State planning and transportation agencies continually face the escalating problem of increasing needs coupled with limited financial resources to meet those needs. In this difficult fiscal environment, the importance of meaningfully involving the public in the decisions that shape the future of our cities and regions becomes even more amplified. Proactively working with the public to gain buy-in from the early stages of the planning process is one of the most effective strategies to reduce project costs. The classic process in which state planning and transportation agencies have engaged the public is no longer an effective or efficient model as public meeting attendance has consistently decreased. As technology continues to shape the way that the public communicates with each other and their government, the onus falls on state planning and transportation agencies not only to continue to provide the traditional methods of engagement, but to look for new and innovative ways to gain increased public participation in the planning process. The traditional methods of public engagement will always be an important part of the planning process, but discovering the effectiveness of emerging technologies in order to develop new best practices for public engagement is the charge of the future. This report will evaluate whether a) online participatory planning spaces expand participation in the planning process and b) examine how evaluative metrics gathered by using online tools can inform decision makers of the utility of virtual planning spaces. This report will then present an evaluative criteria in order to establish a baseline by which to assess the performance of public involvement processes. This report will then present a case study of the Oak Hill Parkway Virtual Open House Pilot Project, a pilot study conducted in Austin, Texas to test the effectiveness of online participatory planning spaces in the field. This report will also share the results of interviews with Oak Hill Parkway Project representatives regarding the usefulness of virtual planning spaces. The report will conclude with a discussion of lessons learned and future research needs. / text

Technische Systeme nutzen sich ab. Dadurch bedingt kommt es zu Ausfällen. Um die Funktionstüchtigkeit von abgenutzten technischen Systemen wiederherzustellen, werden Instandsetzungsmaßnahmen durchgeführt. Da die Folgen eines unerwartet eintretenden Ausfalls drastisch sein können, ist es sinnvoll, das Abnutzungsverhalten eines technischen Systems vorherzusagen und so den Zeitpunkt von Instandsetzungsmaßnahmen zielgerichtet zu planen. Die Erstellung von Abnutzungsprognosen wird dadurch erschwert, dass sich technische Systeme oft variabel, in Abhängigkeit von auf sie einwirkenden Beanspruchungen, abnutzen. Außerdem wird diese Abnutzungsvariabilität von betriebsbedingten Einflüssen überlagert, was deren Modellierung erschwert. Im Rahmen dieser Arbeit wurden deshalb Lösungsansätze entwickelt, die es ermöglichen, die Abnutzungsvariabilität eines technischen Systems in Abnutzungsprognosen zu integrieren und dabei betriebsbedingte Einflüsse zu berücksichtigen. Somit können Instandsetzungsmaßnahmen präziser geplant, Ressourcen geschont sowie Kosten reduziert werden. / Technical systems are prone to deterioration. This leads to negative consequences like break-downs. Maintenance actions are executed in order to transfer technical systems back into healthy states. If break downs occur suddenly, the consequences can be dramatic. Therefore, it is reasonable to schedule maintenance actions based on health-state predictions. Thereby, health state predictions are impeded by the fact that technical systems often deteriorate variably, depending on certain stress factors. Furthermore, the effects of variable deterioration behavior can be hidden by system specific behavior. Thus, approaches are shown which integrate variable deterioration behavior into healthstate predictions while influences caused by the system specific behavior are considered. Consequently, maintenance actions can be scheduled more efficiently which spares resources and reduces costs.

The formalized and algorithmic study of human language within the field of Natural Language Processing (NLP) has motivated much theoretical work in the related field of formal languages, in particular the subfields of grammar and automata theory. Motivated and informed by NLP, the papers in this thesis explore the connections between expressibility – that is, the ability for a formal system to define complex sets of objects – and algorithmic complexity – that is, the varying amount of effort required to analyse and utilise such systems. Our research studies formal systems working not just on strings, but on more complex structures such as trees and graphs, in particular syntax trees and semantic graphs. The field of mildly context-sensitive languages concerns attempts to find a useful class of formal languages between the context-free and context-sensitive. We study formalisms defining two candidates for this class; tree-adjoining languages and the languages defined by linear context-free rewriting systems. For the former, we specifically investigate the tree languages, and define a subclass and tree automaton with linear parsing complexity. For the latter, we use the framework of parameterized complexity theory to investigate more deeply the related parsing problems, as well as the connections between various formalisms defining the class. The field of semantic modelling aims towards formally and accurately modelling not only the syntax of natural language statements, but also the meaning. In particular, recent work in semantic graphs motivates our study of graph grammars and graph parsing. To the best of our knowledge, the formalism presented in Paper III of this thesis is the first graph grammar where the uniform parsing problem has polynomial parsing complexity, even for input graphs of unbounded node degree.

Large flexible software systems tend to incur “bloat”, here defined as the runtime overhead induced by the accumulation of excess functionality and objects. Removing bloat is hard as these overheads are a side-effect of the same trends that have fuelled software growth. Even defining and measuring bloat is non-trivial, as software doesn’t come with built-in labels that indicate which portions of computation are necessary for a given application and which lead to bloat. Much progress has been made in novel analysis tools that aid (human experts in) the process of finding bloat by highlighting signs of excessive activity and data flow. However, there has been very little research focus on understanding the connection between sources of bloat and its system level implications. In particular, excess resource usage due to bloat could be a significant source of power-performance inefficiencies, but the relation between bloat and energy efficient design remains unexplored. In order to systematically devise effective mechanisms for reaping power-performance benefits through bloat mitigation, we require a deeper insight into exactly when excess features can originate bloat, when the resource overheads of bloat are most pronounced and when bloat matters for power performance. This dissertation explores the problem of software bloat and its energy efficiency implications from multiple perspectives to develop a better understanding of these connections. First, we establish the need for a whole systems perspective in assessing potential energy efficiency benefits of bloat reduction, based on a systematic empirical and analytical study that highlights a curious interplay between bloat, energy proportionality and system bottlenecks. Second, we present a novel static analysis algorithm to perform an automated code transformation for object reuse that mitigates bloat involving the generation of excess temporary objects within loops. Third, we introduce the idea of concern augmented program analysis (CAPA), to identify sources of bloat due to excess features; the technique uses externally supplied information about program concerns and their properties as an abstraction of underlying intent. Fourth, as an early diagnostic aid, we use a statistical topic model to automatically discover latent concerns from source code statements and then correlate these latent concerns with resource usage properties that vary at statement granularity. The statistical model has a built-in sensitivity to the context of individual statements so that it can discover even diffused concerns without any apriori concern information. Together, our findings show that presence of excess features, in itself, may not lead to (runtime) bloat, unless these features have some structural interaction with essential features. Further, the overheads due to such structural interactions, in turn, may not cause substantial bloat in the resource consumption of a long running (server) application unless incurred repeatedly during program execution. Finally, even such bloated resource usage has a pronounced impact on power-performance only if it affects a system bottleneck or a hardware resource that has a high degree of energy proportionality and consumes a high fraction of power compared to the other system resources. We conclude that energy wastage due to bloat need not be an inevitable consequence of over-provisioning flexibility. Instead, the extent to which excess features result in runtime bloat and poor power-performance is determined by certain characteristics of the program structure and of the underlying hardware system --these represent potential control points that could be exercised to develop principled design approaches for mitigating bloat without sacrificing flexibility or productivity.

This thesis provides a summary of knowledge of grammar systems. The thesis proposes modifications of parallel oriented grammar systems to be usable in sequential parsing. Concept of grammar systems is extended to level of entire parsers, that are grouped into parsing system. Then the properties of these systems are examined. The aim of thesis is to introduce approaches to syntactic analysis based on grammar systems. Thesis is based on context-free methods of syntactic analysis, extending them and connecting them together. Great attention is dedicated to increase generative capacity of LL and LR parsing. There were created context-free structures within this thesis, which are capable to generate context-sensitive languages. This work also provides a simple recipe for implementation of these structures. We introduced generic concept of parsing, that enlarge generative power of conventional parsing methods. Using presented techniques it is possible to extend many of often used languages with context-sensitive elements, especially elements contradicting with pumping lemma.

Technische Systeme nutzen sich ab. Dadurch bedingt kommt es zu Ausfällen. Um die Funktionstüchtigkeit von abgenutzten technischen Systemen wiederherzustellen, werden Instandsetzungsmaßnahmen durchgeführt. Da die Folgen eines unerwartet eintretenden Ausfalls drastisch sein können, ist es sinnvoll, das Abnutzungsverhalten eines technischen Systems vorherzusagen und so den Zeitpunkt von Instandsetzungsmaßnahmen zielgerichtet zu planen. Die Erstellung von Abnutzungsprognosen wird dadurch erschwert, dass sich technische Systeme oft variabel, in Abhängigkeit von auf sie einwirkenden Beanspruchungen, abnutzen. Außerdem wird diese Abnutzungsvariabilität von betriebsbedingten Einflüssen überlagert, was deren Modellierung erschwert. Im Rahmen dieser Arbeit wurden deshalb Lösungsansätze entwickelt, die es ermöglichen, die Abnutzungsvariabilität eines technischen Systems in Abnutzungsprognosen zu integrieren und dabei betriebsbedingte Einflüsse zu berücksichtigen. Somit können Instandsetzungsmaßnahmen präziser geplant, Ressourcen geschont sowie Kosten reduziert werden. / Technical systems are prone to deterioration. This leads to negative consequences like break-downs. Maintenance actions are executed in order to transfer technical systems back into healthy states. If break downs occur suddenly, the consequences can be dramatic. Therefore, it is reasonable to schedule maintenance actions based on health-state predictions. Thereby, health state predictions are impeded by the fact that technical systems often deteriorate variably, depending on certain stress factors. Furthermore, the effects of variable deterioration behavior can be hidden by system specific behavior. Thus, approaches are shown which integrate variable deterioration behavior into healthstate predictions while influences caused by the system specific behavior are considered. Consequently, maintenance actions can be scheduled more efficiently which spares resources and reduces costs.

Submitted by Milena Rubi ( ri.bso@ufscar.br) on 2017-10-17T13:29:06Z No. of bitstreams: 1 BUENO_Danilo_2017.pdf: 12404601 bytes, checksum: b788f4b11bbb3fb391f608449597ae16 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Milena Rubi ( ri.bso@ufscar.br) on 2017-10-17T13:29:18Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 BUENO_Danilo_2017.pdf: 12404601 bytes, checksum: b788f4b11bbb3fb391f608449597ae16 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Milena Rubi ( ri.bso@ufscar.br) on 2017-10-17T13:29:26Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 BUENO_Danilo_2017.pdf: 12404601 bytes, checksum: b788f4b11bbb3fb391f608449597ae16 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-10-17T13:29:35Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 BUENO_Danilo_2017.pdf: 12404601 bytes, checksum: b788f4b11bbb3fb391f608449597ae16 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-06-30 / Não recebi financiamento / The use of mobile devices to browse the Web has become increasingly popular as a consequence of easy access to the Internet. However, moving from the desktop development to the mobile platform features, requests from developers an important focus on interaction elements which fit into the interaction demands. There by, several approaches have emerged for adaptation of Web applications. One of the most adopted solution by Web developers are front-end frameworks . Nevertheless, this technique has shortcomings that directly impact in the interaction elements and user satisfaction. In this scenario, the objective of this work is to propose a hybrid adaptation approach of context-sensitive Web interfaces with multimodality support, called HyMobWeb, which aims to help developers to create solutions closer to the device’s characteristics, to the contexts of use and the needs of end-users. The approach is composed of stages of static and dynamic adaptation. Static adaptation subsidizes developers in marking elements to be adapted through a grammar that can reduce the coding effort of solutions that address aspects related to multimodality and context sensitivity. Dynamic adaptation is responsible for analyzing changes in the context of the user and performing the marked adaptations in static adaptation. The approach was outlined from a review of the literature on mobile Web interface adaptation and three exploratory studies. The first and second study dealt with end users’ difficulties regarding the use of non-mobile Web applications. The third is about gaps in traditional adaptations - made through frameworks front-end - in relation to the users needs. Aiming to evaluate the approach, two evaluations were carried out, one from the perspective of the developer and another from the end user. The first one focused on verifying the acceptance of the proposal by software developers in the use of the grammar and resources proposed from it. The second sought to identify if the adaptation, previously implemented by the developers, brought satisfaction to the end-users during its use. The findings suggested that HyMobWeb brought significant contributions to the work of the developers and that the resources explored by the approach provided positive reactions to the satisfaction of end-users. / O uso de dispositivos móveis para navegar na Web tornou-se cada vez mais popular devido à proliferação dos aparelhos e sua facilidade de acesso. No entanto, a transição da plataforma desktop para mobile inseriu um novo desafio aos desenvolvedores sobre o uso de elementos de interação e de suas funcionalidades. Com isso, surgiram diversas abordagens para adaptação das aplicações Web. Entre elas, uma das mais comuns entre Desenvolvedores Web é a utilização de frameworks front-end . Contudo, estes frameworks possuem limitantes nas funcionalidades de adaptação das interfaces com deficiências que impactam diretamente nos elementos de interação e na satisfação do usuário. Diante deste cenário, este trabalho tem como objetivo propor a HyMobWeb, uma abordagem híbrida de adaptação de interfaces Web móveis sensíveis ao contexto e com suporte a multimodalidade, que visa a auxiliar os desenvolvedores na criação de soluções mais próximas às características do dispositivo, aos contextos de utilização, e as necessidades dos usuários finais. A abordagem é composta das etapas de adaptação estática e dinâmica. A adaptação estática subsidia os desenvolvedores na marcação de elementos a serem adaptados através de uma gramática que pode reduzir o esforço de codificação de soluções que abordam aspectos relacionados à multimodalidade e à sensibilidade ao contexto. A adaptação dinâmica é a responsável por analisar as mudanças no contexto do usuário e realizar as adaptações marcadas na adaptação estática. A abordagem foi delineada a partir de uma revisão da literatura acerca da adaptação de interface Web em dispositivos móveis e três estudos exploratórios. O primeiro estudo tratou sobre as dificuldades dos usuários finais em relação à utilização de aplicações Web não adaptadas aos dispositivos móveis. O segundo sobre os impactos da adição da multimodalidade em tais ambientes. Enquanto o terceiro, sobre as lacunas existentes nas adaptações tradicionais - realizadas através de frameworks front-end - em relação às necessidades dos usuários finais. Visando avaliar a abordagem, duas avaliações foram realizadas: uma na perspectiva do desenvolvedor e outra do usuário final. A primeira focou em verificar aceitação da proposta por parte dos desenvolvedores de software no uso da gramática e recursos propostos a partir dela. A segunda buscou identificar se a adaptação, previamente implementada pelos desenvolvedores, trazia satisfação para os usuários finais durante seu uso. Os resultados encontrados sugeriram que a HyMobWeb trouxe contribuições significativas para o trabalho dos desenvolvedores e que os recursos explorados pela abordagem propiciaram reações positivas na satisfação dos usuários finais

The project ClinicSpace aims to fill gaps in current clinical systems, regarding to the characteristics of pervasive computing tasks and clinical activities support to the user (physician). The architecture of the model ClinicSpace, built from the perspective given by the activity theory, it is composed of several modules that interconnected offer the features needed in a system geared to clinical pervasive end-user. One of these modules is the treatment of the clinical tasks. This work holds a discussion on the present requirements for the treatment of the clinical tasks, defining an architecture to link them to the tasks of the user, allowing context customization and automatic entry of data. The customization is achieved through the use of Programmable Elements of Context, which are represented by actuators, physical or logical, responsible for providing the system capacity of automatic executions, based on the parameters specified by the user. Yet the automatic data comes from the implicit way of obtaining these, the information used by applications that the user performs in the course of their duties. For this, an architecture was set up to support the customization and the semantic specification of data used. Building such features extended the pervasive middleware EXEHDA, modifying the already existing services and adding new ones. The main contribution of this work is the interconnection between the components that make up the architecture, building a unique view of the context of a task from the perspective of the necessary data for it and the ability to be customized by the user. Thus, it reduces the need for explicit data entry, and it contributes to the reducing rejections of its adoption of clinical systems in highly dynamic environments such as hospitals. / O projeto ClinicSpace tem por objetivo preencher as lacunas existentes nos sistemas clínicos atuais, no que tange às características de pervasividade e apoio de tarefas computacionais às atividades clínicas que o usuário (médico) realiza. A arquitetura do modelo ClinicSpace, construída a partir da perspectiva dada pela teoria da atividade, é composta por vários módulos que interligados oferecem as características necessárias a um sistema clínico pervasivo orientado ao usuário-final. Um desses módulos é o tratamento de contexto das tarefas clínicas. Esse trabalho realiza uma discussão sobre os requisitos presentes para o tratamento de contexto das tarefas clínicas, definindo uma arquitetura para associá-los às tarefas do usuário, permitindo personalização de contexto e entrada automática de dados. A personalização é obtida através da utilização de Elementos Programáveis de Contexto, que são representados por atuadores, físicos ou lógicos, responsáveis por dotar o sistema de capacidade de execuções automáticas, baseadas em parâmetros de contexto especificados pelo usuário. Já a entrada automática de dados trata da obtenção destes de maneira implícita, obtendo as informações utilizadas pelas aplicações que o usuário executa, no decorrer de suas tarefas. Para isso, definiu-se uma arquitetura com suporte à personalização e especificação semântica dos dados nela utilizados. Para construir tais funcionalidades, estendeu-se o middleware pervasivo EXEHDA, modificando serviços existentes e agregando novos serviços. A principal contribuição do trabalho está na interligação existente entre os componentes que integram a arquitetura, construindo uma visão única do contexto de uma tarefa sob a perspectiva dos dados necessários a ela e da capacidade de personalização pelo usuário. Dessa forma, reduz-se a necessidade da entrada explícita de dados, e contribui-se para a redução da rejeição da adoção dos sistemas clínicos em ambientes altamente dinâmicos, como os hospitalares.

Submitted by Milena Rubi (milenarubi@ufscar.br) on 2016-10-25T22:46:25Z No. of bitstreams: 1 CUNHA_Marcel_2016.pdf: 12825811 bytes, checksum: fe0b61494670e2e5bcf510bf3689ef64 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Milena Rubi (milenarubi@ufscar.br) on 2016-10-25T22:46:38Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 CUNHA_Marcel_2016.pdf: 12825811 bytes, checksum: fe0b61494670e2e5bcf510bf3689ef64 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Milena Rubi (milenarubi@ufscar.br) on 2016-10-25T22:46:50Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 CUNHA_Marcel_2016.pdf: 12825811 bytes, checksum: fe0b61494670e2e5bcf510bf3689ef64 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-10-25T22:46:59Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 CUNHA_Marcel_2016.pdf: 12825811 bytes, checksum: fe0b61494670e2e5bcf510bf3689ef64 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-02-22 / Não recebi financiamento / Nowadays smartphones are composed of a wide range of sensors and resources such as GPS (Global Positioning System), Bluetooth and Internet connection through Wi-Fi, 3G, among others resources. Along with the smartphone’s increasing popularity around the world, there is an increasing development and popularity of power-hungry applications: applications that take advantage from these resources and may reduce the smartphones autonomy. This fact is known as one of the biggest to be solved when talking about nowadays smartphones. Considering this, many solutions were proposed and approach this topic in different ways. These solutions can be classified in two major groups: software layer solutions and hardware layer solutions. In one hand, the software layer solutions are the ones that try to reduce the smartphone’s energy drain by only changing the software that composes the smartphone. For example, by improving the Wi-Fi interface or managing the running applications of the smartphone. On the other hand, the hardware layer solutions are the ones that try to improve or increase the energy availability of the smartphone changing or improving only the physical components, for example evolving the technology regarding the batteries. This study presents an approach in software layer for this problem: a system for managing the states of the smartphone’s sensors and components, based on the user profile, aiming energy savings. This work consisted of three steps. In the first step the literature research was done and also a research of the existing solutions in the same area. In the second step the mechanism, called MyBatRecommender, composed by the server and client sides, was presented and developed for the Android operational system. In the last step some validation tests were applied aiming to verify the system efficiency. The results show that when applied to a controlled scenario, the MyBatRecommender achieves around thirty-two per cent of energy savings. / Os smartphones atuais são compostos por uma grande gama de sensores e componentes como GPS, Bluetooth e conexão com a Internet através das interfaces de rede Wi-Fi, 3G, entre diversos outros recursos. Junto com a crescente popularização dos smartphones ao redor do mundo está também o crescente desenvolvimento e popularização dos aplicativos que fazem uso desses recursos e tendem a diminuir a autonomia dos smartphones. Esse fato é considerado como um dos maiores problemas a ser superado no contexto de smartphones atualmente. Tendo esse problema em vista, diversas soluções abordam a questão de diferentes maneiras, e podem ser classificados em dois grupos: soluções em nível de software e soluções em nível de hardware. As soluções em nível de software são aquelas que procuram melhorar o consumo de energia dos smartphones apenas com alterações nos softwares que compõe o smartphone. Por exemplo, melhorando a eficiência da interface de rede Wi-Fi, controlando aplicativos que rodam no smartphone, entre outras. Por outro lado, as soluções em nível de hardware procuram melhorar ou ampliar a disponibilidade de energia nos smartphones através dos seus componentes físicos, como por exemplo evoluindo a tecnologia das baterias dos mesmos. Esta dissertação apresenta uma abordagem em nível de software para esse problema através de um sistema de gerenciamento dos estados dos sensores e componentes de um smartphone, baseado no perfil do usuário, visando a economia de energia. Esse estudo consistiu de três etapas. Na primeira etapa foi feito o levantamento bibliográfico e desenvolvida uma pesquisa de soluções existentes na área, identificando possíveis sistemas e aplicativos com a mesma proposição. Na segunda etapa foi elaborado o mecanismo denominado MyBatRecommender, composto pelas partes servidora e cliente, e implementado para o sistema operacional Android. Por fim, na última etapa, foram aplicadas algumas formas de validação no sistema proposto a fim de verificar a sua eficiência. Os resultados obtidos mostram que o sistema implementado, quando aplicado em cenário de testes controlado, apresenta um resultado que traz uma economia de energia de aproximadamente trinta e dois por cento em relação ao uso sem o mecanismo proposto.

This thesis deals with the topic of sequential and parallel grammars. Both of these groups cover a large number of grammar families, most of which, however, are not widely used because of the difficulties related to their processing. The thesis examines some of these grammar types, such as scattered-context grammars, multigenerative systems, and interactive L-systems, with focus on their normal forms. Subsequently, it introduces a set of algorithms utilising properties of the discussed grammar types as well as their normal forms. These algorithms are based on the Cocke-Younger-Kasami algorithm for context-free grammars, and are capable of parsing any grammar in the corresponding normal form. Finally, a program implementing the proposed algorithms is presented.