Building Information Modelling (BIM) as a Model-based design facilitates to investigate multiple solutions in the infrastructure planning process. The most important reason for implementing model-based design is to help designers and to increase communication between different design parties. It decentralizes and coordinates team collaboration and facilitates faster and lossless project data exchange and management across extended teams and external partners in project lifecycle. Infrastructure are fundamental facilities, services, and installations needed for the functioning of a community or society, such as transportation, roads, communication systems, water and power networks, as well as power plants. Geospatial Information Systems (GIS) as the digital representation of the world are systems for maintaining, managing, modelling, analyzing, and visualizing of the world data including infrastructure. High level infrastructure suits mostly facilitate to analyze the infrastructure design based on the international or user defined standards. Called regulation1-based design, this minimizes errors, reduces costly design conflicts, increases time savings and provides consistent project quality, yet mostly in standalone solutions. Tasks of infrastructure usually require both model based and regulation based design packages. Infrastructure tasks deal with cross-domain information. However, the corresponding data is split in several domain models. Besides infrastructure projects demand a lot of decision makings on governmental as well as on private level considering different data models. Therefore lossless flow of project data as well as documents like regulations across project team, stakeholders, governmental and private level is highly important. Yet infrastructure projects have largely been absent from product modelling discourses for a long time. Thus, as will be explained in chapter 2 interoperability is needed in infrastructure processes. Multimodel (MM) is one of the interoperability methods which enable heterogeneous data models from various domains get bundled together into a container keeping their original format. Existing interoperability methods including existing MM solutions can’t satisfactorily fulfill the typical demands of infrastructure information processes like dynamic data resources and a huge amount of inter model relations. Therefore chapter 3 concept of infrastructure information modelling investigates a method for loose and rule based coupling of exchangeable heterogeneous information spaces. This hypothesis is an extension for the existing MM to a rule-based Multimodel named extended Multimodel (eMM) with semantic rules – instead of static links. The semantic rules will be used to describe relations between data elements of various models dynamically in a link-database. Most of the confusion about geospatial data models arises from their diversity. In some of these data models spatial IDs are the basic identities of entities and in some other data models there are no IDs. That is why in the geospatial data, data structure is more important than data models. There are always spatial indexes that enable accessing to the geodata. The most important unification of data models involved in infrastructure projects is the spatiality. Explained in chapter 4 the method of infrastructure information modelling for interoperation in spatial domains generate interlinks through spatial identity of entities. Match finding through spatial links enables any kind of data models sharing spatial property get interlinked. Through such spatial links each entity receives the spatial information from other data models which is related to the target entity due to sharing equivalent spatial index. This information will be the virtual properties for the object. The thesis uses Nearest Neighborhood algorithm for spatial match finding and performs filtering and refining approaches. For the abstraction of the spatial matching results hierarchical filtering techniques are used for refining the virtual properties. These approaches focus on two main application areas which are product model and Level of Detail (LoD). For the eMM suggested in this thesis a rule based interoperability method between arbitrary data models of spatial domain has been developed. The implementation of this method enables transaction of data in spatial domains run loss less. The system architecture and the implementation which has been applied on the case study of this thesis namely infrastructure and geospatial data models are described in chapter 5. Achieving afore mentioned aims results in reducing the whole project lifecycle costs, increasing reliability of the comprehensive fundamental information, and consequently in independent, cost-effective, aesthetically pleasing, and environmentally sensitive infrastructure design.:ABSTRACT 4 KEYWORDS 7 TABLE OF CONTENT 8 LIST OF FIGURES 9 LIST OF TABLES 11 LIST OF ABBREVIATION 12 INTRODUCTION 13 1.1. A GENERAL VIEW 14 1.2. PROBLEM STATEMENT 15 1.3. OBJECTIVES 17 1.4. APPROACH 18 1.5. STRUCTURE OF THESIS 18 INTEROPERABILITY IN INFRASTRUCTURE ENGINEERING 20 2.1. STATE OF INTEROPERABILITY 21 2.1.1. Interoperability of GIS and BIM 23 2.1.2. Interoperability of GIS and Infrastructure 25 2.2. MAIN CHALLENGES AND RELATED WORK 27 2.3. INFRASTRUCTURE MODELING IN GEOSPATIAL CONTEXT 29 2.3.1. LamdXML: Infrastructure Data Standards 32 2.3.2. CityGML: Geospatial Data Standards 33 2.3.3. LandXML and CityGML 36 2.4. INTEROPERABILITY AND MULTIMODEL TECHNOLOGY 39 2.5. LIMITATIONS OF EXISTING APPROACHES 41 INFRASTRUCTURE INFORMATION MODELLING 44 3.1. MULTI MODEL FOR GEOSPATIAL AND INFRASTRUCTURE DATA MODELS 45 3.2. LINKING APPROACH, QUERYING AND FILTERING 48 3.2.1. Virtual Properties via Link Model 49 3.3. MULTI MODEL AS AN INTERDISCIPLINARY METHOD 52 3.4. USING LEVEL OF DETAIL (LOD) FOR FILTERING 53 SPATIAL MODELLING AND PROCESSING 58 4.1. SPATIAL IDENTIFIERS 59 4.1.1. Spatial Indexes 60 4.1.2. Tree-Based Spatial Indexes 61 4.2. NEAREST NEIGHBORHOOD AS A BASIC LINK METHOD 63 4.3. HIERARCHICAL FILTERING 70 4.4. OTHER FUNCTIONAL LINK METHODS 75 4.5. ADVANCES AND LIMITATIONS OF FUNCTIONAL LINK METHODS 76 IMPLEMENTATION OF THE PROPOSED IIM METHOD 77 5.1. IMPLEMENTATION 78 5.2. CASE STUDY 83 CONCLUSION 89 6.1. SUMMERY 90 6.2. DISCUSSION OF RESULTS 92 6.3. FUTURE WORK 93 BIBLIOGRAPHY 94 7.1. BOOKS AND PAPERS 95 7.2. WEBSITES 101

Thesis (MScEng (Electrical and Electronic Engineering))--University of Stellenbosch, 2006. / Speech is the primary and most natural means of communication between human beings. With the rapid spread of technology across the globe and the increased number of personal and public applications for digital equipment in recent years, the need for human/machine interaction has increased dramatically. Synthetic speech is audible speech produced by a machine automatically. A text-to-speech (TTS) system is one that converts bodies of text into digital speech signals which can be heard and understood by a person. Current TTS systems generally require large annotated speech corpora in the languages for which they are developed. For many languages these resources are not available. In their absence, a TTS system generates synthetic speech by means of mathematical algorithms constrained by certain rules. This thesis describes the design and implementation of a rule-based speech generation algorithm for use in a TTS system. The system allows the type, emphasis, pitch and other parameters associated with a sound and its particular mode of articulation to be specified. However, no attempt is made to model prosodic and other higher-level information. Instead, this is assumed known. The algorithm uses linear predictive (LP) models of monophone speech units, which greatly reduces the amount of data required for development in a new language. A novel approach to the interpolation of monophone speech units is presented to allow realistic transitions between monophone units. Additionally, novel algorithms for estimation and modelling of the harmonic and stochastic content of an excitation signal are presented. This is used to determine the amount of voiced and unvoiced energy present in individual speech sounds. Promising results were obtained when evaluating the developed system’s South African English speech output using two widely used speech intelligibility tests, namely the modified rhyme test (MRT) and semantically unpredictable sentences (SUS).

La scoliose idiopathique de l’adolescent (SIA) est une déformation tri-dimensionelle du rachis. Son traitement comprend l’observation, l’utilisation de corsets pour limiter sa progression ou la chirurgie pour corriger la déformation squelettique et cesser sa progression. Le traitement chirurgical reste controversé au niveau des indications, mais aussi de la chirurgie à entreprendre. Malgré la présence de classifications pour guider le traitement de la SIA, une variabilité dans la stratégie opératoire intra et inter-observateur a été décrite dans la littérature. Cette variabilité s’accentue d’autant plus avec l’évolution des techniques chirurgicales et de l’instrumentation disponible. L’avancement de la technologie et son intégration dans le milieu médical a mené à l’utilisation d’algorithmes d’intelligence artificielle informatiques pour aider la classification et l’évaluation tridimensionnelle de la scoliose. Certains algorithmes ont démontré être efficace pour diminuer la variabilité dans la classification de la scoliose et pour guider le traitement. L’objectif général de cette thèse est de développer une application utilisant des outils d’intelligence artificielle pour intégrer les données d’un nouveau patient et les évidences disponibles dans la littérature pour guider le traitement chirurgical de la SIA. Pour cela une revue de la littérature sur les applications existantes dans l’évaluation de la SIA fut entreprise pour rassembler les éléments qui permettraient la mise en place d’une application efficace et acceptée dans le milieu clinique. Cette revue de la littérature nous a permis de réaliser que l’existence de “black box” dans les applications développées est une limitation pour l’intégration clinique ou la justification basée sur les évidence est essentielle. Dans une première étude nous avons développé un arbre décisionnel de classification de la scoliose idiopathique basé sur la classification de Lenke qui est la plus communément utilisée de nos jours mais a été critiquée pour sa complexité et la variabilité inter et intra-observateur. Cet arbre décisionnel a démontré qu’il permet d’augmenter la précision de classification proportionnellement au temps passé à classifier et ce indépendamment du niveau de connaissance sur la SIA. Dans une deuxième étude, un algorithme de stratégies chirurgicales basé sur des règles extraites de la littérature a été développé pour guider les chirurgiens dans la sélection de l’approche et les niveaux de fusion pour la SIA. Lorsque cet algorithme est appliqué à une large base de donnée de 1556 cas de SIA, il est capable de proposer une stratégie opératoire similaire à celle d’un chirurgien expert dans prêt de 70% des cas. Cette étude a confirmé la possibilité d’extraire des stratégies opératoires valides à l’aide d’un arbre décisionnel utilisant des règles extraites de la littérature. Dans une troisième étude, la classification de 1776 patients avec la SIA à l’aide d’une carte de Kohonen, un type de réseaux de neurone a permis de démontrer qu’il existe des scoliose typiques (scoliose à courbes uniques ou double thoracique) pour lesquelles la variabilité dans le traitement chirurgical varie peu des recommandations par la classification de Lenke tandis que les scolioses a courbes multiples ou tangentielles à deux groupes de courbes typiques étaient celles avec le plus de variation dans la stratégie opératoire. Finalement, une plateforme logicielle a été développée intégrant chacune des études ci-dessus. Cette interface logicielle permet l’entrée de données radiologiques pour un patient scoliotique, classifie la SIA à l’aide de l’arbre décisionnel de classification et suggère une approche chirurgicale basée sur l’arbre décisionnel de stratégies opératoires. Une analyse de la correction post-opératoire obtenue démontre une tendance, bien que non-statistiquement significative, à une meilleure balance chez les patients opérés suivant la stratégie recommandée par la plateforme logicielle que ceux aillant un traitement différent. Les études exposées dans cette thèse soulignent que l’utilisation d’algorithmes d’intelligence artificielle dans la classification et l’élaboration de stratégies opératoires de la SIA peuvent être intégrées dans une plateforme logicielle et pourraient assister les chirurgiens dans leur planification préopératoire. / Adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (AIS) is a three-dimensional deformity of the spine. Management of AIS includes conservative treatment with observation, the use of braces to limit its progression or surgery to correct the deformity and cease its progression. Surgical treatment of AIS remains controversial with respect to not only indications but also surgical strategy. Despite the existence of classifications to guide AIS treatment, intra- and inter-observer variability in surgical strategy has been described in the literature. Technological advances and their integration into the medical field have led to the use of artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms to assist with AIS classification and three-dimensional evaluation. With the evolution of surgical techniques and instrumentation, it is probable that the intra- and inter-observer variability could increase. However, some AI algorithms have shown the potential to lower variability in classification and guide treatment. The overall objective of this thesis was to develop software using AI tools that has the capacity to integrate AIS patient data and available evidence from the literature to guide AIS surgical treatment. To do so, a literature review on existing computer applications developed with regards to AIS evaluation and management was undertaken to gather all the elements that would lead to usable software in the clinical setting. This review highlighted the fact that many applications use a non-descript “black box” between input and output, which limits clinical integration where management based on evidence is essential. In the first study, we developed a decision tree to classify AIS based on the Lenke scheme. The Lenke scheme was popular in the past, but has recently been criticized for its complexity leading to intra and inter-observer variability. The resultant decision tree demonstrated an ability to increase classification accuracy in proportion to the time spent classifying. Importantly, this increase in accuracy was independently of previous knowledge about AIS. In the second study, a surgical strategy rule-based algorithm was developed using rules extracted from the literature to guide surgeons in the selection of the approach and levels of fusion for AIS. When this rule-based algorithm was tested against a database of 1,556 AIS cases, it was able to output a surgical strategy similar to the one undertaken by an expert surgeon in 70% of cases. This study confirmed the ability of a rule-based algorithm based on the literature to output valid surgical strategies. In the third study, classification of 1,776 AIS patients was undertaken using Kohonen Self-Organizing-Maps (SOM), which is a kind of neural network that demonstrates there are typical AIS curve types (i.e: single curves and double thoracic curves) for which there is little variability in surgical treatment when compared to the recommendations from the Lenke scheme. Other curve types (i.e: multiple curves or in transition zones between typical curves) have much greater variability in surgical strategy. Finally, a software platform integrating all the above studies was developed. The interface of this software platform allows for: 1) the input of AIS patient radiographic measurements; 2) classification of the curve type using the decision tree; 3) output of surgical strategy options based on rules extracted from the literature. A comparison of surgical correction obtained by patients receiving surgical treatment suggested by the software showed a tendency to obtain better balance -though non-statistically significant - than those who were treated differently from the surgical strategies outputted by the software. Overall, studies from this thesis suggest that the use of AI algorithms in the classification and selection of surgical strategies for AIS can be integrated in a software platform that could assist the surgeon in the planning of appropriate surgical treatment.

Mathematische Modellierung ist ein wichtiges Werkzeug biologischer Forschung geworden, was sich in der Entstehung von Systembiologie widerspiegelt. Eine erfolgreiche Anwendung mathematischer Methoden auf biologische Fragen erfordert die Zusammenarbeit zwischen experimentell und theoretisch arbeitenden Wissenschaftlern, auch um sicherzustellen, dass die Biologie im Modell adäquat dargestellt wird. Ich präsentiere hier zwei Untersuchungen zur Anpassung von Saccharomyces cere- visae an hyperosmotische Bedingungen: Eine biologisch detailgetreue Beschreibung der Signaltransduktion zur Aktivierung von Hog1 und ein Model, das Anpassung an osmotischen Stress in zellulärem Zusammenhang beschreibt. Die Studie zur Osmoadaptation in zellulären Kontext impliziert, dass Hog1 und Fps1, zwei wichtige Bausteine dieses Adaptationsvorgangs, miteinander in Wechselwirkung treten und dies zur Anpassung beiträgt. Dieses Ergebnis wird durch die Integration verschiedener Hefestämme mit zum Teil gegensätzlich wirkenden Mutationen ermöglicht. Diese Studie offenbart des weiteren, dass die Rolle von Glycerol in der langfristigen Anpassung bisher überschätzt wurde. Die hier präsentierten Ergebnisse zeigen, dass Glycerol als ’Not’-Osmolyt eingesetzt wird und andere Stoffe, z.B. Trehalose, erheblich zu dauerhafter Osmoadaptation beitragen. Durch die Betrachtung des Zustands mehrerer zellulärer Mechansimen wird deutlich, dass Osmoadaptation stark vom Kontext abhängig ist und nicht perfekt ist. Der Preis schlägt sich in langsamerem Wachstum nieder. Zeitabhängige Sensitivitätsanalyse des Modells untermauert diese Hypothese. Die gewählte Perspektive ermöglicht die Betrachtung von intrazellulären Signaltransduktionskomponenten, Metaboliten und des Wachstums. Der Vergleich mit einer Studie, die Anpassung an osmotischen Stress als perfekte Adaptation auf Grund eines vereinfachten Modells beschreibt, hebt die Rolle der gewählten Perspektive zum Verständnis biologischer Systeme hervor. / Mathematical modeling has become an important tool in biology, reflected in the emergence of systems biology. Successful application of mathematical methods to biological questions requires collaboration of experimental and theoretical scientists to identify and study the problem at hand and to ensure that biology and model match. In this thesis, I present two studies on adaptation to hyperosmotic conditions in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisae: A biologically faithful description of the signaling pathways activating Hog1 and a model integrating the effects of Hog1-activity and cellular metabolism, describing osmoadaptation in cellular context. The study of osmoadaptation in cellular context suggests that Hog1 and Fps1, two crucial components of adaptation, interact upon hyperosmotic stress. This finding is facilitated by incorporating multiple strains with mutations leading to partly oppositional phenotypes. This study further reveals that the role of glycerol in long term adaptation has been overestimated so far. According to the results presented here, glycerol is utilized as an ’emergency’ osmoprotectant and other compounds, e.g. trehalose, contribute significantly to osmoadaptation. Accounting for the state of multiple cellular mechanisms (Hog1-activity, glycolysis, growth) shows that adaptation to hyperosmotic stress and the impact of the individual mechanisms of adaptation is context dependent and that adaptation to sustained osmostress is not perfect, the expense reflected in a reduced growth rate in hyperosmotic medium. Time-dependent sensitivity analysis supports the notion of context. The perspective chosen allows observations on intracellular signaling components, metabolites and growth speed. Comparison with a study that describes osmoadaptation as perfect adaptation highlights the role of this perspective for the conclusions drawn, thus emphasizing the importance of an integrative perspective for understanding biological systems.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-04T18:31:32Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Andreiwid Sheffer Correa.pdf: 4501821 bytes, checksum: 3d9f7fecc118ff0dc70b11ea481d5e67 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012-11-23 / The unstructured and unplanned implementation of technological solutions leads to wastage of resources and imposes itself as a barrier to achieving the potential benefits of information technologies and communication. The problem increases when managers who operate these technologies are part of the public administration, as structural issues make this scenario open for merely temporary, strictly proprietary, experimental or doomed to obsolescence solutions, resulting in interoperability problems. Thus, the possible damage extrapolates financial issues and compromise expected social return. In an attempt to avoid this problem, several countries are developing and adopting government interoperability frameworks to guide their actions in electronic government. These architectures expose successful solutions for technical, semantic and organizational dimension of interoperability, and reflect on the best path according to the understanding of its government. However, specifically for the technical dimension, there is no way to evaluate the effectiveness of these architectures and assess how the solutions are interoperable. This work aims to propose a maturity model for technical interoperability in order to assess the use of standards and assist software and systems engineers, as well as professionals in general, to focus their efforts on the use of recommended technologies by good practices. It has been based on e-PING architecture, which is the Brazilian standard for interoperability. In addition, this work proposes the development and use of a rule-based system that implements fuzzy logic to assist evaluation and adherence to the model. To verify model feasibility and validate the developed system, this paper also uses a real scenario as the basis of analysis of interoperability. / A implementa??o desestruturada e n?o planejada de solu??es tecnol?gicas ? fonte de desperd?cio de recursos e imp?e-se como barreira para obten??o dos potenciais benef?cios do uso das tecnologias da informa??o e comunica??o. O problema acentua-se quando gestores dessas tecnologias atuam para a administra??o p?blica, pois quest?es estruturais fazem com que este cen?rio abra espa?o para solu??es pontuais e transit?rias, estritamente propriet?rias, experimentais ou fadadas ? obsolesc?ncia, o que resulta em problemas de interoperabilidade. Desse modo, os poss?veis danos extrapolam o sentido financeiro por comprometer o retorno social esperado. Na tentativa de contornar essa quest?o, v?rios pa?ses v?m desenvolvendo e adotando as arquiteturas de interoperabilidade governamentais para orientar suas a??es de governo eletr?nico. Essas arquiteturas buscam evidenciar, a partir dos aspectos t?cnicos, sem?nticos ou organizacionais, as solu??es bem sucedidas e aceitas universalmente, al?m de refletirem o melhor caminho para a interoperabilidade, segundo o entendimento de cada governo. No entanto, especificamente para o aspecto t?cnico, n?o existe um meio para avaliar a efetiva utiliza??o dessas arquiteturas e aferir o qu?o interoper?veis as solu??es se encontram. Este trabalho visa propor um modelo de maturidade para interoperabilidade t?cnica com o objetivo de medir o uso de padr?es de interoperabilidade e auxiliar engenheiros de softwares e de sistemas, assim como profissionais em geral, a direcionar seus esfor?os no emprego de tecnologias consagradas pelas boas pr?ticas de mercado. Tem-se, como base para a constru??o do modelo, a arquitetura e-PING, que ? o padr?o brasileiro de interoperabilidade. Adicionalmente, este trabalho prop?e o desenvolvimento e utiliza??o de um sistema baseado em regras que emprega l?gica nebulosa para auxiliar no processo de avalia??o da ader?ncia ao modelo. Para verifica??o da viabilidade do modelo e valida??o do sistema desenvolvido, este trabalho tamb?m utiliza um cen?rio real para servir de base de an?lise da interoperabilidade.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-12-23T14:33:33Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Diss ITM 1.pdf: 288787 bytes, checksum: 7ec6ca50c8c58631a8efb146dc08e482 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-01-25 / Aplicações sensíveis ao contexto usam informações contextuais para customizar serviços de acordo com as situações e as necessidades dos seus usuários. Um dos desafios associados ao desenvolvimento deste tipo de aplicação está em especificar os modelos conceituais que representam as situações de interesse da aplicação. O objetivo desta dissertação é propor uma metodologia orientada a modelos para auxiliar o desenvolvimento de aplicações sensíveis ao contexto, com foco na especificação e detecção de situações contextuais. Para atingir este objetivo, o trabalho propõe uma linguagem gráfica de modelagem de situações, chamada SML (Situation Modeling Language), que permite especificar diferentes tipos de situação considerando aspectos como composição de situações e inferência temporal. A fim de permitir a detecção de situações, os modelos descritos em SML podem ser utilizados para gerar uma implementação baseada em regras que observa contexto e controla o ciclo de vida das situações de interesse da aplicação. O trabalho descreve como os elementos especificados em SML são transformados em código a ser executado pela máquina de regras Drools. Finalmente, para apoiar o desenvolvimento de aplicações sensíveis ao contexto, são propostas ferramentas que auxiliam o processo de modelagem e de transformação do modelo em código. Os conceitos envolvidos na construção de SML e na geração automática de código são exemplificados por meio de um cenário de detecção de fraudes bancárias / Context-aware applications manipulate context information to adapt services according to the users current situation and needs. One of the challenges of developing context-aware applications refers to the specification of the conceptual models that represent the situations of interest. The objective of this thesis is to propose a model-driven methodology to assist the development of context-aware applications, focusing on the specification and the detection of contextual situations. To achieve this goal, the work proposes a graphical language for modeling situations, coined SML (Situation Modeling Language), which allows the user to specify situation types considering aspects such as composition of situations and their temporal reasoning. In order to allow situation detection, the models described in SML can be used to generate a rule-based implementation, which is capable of observing context and controlling situations lifecycle. The work describes how the elements specified in SML are transformed into code to be executed in the Drools rule engine. Finally, to support the development of applications, we propose tools to assist the modeling phase, as well as the implementation phase, by means of code generation. The concepts involved in the design of SML and the transformations of SML models to Drools code are exemplified by means of a banking scenario for detecting fraudsusceptible behavior

Afin d'accompagner les professionnels de santé dans leur démarche clinique, plusieurs systèmes de suivi et deprise en charge médicale ont été construits et déployés dans le milieu hospitalier. Ces systèmes permettentprincipalement de collecter des données médicales sur les patients, de les analyser et de présenter les résultats dedifférentes manières. Ils représentent un appui et une aide aux professionnels de santé dans leur prise de décisionpar rapport à l'évolution de l'état de santé des patients suivis. L'utilisation de tels systèmes nécessitesystématiquement une adaptation à la fois au domaine médical concerné et au mode d'intervention. Il estnécessaire, dans un milieu hospitalier, que ces systèmes puissent s'adapter et évoluer d'une manière simple, enlimitant toute maintenance corrective ou évolutive. Ils doivent être en mesure de prendre en compte dynamiquementdes connaissances théoriques et empiriques du domaine issues des experts médicaux.Afin de répondre à ces exigences, nous avons proposé une approche pour la construction d'un système d'aide à ladécision médicale capable de s'adapter au domaine médical concerné et au mode d'intervention approprié pourassister les professionnels de santé dans leur démarche clinique. Cette approche permet notamment l'organisationde la collecte des données médicales, en tenant compte du contexte du patient, la représentation desconnaissances du domaine à base d'ontologies ainsi que leur exploitation associée aux guides de bonnes pratiqueset à l'expérience clinique.Dans la continuité des travaux précédemment réalisés au sein de notre équipe de recherche, nous avons choisid'enrichir, avec notre approche, la plateforme E-care qui est dédiée au suivi et à la détection précoce de touteanomalie de l'état de patients atteints de maladies chroniques. Nous avons pu ainsi adapter facilement la plateformeE-care aux différentes expérimentations qui sont été menées notamment dans des EPHAD de la MutualitéFrançaise en Anjou-Mayenne, au CHU de Hautepierre et au CHUV à Lausanne.Les résultats de ces expérimentations ont montré l'efficacité de l'approche proposée. L'adaptation de la plateformepar rapport au domaine et au mode d'intervention de chacune de ces expérimentations se limite à de la simpleconfiguration. De plus, l'approche proposée a suscité l'intérêt du personnel médical par rapport à l'organisation de lacollecte des données, qui tient compte du contexte du patient, et par rapport à l'exploitation des connaissancesmédicales qui apporte aux professionnels de santé une assistance pour une meilleure prise de décision. / To support health professionals in their clinical processes, several monitoring and medical care systems have beenbuilt and deployed in the hospital setting. These systems are mainly used to collect medical data on patients,analyze and present the outcomes in different ways. They represent support and assistance to health professionalsin their decision making regarding the evolution in the health status of the patients followed. The use of suchsystems always requires an adaptation to both the medical field and the mode of intervention. It is necessary, in ahospital setting, to adapt and evolve these systems in a simple manner, limiting any corrective or evolutionarymaintenance. Moreover, these systems should be able to consider dynamically the domain knowledge from medicalexperts.To meet these requirements, we proposed an approach for the construction of a medical decision support system(MDSS). This MDSS can adapt to the medical field and to the appropriate mode of intervention to assist healthprofessionals in their clinical processes. This approach allows especially the organization of the medical datacollection by taking into account the patient¿s context, the ontology-based knowledge representation of the domainand permits the exploitation of the medical guidelines and the clinical experience.In continuity of our research team¿s previous work, we chose to expand with our approach, the E-care platformwhich is dedicated to monitoring and early detection of any abnormality of the health status of patients with chronicdiseases. We were able to adapt easily the E-care platform for the various experiments that have been conducted,including EPHAD of the Mutualité Française in Anjou-Mayenne, Hautepierre hospital and Lausanne hospital(CHUV).The outcomes of these experiments have shown the effectiveness of the proposed approach. Where, the adaptationof the platform regarding to the domain and mode of intervention of each of these experiments is limited to thesimple configuration. Furthermore, the proposed approach has attracted the interest of the medical staff regardingthe organization of the medical data collection, and the exploitation of the medical knowledge which bringsassistance to the health professionals for better decision making.

<p>The thesis describes steps taken towards using graphic representation and visual modelling support for the knowledge acquisition process in knowledge-based systems – a process commonly regarded as difficult. The performance of the systems depends on the quality of the embedded knowledge, which makes the knowledge acquisition phase particularly significant. During the acquisition phase, a main obstacle to proper extraction of information is the absence of effective modelling techniques.</p><p>The contributions of the thesis are: introducing a methodology for user-centred knowledge modelling, enhancing transparency to support the modelling of content and of the reasoning strategy, incorporating conceptualisation to simplify the grasp of the contents and to support assimilation of the domain knowledge, and supplying a visual compositional logic programming language for adding and modifying functionality.</p><p>The user-centred knowledge acquisition model, proposed in this thesis, applies a combination of different approaches to knowledge modelling. The aim is to bridge the gap between the users (i.e., knowledge engineers, domain experts and end users) and the system in transferring knowledge, by supporting the users through graphics and visualisation. Visualisation supports the users by providing several different views of the contents of the system.</p><p>The Unified Modelling Language (UML) is employed as a modelling language. A benefit of utilising UML is that the knowledge base can be modified, and the reasoning strategy and the functionality can be changed directly in the model. To make the knowledge base more comprehensible and expressive, we incorporated visual conceptualisation into UML’s diagrams to describe the contents. Visual conceptualisation of the knowledge can also facilitate assimilation in a hypermedia system through visual libraries.</p><p>Visualisation of functionality is applied to a programming paradigm, namely relational programming, often employed in artificial intelligence systems. This approach employs Venn-Euler diagrams as a graphic interface to a compositional operator based relational programming language. </p><p>The concrete result of the research is the development of a graphic representation and visual modelling approach to support the knowledge acquisition process. This approach has been evaluated for two different knowledge bases, one built for hydropower development and river regulation and the other for diagnosing childhood diseases.</p>

The thesis describes steps taken towards using graphic representation and visual modelling support for the knowledge acquisition process in knowledge-based systems – a process commonly regarded as difficult. The performance of the systems depends on the quality of the embedded knowledge, which makes the knowledge acquisition phase particularly significant. During the acquisition phase, a main obstacle to proper extraction of information is the absence of effective modelling techniques. The contributions of the thesis are: introducing a methodology for user-centred knowledge modelling, enhancing transparency to support the modelling of content and of the reasoning strategy, incorporating conceptualisation to simplify the grasp of the contents and to support assimilation of the domain knowledge, and supplying a visual compositional logic programming language for adding and modifying functionality. The user-centred knowledge acquisition model, proposed in this thesis, applies a combination of different approaches to knowledge modelling. The aim is to bridge the gap between the users (i.e., knowledge engineers, domain experts and end users) and the system in transferring knowledge, by supporting the users through graphics and visualisation. Visualisation supports the users by providing several different views of the contents of the system. The Unified Modelling Language (UML) is employed as a modelling language. A benefit of utilising UML is that the knowledge base can be modified, and the reasoning strategy and the functionality can be changed directly in the model. To make the knowledge base more comprehensible and expressive, we incorporated visual conceptualisation into UML’s diagrams to describe the contents. Visual conceptualisation of the knowledge can also facilitate assimilation in a hypermedia system through visual libraries. Visualisation of functionality is applied to a programming paradigm, namely relational programming, often employed in artificial intelligence systems. This approach employs Venn-Euler diagrams as a graphic interface to a compositional operator based relational programming language. The concrete result of the research is the development of a graphic representation and visual modelling approach to support the knowledge acquisition process. This approach has been evaluated for two different knowledge bases, one built for hydropower development and river regulation and the other for diagnosing childhood diseases.

Verification of knowledge-bases is a critical step to ensure the quality of a knowledge-based system. The success of these systems depends heavily on how qualitative the knowledge is. Manual verification is however cumbersome and error prone, especially for large knowledge-bases. This thesis provides a design theory, based upon the suggested framework by Gregor and Jones (2007). The theory proposes a general design of automated verification tools, which have the abilities of verifying heuristic knowledge in rule-based systems utilizing certainty factors. Included is a verification of completeness and consistency technique customized to this class of knowledge-based systems. The design theory is instantiated in a real-world verification tool development project at Uppsala University. Considerable attention is given to the design and implementation of this artifact – uncovering issues and considerations involved in the development process. For the knowledge management practitioner, this thesis offers guidance and recommendations for automated verification tool development projects. For the IS research community, the thesis contributes with extensions of existing design theory, and reveals some of the complexity involved with verification of a specific rule-based system utilizing certainty factors.