Miguel J. Hornos

Software simulation and verification to increase the reliability of Intelligent Environments

This paper explains how the Spin model checker can be used to guide and inform the development of more reliable Intelligent Environments. The idea is to present a methodological guide which provides strategies and suggestions on how to model, simulate and verify these types of systems, as well as to facilitate the use of well-known tools like Spin in the development of Intelligent Environments. These tools, which have been developed by the Software Engineering community, have proven their usefulness for improving the quality of complex software systems, even in the industry field. However, researchers and developers in the area of Intelligent Environments do not usually make use of these tools. Our aim is therefore to encourage their use by colleagues working in this area to increase the reliability of these complex systems, which integrate aspects and elements of networks, sensors/actuators, ubiquitous/pervasive computing, human-computer interaction and artificial intelligence, among other related areas.

Enabling correct design and formal analysis of Ambient Assisted Living systems

Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) systems intend to provide services that enable people with specific needs to live an independent and safe life. Emergency treatment services are critical, time-constrained, and require compliance to numerous non-functional (or quality) requirements. In conventional approaches, often, non-functional requirements are kept outside the modeling scope and as such, their verification is also overlooked. For this reason, the specification and verification of Non-functional requirements (NFR) in this kind of services is a key issue. This paper presents a verification approach based on timed traces semantics and a methodology based on UML-RT models (MEDISTAM-RT) to check the fulfillment of non-functional requirements, such as timeliness and safety (deadlock freeness), and to assure the correct functioning of the AAL systems. We validate this approach by its application to an Emergency Assistance System for monitoring people suffering from cardiac alteration with syncope.

A Linguistic Multi-Criteria Decision Making Model Applied to the Integration of Education Questionnaires

We present a model made up of linguistic multi-criteria decision making processes to integrate the answers to heterogeneous questionnaires, based on a five-point Likert scale, into a unique form rooted in the widespread course experience questionnaire . The main advantage of having the resulting integrated questionnaire is that it can be incorporated into other course experience questionnaire surveys to make benchmarking among organizations. This model has been applied to integrate heterogeneous educational questionnaires at the University of Granada.

SICTQUAL: A fuzzy linguistic multi-criteria model to assess the quality of service in the ICT sector from the user perspective

Abstract The Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) play an important role in the economic development, making it necessary to assess the quality of service perceived by consumers in this sector. The most effective quality assessment from the consumer perspective is still to be researched, yet the most common approach is oriented towards quantitative indicators. This study proposes to use a two-dimensional model that combines the widely accepted segmentation of ICTs with elements from the SERVQUAL quality model. This model, useful in multi-criteria decision-making situations, has been developed using the 2-tuple linguistic representation and fuzzy logic principles. This methodology prevents data loss during processing and provides relevant information through 16 indicators related to the quality of service. Besides, an expert-based mechanism is defined for the use of historical information extracted from completed surveys. As a practical case, this mechanism is applied to the historical information of a telecommunications company for assessing the quality of the service provided to its customers.

A hybrid model for decision-making in the Information and Communications Technology sector

The majority of businesses in the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector face decision-making problems on a daily basis. Most of these problems are based on contexts of uncertainty, where decisions are founded on qualitative information which may be imprecise or perception-based. In these cases, the information which is expressed by experts and users of evaluated services can be treated using processes of computing with words (CW). In this paper, we present a hybrid decision-making model especially designed for the ICT sector whereby the experts have the support of an intelligent system which provides information about the opinions of users related to those problems which are to be analysed. These opinions are obtained by using different mechanisms and techniques when users conduct business with the service provider. In addition, we employ a procedure for obtaining consensus between experts which enriches and strengthens the decision-making process.

Ontology-based modelling of session management policies for groupware applications

Groupware applications support group work and groups may perform geographically distributed with different roles and using different organizational structures. It is important that these applications do not provide only the needed infrastructure to support group work, but also grant some ways to change the group behaviour during a session. Therefore, this paper presents a conceptual model of the session management policies by means of an ontology, i.e. we model the form in which group work is organized. This ontology describes the concepts, the relations among them and the axioms that allow to specify and control the role changes that a user can play in a session and the changes in the rights/obligations of each role. In this model we have separated the mechanisms that consent to establishing a session (i.e. mechanisms to create the shared workspace) from the session management policies. Moreover, we can create templates of policies that can be employed to facilitate their reuse in runtime. In this way, we can affirm that this model smooths the dynamic group work.

Linguistic multi-criteria decision-making model with output variable expressive richness

Proposal to improve the expressive richness of any decision-making model results.It provides decision makers with more precise and intuitive outcomes.The model is validated by applying it to several real case studies in ICT sector.The results obtained are shown and compared with the ones got with other models.The main advantages of applying this model are presented. In general, traditional decision-making models are based on methods that perform calculations on quantitative measures. These methods are usually applied to assess possible solutions to a problem, resulting in a ranking of alternatives. However, when it comes to making decisions about qualitative measuressuch as service quality, the quantitative assessment is a bit difficult to interpret. Therefore, taking into account the maturity of the linguistic assessment models, this paper puts forth a new solution proposal. It is a decision-making model that uses linguistic labels represented with the 2-tuple notationand a variable expressive richness when providing output results. This solution allows expressing results in a manner closer to the human cognitive system. To achieve this goal, a mechanism has been implemented for measuring the distance among the aggregate ratings, providing the decision-maker with a fast and intuitive answer. The proposal is illustrated with an application example based on the TOPSIS model, using linguistic labels throughout the entire process.

A multidimensional data model using the fuzzy model based on the semantic translation

With the rapid development of Web 2.0 sites such as Blogs and Wikis users are encouraged to express opinions about certain products, services or social topics over the web. There is a method for aggregating these opinions, called Opinion Aggregation, which is made up of four steps: Collect, Identify, Classify and Aggregate. In this paper, we present a new conceptual multidimensional data model based on the Fuzzy Model based on the Semantic Translation to solve the Aggregate step of an Opinion Aggregation architecture, which allows exploiting the measure values resulting from integrating heterogeneous information (including unstructured data such as free texts) by means of traditional Business Intelligence tools. We also present an entire Opinion Aggregation architecture that includes the Aggregate step and solves the rest of steps (Collect, Identify and Classify) by means an Extraction, Transformation and Loading process. This architecture has been implemented in an Oracle Relational Database Management System. We have applied it to integrate heterogeneous data extracted from certain high end hotels websites, and we show a case study using the collected data during several years in the websites of high end hotels located in Granada (Spain). With this integrated information, the Data Warehouse user can make several analyses with the benefit of an easy linguistic interpretability and a high precision by means of interactive tools such as the dashboards.

Development of extensible and flexible collaborative applications using a web service-based architecture

This paper presents a study of the main current collaborative applications and shows how their architectural models focus on the interactive aspects of the systems for very specific applications. It also analyses state-of-the art web service-based collaborative applications and shows how they only solve specific problems and do not provide an extensible and flexible architecture. From this study, we conclude that there is currently no standard architecture (and even less a web service-based one) which can be taken as a model for collaborative application development. We therefore propose a web service-based architectural model for the development of this type of application. This model provides flexible collaborative sessions in order to facilitate collaborative work in a consistent way and with group awareness mechanisms. The proposed architecture enables applications, components or tools to be added and can be extended with new web services when required without the need to modify existing services. The resulting collaborative applications are therefore flexible and extensible.

On-the-fly model checking from interval logic specifications

Future Interval Logic (FIL) and its intuitive graphical representation, Graphical Interval Logic (GIL), can be used as the formal description language of model checking tools to verify hardware and software systems. An interval clearly defines the temporal scope over which properties are evaluated. From interval formulas specifying the temporal behavior of a system we obtain their semantically equivalent Büchi automata, but in such a way that our algorithm can be integrated into an on-the-fly model checking tool. As the property automaton can be generated simultaneously with, and guided by, the construction of the system model, it is possible to detect that a property is violated by constructing only a part of both state spaces. This is the first time that this kind of algorithm has been developed for an interval logic. The relations with other automated verification techniques from linear temporal logic are also discussed. Moreover, an appendix with proof of the correctness of our algorithm is included.