System Development Paradigm Research Articles

Scalable, Flexible Implementation of MBSE and DevOps in VSEs: Design Considerations and a Case Study

AbstractModel‐based systems engineering (MBSE) and development operations (DevOps) both provide organizations with increased system development capabilities by defining development process controls and defining sequential development, testing, and other processes. As the use and complexity of MBSE and DevOps processes for software systems development continues to rise, very small entities (<25 employees) may struggle to implement full scale implementations of these engineering project management processes. This paper uses principles from MBSE and DevOps models to explore a reduced, simplified scope of both system development paradigms that VSEs can implement to obtain benefits of both processes.

Autonomous Vehicles Digital Twin: A Practical Paradigm for Autonomous Driving System Development

In this article, we share our real-world experiences of digital twin, a practical autonomous driving system development paradigm, which generates an integral, comprehensive, precise, and reliable representation of the physical environment to minimize the need for physical testing.

Food Systems Development: The Necessary Paradigm Shift for a Healthy and Sustainable Agrarian Transition, a Case Study from Bougainville, Papua New Guinea.

Classical agricultural development paradigms prioritise basic requirements such as agronomic, caloric and economic needs for the target environment and for beneficiaries. As challenges associated with climate change, globalisation, and population growth compound and amplify one another, project scope must be broadened to take a holistic food systems approach that includes sociocultural and historical contexts, as well as climate impacts as underpinning project design. In this paper, we illustrate the importance of adopting a food systems development paradigm rather than a classical agricultural development paradigm through a case study in Bougainville, Papua New Guinea. The case uses Rich Picturing, targeted and focus-group interviews, and garden visits in remote Bougainville; it provides a poignant illustration of the importance of this more holistic perspective given the historical inefficacy of food systems development, as well as Papua New Guinea’s exposure to a plethora of compounding environmental, social, economic, and political stresses and shocks that demonstrate the important linkages between ecosystem services and health. The study aims to demonstrate how including localised gender dynamics, climate vulnerability, rapidly morphing social norms, and climate analogue environments is critical in building food systems resilience and is key to designing policies, programs, and development projects that more effectively address environmental, sociocultural, and health considerations. Building on the inadequacies in agricultural development efforts previously documented for Papua New Guinea, we propose an improved framing for food systems development and identify areas for future research.

Mind Your Outcomes: The ΔQSD Paradigm for Quality-Centric Systems Development and Its Application to a Blockchain Case Study

This paper directly addresses a long-standing issue that affects the development of many complex distributed software systems: how to establish quickly, cheaply, and reliably whether they can deliver their intended performance before expending significant time, effort, and money on detailed design and implementation. We describe ΔQSD, a novel metrics-based and quality-centric paradigm that uses formalised outcome diagrams to explore the performance consequences of design decisions, as a performance blueprint of the system. The distinctive feature of outcome diagrams is that they capture the essential observational properties of the system, independent of the details of system structure and behaviour. The ΔQSD paradigm derives bounds on performance expressed as probability distributions encompassing all possible executions of the system. The ΔQSD paradigm is both effective and generic: it allows values from various sources to be combined in a rigorous way so that approximate results can be obtained quickly and subsequently refined. ΔQSD has been successfully used by a small team in Predictable Network Solutions for consultancy on large-scale applications in a number of industries, including telecommunications, avionics, and space and defence, resulting in cumulative savings worth billions of US dollars. The paper outlines the ΔQSD paradigm, describes its formal underpinnings, and illustrates its use via a topical real-world example taken from the blockchain/cryptocurrency domain. ΔQSD has supported the development of an industry-leading proof-of-stake blockchain implementation that reliably and consistently delivers blocks of up to 80 kB every 20 s on average across a globally distributed network of collaborating block-producing nodes operating on the public internet.

ПРИНЦИПЫ ФОРМИРОВАНИЯ И ОСНОВНЫЕ МОДЕЛИ ИСЛАМСКОГО БАНКИНГА

The article is devoted to the development of theoretical and methodological grounds of the Islamic banking study as well as scientific and practical recommendations towards its principles implementation in the traditional banking systems. In the thesis the methodological grounds of the Islamic banking study are considered in the context of the global financial system development paradigm; the principles of Islamic banking formation are defined and its basic models are characterized. The role and place of the Islamic banking in the global financial system are studied; the current state of Islamic banking integration in the traditional banking systems is analyzes

Agrobiodiversity-Oriented Food Systems between Public Policies and Private Action: A Socio-Ecological Model for Sustainable Territorial Development

The international and European literature and institutional contexts are fostering agrobiodiversity as the foundation of a new paradigm for localized agri-food system development and sustainability. Accordingly, new systemic and holistic theoretical approaches and conceptual models are needed. This paper aims to identify and apply a new conceptual framework contributing to the understanding of how the restoring and valorization of underutilized or neglected landraces can act as a trigger for sustainable territorial development. A new holistic model was designed for the characterization and analysis of agrobiodiversity-oriented food systems. We consider the model innovative in enhancing the conceptualization of the adoption of a socio-ecological systems approach. We applied the model to a representative case study involving the localized agri-food system of the Valtiberina Red Onion, a threatened plant landrace cultivated in Tuscany, Italy. A participatory action–research approach was followed, involving both public and private stakeholders. As the main outcome of the paper, we demonstrated the capability of our new SES model by identifying and describing the assets, drivers, human action processes and generated beneficial effects concerning the development and reproduction of landrace-based quality valorization virtuous circles. Our research findings highlighted the model as an innovative tool for the analysis of agrobiodiversity-oriented food systems sustainability. Significantly, the model was designed to identify the combined role of public policy and private action in supporting the implementation of coherent management mechanisms and effective governance settings.

Intelligent Control System Architecture for Phosphorus Production from Apatite-Nepheline Ore Waste

This paper proposes multilevel architecture for an intelligent control system for the complex chemical energy technological process of yellow phosphorus production from apatite-nepheline ore processing waste. The research revealed that, when controlling this process, one has to deal with large amounts of multiformat and polymodal information, and control goals differ at different levels not only in effectiveness criteria, but also in the structuredness of the level problems. On this basis, it is proposed that intelligent methods be used for the implementation of information processes and control goals at individual levels and the whole system. The artificial intelligence methods underlying the informational model of a control system offer solutions to problems of analyzing control processes at different hierarchy levels, namely the initial level of sensing devices, the levels of programmable logic controllers, dispatching of control and production processes, enterprise management and strategic planning. Besides, the intelligent control system architecture includes analytical and simulation models of processes occurring in the multistage procedure of ore waste processing by a plant consisting of a granulating machine, a conveyor-type multichambercalcining machine, and an ore thermal furnace. The architecture of information support for the control system comprises a knowledge-based inference block intended for implementing the self-refinement of neural network and simulation models. Fuzzy logic methods are proposed for constructing this block. The paper considers the deployment of control algorithms for a phosphorus production system using the Matlab software environment on the basis of a modern complex system development paradigm known as the model-oriented design concept.

Modern Methods of Urban Energy System Planning

Knowledge of the nature of the energy load alterations not only in time, but also in space will allow achieving the optimal structure of energy sources in the city and thereby reducing unproductive energy costs of energy resources and increasing energy efficiency. Changing the paradigm of power supply systems development towards the development of small distributed power production, intellectualization and demand management requires a more accurate understanding of the planned local loads in the city. At present it is still difficult to obtain such data; it requires analysis of many sources and, consequently, takes a lot of time. The article presents a possible algorithm of formation of the space-time profile of energy resources consumption. At the heart of the load disaggregation there is a spatial distribution of consumers in the city, estimated by the density of the distribution area of buildings of energy consumer groups. The dimension of the model is not limited in both temporal and spatial resolution: the model is flexible and can be adapted to different cases and local conditions. The proposed algorithm has been applied to the modeling of the profile of electricity consumption in St. Petersburg. The profile is based on an annual graph of electricity consumption by hour (8760 values). The spatial resolution of the model ranges from hundreds of meters to several kilometers and depends only on the availability of initial data. In the example, the division of the city territory into administrative districts (18 districts of St. Petersburg) is used as a spatial unit. The obtained results showed their logicality and compliance with empirical observations.

Understanding the Current Energy Paradigm and Energy System Models for More Sustainable Energy System Development

This study contributes to a better understanding of where to place different energy modelling tools and support better decision-making related to the sustainable development of energy systems. It is argued that through the connection of the energy field and the field of sustainable development, the current energy paradigm—encompassing economic, environmental and social aspects—has emerged. This paper provides an analysis of different categories of existing energy system models and their ability to provide answers to questions arising from the current energy paradigm formulated within this study. The current energy paradigm and the relevant questions were defined by conducting conceptual framework analysis. The overarching question of the current paradigm asks how different energy pathways impact on the (sustainable) development of the energy system and overall (sustainable) development globally and nationally. A review of energy system models was conducted to analyse what questions of the current energy paradigm are addressed by which models. The results show that most models address aspects of the current energy paradigm but often in a simplified way. To answer some of the questions of the current energy paradigm in more depth and to get novel insights on sustainable energy system development, it might be necessary use complementary methods in addition to traditional energy modelling methodological approaches.

Design for Customization: A New Paradigm for Product-Service System Development

In the traditional software development cycle, requirements gathering is considered the most critical phase. Getting the requirements right first time has become a dogma in software engineering because the correction of erroneous or incomplete requirements in later software development phases becomes overly expensive. For product-service systems (PSS), this dogma and standard requirements engineering (RE) approaches are not appropriate because classical RE is considered concluded, once a product service is delivered. For PSS it is impossible to foresee all future context conditions and customization needs customers may come up with after product deployment. In addition, the services supporting a complex hardware-software product depend on the individual product configuration a customer requires. For example, when a standard laser machine is equipped with one or more special sensors, new services may be needed that depend on sensor data from these new sources combined with other data generated by the standard machine configuration. Thus, we claim that RE needs to be extended to the deployment phase of a product and an agile approach is required to cope with emerging hardware and software requirements as a PSS is marketed. In this paper, a novel view-based model-driven engineering approach is proposed that enables collaborative product-service design and customization and copes with evolving, incomplete and unforeseen requirements. A prototype has been implemented as a Proof-of-Concept (PoC) and is currently validated on four industrial pilot cases as part of the H2020 project ICP4Life.

Precision Medicine and Site-Specific Drug Delivery

Precision medicine is an approach to prevent and treat diseases that takes into account people’s individual variations in genes, environment, and lifestyle. The current Precision Medicine Initiative of the US Government is to “generate the scientific evidence needed to move the concept of precision medicine into clinical practice”. In the first approximation, precision medicine may provide a more accurate diagnosis of the disease such as cancer, but may not have the means to offer an improved therapy. The aim of drug targeting is to generate pharmacologically effective drug concentration at the site of disease while keeping a very low/minimal drug concentration in the rest of the body, away from the site of disease. Targeted drugs are thus “precision drugs” needed to bring precision medicine into the clinical practice. Focusing on the area of cancer therapy, this review examines the essential requirements that must be met for cell/tumour-targeted drug-delivery systems to work. It examines the progress to date and draws conclusions for an optimal paradigm for future drug-delivery systems development.

Self-Explaining Agents

This work advocate self-explanation as one foundation of self-* properties. Arguing that for system component to become more self-explanatory the underlining foundation is an awareness of themselves and their environment. In the research area of adaptive software, self-* properties have shifted into focus caused by the tendency to push ever more design decisions to the applications runtime. Thus fostering new paradigms for system development like intelligent and learning agents. This work surveys the state-of-the-art methods of self-explanation in software systems and distills a definition of self-explanation. Additionally, we introduce a measure to compare explanations and propose an approach for the first steps towards extending descriptions to become more explanatory. The conclusion shows that explanation is a special kind of description. The kind of description that provides additional information about a subject of interest and is understandable for the audience of the explanation. Further the explanation is dependent on the context it is used in, which brings about that one explanation can transport different information in different contexts. The proposed measure reflects those requirements.

A Human-Centred Analysis of Systems Development Goals, Rationality and Focus Using Principal Components Analysis and Hierarchical Clustering

The human-centred approach is a paradigm of systems development that is well suited to improving international stability. This paper consequently investigates whether or not contemporary systems development is, or has the potential to become, truly human-centred. Data originally collected as part of a multi-method critical-interpretive study of privacy in information systems development is used for the analysis. The analysis presented considers the issue of human-centredness from three complementary perspectives: (1) the goals of systems development, (2) the rationality of systems development, and (3) the focus of systems development. Principal components analysis and hierarchical clustering are used to examine the original data in terms of systems development goals, rationality and focus in order to identify the underlying latent variables, factors or clusters therein. The analysis shows clear dyadic polarisations between human-centred goals and rationalities, and more functionalistic goals and rationalities. It also shows a triadic polarisation in systems development focus regarding individual personal issues, organisational issues, and technical issues, and also how the human-centred ideal is not currently being realised in systems development practice. Finally, the paper considers the implications of the findings for human-centred systems development and its pivotal role in fostering international stability.

Abstract Constraints: A General Framework for Solver‐Independent Reasoning on Product‐Line Models

Product Line Engineering (PLE) is a paradigm for reuse-based complex systems development that is well installed in the industry. Among the proven benefits are reduced time to market, better asset reuse, and improved software quality [1]. To be successful, PLE must efficiently manage the variability -- the capacity of product line's artifacts to vary -- present in the products that form a Product Line (PL). Several modeling approaches have been proposed to represent the correct combinations of artifacts of a PL, their properties and relationships in a single Product Line Model (PLM) [2]. In this context, being able to reason about the PLM is an important success factor in the PLE strategy. Reasoning on PLMs is achieved by querying the models in order to verify, analyze or configure them [3]. For instance, PLMs can be verified to guarantee that they do not have undesirable properties affecting the correctness of the products they help develop. Several approaches are available in the literature to support automatic reasoning on PLMs [5]. Several approaches consist in transforming the PLMs into a constraint program that can be executed by a solver. For example, Satisfiability (SAT) solvers are used to analyze PLMs specified as Boolean constraints [6]. Others use SAT or constraint over finite domains solvers to find the number of solutions that can be configured on a PLM. Interestingly, it seems that for this task Binary Decision Diagram (BDD) solvers are more efficient [6]. Thus, authors seem to undermine the efficiency of certain reasoning operations to prioritize others. One reason might be that the transformation is guided by the solver to be used and not by nature of the PLMs or the efficiency/limitations of using one solver or another one.

What agents can do in workflow management systems

Workflow management systems are an emerging category of information systems, currently under dynamic evolution. On the other hand software agents are a distinct research area as well as an emerging paradigm for information systems design and development. This paper tries to examine the integration of these two fields; reveal the stimulation and the advantages of such a mixing. Popular standards of the workflow management field are used to derive a classification scheme, which is exploited to map existing approaches. As a significant number of existing approaches is reviewed, a plethora of integration patterns are identified and grouped according to the proposed classification scheme. The overall goal of the paper is to clear the vague picture of the consolidation of workflow management systems and software agents and to provide an unifying framework for this intersected area.

Tipping Points: Managing Complex Systems for Economic Development Success

In the paper, I argue that different management approaches in International Financial Institutions (IFIs) are receptive to different economic and theoretical paradigms, which in turn lead decision makers to different design of investment, and such differences in design and investment lead to significant differences in development success. Successful development efforts lead an economy to the point where it achieves a critical mass of structural transformation and tips to the side of a sustained growth process. The paper characterizes International Financial Institutions (IFIs, also known as MFIs or Multilateral development Finance Institutions) as planning oriented and politically dominated by their governance set-up. Developing economies are complex systems. The paper outlines the complex systems development paradigm. Designing investment interventions for complex systems requires decentralized, flexible and networked institutions equipped to explore a variety of development outcomes. Experimentation, trial and error, quick replication of successful prototype investment projects, exploration of alternatives when rapid feedback shows unsatisfactory results in the field, are the hallmarks of managing a complex system. The traditional approach by IFIs to managing development is likely to lead to inferior development outcomes, as the paper demonstrates with investment examples. One path to better development investment design is the institutional establishment of management tools in the form of evolutionary, complex systems models of economies that can inform realistic and rigorous decision making, and flanked by human resource incentives that stimulate competition for ideas and success.

Tipping Points: Managing Complex Systems for Economic Development Success

In the paper, I argue that different management approaches in International Financial Institutions (IFIs) are receptive to different economic and theoretical paradigms, which in turn lead decision makers to different design of investment, and such differences in design and investment lead to significant differences in development success. Successful development efforts lead an economy to the point where it achieves a critical mass of structural transformation and tips to the side of a sustained growth process. The paper characterizes International Financial Institutions (IFIs, also known as MFIs or Multilateral development Finance Institutions) as planning oriented and politically dominated by their governance set-up. Developing economies are complex systems. The paper outlines the complex systems development paradigm. Designing investment interventions for complex systems requires decentralized, flexible and networked institutions equipped to explore a variety of development outcomes. Experimentation, trial and error, quick replication of successful prototype investment projects, exploration of alternatives when rapid feedback shows unsatisfactory results in the field, are the hallmarks of managing a complex system. The traditional approach by IFIs to managing development is likely to lead to inferior development outcomes, as the paper demonstrates with investment examples. One path to better development investment design is the institutional establishment of management tools in the form of evolutionary, complex systems models of economies that can inform realistic and rigorous decision making, and flanked by human resource incentives that stimulate competition for ideas and success.

1.2.2 Assumptions / Promises ‐ Shifting the Paradigm in Systems‐Engineering

AbstractIn the field of embedded systems, the need for increased competitiveness necessitates the shortening of the development lifecycle. Engineering activities, that in the past were conducted serially, must often proceed in parallel in order to reduce time‐to‐market. This causes the concurrently working design‐teams, to rely on preliminary information that has not yet been finalized. As a result, substantial rework is required throughout the development process, consuming as much as 50% of the total engineering effort.This paper describes early results from the European Commission supported SPEEDS (Speculative and Exploratory Design in Systems Engineering) project. The objective of SPEEDS is to construct theory and tools for concurrent system development which will reduce the overall systems development cost and time to market.We propose a shift in systems development paradigm, relying on the formal use of contracts composed of Assumptions and Promises (A/P), analogous to Bertrand Meyer's “design‐by‐contract” model proposed in the early 90's. Such assumptions and promises may be related to both technical and management domains, where contracts are defined at all levels of design abstraction. Horizontal A/Ps analysis (Consistency) and vertical A/P analysis (Composability) may be conducted, leading to early discovery and correction of technical or management incompatibilities emanating from invalid assumptions.SPEEDS utilize several enhanced COTS modeling tools, giving users the ability to apply design‐by‐contract to Model Driven Systems‐Engineering in all phases of the development lifecycle.

Functional distinctness of closely related transcription factors: A comparison of the Atonal and Amos proneural factors

Using the well-characterised paradigm of Drosophila sensory nervous system development, we examine the functional distinctness of the Amos and Atonal (Ato) proneural transcription factors, which have different mutant phenotypes but share very high similarity in their signature bHLH domains. Using misexpression and mutant rescue assays, we show that Ato and Amos proteins have abundantly distinct intrinsic proneural capabilities in much of the ectoderm. The eye, however, is an exception: here both proteins share the capability to direct the R8 photoreceptor fate choice. Therefore, functional distinctness between these closely related transcription factors vary with developmental context, indicating different molecular mechanisms of specificity in different contexts. Consistent with this, the structural basis for their distinctness also varies depending upon the function in question. In previous studies of neural bHLH factors, specificity invariably mapped to the bHLH domain sequence. Similarly, and despite their high similarity, much of the Amos’ specificity relative to Ato maps to Amos-specific residues in its bHLH domain. For Ato-specific functions, however, the Amos bHLH domain can substitute for that of Ato. Consequently, Ato’s specificity relative to Amos requires the non-bHLH portion of the Ato protein. Ato provides a powerful precedence for a role of non-bHLH sequences in modulating bHLH functional specificity. This has implications for structural and functional comparisons of other closely related transcription factors, and for understanding the molecular basis of specificity.

Echinostoma malayanumInfection, the Philippines

<i>Echinostoma malayanum</i>Infection, the Philippines