Simon Caton - Profile on Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Simon Caton

Towards Financial Planning as a Service

2011 IEEE International Conference on Services Computing, 2011

ABSTRACT The financial crisis has recalled the importance of proper financial planning. Companies... more ABSTRACT The financial crisis has recalled the importance of proper financial planning. Companies which are organized as a multitude of legal entities are in particular affected by planning irregularities. To optimize the financial planning process and to cope with the challenges, we propose our service model "Financial Planning as a Service" (FiPlaaS). This approach allows companies to redesign their planning processes according to SOA principles and to achieve substantial improvements in performance.

Seventh IEEE International Symposium on Cluster Computing and the Grid (CCGrid '07), 2007

Interactive image processing is an important requirement in many industrial applications, such as... more Interactive image processing is an important requirement in many industrial applications, such as the inspection of industrial parts within a manufacturing environment, or the processing of images from surveillance cameras. Being able to achieve this quickly and accurately is often essential for the success of such industrial applications. A service-based approach that autonomously launches Image Analysis Services (accessible through a Central Service Manager) onto spare network resources through a Condor system is presented. This allows high throughput analysis of these images in a dynamic resource pool. The Central Service Manager reacts to new tasks submitted to the Image Analysis Services and is able to add new service instances to manage these tasks dynamically. Each service instance here corresponds to a computational resource that is able to execute image processing algorithms. New service instances may be requested by the Central Service Manager from the Condor system, based on the number of tasks that need to be processed. This enables entire image repositories to be acted upon interactively and in parallel, as opposed to the analysis of single images individually. The approach is demonstrated through a campus-wide test bed utilising a Condor system with 90 machines. Seventh IEEE International Symposium on Cluster Computing and the Grid(CCGrid'07) 0-7695-2833-3/07 20.00©2007SeventhIEEEInternationalSymposiumonClusterComputingandtheGrid(CCGrid′07)0−7695−2833−3/0720.00 © 2007 Seventh IEEE International Symposium on Cluster Computing and the Grid(CCGrid'07) 0-7695-2833-3/07 20.00c◯2007SeventhIEEEInternationalSymposiumonClusterComputingandtheGrid(CCGrid′07)0−7695−2833−3/0720.00 © 2007 Seventh IEEE International Symposium on Cluster Computing and the Grid(CCGrid'07) 0-7695-2833-3/07 20.00©2007SeventhIEEEInternationalSymposiumonClusterComputingandtheGrid(CCGrid′07)0−7695−2833−3/0720.00 © 2007 Seventh IEEE International Symposium on Cluster Computing and the Grid(CCGrid'07) 0-7695-2833-3/07 20.00c◯2007SeventhIEEEInternationalSymposiumonClusterComputingandtheGrid(CCGrid′07)0−7695−2833−3/0720.00 © 2007 Seventh IEEE International Symposium on Cluster Computing and the Grid(CCGrid'07) 0-7695-2833-3/07 20.00©2007SeventhIEEEInternationalSymposiumonClusterComputingandtheGrid(CCGrid′07)0−7695−2833−3/0720.00 © 2007 Seventh IEEE International Symposium on Cluster Computing and the Grid(CCGrid'07) 0-7695-2833-3/07 20.00c◯2007SeventhIEEEInternationalSymposiumonClusterComputingandtheGrid(CCGrid′07)0−7695−2833−3/0720.00

2010 IEEE 3rd International Conference on Cloud Computing, 2010

With the increasingly ubiquitous nature of Social networks and Cloud computing, users are startin... more With the increasingly ubiquitous nature of Social networks and Cloud computing, users are starting to explore new ways to interact with, and exploit these developing paradigms. Social networks are used to reflect real world relationships that allow users to share information and form connections between one another, essentially creating dynamic Virtual Organizations. We propose leveraging the pre-established trust formed through friend relationships within a Social network to form a dynamic "Social Cloud", enabling friends to share resources within the context of a Social network. We believe that combining trust relationships with suitable incentive mechanisms (through financial payments or bartering) could provide much more sustainable resource sharing mechanisms. This paper outlines our vision of, and experiences with, creating a Social Storage Cloud, looking specifically at possible market mechanisms that could be used to create a dynamic Cloud infrastructure in a Social network environment.

Proceedings of the fourth international joint conference on Autonomous agents and multiagent systems - AAMAS '05, 2005

Description of a system to detect facial expressions using an agent-based approach is presented. ... more Description of a system to detect facial expressions using an agent-based approach is presented. The system utilizes interaction between Matlab-based image filters and a JADEbased agent implementation. The system is demonstrated using a feature recognition example. The system however has a much wider applicability, especially as Matlab is used extensively in other scientific/numerical computing applications.

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000

With the surge of obesity in the United States, improving urban food environments has gained in i... more With the surge of obesity in the United States, improving urban food environments has gained in importance. Research on food deserts focuses mainly on assessing the food environment but lacks methods of generating good solutions for the placement of food stores. This work uses a maximum covering location problem in combination with census block group GIS data from the City of Philadelphia to find optimal locations for future food store openings. A socioeconomic index of vulnerability is computed to weigh regions based on their residents' sensitivity to food access limitations. The analysis found that supermarkets in Philadelphia are relatively unequally distributed and that there are many viable locations which could satisfy both the public interest of improving food access as well as the private interest of being profitable. Going forward, this joint approach of GIS data and operations research can be used to highlight locations for possible policy interventions in urban areas.

Well-Being’s Predictive Value

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2013

2012 Second International Conference on Cloud and Green Computing, 2012

In this paper, we lay the foundations for a contextualisation of trust, the role it plays, and it... more In this paper, we lay the foundations for a contextualisation of trust, the role it plays, and its different layers within the context of a novel paradigm: Social Cloud Computing. In a Social Cloud, trust plays a vital role as a collaboration enabler. However, trust is not trivial to define, observe, represent and analyse as precursors to understand exactly what role it plays in the enablement of collaboration. We do this through the definition of structure of a Social Cloud as a sequence of social and cognitive processes. We then survey research from the domains of computer science, economics and sociology that consider trust in online communities and exchange scenarios to illustrate the complexity of modelling trust in our scenario. Finally, we define trust within the context of a Social Cloud and identify the core components of trust to facilitate its understanding.

A simulator for social exchanges and collaborations — Architecture and case study

2012 IEEE 8th International Conference on E-Science, 2012

ABSTRACT Social collaboration scenarios, such as sharing resources between friends, are becoming ... more ABSTRACT Social collaboration scenarios, such as sharing resources between friends, are becoming increasingly prevalent in recent years. An example of this new paradigm is Social Cloud Computing, which aims at leveraging existing digital relationships within social networks for the exchange of resources among users and user communities. Due to their complexity, such platforms and systems have to be carefully designed and engineered to suit their purpose. In this paper, we propose a general-purpose simulation tool to help in the design and analysis of Social Collaboration Platforms, and discuss potential use cases and the architecture of the simulator. To show the usefulness of the simulator, we present a simple use case in which we study the effects of an incentive scheme on the system and its user community.

Towards the Competence of Crowdsourcees: Literature-based Considerations on the Problem of Assessing Crowdsourcees' Qualities

2013 International Conference on Cloud and Green Computing, 2013

ABSTRACT Today, crowd sourcing literature and platforms propose many different means of assessing... more ABSTRACT Today, crowd sourcing literature and platforms propose many different means of assessing and defining worker quality, reliability and trustworthiness of task solutions. Where examples include: redundant scheduling, gold standard questions, qualification tests, and employer acceptance rate. In this paper, we argue that these approaches are not ineffective, but are shortsighted, as they reveal little about the actual abilities of a worker in general. Therefore, we propose the definition of competencies for crowd sourcees as a more elaborate methodology to today's notion of qualifications and qualification tests. Furthermore, we shed some light on how the competencies of crowd sourcees could be identified and confirmed via online social media platforms.

2011 IEEE Ninth International Conference on Dependable, Autonomic and Secure Computing, 2011

Currently, the Cloud landscape is a fragmented, static and shapeless market that hinders the para... more Currently, the Cloud landscape is a fragmented, static and shapeless market that hinders the paradigm's ability to fulfil its promise of ubiquitous computing on tap and as a commodity. In this paper, we present our vision of an autonomic self-aware Cloud market platform, and argue that autonomic market platforms for Clouds can step up to the challenge of today's status quo. As our first steps towards achieving this vision, we present a market monitoring methodology, which includes a series of realistic market goals, sets of extractable metrics from a market platform and how to map (i.e. combine and transform) metrics to access goal performance such that autonomic adaption of the market could be undertaken. We have extended a known market simulator for distributed infrastructures (GridSim) with relevant sensors. To demonstrate the usefulness of our approach, we simulate a sudden cease in demand for goods in our market platform.

Well-being is a multifaceted concept, having intellectual origins in philosophy, psychology, econ... more Well-being is a multifaceted concept, having intellectual origins in philosophy, psychology, economics, political science, and other disciplines. To date, methods to assess well-being are performed infrequently (e.g. yearly) and superficially; resulting in highly aggregated observations. Our objective is to create a measurement framework for assessing (human) well-being with a much higher observation frequency (e.g. daily). In decreasing the time between observations of well-being, we believe that better processes for the management of social groups and communities (e.g. a workforce) can be implemented. In this paper, we discuss our experiences and findings from the implementation of a gamified Facebook application for the measurement of well-being. We pay special attention to the accuracy of well-being observations, and the efficacy of various gamification incentives on continued use by users. Our results show that gamification provides a suitable environment for extracting accelerated, realistic, truthful selfreporting for the measurement of human flourishing.

Current changes in energy provision are forcing changes in the relationships between provider and... more Current changes in energy provision are forcing changes in the relationships between provider and consumer. Nowhere is this more evident than in the transition to renewable energy sources, where ongoing structural changes create new stakeholder roles, new value chains, and a renewed focus on the concepts of service requirements and public acceptance. Especially public acceptance in the energy sector is under addressed in research due to its domain specificity and low generalizability. This research empirically addresses the intersections between public acceptance, energy service markets, and quality of service to provide first insights into the drivers of service requirements in the German energy value chain.

On Replica Placement in a Social CDN for e-Science

Integrated Modeling of Technical and Business Aspects in Service Networks

... Service Level Management for Service Value Networks. In 5th International Workshop on Service... more ... Service Level Management for Service Value Networks. In 5th International Workshop on Service Science and Systems (SSS 2012) at the IEEE Conference on Computer Software and Applications (COMPSAC 2012) 13. Schulz, F. (2011). ...

Service Level Management for Service Value Networks

ABSTRACT The ongoing trend towards a global services economy creates considerable market opportun... more ABSTRACT The ongoing trend towards a global services economy creates considerable market opportunities for various stakeholders. A service intermediary who offers complex services to customers and consumes services from suppliers and thus creates a service value network, faces the challenge of adhering to agreed service levels while minimizing associated costs, risks and potential penalties. Starting from a lifecycle model for service value networks, this paper identifies the service level management tasks to be performed by a service intermediary. For each of these tasks, supporting software tools have been developed. Together, they form an integrated tool chain which provides effective support for service level management of service intermediaries. The tools have been evaluated in case studies and industrial settings. The paper contributes the first study of an end-to-end service level management for service value networks.

Engineering incentives in social clouds

ABSTRACT Combining the strengths of the Cloud Computing and Social Network paradigms, the vision ... more ABSTRACT Combining the strengths of the Cloud Computing and Social Network paradigms, the vision of Social Clouds aims to provide a resource sharing mechanism where participants dynamically share and trade resources on the premise of the relationships encoded in a social network. By building upon existing relationships in social networks and the inherent trust that accompanies these relationships, a Social Cloud is able to address one of the most cited obstacles in the adoption of current cloud solutions, the missing trust between Cloud service providers and users. However, as with other computing approaches relying on user participation, incentivisation of potential and existing participants is crucial for the success and sustainability of a Social Cloud. Therefore, an incentive engineering approach is needed and will be discussed in this paper considering all phases of user participation in a Social Cloud in order to provide proper incentives for active user participation and desired user behavior.

Well-being’s Predictive Value: A gamified approach to managing smart

Social network platforms have rapidly changed the way that people communicate and interact. They ... more Social network platforms have rapidly changed the way that people communicate and interact. They have enabled the establishment of, and participation in, digital communities as well as the representation, documentation and exploration of social relationships. We believe that as 'apps' become more sophisticated, it will become easier for users to share their own services, resources and data via social networks. To substantiate this, we present a social compute cloud where the provisioning of cloud infrastructure occurs through "friend" relationships. In a social compute cloud, resource owners offer virtualized containers on their personal computer(s) or smart device(s) to their social network. However, as users may have complex preference structures concerning with whom they do or do not wish to share their resources, we investigate, via simulation, how resources can be effectively allocated within a social community offering resources on a best effort basis. In the assessment of social resource allocation, we consider welfare, allocation fairness, and algorithmic runtime. The key findings of this work illustrate how social networks can be leveraged in the construction of cloud computing infrastructures and how resources can be allocated in the presence of user sharing preferences.