nÃo hà / Nesta pesquisa, analisamos as caracterÃsticas e mecanismos que tornam a categorizaÃÃo, como processo cognitivo, um Sistema Adaptativo Complexo e as estratÃgias de categorizaÃÃo que atuam na emergÃncia de inferÃncias para a conceitualizaÃÃo da categoria VIOLÃNCIA e a subcategoria VIOLÃNCIA URBANA. Nosso suporte teÃrico para a investigaÃÃo dos nossos objetivos sÃo os pressupostos do paradigma do caos, da complexidade e dos sistemas complexos, conforme delineados por Bertalanffy (1977), Morin (2005), Holland (1995; 1998) e Larsen- Freeman e Cameron (2008; 2012), que propÃem os conceitos de sistemas, complexidade, atratores, espaÃo fase e caracterÃsticas e mecanismos de um Sistema Adaptativo Complexo. No caso do processo inferencial, buscamos amparo teÃrico na Teoria da RelevÃncia, conforme proposta por Sperber e Wilson (1995; 2001), Feltes (1999; 2007), Alves e GonÃalves (2006) e Yus (2008; 2013). Para chegarmos à caracterizaÃÃo da categorizaÃÃo como Sistema Adaptativo Complexo, levamos em consideraÃÃo as propriedades apresentadas por Holland (1995) e Larsen- Freeman e Cameron (2008), buscando ampliar o conceito e explicar a instabilidade do sistema categorizacional à luz da complexidade (MORIN, 1977). Para essa investigaÃÃo com base na complexidade foi necessÃrio ainda incluir o conceito de sistema, espaÃo fase e atratores tÃo caros à abordagem metodolÃgica utilizada. Esse procedimento resultou em uma tipologia de estratÃgias de categorizaÃÃo para anÃlise e explicitaÃÃo de como se aciona os diversos espaÃos possÃveis para conceitualizaÃÃo de VIOLÃNCIA. Escolhemos a categoria VIOLÃNCIA para investigar nosso objetivo tendo em vista a atualizaÃÃo do assunto nos Ãltimos vinte anos e pelos trabalhos com essa categoria realizados por Larsen-Freeman e Cameron, Macedo e Feltes, cujos estudos serviram de base para nossa proposta metodolÃgica. Para verificarmos nossas hipÃteses, utilizamos como desenho metodolÃgico uma pesquisa com observaÃÃo direta e intensiva de 33 categorizadores que responderam a questionÃrios sobre a categorizaÃÃo de VIOLÃNCIA e participaram de protocolos verbais para verificaÃÃo dos mecanismos de inferenciaÃÃo. Os resultados das anÃlises permitem as seguintes conclusÃes: a categorizaÃÃo de VIOLÃNCIA possui propriedades e mecanismos dos Sistemas Adaptativos Complexos, pois os sistemas apresentam no todo e nas partes, variedade dentro de uma estabilidade. Os categorizadores utilizam o processo inferencial para acionar os atratores que levam ao espaÃo fase em que se encontram diversos conhecimentos sobre violÃncia para sua conceitualizaÃÃo de forma estratÃgica. / In this research, I analyzed the characteristics and mechanisms that make categorization, as a cognitive process, a Complex Adaptive System and the strategies of categorization that work in the emergency of inferences for the conceptualization of the category VIOLENCE and subcategory URBAN VIOLENCE. The theoretical support for the investigation of the research aims are the assumptions of the paradigm of chaos, complexity and complex systems, as outlined by Bertalanffy (1977), Morin (2005), Holland (1995, 1998) and Larsen-Freeman and Cameron ( 2008; 2012), who propose the concepts of systems, complexity, attractors, phase space and characteristics and mechanisms of a Complex Adaptive System. In the case of inferential process, I sought theoretical support in Relevance Theory, as proposed by Sperber and Wilson (1995, 2001), Feltes (1999, 2007), Alves and GonÃalves (2006) and Yus (2008, 2013). To get to the characterization of categorization as a Complex Adaptive System, I considered the properties presented by Holland (1995) and Larsen-Freeman and Cameron (2008), seeking to expand the concept and explain the instability of the categorical system based on the complexity theory (Morin, 1977). For this investigation, based on the complexity theory, it was also necessary to include the concept of system, phase space and attractors so relevant to the methodological approach used in this research. Such a procedure resulted in a typology of categorization strategies for the analysis and explanation of how the various feasible spaces for the conceptualizing of VIOLENCE are triggered. The category "VIOLENCE" was chosen for analysis in view of its update status in the last twenty years and the various researches on the subject carried out by Larsen-Freeman and Cameron, Macedo and Feltes, scholars whose studies served as basis for the methodological proposal of this thesis. In order to verify the research hypotheses, a methodological design which involved intensive direct observation of 33 categorizers was used. The participants answered questionnaires about the categorization of VIOLENCE and participated of verbal protocols to verify the inference mechanisms involved in the process. The analyses result allow for the following conclusions: VIOLENCE categorization has the properties and mechanisms of Complex Adaptive Systems because the systems present, in whole and in parts, variation within a stable range. The categorizers use the inferential process to trigger the attractors that lead to the phase space in which diverse knowledge about violence is available for its conceptualization in a strategic way.

Computação em nuvem refere-se a um modelo de disponibilização de recursos computacionais no qual a infraestrutura de software e hardware é ofertada como um serviço, e vem se estabelecendo como um paradigma de sucesso graças a versatilidade e ao custo-efetividade envolvidos nesse modelo de negócio, possibilitando o compartilhamento de um conjunto de recursos físicos entre diferentes usuários e aplicações. Com o advento da computação em nuvem e a possibilidade de elasticidade dos recursos computacionais virtualizados, a alocação dinâmica de recursos vem ganhando destaque, e com ela as questões referentes ao estabelecimento de contratos e de de qualidade de serviço. Historicamente, as pesquisas em QoS concentram-se na solução de problemas que envolvem duas entidades: usuários e servidores. Entretanto, em ambientes de nuvem, uma terceira entidade passa a fazer parte dessa interação, o consumidor de serviços em nuvem, que usa a infraestrutura para disponibilizar algum tipo de serviço aos usuários finais e que tem recebido pouca atenção das pesquisa até o momento, principalmente no que tange ao desenvolvimento de mecanismos automáticos para a alocação dinâmica de recursos sob variação de demanda. Este trabalho consiste na proposta de uma arquitetura de gerenciamento adaptativo de recursos sob a perspectiva do modelo de negócio envolvendo três entidades, focada na eficiência do consumidor. O trabalho inspira-se em técnicas de controle realimentado para encontrar soluções adaptativas aos problemas de alocação dinâmica de recursos, resultando em uma arquitetura de broker de consumidor, um respectivo protótipo e um método de projeto de controle para sistemas computacionais dessa natureza / CLoud computing refers to a computer resource deployment model in which software and hardware infrastructure are offered as a service. Cloud computing has become a successful paradigm due to the versatility and cost-effectiveness involved in that business model, making it possible to share a cluster of physical resources between several users and applications. With the advent of cloud computing and the computer elastic resource, dynamic allocation of virtualized resources is becoming more prominent, and along with it, the issues concerning the establishment of quality of service parameters. Historically, research on QoS has focused on solutions for problems involving two entities: users and servers. However, in cloud environments, a third party becomes part of this interaction, the cloud consumer, that uses the infrastructure to provide some kind of service to endusers, and which has received fewer attention, especially regarding the development of autonomic mechanisms for dynamic resource allocation under time-varying demand. This work aims at the development of an architecture for dynamic adaptive resource allocation involving three entities, focused on consumer revenue. The research outcome is a consumer broker architecture based on feedback control, a respective architecture prototype and a computer system feedback control methodology which may be applied in this class of problems

Dynamic adaptivity of a computer system is its ability to modify the behavior according to the environment in which it is executed. It allows the system to achieve better performance, but usually requires specialized architecture and brings more complexity. The thesis presents an analysis and design of a framework that allows simple and fluent performance-based adaptive development at the level of functions and methods. It closely examines the API requirements and possibilities of integrating such a framework into the Scala programming language using its advanced syntactical constructs. On theoretical level, it deals with the problem of selecting the most appropriate function to execute with given input based on measurements of previous executions. In the provided framework implementation, the main stress is laid on modularity and extensibility, as many possible future extensions are outlined. The solution is evaluated on a variety of development scenarios, ranging from input adaptation of algorithms to environment adaptations of complex distributed computations in Apache Spark.

Cyber-Physical-Human Systems (CPHSs) are the integration, mostly focused on the interactions, of cyber, physical and humans elements that work together towards the achievement of the objectives of the system. Users continuously rely on CPHSs to fulfil personal goals, thus becoming active, relevant, and necessary components of the designed system. The gap between humans and technology is getting smaller. Users are increasingly demanding smarter and personalized applications, capable of understanding and acting upon changing situations. However, humans are highly dynamic, their decisions might not always be predictable, and they expose themselves to unforeseeable situations that might impact their interactions with their physical and cyber elements. The problem addressed in this dissertation is the support of CPHSs' user-centric requirements at runtime. Therefore, this dissertation focuses on the investigation of runtime models and infrastructures for: (1) understanding users, their personal goals and changing situations, (2) causally connecting the cyber, physical and human components involved in the achievement of users' personal goals, and (3) supporting runtime adaptation to respond to relevant changes in the users' situations. Situation-awareness and runtime adaptation pose significant challenges for the engineering of user-centric CPHSs. There are three challenges associated with situation-awareness: first, the complexity and dynamism of users' changing situations require specifications that explicitly connect users with personal goals and relevant context. Second, the achievement of personal goals entails comprehensive representations of user's tasks and sequences and measurable outcomes. Third, situation-awareness implies the analysis of context towards an understanding of users' changing conditions. Therefore, there is a need for representations and reasoning techniques to infer emerging situations. There are three challenges associated with runtime adaptation: first, the dynamic nature of CPHSs and users require runtime models to make explicit the components of CPHSs and their interactions. Second, the definition of architectural and functional requirements of CPHSs to support runtime user-centric awareness and adaptation. Finally, the design and implementation of runtime adaptation techniques to support dynamic changes in the specification of the CPHSs' runtime models. The four contributions of this dissertation add to the body of knowledge for the development of smart applications centred around the achievement of users' personal goals. First, we propose a definition and architectural design for the implementation of user-centric smart cyber-physical-human applications (UCSAs). Our design proposes a context-aware self-adaptive system supported by a runtime infrastructure to manage CRUD operations. Second, we propose two models at runtime (MARTs): (1) our Galapagos Metamodel, which defines the concepts of a UCSA; and (2) our Galapagos Model, which supports the specification of evolving tasking goals, personal interactions, and the relevant contexts. Third, we propose our operational framework, which defines model equivalences between human-readable and machine-readable, available runtime operations and semantics, to manage runtime operations on MARTs. Finally, we propose our processing infrastructure for models at runtime (PRIMOR), which is a component-based system responsible for providing reading access from software components to the MARTs, executing model-related runtime operations, and managing the propagation of changes among interconnected MARTs and their realities. To evaluate our contributions, we conducted a literature review of models and performed a qualitative analysis to demonstrate the novelty of our approach by comparing it with related approaches. We demonstrated that our models satisfy MARTs characteristics, therefore making them proper models at runtime. Furthermore, we performed an experimental analysis based on our case study on online grocery shopping for the elderly. We focused our analysis on the runtime operations specified in the framework as supported by the corresponding MART (accuracy and scalability), and our infrastructure to manage runtime operation and growing MARTs (performance). / Graduate

Introduction/ Objectives: Stroke, the third leading cause of death in Canada, is projected to rise in the next 20 years as the population ages and obesity rates increase. Family caregivers fulfill pertinent roles in providing support for family members who have survived a stroke, from onset to re-integration into the community. However, the transition from rehabilitation to home is a crucial transition for both the stroke survivor and family caregiver. As the stroke survivor transitions home from a rehabilitation facility, family caregivers provide different types of support, including assistance with navigating the stroke rehabilitation system. They also are a constant source of support for the stroke survivor providing them with continuity during the transition. In this exploratory study we examined family caregivers’ perceptions and experiences navigating the stroke rehabilitation system. The theories of continuity care and complex adaptive systems were used to examine the transition home from hospital or stroke rehabilitation facility, and in some cases back to hospital. Methodology: Family caregivers (n=14) who provide care for a stroke survivor were recruited 4-12 weeks following the patient’s discharge from a stroke rehabilitation facility. Interviews were conducted with family caregivers to examine their perceptions and experiences navigating the stroke rehabilitation system. Directed content analysis was used to explore the perceptions of family caregivers as they reflected on the transitions home. The theories of continuity of care and complex adaptive systems were used to interpret their experiences. Results/Conclusions: During the transition home from a rehabilitation facility, family caregivers are a constant source of support, providing the stroke survivor with continuity. Emergent themes highlight the importance of the caregiving role, and barriers and facilitators that impact the role, and influence continuity of care. Also, supports and services in the community were limited or did not meet the specific needs of the family caregiver. The acknowledgment of the unique attributes of each case will ensure supports and services are tailored to the family caregiver’s needs. Mitigation of systemic barriers would also decrease complexity experienced at the micro-level in the stroke rehabilitation system, and better support the family caregiver during the transition home from a stroke rehabilitation facility.

To tackle one of the world’s worst maternal, neonatal and child health outcomes and a chronic shortage of human resources for health, the Afghan Ministry of Public Health deployed volunteer Community Health Workers (CHW) in rural areas of Afghanistan in 2003. This thesis documents the Afghan CHW program, exploring organizational and community contexts. The research design in this study is a mixed methods case study. The actual Afghan CHW program was situated with an Afghan complex adapative health system, mainly guided by the policy of the health system but was also largely influenced by the power and gender dynamics of the community context in which it was implemented. The tasks of CHWs were numerous but CHWs role was more than just the sum of their tasks; they occupied a unique location juxtaposed between formal and informal HRH systems. It is important to acknowledge the assembly of so many national and international organizations in achieving a shared goal of providing health services to a large population in an unstable and partially insecure environment. The shared goal in the Afghan context may have been interpreted only in terms availability of services, though the goal carries with it, either explicitly or implicitly, the values of effectiveness, efficiency, timeliness, and costliness – known as quality by some participants of this study. The community component was another layer of the complex adaptive system that made up the Afghan CHW program. Political-ethnic power in the community and legal-rational authority of the health system influenced the way communities were mapped in an inequitable manner, in turn, contributed to the unfair distribution of resources to the populations. Finally, the intersection of the gender equity approach and the gendered nature of the work as a cross-cutting layer added to the complexity of the Afghan health system.

The execution of service oriented applications is based on the invocation of services that perform tasks for the application. Often, multiple service providers provide the same service, with the main differentiating factor being their Quality of Service. Moreover, the quality of a service provider varies over time as it is influenced by environmental factors such as service load, software crashes, and changes in pricing. Therefore, obtaining consistent good quality for each of the required services is not an easy task. Service invocation patterns had been proposed to aid service oriented applications in this task. We can use these invocation patterns to help the application decide which service it should invoke. However, the evaluation of the applications behavior using the invocation patterns when the quality of the service providers changes over time is a problem that has not been addressed yet. To address this, this thesis investigates the utilization and generation of service invocation patterns. Concretely, I have implemented 1) a simulator of service oriented applications that use invocations patterns and 2) an adaptation engine that dynamically generates invocations patterns. The latter can be used to update the values in the service invocation patterns when the quality of the service providers changes. I have implemented the patterns according to existing definitions and integrated them into the application. I have also conducted series of experiments in order to examine the effect of self-adaptation using invocation patterns on the quality of the application. The results of the experiments conducted in this thesis indicate that adaptive invocation patterns have a positive effect on the quality of the application.

Dans cette thèse, des méthodes dites de Lyapunov sont proposées afin de résoudre des problèmes liés à la coordination distribuée des systèmes multiagent, plus précisément, un groupe de systèmes (agents) non-linéaires formés de robots mobiles non-holonomes est considéré. Pour ce groupe de systèmes, des lois de commande distribuée sont proposées dans le but de résoudre des problèmes de type leader-suiveur en formation et aussi des problèmes de type formation sans-leader par une approche de consensus, sous différentes hypothèses sur le graphe de communication et surtout sur les vitesses du leader.L'originalité de ce travail est dans l'approche proposée pour l'étude de stabilité de la boucle fermée, cette approche consiste à transformer les deux derniers problèmes en des problèmes de stabilisation globale asymptotique d'un ensemble invariant. L’analyse de stabilité est basée sur la construction de fonction de Lyapunov et de fonction de Lyapunov-Karasovskii strictes pour des classes de systèmes non-linéaires variant dans le temps présentant des retards bornés et variant dans le temps. / In this thesis, we propose a Lyapunov based approaches to address some distributedsolutions to multi-agent coordination problems, more precisely, we consider a groupof agents modeled as nonholonomic mobile robots, we provide a distributed controllaws in order to solve the leader-follower and the leaderless consensus problems under different assumptions on the communication graph topology and on the leader’strajectories. The originality of this work relies on the closed-loop analysis approach, that is, it consists on transforming the last two problems into a global stabilization problem of an invariant set. The stability analysis is mainly based on the construction of strict Lyapunov functions and strict Lyapunov-Krasovskii functionals for a classes of nonlinear time-varying and/or delayed systems.

The emerging, multi-disciplinary field of Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) is an alternative to linear, reductionist thinking. It is based on the observations that real-world systems, regardless of scale, are emergent, complex, adaptive, and evolutionary. In this research the scale of CAS examined range from distances of Planck’s constant to Gigaparsecs. CAS has also heavily leveraged the interpretations of several recent Nobel Laureates and assumes too that the world is random, indeterministic, and chaotic. But randomness, chaos, and indeterminism can hardly create the progressive, increasingly harmonious world that we are a part of. At the heart of this issue lies confusion around what innovation in CAS really is. The essential approach to arriving at a mathematical basis of innovation for CAS here has been to view systems from the outside-in as opposed to from the inside-out and the bottom-up. In this approach innovation is conceptualized as existing in every single space-time point-instant in a system. There is a process of precipitation by which this innovation may express itself through a series of quaternary-based architectural forces that are the prime sources of innovation. These series or arrays of forces may further precipitate by informing organizational signatures. Organizations can be thought of as formations with a unique signature at their center, and can vary in complexity and scale. The unique signature for each organization is usually hidden though by common surface dynamics, and “to innovate” is to work through and change the habitual and common patterns in order to allow the deeper founts of innovation to become active at the surface level. When this happens, it is then that innovation occurs. Once that is more clearly seen then the erected probabilistic and uncertainty functions assumed to be true of the fundamental layers of nature, will be relegated to their place as interim devices in model building. The nature of innovation can be progressively elaborated through inductive reasoning to arrive at a mathematical framework for innovation in CAS. Rather than assume a chaotic, random, indeterministic world as a starting point, this framework can be built assuming a purposeful, ordered world characterized by qualified determinism. Equations to provide insight into the inherent innovation bias of our system, the nature of each point in the system, the broad architectural forces behind the development of organizations, the inherent uniqueness of each organization, the way to think about varying cultures or organizations, and the inherent dynamism of our system, form the edifice of this framework. The resulting model can then be used deductively to reinforce observations, and predictively to suggest directions and / or steps to emerging trends. This research hence, through deriving mathematical equations, and by further applying these to various domains ranging from the quantum, to the atomic, to the cellular, to the astrophysical, has been able to provide mathematical contributions to the theory of CAS and to various CAS application areas. With respect to the theory of CAS, mathematical contributions have been made to understanding the underlying directional bias of CAS activity, understanding the nature of each point in any CAS, and creating mathematical sets for architectural forces that are posited to be behind the development of any CAS. Further, mathematical contributions have been made to understanding the inherent dynamics in any CAS, the dynamics of stagnation and growth in CAS, and the balance of randomness and determinism of any CAS. Mathematical contributions also extend to framing complexity in CAS, understanding what can drive sustainability of CAS, and arriving at a general set of mathematical operators true of any CAS. In terms of application areas in the organizational space, mathematical contributions have been made to understanding uniqueness of organizations, the emergence of uniqueness in organizations, and what constitutes varying culture of organizations. Further, existing work done by Nobel Laureate Ilya Prigogine and Alan Turing have been leveraged to further frame organizational transitions, and to frame and model shifts in innovations, respectively. Further mathematical contributions have been made in a range of CAS areas at different scale and level of complexity. Hence, a series of equations have been derived for the electromagnetic spectrum. Quantum, atomic, and cellular wave equations have been derived building off Schrodinger’s existing Wave Equation. Further qualifications have been derived for Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle and an equation has been derived for the integration of different layers of CAS also using Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. Equations for space and time alteration as per Einstein’s Theory of Relativity have also been derived. Additionally, equations for the architectures of quantum particles, periodic table elements, and molecular plans at the cellular level have also been derived. Finally, equations for dark matter and dark energy, non-probabilistic quantum states in quantum computing, and the emergence of CAS in the universe have been derived. In all over 225 equations in 25 different areas have been derived in this dissertation. In fact, as suggested by the CAS equation derived for a unified field, everything, from unseen energy fields, to quantum particles, to atoms, to molecules, to cells, and therefore to all animate and even inanimate and even unseen objects, and therefore even any CAS system regardless of scale would have a high-degree of quaternary intelligence embedded in it and exist simultaneously. Quoting Schrodinger: “What we observe as material bodies and forces are nothing but shapes and variations in the structure of space. Particles are just schaumkommen (appearances). The world is given to me only once, not one existing and one perceived. Subject and object are only one. The barrier between them cannot be said to have broken down as a result of recent experience in the physical sciences, for this barrier does not exist.” This implicit quaternary-based intelligence likely sheds new light on properties such as distributed control, uncertainty, paradox, co-evolution, emergence, amongst others, seen as fundamental to CAS. Thinking about CAS as purposeful, and animated by a mathematically-framed engine of innovation, allows existence to potentially be considered as a unified field. Further, it allows insight and additional solutions to a host of complex problems regardless of scale – at the quantum, cellular, human, organizational, sociotechnical, market, economical, political, and social levels - to be conceptualized, designed, elaborated, and managed differently. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2017. / Graduate School of Technology Management (GSTM) / PhD / Unrestricted

Software engineers and researchers in the field are constantly developing new technologies to manage the complexity of current software systems. There is an increasing need for mechanisms that can deal with dynamics in the systems' environment, goals, and requirements. Self-adaptive software systems are a solution to manage the complexity caused by dynamics or runtime variations. Software reuse is a classical solution to deal with complexity and increase the quality of a system in a systematic and efficient way. Despite the large amount of research on self-adaptation, no systematic study has been found, which surveys and reports the application of reuse methods and techniques for the development of self-adaptive software systems. A systematic analysis of reuse methods and techniques for the development of self-adaptive systems is interesting as it provides useful insights for researchers and practitioners in the self-adaptive area. This study systematically reviews relevant research work published between the years 2000 and 2020 at eight well-known venues on self-adaptation and software engineering. By following the systematic literature review method, 97 studies were reviewed and 40 primary studies identified for addressing the research questions. The main objectives of the review are 1) to collect and analyse the reuse-based methods studied and applied for the design and development of self-adaptive software systems, 2) analyse the challenges in the application of reuse-based methods for the development of self-adaptive software systems. The review shows that most of the analysed studies support reuse with component-based software engineering. The primary studies propose different reuse-based methods to allow faster and simpler development of self-adaptive systems. Furthermore, the analysis shows that the reviewed studies report several challenges related to the configuration process, design, performance and uncertainty in the application of reuse methods for the development of self-adaptive systems.