As quantitative validation measures have become available, so has the controversy regarding the construction of such measures. The complexity of the physical processes involved is compounded by uncertainties introduced due to model inputs, experimental errors, and modeling assumptions just to name a few. Also, how these uncertainties are treated is of major importance. In this dissertation, the issues associated with several state of the art quantitative validation metrics are discussed in detail. Basic Verification and Validation (V&V) framework is introduced outlining areas where some agreement has been reached in the engineering community. In addition, carefully constructed examples are used to shed light on differences among the state of the art validation metrics. The results show that the univariate validation metric fails to account for correlation structure due to common systematic error sources in the comparison error results. Also, the confidence interval metric is an inadequate measure of the noise level of the validation exercise. Therefore, the multivariate validation metric should be utilized whenever possible. In addition, end-to-end examples of the V&V effort are provided using the multivariate and univariate validation metrics. Methodology is introduced using Monte Carlo analysis to construct the covariance matrix used in the multivariate validation metric when non-linear sensitivities exist. Also, the examples show how multiple iterations of the validation exercise can lead to a successful validation effort. Finally, modular uncertainty techniques are introduced for the uncertainty analysis of large systems where many data reduction equations or models are used to examine multiple outputs of interest. In addition, the modular uncertainty methodology was shown to be an equivalent method to the traditional propagation of errors approach with a drastic reduction in computational effort. The modular uncertainty technique also has the advantage in that insight is given into the relationship between the uncertainties of the quantities of interest being examined. An extension of the modular uncertainty methodology to cover full scale V&V exercises is also introduced.

The project is to design and implement a Web application for realizing an innovative, hands-on interactive learning experience for the Google Maps API. This learning environment was developed based on a real-world Geographic Information System (GIS), the Gulf of Mexico Coastal Geospatial Information Support System. Significant efforts were invested not only in development of this GIS system, but also in the design and implement that turns the production system into a learning environment. The Web development aspect attracts computer science students, while the opportunity to learn GIS concepts in an interactive way to attract students from the geography department and the opportunity to learn the Google Maps API proves interesting to regular internet users. The Web learning system was given to a focus group whose feedback was collected through a survey. The survey results reveal a favorable response to the interactive, hands-on learning model and the Web implementation.

Dans cette thèse, nous nous sommes intéressés aux design, vérification et implémentation des systèmes à base de composants. Nous proposons d'abord une méthodologie de design et de vérification compositionelle et incrémentale à base de contrats pour les systèmes de composants. Nous proposons ensuite une implémentation distribuée qui permet de préserver certaines properiétés globales de ces systèmes. La méthodologie de design proposée utilise les contrats comme un moyen de contraindre, raffiner et d'implémenter les systèmes. Elle est basée sur un formalisme de contracts générique, que nous instancions pour un formalisme de composants permettant la description des propriétés de progrés. Nous étendons cette méthodologie pour raisonner sur des systèmes de taille arbitraire et nous prouvons son utilité pour vérifier des propriétés de sûreté et de progrés d'un réseau de noeuds distribués. Dans le contexte des systèmes distribués, les systèmes doivent être implémenter de manière distribuée. Nous proposons dans cette thèse un protocole qui permet l'exécution distribuée des systèmes tout en préservant certaines propriétés globales à savoir des synchronisations et des priorités et où les composants interagissent par échange de messages. Nous proposons également une implémentation du protocole pour une plateforme particulière. / The goal of the thesis is to provide theory, methods and tools for the design and implementation of component-based systems. To master the complexity of systems of components, we first propose a contract-based design and verification approach which is both compositional and incremental. Then we provide a distributed implementation of these systems allowing to preserve some global properties. The proposed verification approach uses contracts as a means to constrain, refine and implement systems. It is based on a generic contract framework that we instantiate for a component framework allowing to express progress properties. We also extend the approach to reason about systems of arbitrary size and we show its usefulness for proving safety and progress properties in networked systems. In the context of distributed settings, these systems must later be executed in a distributed fashion. We also propose in this thesis a protocol that allows executing systems in a distributed way while preserving some global requirements namely priorities and synchronizations and where components interact by message exchange. Then, we provide an implementation of this protocol in a particular platform.