Kym Watson - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Kym Watson

Springer eBooks, 2013

The current procedure for the reporting of cholera cases in Uganda contains many manual steps acr... more The current procedure for the reporting of cholera cases in Uganda contains many manual steps across several levels of the health infrastructure. Because of this there is a large chance of errors in the information flow, possibly delaying the signalling of an outbreak. The lack of accurate and complete data also hinders research into the spread of cholera. To improve the cholera reporting an application called Dira (Disease Incidence Reporting Application) has been developed for mobile devices, that allows the field registration of patients to be done quickly, easily and accurately. By entering the data directly on an electronic device there is no longer the need for separate digitization steps. By transferring case data directly from the hand-held device to a central server at the Ugandan Ministry of Health, the reliability of the data can be increased and the time to launch a response to an outbreak can be decreased.

Springer eBooks, 2013

Air quality and air pollution have a very large impact on human health. The sensitivity to differ... more Air quality and air pollution have a very large impact on human health. The sensitivity to different pollutants varies per person, therefore it is important that citizens can get personalised air quality information. The Personal Environmental Information System (PEIS) aims at delivering just that. The PEIS takes sensor data from several data providers and employs a service-oriented architecture to deliver these observations to the user through a smartphone application. The PEIS also uses scientific models to fuse the sensor data and create new, derived observations. To make scientific models that fuse sensor data fit better in a service-oriented architecture, a software framework called Fusion4Decision was developed. This framework is based on Open Geospatial Consortium standards and allows scientific models written in languages like MATLAB or R to be available as a web service.

International Symposium on Computer Modeling, Measurement and Evaluation, Dec 19, 1984

Die Ziele und Architektur des Smart Factory Web als Plattform für die Vernetzung von Fabriken wer... more Die Ziele und Architektur des Smart Factory Web als Plattform für die Vernetzung von Fabriken werden beschrieben. Die Fähigkeiten und Kapazitäten von Fabriken werden adaptiert und kombiniert zur flexiblen Erfüllung von Aufträgen. Die Industrie 4.0-Anwendungsszenarien "Auftragsgesteuerte Produktion" und "Wandlungsfähige Fabrik" werden dadurch ermöglicht. Als Grundlage für eine nachhaltige und offene Lösung dienen die Referenzarchitekturmodelle des Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC) und Industrie 4.0 sowie die internationalen Standards OPC UA und AutomationML.

EGU General Assembly Conference Abstracts, Apr 1, 2018

This presentation describes work carried out by the Fraunhofer Institute IOSB and the University ... more This presentation describes work carried out by the Fraunhofer Institute IOSB and the University of Perugia in the European H2020 project "HEritage Resilience Against CLimate Events on Site" (HERACLES) as part of the test bed in Gubbio (Italy) to protect its historic buildings (cf. http://www.heracles-project.eu/). Sensors positioned in the heritage buildings of Gubbio measure parameters such as acceleration, room temperature and crack amplitudes and deliver sampling data streams. The data is stored on a server implementation of the OGC standard SensorThings API (see also https://github.com/FraunhoferIOSB/SensorThingsServer). Special techniques have been developed to select, aggregate and visualize sensor data streams in a performant way in a web application.

The Smart Factory Web (SFW) is a platform that connects Smart Factories over a network to enable ... more The Smart Factory Web (SFW) is a platform that connects Smart Factories over a network to enable flexible sharing and management of resources, assets and inventory to maximize production and efficiency. In order to become part of the Smart Factory Web, network participants describe not only their products, but also the factory capabilities to order to improve factory-to-factory collaboration. A Smart Factory Web Portal (SFWP) enables secure data and service integration in cross-site application scenarios as well as 'plug & work' functions for devices, machines, and data analytics software by applying industrial standards, Open Platform Communications Unified Architecture (OPC UA), and Automation Markup Language (AutomationML or AML for short). OPC UA serves as a comprehensive and secure communication protocol from the machine level into the cloud. A Cloud Coupler on the shop floor publishes the availability of a factory and selected process data in the SFWP. Customers or even smart machines can use this information to make decisions for placing an order and track their orders in real time. In order to simplify the setup of the connection to the cloud and minimize the commissioning time the cloud coupler also aggregates all OPC UA servers on devices in the factory into a single OPC UA aggregated server address space. In this paper an architecture is proposed which uses cloud coupler and plug and work techniques to make a new or retrofit factory available in a SFW to share capability information towards a new marketplace for manufacturing. It is shown that the integration efforts are decreased but also the use of standards reduces the effort to define interfaces.

We show, under which conditions switched Ethernet can be called deterministic. The influence of t... more We show, under which conditions switched Ethernet can be called deterministic. The influence of the service strategies in switched Ethernet is investigated by simulation and compared with analytical bounds on the delays.

Environmental Modelling and Software, Sep 1, 2010

ABSTRACT Sensors and sensor networks are an important component in the monitoring and management ... more ABSTRACT Sensors and sensor networks are an important component in the monitoring and management of environmental systems. In this editorial we outline the main features of the Thematic Issue titled “Sensors and the Environment – Modelling & ICT challenges” which contains eight papers focusing on different aspects of research and development of sensors for environmental systems.

Environmental Modelling and Software, Sep 1, 2010

ABSTRACT One of the key issues for the analysis and the management of the environmental status is... more ABSTRACT One of the key issues for the analysis and the management of the environmental status is the integration of information from various sources, being in situ, airborne or space borne sensors or environmental databases. The European Integrated Project SANY has published a specification of the Sensor Service Architecture (SensorSA) enabling large-scale environmental information systems. The SensorSA belongs to the family of service-oriented architectures but has a particular focus on the access, the management, the processing of information and event notifications provided by sensors and sensor networks. It contains sensor-specific services, primarily based upon standards of the Sensor Web Enablement initiative of the Open Geospatial Consortium abstracting from the peculiarities of sensors and underlying sensor network technologies. The SensorSA follows a multi-style architectural approach: In addition to remote invocations, it also supports an event-driven and a resource-oriented architectural style. This paper presents the basic architectural concepts, supported sensor network topologies, generic use cases, sensor service types and information models. It concludes with a description of the SERVUS design methodology. The SERVUS design methodology is tailored to the design of geospatial service-oriented architectures and environmental information systems and leverages the idea of a uniform modeling of use cases and capabilities of SensorSA implementations as resources.

$Research paper thumbnail of Linear fractional maps and Jordan algebras$

Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society, 1979

Jordan algebras are characterized from amongst the finite dimensional commutative algebras withou... more Jordan algebras are characterized from amongst the finite dimensional commutative algebras without the use of identities. This is achieved by investigating the properties of the linear fractional transformations generated by the quasi-inversion and all translations. In [3], M. Koecher characterized unital Jordan algebras as homogeneous unital commutative algebras. Some further descriptions may be found in [1]. Here we give another characterization in terms of the linear fractional transformations generated by the quasi-inversion and all translations. This result reinforces the special role played by the linear fractional maps in Jordan algebras.

Informatik-Fachberichte, 1983

We propose a collection of universal benchmarks for the comparison and description of the perform... more We propose a collection of universal benchmarks for the comparison and description of the performance characteristics of local area networks (LANs). For this purpose we discuss typical load patterns in LANs, especially chosen to reveal differences in their performance behaviour. We consider four types of general transactfuns in LANs-single messages, single messages with acknowledgement, demand messages with reply and broadcast messages. By assigning message priorities the transaction types are further subdivided into classes. The transaction classes are then given attributes according to the length of their messages (short, medium, long average length, exponentially distributed or constant length) and their generation process (Poisson or periodical). Typical load patterns are then defined by suitably dividing the total load between the various transaction classes. Finally, we suggest benchmarks, which, together with performance measures such as throughputs and bit times, are valuable aids in LAN evaluation and comparison.

IFAC Proceedings Volumes, Oct 1, 1987

Abstract Now that the Token Bus local area network IEEE 802.4 is part of the MAP (Manufacturing A... more Abstract Now that the Token Bus local area network IEEE 802.4 is part of the MAP (Manufacturing Automation Protocol) profile and has been adopted for IEC's Process Data Highway (PROWAY), its performance characteristics are of wide spread interest. We discuss areas of application of token bus systems and the performance requirements to be met. Bounds on the attainable data throughput are derived and used to tune the Token Bus parameters. The performance in terms of throughputs and waiting times is measured for a benchmark load pattern. Several performance requirements, including a stringent real time requirement, are defined and the Token Bus parameters are set to meet these requirements.

IFAC Proceedings Volumes, Jul 1, 2003

Abstract The a priori determination of temporal behavior is an essential requirement on the desig... more Abstract The a priori determination of temporal behavior is an essential requirement on the design of distributed real-time systems. It is shown how the analytical method Network Calculus can be applied to find hard upper bounds for transaction times in switched Ethernet networks. The analytical results are validated by simulation for an example scenario and the differences are discussed.

We consider the recognition of dangerous situations in vehicle traffic. Unscented Kalman filters ... more We consider the recognition of dangerous situations in vehicle traffic. Unscented Kalman filters are used to predict vehicle trajectories within a short prediction horizon [to, to +~t]. Based on this prediction, for each vehicle pair the mutual distance is computed for [to, to+~t], whereby the distance accounts for the geometric distance, for the prediction uncertainties as well as for the spatial dimensions of the vehicles. If at least one of the mutual distances falls below a distance threshold E within [to, to +~t], then a dangerous situation arises for the cooperative group and may lead to an autonomous cooperative driving manoeuvre. This approach allows the usage of the system in a mixed environment (only some vehicles are cooperative and cognitive). Obstacles can also be handled. The key issues in this ongoing research work are the recognition and classification of dangerous situations and the formation of a cooperative group constituting an operational unit. A common relevant picture within a group coordinator fuses the necessary information from all cooperative vehicles of the group and forms the basis for situation recognition and classification. This paper is a step to expand a Cooperative Collision Warning System (CCWS) to an integrated Cooperative Collision Avoidance and Cooperative Collision Mitigation System (CCAMS).

Open research Europe, Mar 24, 2021

Environmental modelling workflows are often tedious due to heterogeneity of data sources, types a... more Environmental modelling workflows are often tedious due to heterogeneity of data sources, types and formats. This paper discusses how a software framework based on Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards may facilitate the workflow steps and improve their flexibility by supporting data access, processing, and decision-making. The software framework is designed based on OGC standards, which can be realized in any modern programming language, to encapsulate processing algorithms (so called fusors) that fuse the environmental input data and run a model based computation. Such a software framework can improve the integration of new data sources into environmental applications as well as the data exchange between scientists who can then focus on the real application problem at hand. The open source model MODFLOW, which is worldwide one of the standard codes for groundwater flow simulation, is taken here as an example data fusor. A further objective of this software framework is to offer the complete modelling workflow as a web service.

The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, Sep 20, 2018

From an IoT point of view, the continuous growth of cheap and versatile sensor technologies has g... more From an IoT point of view, the continuous growth of cheap and versatile sensor technologies has generated a massive data flow in communication networks, which most of the time carries unnecessary or redundant information that requires larger storage centers and more time to process and analyze data. Most of this redundancy is due to fact that network nodes are unable to identify environmental cues showing measurement changes to be considered and instead remain at a static location getting the same data. In this work we propose a multi-agent learning framework based on two theoretical tools. Firstly, we use Gaussian Process Regression (GPR) to make each node capable of getting information from the environment based on its current measurement and the measurements taken by its neighbors. Secondly, we use the rate distortion function to define a boundary where the information coming from the environment is neither redundant nor misunderstood. Finally, we show how the framework is applied in a mobile sensor network in which sensors decide to be more or less exploratory by means of the parameter s of the Blahut-Arimoto algorithm, and how it affects the measurement coverage in a spatial area being sensed.

Canadian Journal of Mathematics, Feb 1, 1980

Introduction. Spreads of curves were introduced by Grunbaum in [1]. A spread of curves is a conti... more Introduction. Spreads of curves were introduced by Grunbaum in [1]. A spread of curves is a continuous family of simple arcs in the real plane, every two of which intersect in exactly one point. A spread is the continuous analogue of a finite arrangement of pseudolines in the plane. Sylvester's problem for finite arrangements of pseudolines asks if every non-trivial arrangement has a simple vertex, that is a point contained in exactly two pseudolines of the arrangement. This question was answered in the affirmative by Kelly and Rottenberg [5]. One interesting feature of this result is that it does not depend on the pseudolines being straight lines. Here we settle Sylvester's problem for spreads. We show that every nontrivial spread of line segments has uncountably many simple vertices. But we also give examples of non-trivial spreads with no simple vertices. Thus there is an essential difference between general spreads and spreads of line segments. We find some necessary and some sufficient conditions for a spread to have a denumerable number of simple vertices. This investigation leads to the concept of a 2-isolated point in a spread which permits Sylvester's problem for spreads to be answered affirmatively.

Springer eBooks, 2013

International Symposium on Computer Modeling, Measurement and Evaluation, Dec 19, 1984

EGU General Assembly Conference Abstracts, Apr 1, 2018

Environmental Modelling and Software, Sep 1, 2010

$Research paper thumbnail of Linear fractional maps and Jordan algebras$

Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society, 1979

Informatik-Fachberichte, 1983

IFAC Proceedings Volumes, Oct 1, 1987

IFAC Proceedings Volumes, Jul 1, 2003

Open research Europe, Mar 24, 2021

The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, Sep 20, 2018

Canadian Journal of Mathematics, Feb 1, 1980