Today’s information systems engineering involves large number of stakeholders, wide geographical distribution and wide range of tools. Success in system engi-neering depends on effective human communication. Early understanding and modelling of the problem domain is a key to manage large scale systems and pro-jects. This requires stakeholders to reach a certain level of shared interpretation of the domain referred throughout the development We propose a method for semantics driven change impact assessment. In our method, first a collaborative problem analysis is conducted. The problem analysis results in an agreed and committed common understanding of the prob-lem domain, expressed in a conceptual domain model. The constructed concep-tual domain-specific model is then actively used as a communication medium, e.g., to abstract development objects from representation format in order to expli-cate their semantics. Stakeholders browse the domain model and interactively as-sociate to product fragments by selecting concept clusters that best describe the contents (intended meaning) of the product fragments. Associations of the development objects with concepts from domain model, as well as the domain model itself constitute the basis for change impact assess-ment throughout the development. Every revision of a development object in-vokes change impact notifications that are either confirmed or rejected. Accumu-lated statistics are used to refine associations via the domain model to the direct dependency links among development objects. The method has been implemented in a prototype system CO2SY and has been evaluated in an experiment, where a set of test users has been provided with a problem domain description including a domain model and a set of develop-ment objects. The experiment was based on two real world cases. Users were asked to perform tasks using the prototype and two comparative tools. The method and prototype have been evaluated with respect to actual performance and users perceptions. The result shows actual effectiveness, perceived ease of use and usefulness comparing to other tools used in the experiment, as well as intention of the subjects to use the method in future. A discussion of future research directions and possible revisions of the method concludes the thesis.

To encode, query and present the semantic content of digital video precisely and flexibly is very useful for many kinds of knowledge work: system analysis and evaluation, documentation and education, to name a few. However, that kind of video management is not a trivial matter. The traditional stratified annotation model has quite poor facilities for specifying the meaning – the structure and relationships – of the strata. Because of this, it may also be troublesome to present the annotations to the users in a clear and flexible manner. This thesis presents OntoLog, a system for managing the semantic content of video. It extends the stratified annotation model by defining the strata as objects and classes in ontologies, thereby making their semantic meaning more explicit and relating them to each other in a semantic network. The same ontologies are also used to define properties and objects for describing both the strata, individual video intervals and entire videos. This constitutes a very customisable, expressive and precise description model, without sacrificing simplicity and conceptual integrity. Arranging the annotation strata in a near-hierarchical network with specified semantics (classes, subclasses and instances) also enables reasoning about the annotations during query and browsing. In particular, it enables visual aggregation of traditional timeline-based strata graphics. Using this to create compact content visualisations, the OntoLog system is able to present tens of videos on screen at the same time, thus providing inter-video browsing. By judiciously disaggregating selected parts of the strata hierarchy, users can focus on relevant strata at their preferred level of detail – overview-and-zoom functionality for semantic annotations, in other words. The OntoLog system has been implemented in the form of six Java applications and web services – together covering annotation editing, browsing, analysis, search, query and presentation with various approaches – built on top of an RDF database founded on SQL. The system has been tested under realistic conditions in several real-world projects, with good results. A novel information gathering interface for OntoLog data, Savanta, has been created. This is based on an iterative interaction paradigm featuring inter-video browsing, filtering, navigation and context-sensitive temporal analysis of the annotations. In a comparative usability evaluation, Savanta is shown to outperform more traditional user interfaces for video search/browsing with regard to expressive power, straightforwardness and user satisfaction.

Analyzing human motion is important in a number of ways. An athlete constantly needs to evaluate minute details about his or her motion pattern. In physical rehabilitation, the doctor needs to evaluate how well a patient is rehabilitating from injuries. Some systems are being developed in order to identify people only based on their gait. Automatic interpretation of sign language is another area that has received much attention. While all these applications can be considered useful in some sense, the analysis of human motion can also be used for pure entertainment. For example, by filming a sport activity from one view, it is possible to create a 3D reconstruction of this motion, that can be rendered from a view where no camera was originally placed. Such a reconstruction system can be enjoyable for the TV audience. It can also be useful for the computer-game industry. This thesis presents ideas and new methods on how such reconstructions can be obtained. One of the main purposes of this thesis is to identify a number of qualitative constraints that strongly characterizes a certain class of motion. These qualitative constraints provide enough information about the class so that every motion satisfying the constraints will "look nice" and appear, according to a human observer, to belong to the class. Further, the constraints must not be too restrictive; a large variation within the class is necessary. It is shown how such qualitative constraints can be learned automatically from a small set of examples. Another topic that will be addressed concerns analysis of motion in terms of quality assessment as well as classification. It is shown that in many cases, 2D projections of a motion carries almost as much information about the motion as the original 3D representation. It is also shown that single-view reconstruction of 2D data for the purpose of analysis is generally not useful. Using these facts, a prototype of a "virtual coach" that is able to track and analyze image data of human action is developed. Potentials and limitations of such a system are discussed in the the thesis. / QC 20100601

There is an increasing demand for the exchange of important product and manufacturing information in a computer interpretable way. Large manufacturing companies are dependent on having access to the necessary information electronically. If they do not get information about their manufacturing resources from their vendors, they will buy their resources elsewhere, or they will have to create the information themselves. In the end, the cost of the manufactured products will increase to accommodate the cost increase from having to create, integrate, and maintain this information. In order to solve this problem, the use of international standards for product data is required. One area where such a standard is required is the area of cutting tools. This thesis describes the requirements for an international standard for the representation and exchange of cutting tool information and the resulting information model together with necessary reference data. The representation of cutting tool information using an international standard requires a generally applicable information model which is used together with a reference data library. The reference data provides the explicit, unambiguous concepts necessary for successful information exchange. ISO 13399, the international standard that is the result of this research project, uses P-Lib (ISO 13584) to define its reference data. To successfully use P-Lib in this way, requires some basic assumptions to be made, since P-Lib is originally developed for component catalogs. As a result of the chosen representation technique, the standard is capable of accommodating current and future developments of cutting tools, e.g. multi function tools. / QC 20100901

This thesis is about the design of technology for museum exhibitions. More specifically, it explores different ways in which visitors can contribute to museum exhibition design and how technology can support learning-related activities within museum exhibitions. Most contemporary museums collect, preserve, and provide access to important cultural and historical artefacts with the explicit intention of educating and informing the general public about those artefacts. For many exhibition designers, the audience's encounter with the exhibition is of primary concern, and technology is often seen as a means for providing visitors with new experiences and opportunities for learning. However, it appears to be only very recently that researchers have begun to show an interest in how modern technology is actually being used by visitors and many museums are struggling in their efforts to incorporate new technologies in their established exhibition design practices. Thus, on the one hand, many museums are seeking more visitor-focused ways of carrying out design (with the help of, for example, different forms of evaluation or feedback). On the other hand, many museums seem to have limited experience with designing technology in a user-oriented fashion. Consequently, human-computer interaction, with its long tradition of involving users in design, is in a position to provide museums with new ways for audiences to contribute to exhibitions with their knowledge, experience, opinions, and desires. The papers in this thesis explore this topic through a number of case studies where visitors have been invited to contribute to the design and evaluation of exhibitions. The analysis of the results suggests that visitors can provide relevant contributions in all of the main phases of museum exhibition production. This thesis also addresses the issue of how technology can support learning-related activities in museums. It appears that many museums base their notion of learning on epistemologies which suggest that activities such as interpretation, communication, and collaboration are fundamental to most museum learning processes. Consequently, the papers in this thesis explore a number of different techniques for supporting and orchestrating such social activities. The result is a set of design approaches that has the ability to encourage collaboration and dialogue between co-present visitors and allow visitors to create dynamic and evolving contexts for existing exhibits. In summary, the contributions of this thesis explore museum exhibition design from two different, yet interrelated perspectives. From the first perspective, visitors' desires, wishes, experiences, and knowledge are seen as important contributions to museum exhibition design. From the second perspective, different social activities and relationships between visitors in museums become the focus of the design activities. Together, these two perspectives outline an approach to museum exhibition design where visitors are of primary concern, both with respect to the content presented in exhibitions and with respect to the way exhibitions orchestrate and support different forms of social interaction. / QC 20101004

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Detta arbete utgör en sammanhållen bild av den elektroniska legitimationens (e-legitimationens) framväxt i Sverige, vilket är en viktig förutsättning för utvecklingen av säkra offentliga elektroniska tjänster inom den elektroniska förvaltningen. Eftersom statsförvaltningens styrning historiskt uppfattats som relativt otydlig har området med tiden kommit att präglas av olika enskilda aktörers egna insatser, intressen och föreställningar. Studiens bidrag är att beskriva och analysera framväxten av den svenska e-legitimationen med hjälp av de tre analysperspektiven deltagande, föreställningar samt legitimitet. Jag har i studien intresserat mig för vad som skett historiskt och hur detta kan kopplas till det som sker i nutid kring e-legitimationer. Särskild vikt har lagts vid aspekter av icketeknisk natur varvid studien kan ses som en motvikt till den tydligt teknikfokuserade utredning kring den framtida e-legitimationen som genomfördes under hösten 2010. Resultatet av arbetet visar bland annat på att praktisk erfarenhet är en nyckelaspekt för deltagandet och formandet av föreställningar kring e-legitimationen. Statens bristande intresse för området har även tydligt påverkat utrymmet för eget meningsskapande samt e-legitimationens erhållna legitimitet. När staten under 2010/2011 fått ökat intresse för området och identifierat ett tydligt samordningsbehov står det därmed klart att dessa ansatser inte kommer att vara av helt oproblematisk natur.

Researrangörer har under en lång tid distribuerat sina produkter genom resebyråer eftersom det innan internets uppkomst var det bästa alternativet. Frågan är dock om resebyråns tjänster räcker till för att researrangörer i dagens priskänsliga och konkurrenskraftiga samhälle finner det lönsamt att distribuera sina produkter genom traditionella resebyråer när siffror tydligt visar på att tillväxten och framtiden finns på internet. Uppsatsens syfte är att ur researrangörers synvinkel undersöka betydelsen av att distribuera sina produkter genom traditionella resebyråer då trenden går mot ett virtuellt samhälle. Den teoretiska ramen hämtas från litteratur, vetenskapliga artiklar och rapporter rörande turismens produktionssystem (TPS), nätverkssamhälle och turismdistribution. Kvalitativa intervjuer med ett antal branschaktörer har sedan fått ligga som grund till uppsatsens empiri tillsammans med en kvantitativ undersökning bland researrangörer. Resultatet visar på en relativt stor spridning bland researrangörers ställningstagande gällande den traditionella resebyråns betydelse. Beroendet av fysisk försäljning tenderar att bero på reseproduktens komplexitet. Varje researrangör måste se till sin egen situation och göra en bedömning av vilka distributionskanaler som är mest gynnsamma. Åsikterna kring disintermediering blir därför svåra att generalisera. Vad majoriteten dock tycks vara överens om är att den traditionella resebyråns betydelse kommer att fortsätta minska och att användandet av internet och sociala medier som distributionskanal av turismprodukter ytterligare kommer att öka i framtiden.

<p>Though a constantly increasing number of ontologies are now available on the Internet, the ontology construction process remains generally a manual task, so consequently an effort demanding task. As no unified ontology construction method is available in the literature, researchers started investigating different frameworks for automatically generating ontologies and, therefore shorten the time required for their construction. This master’s thesis presents a prototype system for automatic construction of ontology, based on ontology design patterns and unstructured texts, such as natural language texts. The use of ontology design patterns allow constructing well structured ontologies and reducing the demand of knowledge experts. A difference between our prototype system and the systems presented in the literature is, the possibility to increase accuracy of the generated ontology by selecting the more relevant terms and associations from the unstructured text and match them against the ontology design patterns. Also, a matching score is introduced to define the level of similarity between the terms extracted and the ontology design patterns. By setting a threshold value on the matching score, the relevant ontology design patterns are selected and used for the ontology construction process. The ontology construction framework used by the prototype system has been developed by the research group in Information Engineering of the School of Engineering, Jönköping University.</p>

<p>The COMInf network is the infrastructure part of the operation and management system used for guarding the radio access networks developed by Ericsson. This thesis investigates the Ericsson COMInf network; identifies problems covering both functional as well as security aspects of the network and its current monitoring solution, and also presents a set of requirements and recommendations for a future network surveillance solution. As this thesis shows, the COMInf network today has limited functions regarding both network and security supervision.</p><p>However, implementations of such solutions are possible due to the standardized components used in the network today. To improve the COMInf network, this thesis defines requirements and recommends a network surveillance solution which fulfills these requirements. It is also recommended to update some of the hardware currently in place for the COMInf network.</p>