Thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree Master of Technology: Electrical Engineering in the Faculty of Engineering at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology 2014 / The IEC 61850 standard, “Communication networks and systems in substations” was promulgated to accommodate the need for a common communication platform within substations for devices from different vendors. The IEC 61850 standard proposes a substation automation architecture that is Ethernet-based, with a “station-bus” for protection devices within the substation and a “process bus” where raw data from the voltage and current transformers are published onto the data network using a device known as a Merging Unit. To date, most of the standardization efforts were focused at the station bus level where event-triggered messages are exchanged between the substation automation devices, commonly referred to as Intelligent Electronic Devices (IEDs). These messages are known as Generic Object Oriented Substation Event messages. Equipment from vendors to accommodate the “process bus” paradigm, however is still limited at present. The Centre for Substation Automation and Energy Management Systems was established within the Electrical Engineering Department at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology with one of its objectives being the development of equipment either for simulation or real-time purposes in compliance with the IEC 61850 standard. In order to fulfil this long-term objective of the Centre, an in-depth understanding of the IEC 61850 standard is required. This document details the efforts at acquiring the requisite knowledge base in support of the educational objectives of the Centre and the research project implements a simulation of a merging unit which is compliant with the functional behavior as stipulated by the standard. This limited functional implementation (i.e. non-real-time) of the merging unit, is achieved through the development of a virtualized data acquisition node capable of synthetic generation of waveforms, encoding of the data and publishing the data in a format compliant with the IEC 61850-9-2 sampled value message structure. This functional behavior of the virtual sensor node which was implemented has been validated against the behavior of a commercial device and the sampled value message structure is validated against the standard. The temporal behavior of the proposed device is commented upon. This research project forms the basis for future real-time implementation of a merging unit.

La gestion de l'acheminement de messages d'e-santé en environnement ubiquitaire soulève plusieurs défis majeurs liés à la diversité et à la spécificité des cas d'usage et des acteurs, à l'évolutivité des contextes médical, social, logistique, environnemental...Nous proposons une méthode originale d'orchestration autonome et auto-adaptative de services visant à optimiser le flux des messages et à personnaliser la qualité de transmission, en les adressant aux destinataires les plus appropriés dans les délais requis. Notre solution est une architecture générique dirigée par des modèles du domaine d'information considéré et des données contextuelles, basés sur l'identification des besoins et des contraintes soulevées par notre problématique.Notre approche consiste en la composition de services de fusion et de gestion dynamique en temps réel d'informations hétérogènes provenant des écosystèmes source, cible et message, pilotés par des méthodes d'intelligence artificielle pour l'aide à la prise de décision de routage. Le but est de garantir une communication fiable, personnalisable et sensible à l'évolution du contexte, quel que soit le scénario et le type de message (alarme, technique, etc.). Notre architecture, applicable à divers domaines, a été consolidée par une modélisation des processus métiers (BPM) explicitant le fonctionnement des services qui la composent.Le cadriciel proposé est basé sur des ontologies et est compatible avec le standard HL7 V3. L'auto-adaptation du processus décisionnel d'acheminement est assurée par un réseau bayésien dynamique et la supervision du statut des messages par une modélisation mathématique utilisant des réseaux de Petri temporels / Routing policy management of eHealth messages in ubiquitous environment leads to address several key issues, such as taking into account the diversity and specificity of the different use cases and actors, as well as the dynamicity of the medical, social, logistic and environmental contexts.We propose an original, autonomous and adaptive service orchestration methodology aiming at optimizing message flow and personalizing transmission quality by timely sending the messages to the appropriate recipients. Our solution consists in a generic, model-driven architecture where domain information and context models were designed according to user needs and requirements. Our approach consists in composing, in real time, services for dynamic fusion and management of heterogeneous information from source, target and message ecosystems, driven by artificial intelligence methods for routing decision support. The aim is to ensure reliable, personalized and dynamic context-aware communication, whatever the scenario and the message type (alarm, technical, etc.). Our architecture is applicable to various domains, and has been strengthened by business process modeling (BPM) to make explicit the services operation.The proposed framework is based on ontologies and is compatible with the HL7 V3 standard. Self-adaptation of the routing decision process is performed by means of a dynamic Bayesian network and the messages status supervision is based on timed Petri nets

Error messages in compilers is a topic that is often overlooked. The quality of the messages can have a big impact on development time and ease oflearning. Another method used to speed up development is to build a domainspecific language (DSL). This thesis migrates an existing framework to use TypeScript in order to speed up development time with compile-time error handling. Alternative methods for implementing a DSL are evaluated based onhow they affect the ability to generate good error messages. This is done usinga proposed list of six usability heuristics for error messages. They are also usedto perform heuristic evaluation on the error messages in the TypeScript compiler. This showed that it struggled with syntax errors but had semantic errormessages with low amount of usability problems. Finally, a method for implementing a DSL and presenting its error messages is suggested. The evaluationof said method showed promise despite the existence of usability problems. / Felmeddelanden i kompilatorer är ett ämne som ofta förbises. Kvaliténpå felmeddelanden kan ha stor påverkan på utvecklingstid och lätthetatt lära. En annan metod för att sänka utvecklingstid är att bygga ettdomänspecifikt programmeringspråk. Detta examensarbete migrerar ettexisterande ramverk till TypeScript för att snabba på utvecklingstidmed felhantering i kompileringsstadiet. Alternativa metoder för attimplementera ett DSL evalueras baserat på hur de påverkar möjlighetenatt generera bra felmeddelanden. Detta görs med en föreslagen lista avsex heuristiker för felmeddelanden. De används också för att utföra enheuristik utvärdering på felmeddelandena i TypeScriptkompilatorn. Detta visade att den har svårt för syntaxfel men hademeddelanden för semantiska fel med låg mängdanvändbarhetsproblem. Till sist föreslås en metod för att implementeraett DSL och presentera dess felmeddelanden. Evalueringen av den nämndametoden visade lovande resultat trots förekomsten av användbarhetsproblem.

The advent of experimental methodologies have led to decisive progress in the study of corrupt behaviour in the last two decades. Since they can complement survey data and perception indexes with controlled experimental data, scholars and policy makers have reached a better understanding of decision-making in bribery situations and are able to design innovative anticorruption policies.In this thesis, I use experimental and empirical data to contribute to the field of the economics of corruption. The first two chapters of this PhD dissertation use experimental methodologies to study decision-making in a bribery scenario. The first chapter tests an anti-corruption strategy with a lab in the field experiment in Burundi. The second chapter studies the fairness concerns that might arise when dealing with redistribution in a bribery situation. The third chapter uses an empirical analysis to explore the controversial issue of political moonlighting, i.e. having outside activities while holding public office. It investigates "double-hat politicians", who combine mayor and parliamentary positions in Wallonia.In a first chapter, written with Jean-Benoit Falisse, we explore the effect of anti- corruption messages on corrupt behavior and public service delivery. In a novel lab-in-the-field experiment, 527 public servants from Burundi were asked to allocate rationed vouchers between anonymous citizens; some of these citizens attempted to bribe the public servants to obtain more vouchers than they were entitled to. Two groups of public servants were randomly exposed to short messages about good governance or professional identity reminders. Participants in these two groups behaved in a fairer manner than those of a third group who were not exposed to any message. The result is more robust in the case of the group exposed to the professional identity reminder. The underlying mechanisms seem to be that when a public servant reflects upon governance values and her professional identity, the moral cost increases, prompting more equal service delivery. Bribe-taking was not impacted by the messages. The experiment provides new insights into the design of anti-corruption strategies.The second chapter, written with Lena Epp, investigates the impact of a public officials’ fairness considerations towards citizens in a petty corruption situation. Other-regarding preferences, and, more particularly, fairness concerns are widely acknowledged as crucial elements of individual economic decision-making. In petty corruption contexts, public officials are to a large extent aware of differences between citizens. Here, we experimentally investigate how fairness considerations may impact on corrupt behaviour. Our novel bribery game reveals that bribes are less frequently accepted when bribers are unequal in terms of endowments. These results suggest that fairness considerations can influence corrupt behaviour.In the last chapter, I focus on political moonlighting in Wallonia. Activities outside of public office or combining specific public offices simultaneously is a topic of ongoing heated debates. An element crucial to these discussions is whether moonlighting is detrimental for politicians’ performance. In Belgium, the combination of local executive and regional legislative offices, i.e. double hat politicians, is a frequent habit for a majority of politicians. This accumulation of activities might lead to (un-)desirable outcomes in terms of political achievements. This chapter investigates the impact of holding several remunerated and honorary positions on regional MPs parliamentary activities and mayor’s municipality performance in Wallonia. I use a database of all public and private positions held by Belgian politicians in Wallonia since the disclosure of positions became compulsory for those holding at least one public position, i.e. from 2004 to 2016. For members of Parliament, wearing a double hat reduces global parliamentary activity. For mayors, it seems that holding more remunerated positions is associated with less efficient municipality management. / Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

An unreliable failure detector is a basic building block widely used to implement fault tolerance techniques in asynchronous distributed systems. The use of failure detectors comes from the impossibility to implement deterministic agreement protocols in these environments, since it is not possible to distinguish a crashed process from a very slow process. However, the massive use of distributed computational resources claims for solutions applicable in large scale distributed systems. In these systers, traditional failure detector algorithms can present scalability problems, such as control message explosion problem, because a large number of messages could compromise the quality of service of failure detectors and the system scalability. The goal of this dissertation is minimize the problem of control message explosion generated by failure detector algorithms in large scale processes monitoring. To do that, we propose a new approach to reduce the number of control messages from reusing messages. Our approach explores the manipulation of the interrogation period or heartbeat period, maximizing the reuse of messages, and it is organized by two strategies: ATF (Frequency Rate Adaptation), that reuses failure detector messages to suppress control messages; and AMA (Reusing of Application Message), that reuses client application messages to suppress control messages. As result, the resulting approach is generic, in the sense that it could be applied to any failure detector algorithm, and practical, in the sense that for its, the traditional failure detectors algorithms need only to change the semantic of control messages. From our experimental results, we demonstrate that our approach reduces the number of control messages, minimizing the message explosion problem, without compromising the quality of service of the failure detector / Detectores de defeitos não con�áveis são amplamente utilizados como bloco básico na implementa ção de técnicas de tolerância a falhas em sistemas distribuídos assíncronos. Sua utilização nestes ambientes é motivada pela impossibilidade de implementação de protocolos de acordo determinísticos, pois não há como distinguir processos defeituosos daqueles de acesso mais lento. Entretanto, o uso maciço de recursos computacionais exige soluções aplicáveis a sistemas distribuídos de larga escala. Neste contexto, algoritmos tradicionais de detecção de defeitos podem apresentar problemas de escalabilidade, tal como o de explosão de mensagens. O grande número de mensagens enviadas pode comprometer a qualidade de serviço do detector de defeitos e a escalabilidade do sistema. Esta dissertação visa minimizar o problema da explosão de mensagens de controle geradas pelos algoritmos de detecção de defeitos em ações de monitoramento de processos. Para tal, propõe-se uma nova abordagem para redução do número de mensagens de controle através do reaproveitamento de mensagens. A abordagem explora a manipulação da periodicidade de envio das mensagens de controle, maximizando o reaproveitamento de mensagens, e é composta por duas estratégias: ATF (Adaptação da Taxa de Freqüência), a qual reaproveita mensagens dos próprios algoritmos de detecção para suprir mensagem de controle; e AMA (Aproveitamento de Mensagens da Aplicação), a qual reaproveita mensagens das aplicações clientes para o mesmo objetivo da ATF. Como resultado, têm-se uma abordagem genérica, no sentido que pode ser aplicada a qualquer algoritmo de detecção, e prática, no sentido que algoritmos tradicionais de detectores de defeitos necessitam apenas alterar a semântica das mensagens de controle para utilizá-la. Através de experimentos demonstra-se que sua aplicação reduz o número de mensagens de controle, minimizando o problema da explosão de mensagens, sem comprometer a qualidade de serviço do detector de defeitos

Le marketing viral est une nouvelle forme de marketing qui exploite les réseaux sociaux afin de promouvoir un produit, une marque, etc. Il se fonde sur l'influence qu'exerce un utilisateur sur un autre. La maximisation de l'influence est le problème scientifique pour le marketing viral. En fait, son but principal est de sélectionner un ensemble d'utilisateurs d'influences qui pourraient adopter le produit et déclencher une large cascade d'influence et d'adoption à travers le réseau. Dans cette thèse, nous proposons deux modèles de maximisation de l'influence sur les réseaux sociaux. L'approche proposée utilise la théorie des fonctions de croyance pour estimer l'influence des utilisateurs. En outre, nous introduisons une mesure d'influence qui fusionne de nombreux aspects d'influence, comme l'importance de l'utilisateur sur le réseau et la popularité de ces messages. Ensuite, nous proposons trois scénarii de marketing viral. Pour chaque scénario, nous introduisons deux mesures d'influence. Le premier scénario cherche les influenceurs ayant une opinion positive sur le produit. Le second scénario concerne les influenceurs ayant une opinion positive et qui influencent des utilisateurs ayant une opinion positive et le dernier scénario cherche des influenceurs ayant une opinion positive et qui influencent des utilisateurs ayant une opinion négative. Dans un deuxième lieu, nous nous sommes tournés vers un autre problème important, qui est le problème de la prédiction du sujet du message social. En effet, le sujet est également un paramètre important dans le problème de la maximisation de l'influence. A cet effet, nous introduisons quatre algorithmes de classification qui ne nécessitent pas le contenu du message pour le classifier, nous avons juste besoin de ces traces de propagation. Dans nos expérimentations, nous comparons les solutions proposées aux solutions existantes et nous montrons la performance des modèles de maximisation de l'influence et les classificateurs proposés. / The Viral Marketing is a relatively new form of marketing that exploits social networks in order to promote a product, a brand, etc. It is based on the influence that exerts one user on another. The influence maximization is the scientific problem for the Viral Marketing. In fact, its main purpose is to select a set of influential users that could adopt the product and trigger a large cascade of influence and adoptions through the network. In this thesis, we propose two evidential influence maximization models for social networks. The proposed approach uses the theory of belief functions to estimate users influence. Furthermore, we introduce an influence measure that fuses many influence aspects, like the importance of the user in the network and the popularity of his messages. Next, we propose three Viral Marketing scenarios. For each scenario we introduce two influence measures. The first scenario is about influencers having a positive opinion about the product. The second scenario searches for influencers having a positive opinion and influence positive opinion users and the last scenario looks for influencers having a positive opinion and influence negative opinion users. On the other hand, we turned to another important problem which is about the prediction of the social message topic. Indeed, the topic is also an important parameter in the influence maximization problem. For this purpose, we introduce four classification algorithms that do not need the content of the message to classify it, they just need its propagation traces. In our experiments, we compare the proposed solutions to existing ones and we show the performance of the proposed influence maximization solutions and the proposed classifiers.

This diploma thesis deals with the effects of Act 300/2008 about electronic acts and authorized document conversion to legal entities entered in the Commercial Register. The goal of thesis is to affect the extent of changes that legal entities had to undergo after the launch of the Information System of Data Boxes, and to show on the examples of commercial solutions how these changes can be effectively addressed. The work contains two case studies on which the typical practical problems of large companies are shown. First chapter contains an overview of the eGovernment introduced in the Czech Republic, and detailed description of the Information System of Data Boxes and data messages. This chapter also discusses the electronic signing of documents and associated problems. The second chapter lists the changes which legal entities had to settle, and also solution is mentioned, especially for large companies, helping to streamline the processes associated with receiving, sending and archiving of data messages. The third chapter shows the difficulties that come along with operating the product for effective management of data boxes and proposals of their possible solutions.

Magister Scientiae - MSc / Text communication is often perceived as lacking some components of communication that are essential in sustaining interaction or conversation. This interaction incoherency tends to make text communication plastic. It is traditionally devoid of intonation, pitch, gesture, facial expression and visual or auditory cues. Nevertheless, Instant Messaging (IM), a form of text communication is on the upward uptake both on PCs and on mobile handhelds. There is a need to rubberise this plastic text messaging to improve co-presence for text communications thereby improving synchronous textual discussion, especially on handheld devices. One element of interaction is gesture, seen as a natural way of conversing. Attaining some level of interaction naturalism requires improving synchronous communication spontaneity, partly achieved by enhancing input mechanisms. To enhance input mechanisms for interactive text-based chat on mobile devices, there is a need to facilitate gesture input. Enhancement is achievable in a number of ways, such as input mechanism redesigning and input offering adaptation. This thesis explores affective gesture mode on interface redesign as an input offering adaptation. This is done without a major physical reconstruction of handheld devices. This thesis presents a text only IM system built on Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and SIP for Instant Messaging and Presence Leveraging Extensions (SIMPLE). It was developed with a novel user-defined hotkey implemented as a one-click context menu to "fast-track" text-gestures and emoticons. A hybrid quantitative and qualitative approach was taken to enable data triangulation. Results from experimental trials show that an Affective Gesture (AG) approach improved IM chat spontaneity/response. Feedback from the user trials affirms that AG hotkey improves chat responsiveness, thus enhancing chat spontaneity.

This paper deals with the monitoring of selected activities on portable mobile devices running Android and subsequent processing of data using a web application. Phone calls, text messages and location are meant by these activities. It introduces an existing application which serves to monitor. It also includes the analysis of monitoring capabilities of selected activities on mentioned devices. Then it includes a specification, design, implementation, demonstration and testing of a new system designed to monitoring activities and data processing.

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