Semi-formal Nature Research Articles

Food Security in Epworth, Zimbabwe: Leveraging Rural-urban Linkages for Resilient Food Systems in Peri-urban Areas

In Zimbabwe, persistent political and economic problems have instigated and exacerbated food insecurity over the past two decades. Low food production, combined with high levels of inflation, a stagnating economy and increasing food prices, have worsened the plight of consumers in the country. High levels of poverty in the rural areas continue to influence rural-urban migrations, but most migrants to the city generally face deprivation, especially in peri-urban areas such as Epworth, where most migrants prefer to settle owing to its semi-formal nature. How then, do the poor in these peri-urban areas feed themselves amidst high urban poverty levels? Using data collected from different surveys between 2008 and 2016, the article explores four major strategies adopted by households to cope with food insecurity: reliance on urban farming; dependence on rural remittances; utilisation by urban residents of employment opportunities in the surrounding farms; and participation in, as well as dependence on, informality. A more nuanced appreciation of these survival strategies will engender an informed theoretical understanding on how to leverage these linkages to create resilient food systems in peri-urban areas.

ETHIOPIA: TOMO – INDIGENOUS CONFLICT RESOLUTION MECHANISM OF THE BENC COMMUNITY

Tomo indigenous conflict resolution approach is practiced by the Benč ethnic group and their neighboring communities within the southwestern fringe of Ethiopia. As an indigenous apparatus, the Tomo approach exhibits spirituality through blessing and cursing which are directed against the accused based on complying or contravening the very indigenous dispute management rules and regulations. The objective of this study was exploring the custom through which the studied community deals with conflict by using the indigenous Tomo approach. In pursuit of this objective, the researcher utilized a qualitative approach, particularly phenomenology. In terms of data collection tools, the researcher used key-informant interview with selected Benč ritual leaders, non-participant observation on Tomo adjudication sessions and critical document analysis. Built up on such data sources, the findings of the study discovered five inferences. First, regardless of the fact that Tomo is an indigenous approach owed by Benč communities, none of the Benč neighboring communities make use ofit. Secondly, the majority of cases seen by Tomo institution are issues that deify credible eyewitness and are cumbersome for verification and/or falsification within the mainstream court system. Thirdly, unlike the habitual Tomo practice within the Benč community, contemporary Tomo exhibits two conflicting formality and informality characteristics. Due to its semi-formal nature, contemporary Tomo ritual leaders notify charges against the presumed wrongdoer by sending an invitation letter for the accused to attend the charges against him/her, comparable with formal courts. Contrary to this formality, contemporary Tomo is also characterized by informality due to the fact that verdicts given against the perpetrator are passed through ritual cursing just like the habitual Tomo. Furthermore, identical with the habitual Tomo practice, cursing within contemporary Tomo goes the presumed wrongdoer including his/her family up to some future generations along with those who feast and bury the presumed wrongdoer. Overall, contemporary Tomo has terrifying delinquency deterring outcome along with the accustomed indigenous conflict resolution mechanism features. Keywords: conflict, conflict resolution, indigenous conflict resolution, Tomo.

Ontology-Based Modelling of IoT Design Patterns

Due to the large and complex nature of the Internet of Things (IoT), various analysis and design methodologies are proposed. Design pattern is one of them to provide the solution for a design problem, which is recurring in nature. In this approach, we have presented design patterns for the IoT use cases such as service integration and IoT security. But the semi-formal nature of software patterns may lead to bugs in the proposed pattern. Hence, an ontology-based approach is considered for modelling of the IoT design patterns. Further, we have presented an ontology-based framework for the specification and refinement of IoT design patterns. In this approach, an analysis of meta-models and ontologies has also been performed for reducing the gap between high-level design abstraction of Unified Modeling Language (UML)-based IoT patterns and formal ontology.

International assemblage of the security of tenure and the interaction of city politics with the international normative discourse

The article approaches the development of security of tenure as a core component of the international human right to adequate housing through the assemblage theory. The concept of security of tenure has been assembled through institutional processes led by UN-Habitat, UN Special Rapporteur for the Right to Adequate Housing, the World Bank and others. These international institutions have developed a plurality of approaches to the tenure security. In addition, through international regime interaction these different approaches eventually became linked and started influencing each other. In such a way, the security of tenure developed from underdeveloped and separated human rights norm, developmental goal, and attribute of freehold title to a house or land, to a complex and pluralistic concept. Furthermore, the recognition of the complexity and the plurality of forms of tenure security have been related to the semiformal nature of international processes led by UN-Habitat and others, which connected the international level with the local conditions around the world. Through these processes, a pallet of actors with local experiences made international institutions recognize the uniqueness and complexity of the urban/local space as crucial for approaching the tenure security. Acknowledging the specificity and the pluralism of local – urban – socio-political spaces by international institutions shows how interlinked international and urban levels of policy-making have become.

Mapping Mobile Statechart Diagrams to the π-Calculus using Graph Transformation

Mobile UML (M-UML) has been proposed as an extension of UML to model mobile agent-based software systems. As UML, M-UML suffers from lack of formal semantics due to its semi-formal nature which penalize the verification of correct behavior of the modeled systems. This paper provides a graphical yet formal approach for the modeling, simulation and verification of mobile statechart diagrams using graph transformations in the AToM3 tool. The authors have firstly proposed meta-models for mobile statechart diagram and flowgraph. Then, a twofold graph grammar is developed for the automatic mapping of mo-bile statechart diagrams into flowgraphs and in the same time generates the cor-responding p-calculus specification. This graph grammar enables either execu-tion through simulation by flowgraphs or verification through model checking, using existing tools (e.g. the Mobility Workbench, MWB). An illustrative example of the authors' approach is provided.

Eliciação e comunicação de requisitos em domínios disjuntos: estudo de caso para automação na área médica

O final do século passado foi marcado por um crescente intresse nas fases preliminares do processo de design, especificamente na fase de requisitos e definição do problema. Na área de automação, o gerenciamento de requisitos é determinante para o sucesso dos projetos, embora grande parte do esforço no desenvolvimento de técnicas e métodos ter sido direcionado para as fases posteriores: o design e a implementação. Por não serem formais, os processos de eliciação e análise de requisitos são subestimados por profissionais da área de automação, onde o formalismo é fundamental para a validação dos processos de controle, automação e supervisão. Em especial, quando os ambientes de desenvolvimeno e de aplicação são disjuntos, isto é, usuários e stakeholders pertencem a um domínio com pouca ou nenhuma interseção com a área da engenharia, informática e automação, os processos de eliciação e análise se tornam bastante complicados. Neste trabalho é apresentada uma proposta de sistematização do gerenciamento de requisitos para domínios disjuntos, adaptando técnicas já conhecidas ao processo de prototipagem virtual, consolidado após o início deste século. Um estudo de caso é apresentado onde o desenvolvimento se dá na área de Engenharia de Automação para aplicações em processos pertinentes à cirurgia de catarata. Para aproximar os domínios busca-se uma abordagem mais simplificada das técnicas de prototipagem virtual tornando o processo mais prático, sem no entanto abdicar do formalismo dos modelos. Os dados levantados foram obtidos com a colaboração do Hospital Santa Luzia, Salvador, Bahia, e do Instituto da Visão, UNIFESP, em São Paulo.

Impact of research on practice in the field of inspections, reviews and walkthroughs

Software inspections, reviews, and walkthroughs have become a standard process component in many software development domains. Maturity level 3 of the CMM-I requires establishment of peer reviews [12] and substantial sustained improvements in quality and productivity have been reported as a result of using reviews ([16], [21], [22], [27]). The NSF Impact project identifies the degree to which these industrial success cases have been instigated and improved by research in software engineering. This research identifies that there is widespread adoption of inspections, reviews or walkthroughs but that companies do not generally exploit their full potential. However there exist sustained industrial success cases with respect to the wide-spread and measurably successful application of them. It also identifies research in software engineering that can be credibly documented as having influenced the industrial success cases. Credible documentation may exist in the form of publications or documented reports by witnesses. Due to the semi-formal nature of inspections, reviews, and walkthroughs, a specific focus is given to empirical research results as motivators for adoption. Through the examination of one detailed case study, it is shown that software engineering research has had a significant impact on practice and that the impact can be traced in this case from research to that practice. The case study chosen provides evidence of both success and failure regarding sustained application in practice. Thus the analysis of historic impact chains of research reveals a clear impact of software engineering research on sustained industrial success for inspections, reviews and walkthroughs. More importantly, in impact chains where the empirical results have not been established, we conclude that success has not been achieved or has not been sustained. The paper closes with (1) lessons learned for creating the sustained use and impact of semi-formal software engineering processes, (2) a request for researchers and practitioners to further consider how their work can improve the effectiveness of research and practice, and (3) a request to contribute additional success cases and impact factors to the authors database for future enhancements of this paper.

Improving UML with Petri nets

UML is the OMG standard notation for object-oriented modeling. It is easy, graphical and appealing, but in several cases still too imprecise. UML is strong as modeling means, supplies several different diagrammatic notations for representing the different aspects of a system under development, but lacks simulation and verifiability capabilities. This drawback comes from its semi-formal nature: UML is extremely precise and wide if we consider syntactical aspects, but its semantics is as precise as those of informal notations. Scientists and users, together with standardization efforts (UML 2.0), are trying to overcome this problem, but as side effect, they are also limiting the intrinsic flexibility of UML. Moreover, several formalization efforts concentrated on its static elements (for example, inheritance), leaving dynamic semantics almost untouched.In this paper we propose the paring of UML dynamic models with high-level timed Petri nets (HLTPN) to obtain a flexible and customizable means to reason on the dynamic aspects of object-oriented models, to simulate particular parts of these models, and if necessary analyze them. The proposal exploits rules to ascribe main UML elements with formal semantics in terms of functionally equivalent HLTPNs and to show results (from execution and analysis) as decorations to UML symbols. Besides sketching the approach, the paper presents also some experiences we have gained so far with it and a research agenda to identify other possible uses of the dual definition of the notation.