The availability and management of water resources is a global issue, this is particularly true in countries with limited water resources, such as Palestine, which falls under the Water Stress Line (1000 m3/person/year)1. Palestine has operated under an -unstable political, economic and social conditions for more than six decades. This uncertainty has resulted in mismanagement, inefficient institutions and the over-xploitation of water resources. The main aim of this study was to produce socioeconomic indicators based on the water tariff structure in order to be pro-poor and to enable water utilities to cope with uncertainties. The study s recommendation is for a flexible, pro-poor and socially acceptable tariff structure have been based on empirical work and socio-economic data which has been collected by rigorous research and reinforced with case studies. Initial results based on a pilot survey showed that there was a 33% increase in the revenue of the water supplier equivalent to 13% of the total water costs and an increase in the number of beneficiaries that paid their bills ranging from 10.5% to 38.6%. If applied at national level, the model application based on current socioeconomic data would have a wide positive socio-economic impact in reducing poverty, financial equality, social security and reduction of the effect of uncertainties. The reform of the existing legal and institution framework are a prerequisite for the application of this kind of model. Institutional and legal reforms coupled with the application of this model, would produce a dynamic water pricing policy as part of the efforts to have an integrated water management and would serve as a tool for the national goal of poverty alleviation and food security.

Query processing is a core task in probabilistic databases: Given a query and a database that encodes uncertainty in data by means of probability distributions, the problem is to compute possible query answers together with their respective probabilities of being correct. This thesis advances the state of the art in two aspects of query processing in probabilistic databases: complexity analysis and query evaluation techniques. A dichotomy is established for non-repeating, con- junctive relational algebra queries with negation that separates #P-hard queries from those with PTIME data complexity. A framework for computing proba- bilities of relational algebra queries is presented; the probability computation algorithm is based on decomposition methods and provides exact answers in the case of exhaustive decompositions, or anytime approximate answers with absolute or relative error guarantees in the case of partial decompositions. The framework is extended to queries with aggregation operators. An experimental evaluation of the proposed algorithms’ implementations within the SPROUT query engine complements the theoretical results. The SPROUT² system uses this query engine to compute answers to queries on uncertain, tabular Web data.

Cette thèse porte sur la composition des services de données et l'étude de l'impact de l'incertitude qui peut être associée à leurs données accessibles sur le processus de composition et de sélection de service. En effet, dans un contexte tel que l'Internet, il est de plus en plus reconnu que les données et les services d'accès aux données sont sujettes à des valeurs d'incertitude tout en exigeant des techniques de gestion plus sophistiquées. Dans cette thèse, nous enrichissons la description sémantique des services Web afin de refléter l'incertitude, et nous proposons de nouveaux mécanismes et modèles pour la sélection et la composition des services. Nos mécanismes sont basés sur les ensembles flous et les théories probabilistes. Tout d'abord, nous étendons notre modélisation précédente basée sur les vues RDF afin d'inclure les contraintes floues qui caractérisent les données accédées par les services. Nous proposons une algèbre de composition qui permet de classer les résultats retournés en fonction de leur pertinence par rapport aux préférences de l'utilisateur. Notre algèbre proposée repose sur les fondations de bases de données floues. En outre, nous optons pour l'approche probabiliste pour modéliser l'incertitude des données renvoyées par les services incertains. Nous étendons la description du service Web standard pour représenter les probabilités de sortie. L'invocation des services est également étendue pour tenir compte de l'incertitude. Cette extension est basée sur la théorie des mondes possibles utilisée dans les bases de données probabiliste. Nous définissons un ensemble d'opérateurs de composition qui sont nécessaires pour orchestrer les services de données. Pour chaque composition, plusieurs plans d'orchestration peuvent être possibles mais qui sont pas tous corrects, donc, nous définissons un ensemble de conditions pour vérifier si le plan est correct (Safe) ou pas. Nous fournissons une implémentation de nos différentes techniques et les appliquer aux domaines de l'immobilier et du commerce électronique. Nous implémentons ces services et nous fournissons également une étude de la performance de notre prototype de composition / In this thesis we focus on the data web services composition problem and study the impact of the uncertainty that may be associated with the output of a service on the service selection and composition processes. This work is motivated by the increasing number of application domains where data web services may return uncertain data, including the e-commerce, scientific data exploration, open web data, etc. We call such services that return uncertain data as uncertain services. In this dissertation, we propose new models and techniques for the selection and the composition of uncertain data web services. Our techniques are based on well established fuzzy and probabilistic database theories and can handle the uncertainty efficiently. First, we proposed a composition model that takes into account the user preferences. In our model, user preferences are modelled as fuzzy constraints, and services are described with fuzzy constraints to better characterize their accessed data. The composition model features also a composition algebra that allows us to rank the returned results based on their relevance to user's preferences. Second, we proposed a probabilistic approach to model the uncertainty of the data returned by uncertain data services. Specifically, we extended the web service description standards (e.g., WSDL) to represent the outputs' probabilities. We also extended the service invocation process to take into account the uncertainty of input data. This extension is based on the possible worlds theory used in the probabilistic databases. We proposed also a set of probability-aware composition operators that are necessary to orchestrate uncertain data services. Since a composition may accept multiple orchestration plans and not all of them compute the correct probabilities of outputs, we defined a set of conditions to check if a plan is safe (i.e., computes the probabilities correctly) or not. We implemented our different techniques and applied them to the real-estate and e-commerce domains. We provide a performance study of our different composition techniques

O estudo da estabilidade e desempenho em sistemas de controle é um tópico relevante na teoria de sistemas. Quando são assumidas incertezas no modelo da planta, existe uma maior dificuldade para garantir um nível de desempenho adequado do sistema dinâmico e a estabilidade pode ser comprometida. Neste trabalho são utilizados um regulador linear quadrático robusto e um filtro de Kalman robusto combinados em uma única formulação para tratar de sistemas dinâmicos incertos em tempo real. O caso de estudo selecionado é o pêndulo invertido. Seus principais desafios de controle encontrados na literatura: estabilização, seguimento e levantamento-captura, serão considerados. Os algoritmos utilizados são motivados pelo fato de que problemas estocásticos podem ser resolvidos por meio de argumentos determinísticos, baseados nos conceitos de função penalidade e mínimos quadrados regularizados. Desta forma, é possível a obtenção do melhor desempenho em contrapartida à máxima influência de incerteza admissível. A análise de desempenho do controlador robusto é realizada por meio de ensaios práticos incluindo incertezas na planta, ruído nos sensores e distúrbios no sinal de controle do pêndulo. / The study of stability and performance in control systems is a relevant topic in systems theory. When uncertainties are considered in the model of the plant, there is a greater difficulty in ensuring an appropriate performance level of the dynamic system, plus, the stability could be compromised as well. In this dissertation a robust linear quadratic regulator and a robust Kalman filter are used in a unified manner to deal with uncertain dynamic systems in real time. The selected case study is the inverted pendulum. Its main control challenges found in the literature will be considered: stabilization, tracking and catching swing-up. The used algorithms are motivated by the fact that stochastic problems can be solved through deterministic arguments based on the concepts of penalty function and regularized least-squares. Thus, it is possible to obtain an optimal performance for the maximum acceptable uncertainty. The performance analysis of the robust control is carried out by practical experiments including uncertainties in the plant, noise in the sensors and disturbance in the pendulum control signal.

L’œuvre de Juan Carlos Onetti, féconde, diverse et originale, représente un renouveau de la littérature uruguayenne et latino-américaine. C’est dans les pages de la revue Marcha où, entre 1939 et 1941, il était secrétaire de rédaction, qu’il exposera sa vision de la littérature qui nécessite, d’après lui, et avec urgence, un renouvellement. Lui-même va mettre en place ses théories littéraires et, à travers son œuvre et sa ville mythique, Santa María, il va créer une nouvelle littérature urbaine plus en accord avec l’homme et le monde de son époque. En France, pendant les années quarante naît le Nouveau Roman, courant littéraire novateur qui représente une rupture dans les lettres françaises. Souvent appelée « littérature du regard », les textes du Nouveau Roman vont au-delà des formes narratives traditionnelles. Le propos de ce travail est l’étude comparée de l’oeuvre de Juan Carlos Onetti et de certaines oeuvres de deux écrivains du Nouveau Roman : Robbe-Grillet et Claude Simon. À partir de trois axes, l’étude d’un personnage en crise, l’étude des voix narratives, et l’étude des rapports entre l’homme, l’écriture et la fiction, ce travail de recherche interroge et analyse les formules narratives nouvelles qui ont bouleversé les règles du passé. / The work of Juan Carlos Onetti, prolific, diverse and singular, represents the renovation of the Uruguayan and Latin-American literature. When he was assistant editor for the magazine Marcha between 1939 and 1941, he exposed in a series of articles his viewpoint about literature, which needed, as he stated, a renovation urgently. His own work illustrates those theories; and with the mythic city Santa Maria he created, he developed a new kind of urban literature more in accordance with his contemporaries and the world he lived in. In France, the Nouveau Roman, which emerged in about 1940, constitutes a rupture in French literature. This innovative movement, often called "literature of look", went beyond traditional narrative forms. The purpose of this study is to compare Juan Carlos Onetti’s work with certain books written by two representatives of the Nouveau Roman: Robbe-Grillet and Claude Simon. From three axes the study of a character in crisis, the study of different narrative voices and the study of the relationship between man, his writings and fiction, this research work questions and analyses new narrative forms which definitively changed the rules of the Past.

Esta tese aborda o problema de regulação para sistemas lineares sujeitos a saltos Markovianos de tempo discreto com matrizes de transição incertas. Considera-se que as incertezas são limitadas em norma e os estados da cadeia de Markov podem não ser completamente observados pelo controlador. No cenário com observação completa dos estados, a solução é deduzida com base em um funcional quadrático dado em termos das probabilidades de transição incertas. Enquanto que no cenário sem observação, a solução é obtida por meio da reformulação do sistema Markoviano como um sistema determinístico, independente da cadeia de Markov. Três modelos são propostos para essa reformulação: um modelo é baseado no primeiro momento do sistema Markoviano, o segundo é obtido a partir da medida de Dirac e resulta em um sistema aumentado, e o terceiro fornece um sistema aumentado singular. Os reguladores recursivos robustos são projetados a partir de critérios de custo quadrático, dados em termos de problemas de otimização restritos. A solução é derivada da técnica de mínimos quadrados regularizados robustos e apresentada em uma estrutura matricial. A recursividade é estabelecida por equações de Riccati, que se assemelham às soluções dos reguladores clássicos, para essa classe de sistemas, quando não estão sujeitos a incertezas. / This thesis deals with regulation problem for discrete-time Markovian jump linear systems with uncertain transition matrix. The uncertainties are assumed to be normbounded type. The states of the Markov chain can not be completely observed by the controller. In the scenario with complete observation of the states, the solution is deduced based on a quadratic functional given in terms of uncertain transition probabilities. While in the scenario without observation, the solution is obtained from reformulation of the Markovian system as a deterministic system, independent of the Markov chain. Three models are proposed for the reformulation process: a model is based on the first moment of the Markovian system, the second is obtained from Dirac measure which results in an augmented system, and the third provides a singular augmented system. Recursive robust regulators are designed from quadratic cost criteria given in terms of constrained optimization problems. The solution is derived from the robust regularized least-square approach, whose framework is given in terms of a matrix structure. The recursiveness is established by Riccati equations which resemble the solutions of standard regulators for this class of systems, when they are not subject to uncertainties.

Esta tese aborda o problema de regulação para sistemas lineares sujeitos a saltos Markovianos de tempo discreto com matrizes de transição incertas. Considera-se que as incertezas são limitadas em norma e os estados da cadeia de Markov podem não ser completamente observados pelo controlador. No cenário com observação completa dos estados, a solução é deduzida com base em um funcional quadrático dado em termos das probabilidades de transição incertas. Enquanto que no cenário sem observação, a solução é obtida por meio da reformulação do sistema Markoviano como um sistema determinístico, independente da cadeia de Markov. Três modelos são propostos para essa reformulação: um modelo é baseado no primeiro momento do sistema Markoviano, o segundo é obtido a partir da medida de Dirac e resulta em um sistema aumentado, e o terceiro fornece um sistema aumentado singular. Os reguladores recursivos robustos são projetados a partir de critérios de custo quadrático, dados em termos de problemas de otimização restritos. A solução é derivada da técnica de mínimos quadrados regularizados robustos e apresentada em uma estrutura matricial. A recursividade é estabelecida por equações de Riccati, que se assemelham às soluções dos reguladores clássicos, para essa classe de sistemas, quando não estão sujeitos a incertezas. / This thesis deals with regulation problem for discrete-time Markovian jump linear systems with uncertain transition matrix. The uncertainties are assumed to be normbounded type. The states of the Markov chain can not be completely observed by the controller. In the scenario with complete observation of the states, the solution is deduced based on a quadratic functional given in terms of uncertain transition probabilities. While in the scenario without observation, the solution is obtained from reformulation of the Markovian system as a deterministic system, independent of the Markov chain. Three models are proposed for the reformulation process: a model is based on the first moment of the Markovian system, the second is obtained from Dirac measure which results in an augmented system, and the third provides a singular augmented system. Recursive robust regulators are designed from quadratic cost criteria given in terms of constrained optimization problems. The solution is derived from the robust regularized least-square approach, whose framework is given in terms of a matrix structure. The recursiveness is established by Riccati equations which resemble the solutions of standard regulators for this class of systems, when they are not subject to uncertainties.

Dans la plupart des problèmes de synthèse, la loi de commande obtenue doit répondre simultanément à des critères réquentiels et temporels en vue de satisfaire un cahier des charges précis. Les derniers développements des techniques de synthèse Hinf de contrôleurs structurés permettent d'obtenir des lois de commande satisfaisant des critères fréquentiels multiples. En revanche, la synthèse de loi de commande satisfaisant une contrainte temporelle sur une sortie ou un état du système est plus complexe. Dans ce travail de thèse, la technique OIST est considérée pour ce type de contraintes. Elle consiste à saturer la sortie du contrôleur dès que la contrainte n'est plus vérifiée afin de restreindre l'ensemble des sorties admissibles. Initialement formulée pour les systèmes linéaires connus dont l'état est mesuré, la technique OIST peut être généralisée pour permettre de considérer des systèmes incertains. C'est l'extension OISTeR qui est proposée dans ce travail. Elle utilise les données d'un observateur par intervalles pour borner de manière garantie le vecteur d'état. La théorie des observateurs par intervalles a récemment fait l'objet de nombreux travaux. La méthode la plus rapide pour obtenir un observateur par intervalles d'un système donné est de considérer un système intermédiaire coopératif dans de nouvelles coordonnées. Une nouvelle technique de détermination de ces nouvelles coordonnées, intitulée SCorplO, est proposée dans ce mémoire. L'ensemble des techniques présentées est appliqué au contrôle d'un lanceur flexible durant son vol atmosphérique, en présence de rafales de vent et sous contrainte temporelle sur l'angle d'incidence. / Ln control design problems, both frequency- and time-domain requirements are usually considered such that the resulting control law satisfies the specifications. Novel non-smooth optimization techniques can be used to achieve multiple frequency-domain specifications over a family of linear models. However, enforcing time-domain constraints on a given output or state is more challenging Since translating them into frequency-domain requirements may be inaccurate. This motivates the study of an additional approach to the Hinf control design techniques. When time-domain constraints are satisfied, the nominal control law reduces to a controller satisfying the frequency-domain constraints. Upon violation of the ime-domain constraint, an additional tool named OIST is used to saturate the controller output so as to restrict the reachable set of the constrained system output. Stability guarantees are obtained for minimum phase systems. Further developments proposed therein allow the consideration of uncertain systems With incomplete state measurements. This is he OISTeR approach. The method uses certified bounds on the considered system state as provided by an interval observer. he theory of interval observers is well-established. ln the case of linear systems, the most common approach is to consider an intermediate cooperative system on which the interval observer can be built. The novel SCorplO design method proposed in this work is used to compute such cooperative representation. ln this thesis, the considered application is the atmospheric control of a flexible launch vehicle under a time-domain constraint on the angle of attack and in the presence of wind gusts.

在資料庫的處理中，top-k查詢幫助使用者從龐大的資料中萃取出具有價值的物件，它將資料庫中的物件依照給分公式給分後，選擇出分數最高的前k個回傳給使用者。然而在多數的情況下，一個物件也許不只有一個分數，要如何在多個分數中仍然選擇出整體最高分的前k個物件，便成為一個新的問題。在本研究中，我們將這樣的物件用不確定資料來表示，而每個物件的不確定性則是其帶有機率的分數以表示此分數出現的可能性，並提出一個新的問題：Best-kGROUP查詢。在此我們將情況模擬為一個複合式競賽，其中有多個子項目，每個項目的參賽人數各異，且最多需要k個人參賽；我們希望能針對此複合式競賽挑選出最佳的k個球員組合。當我們定義一個較佳的組合為其在較多項目居首位的機率比另一組合高，而最佳的組合則是沒有比它更佳的組合。為了加快挑選的速度，我們利用動態規劃的方式與篩選的演算法，將不可能的組合先剔除；所剩的組合則是具有天際線特質的組合，在這些天際線組合中，我們可以輕易的找出最佳的組合。此外，在實驗中，對於在所有球員中挑選最佳的組合，Best-kGROUP查詢也有非常優異的表現。 / In a large database, top-k query is an important mechanism to retrieve the most valuable information for the users. It ranks data objects with a ranking function and reports the k objects with the highest scores. However, when an object has multiple scores, how to rank objects without information loss becomes challenging. In this paper, we model the object with multiple scores as an uncertain data object and the uncertainty of the object as a distribution of the scores, and consider a novel problem named Best-kGROUP query. Imagine the following scenario. Assume there is a composite competition consisting of several games each of which requires a distinct number of players. Suppose the largest number is k, and we want to select the best group of k players from all the players for the competition. A group x is considered better than another group y if x has higher aggregated probability to be the top ones in more games than y. In order to speed up the selection process, the groups worse than another group definitely should first be discarded. We identify these groups using a dynamic programming based approach and a filtering algorithm. The remaining groups with the property that none of them have higher aggregated probability to be the top ones for all games against the other groups are called skyline groups. From these skyline groups, we can easily compare them to select the best group for the composite competition. The experiments show that our approach outperforms the other approaches in selecting the best group to defeat the other groups in the composite competitions.

<p>This thesis presents the implementation of a knowledge base system for rough sets [Paw92]within the logic programming framework. The combination of rough set theory with logic programming is a novel approach. The presented implementation serves as a prototype system for the ideas presented in [VDM03a, VDM03b]. The system is available at "http://www.ida.liu.se/rkbs". </p><p>The presented language for describing knowledge in the rough knowledge base caters for implicit definition of rough sets by combining different regions (e.g. upper approximation, lower approximation, boundary) of other defined rough sets. The rough knowledge base system also provides methods for querying the knowledge base and methods for computing quantitative measures. </p><p>We test the implemented system on a medium sized application example to illustrate the usefulness of the system and the incorporated language. We also provide performance measurements of the system.</p>