. Among these global logistics models, information system is regarded as a hub. With a complete information system, the manufacturer may collect and systematize the information of its marketing, production, stock and delivery coming from different countries and may also make analyses, predictions and responses on this systematized information. 　　The notebook computer industry is now regarded as one of potential industries in Taiwan. What this industry is faced with is the fierce competition on the global market. A notebook computer manufacturer, who lacks the ability to manage global logistics, cannot obtain orders from world leading buyers of reputable systems. In other words, world logistics management is a very important issue to OEM manufacturers of notebook computers. In this research, the first focus is placed on discussion and analysis made, in accordance with related literature, on the framework of information system built on global logistics management models submitted by domestic and overseas modern scholars. From this discussion and analysis is drawn an operating model of global logistics management. Besides, accompanying an analysis given to the existing problem and an observation given to the present situation of this industry, general global logistics models that meet with the demand of domestic notebook computer industry and the framework of information system built on feasible global logistics management models is submitted. Finally, verification is given to this feasibility through the erection of a model system. This information system is expected to make information flow more easily run in the supply chain over structural barriers and the entire supply chain serve as a simulated enterprise so that products can be more quickly put on the market and customers are satisfied with the least cost and the lowest stock rate.