Abstract: The selection of appropriate requirements for product
releases can make a big difference in a product success. The selection
of requirements is done by different requirements prioritization
techniques. These techniques are based on pre-defined and
systematic steps to calculate the requirements relative weight.
Prioritization is complicated by new development settings, shifting
from traditional co-located development to geographically distributed
development. Stakeholders, connected to a project, are distributed all
over the world. These geographically distributions of stakeholders
make it hard to prioritize requirements as each stakeholder have their
own perception and expectations of the requirements in a software
project. This paper discusses limitations of the Analytical Hierarchy
Process with respect to geographically distributed stakeholders-
(GDS) prioritization of requirements. This paper also provides a
solution, in the form of a modified AHP, in order to prioritize
requirements for GDS. We will conduct two experiments in this
paper and will analyze the results in order to discuss AHP limitations
with respect to GDS. The modified AHP variant is also validated in
this paper.
Abstract: A passive system "Qanat" is collection of some
underground wells. A mother-well was dug in a place far from the
city where they could reach to the water table maybe 100 meters
underground, they dug other wells to direct water toward the city,
with minimum possible gradient. Using the slope of the earth they
could bring water close to the surface in the city. The source of water
or the appearance of Qanat, land slope and the ownership lines are
the important and effective factors in the formation of routes and the
segment division of lands to the extent that making use of Qanat as
the techniques of extracting underground waters creates a channel of
routes with an organic order and hierarchy coinciding the slope of
land and it also guides the Qanat waters in the tradition texture of salt
desert and border provinces of it. Qanats are excavated in a specified
distinction from each other. The quantity of water provided by
Qanats depends on the kind of land, distance from mountain,
geographical situation of them and the rate of water supply from the
underground land. The rate of underground waters, possibility of
Qanat excavation, number of Qanats and rate of their water supply
from one hand and the quantity of cultivable fertile lands from the
other hand are the important natural factors making the size of cities.
In the same manner the cities with several Qanats have multi central
textures. The location of cities is in direct relation with land quality,
soil fertility and possibility of using underground water by excavating
Qanats. Observing the allowable distance for Qanat watering is a
determining factor for distance between villages and cities.
Topography, land slope, soil quality, watering system, ownership,
kind of cultivation, etc. are the effective factors in directing Qanats
for excavation and guiding water toward the cultivable lands and it
also causes the formation of different textures in land division of
farming provinces. Several divisions such as orderly and wide, inorderly,
thin and long, comb like, etc. are the introduction to organic
order. And at the same time they are complete coincidence with
environmental conditions in the typical development of ecological
architecture and planning in the traditional cities and settlements
order.
Abstract: Decision support based upon risk analysis into
comparison of the electricity generation from different renewable
energy technologies can provide information about their effects on
the environment and society. The aim of this paper is to develop the
assessment framework regarding risks to health and environment,
and the society-s benefits of the electric power plant generation from
different renewable sources. The multicriteria framework to
multiattribute risk analysis technique and the decision analysis
interview technique are applied in order to support the decisionmaking
process for the implementing renewable energy projects to
the Bangkok case study. Having analyses the local conditions and
appropriate technologies, five renewable power plants are postulated
as options. As this work demonstrates, the analysis can provide a tool
to aid decision-makers for achieving targets related to promote
sustainable energy system.
Abstract: Optimal cultural site selection is one of the ways that
can lead to the promotion of citizenship culture in addition to
ensuring the health and leisure of city residents. This study examines
the social and cultural needs of the community and optimal cultural
site allocation and after identifying the problems and shortcomings,
provides a suitable model for finding the best location for these
centers where there is the greatest impact on the promotion of
citizenship culture. On the other hand, non-scientific methods cause
irreversible impacts to the urban environment and citizens. But
modern efficient methods can reduce these impacts. One of these
methods is using geographical information systems (GIS). In this
study, Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) method was used to
locate the optimal cultural site. In AHP, three principles
(decomposition), (comparative analysis), and (combining
preferences) are used. The objectives of this research include
providing optimal contexts for passing time and performing cultural
activities by Shiraz residents and also proposing construction of some
cultural sites in different areas of the city. The results of this study
show the correct positioning of cultural sites based on social needs of
citizens. Thus, considering the population parameters and radii
access, GIS and AHP model for locating cultural centers can meet
social needs of citizens.
Abstract: In a liberalized electricity market, it is not surprising
that different customers require different power quality (PQ) levels at
different price. Power quality related to several power disturbances is
described by many parameters, so how to define a comprehensive
hierarchy evaluation system of power quality (PQCHES) has become
a concerned issue. In this paper, based on four electromagnetic
compatibility (EMC) levels, the numerical range of each power
disturbance is divided into five grades (Grade I –Grade V), and the
“barrel principle" of power quality is used for the assessment of
overall PQ performance with only one grade indicator. A case study
based on actual monitored data of PQ shows that the site PQ grade
indicates the electromagnetic environment level and also expresses the
characteristics of loads served by the site.
The shortest plank principle of PQ barrel is an incentive
mechanism, which can combine with the rewards/penalty mechanism
(RPM) of consumed energy “on quality demand", to stimulate utilities
to improve the overall PQ level and also stimulate end-user more
“smart" under the infrastructure of future SmartGrid..
Abstract: Information Technology (IT) projects are always
accompanied by various risks and because of high rate of failure in
such projects, managing risks in order to neutralize or at least
decrease their effects on the success of the project is strongly
essential. In this paper, fuzzy analytical hierarchy process (FAHP) is
exploited as a means of risk evaluation methodology to prioritize and
organize risk factors faced in IT projects. A real case of IT projects, a
project of design and implementation of an integrated information
system in a vehicle producing company in Iran is studied. Related
risk factors are identified and then expert qualitative judgments about
these factors are acquired. Translating these judgments to fuzzy
numbers and using them as an input to FAHP, risk factors are then
ranked and prioritized by FAHP in order to make project managers
aware of more important risks and enable them to adopt suitable
measures to deal with these highly devastative risks.
Abstract: This article describes Uruk, the virtual museum of
Iraq that we developed for visual exploration and retrieval of image
collections. The system largely exploits the loosely-structured
hierarchy of XML documents that provides a useful representation
method to store semi-structured or unstructured data, which does not
easily fit into existing database. The system offers users the
capability to mine and manage the XML-based image collections
through a web-based Graphical User Interface (GUI). Typically, at an
interactive session with the system, the user can browse a visual
structural summary of the XML database in order to select interesting
elements. Using this intermediate result, queries combining structure
and textual references can be composed and presented to the system.
After query evaluation, the full set of answers is presented in a visual
and structured way.
Abstract: This study aims to assess the vulnerability and risk of
the coastal areas of Taijiang to abnormal oceanographic phenomena.
In addition, this study aims to investigate and collect data regarding
the disaster losses, land utilization, and other social, economic, and
environmental issues in these coastal areas to construct a coastal
vulnerability and risk map based on the obtained climate-change risk
assessment results. Considering the indexes of the three coastal
vulnerability dimensions, namely, man-made facilities, environmental
geography, and social economy, this study adopted the equal
weighting process and Analytic Hierarchy Process to analyze the
vulnerability of these coastal areas to disasters caused by climatic
changes. Among the areas with high coastal vulnerability to climatic
changes, three towns had the highest coastal vulnerability and four had
the highest relative vulnerability. Areas with lower disaster risks were
found to be increasingly vulnerable to disasters caused by climatic
changes as time progresses.
Abstract: This paper presents a conceptual model of agreement
options for negotiation support in multi-person decision on
optimizing high-rise building columns. The decision is complicated
since many parties involved in choosing a single alternative from a
set of solutions. There are different concern caused by differing
preferences, experiences, and background. Such building columns as
alternatives are referred to as agreement options which are
determined by identifying the possible decision maker group,
followed by determining the optimal solution for each group. The
group in this paper is based on three-decision makers preferences that
are designer, programmer, and construction manager. Decision
techniques applied to determine the relative value of the alternative
solutions for performing the function. Analytical Hierarchy Process
(AHP) was applied for decision process and game theory based agent
system for coalition formation. An n-person cooperative game is
represented by the set of all players. The proposed coalition
formation model enables each agent to select individually its allies or
coalition. It further emphasizes the importance of performance
evaluation in the design process and value-based decision.
Abstract: In theoretical computer science, the Turing machine has played a number of important roles in understanding and exploiting basic concepts and mechanisms in computing and information processing [20]. It is a simple mathematical model of computers [9]. After that, M.Blum and C.Hewitt first proposed two-dimensional automata as a computational model of two-dimensional pattern processing, and investigated their pattern recognition abilities in 1967 [7]. Since then, a lot of researchers in this field have been investigating many properties about automata on a two- or three-dimensional tape. On the other hand, the question of whether processing fourdimensional digital patterns is much more difficult than two- or threedimensional ones is of great interest from the theoretical and practical standpoints. Thus, the study of four-dimensional automata as a computasional model of four-dimensional pattern processing has been meaningful [8]-[19],[21]. This paper introduces a cooperating system of four-dimensional finite automata as one model of four-dimensional automata. A cooperating system of four-dimensional finite automata consists of a finite number of four-dimensional finite automata and a four-dimensional input tape where these finite automata work independently (in parallel). Those finite automata whose input heads scan the same cell of the input tape can communicate with each other, that is, every finite automaton is allowed to know the internal states of other finite automata on the same cell it is scanning at the moment. In this paper, we mainly investigate some accepting powers of a cooperating system of eight- or seven-way four-dimensional finite automata. The seven-way four-dimensional finite automaton is an eight-way four-dimensional finite automaton whose input head can move east, west, south, north, up, down, or in the fu-ture, but not in the past on a four-dimensional input tape.
Abstract: Molodstov-s soft sets theory was originally proposed
as general mathematical tool for dealing with uncertainty problems. The matrix form has been introduced in soft set and some of its
properties have been discussed. However, the formulation of soft
matrix in group decision making problem only with equal importance
weights of criteria, which does not show the true opinion of decision maker on each criteria. The aim of this paper is to propose a method
for solving group decision making problem incorporating the importance of criteria by using soft matrices in a more objective manner. The weight of each criterion is calculated by using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method. An example of house
selection process is given to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.
Abstract: This work discusses an innovative methodology for
deployment of service quality characteristics. Four groups of organizational features that may influence the quality of services are identified: human resource, technology, planning, and organizational
relationships. A House of Service Quality (HOSQ) matrix is built to
extract the desired improvement in the service quality characteristics
and to translate them into a hierarchy of important organizational
features. The Mean Square Error (MSE) criterion enables the
pinpointing of the few essential service quality characteristics to be
improved as well as selection of the vital organizational features. The
method was implemented in an engineering supply enterprise and
provides useful information on its vital service dimensions.
Abstract: Global competitiveness has recently become the
biggest concern of both manufacturing and service companies.
Electronic commerce, as a key technology enables the firms to reach
all the potential consumers from all over the world. In this study, we
have presented commonly used electronic payment systems, and then
we have shown the evaluation of these systems in respect to different
criteria. The payment systems which are included in this research are
the credit card, the virtual credit card, the electronic money, the
mobile payment, the credit transfer and the debit instruments. We
have realized a systematic comparison of these systems in respect to
three main criteria: Technical, economical and social. We have
conducted a fuzzy multi-criteria decision making procedure to deal
with the multi-attribute nature of the problem. The subjectiveness
and imprecision of the evaluation process are modeled using
triangular fuzzy numbers.
Abstract: In this work a new platform for mobile-health systems is
presented. System target application is providing decision support to
rescue corps or military medical personnel in combat areas. Software
architecture relies on a distributed client-server system that manages a
wireless ad-hoc networks hierarchy in which several different types of
client operate. Each client is characterized for different hardware and
software requirements. Lower hierarchy levels rely in a network of
completely custom devices that store clinical information and patient
status and are designed to form an ad-hoc network operating in the
2.4 GHz ISM band and complying with the IEEE 802.15.4 standard
(ZigBee). Medical personnel may interact with such devices, that are
called MICs (Medical Information Carriers), by means of a PDA
(Personal Digital Assistant) or a MDA (Medical Digital Assistant),
and transmit the information stored in their local databases as well as
issue a service request to the upper hierarchy levels by using IEEE
802.11 a/b/g standard (WiFi). The server acts as a repository that
stores both medical evacuation forms and associated events (e.g., a
teleconsulting request). All the actors participating in the diagnostic
or evacuation process may access asynchronously to such repository
and update its content or generate new events. The designed system
pretends to optimise and improve information spreading and flow
among all the system components with the aim of improving both
diagnostic quality and evacuation process.
Abstract: Recently, there have been considerable efforts towards the convergence between P2P and Grid computing in order to reach a solution that takes the best of both worlds by exploiting the advantages that each offers. Augmenting the peer-to-peer model to the services of the Grid promises to eliminate bottlenecks and ensure greater scalability, availability, and fault-tolerance. The Grid Information Service (GIS) directly influences quality of service for grid platforms. Most of the proposed solutions for decentralizing the GIS are based on completely flat overlays. The main contributions for this paper are: the investigation of a novel resource discovery framework for Grid implementations based on a hierarchy of structured peer-to-peer overlay networks, and introducing a discovery algorithm utilizing the proposed framework. Validation of the framework-s performance is done via simulation. Experimental results show that the proposed organization has the advantage of being scalable while providing fault-isolation, effective bandwidth utilization, and hierarchical access control. In addition, it will lead to a reliable, guaranteed sub-linear search which returns results within a bounded interval of time and with a smaller amount of generated traffic within each domain.
Abstract: This paper aims to develop a model that assists the
international retailer in selecting the country that maximizes the
degree of fit between the retailer-s goals and the country
characteristics in his initial internationalization move. A two-stage
multi criteria decision model is designed integrating the Analytic
Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Goal Programming. Ethical, cultural,
geographic and economic proximity are identified as the relevant
constructs of the internationalization decision. The constructs are
further structured into sub-factors within analytic hierarchy. The
model helps the retailer to integrate, rank and weigh a number of
hard and soft factors and prioritize the countries accordingly. The
model has been implemented on a Turkish luxury goods retailer who
was planning to internationalize. Actual entry of the specific retailer
in the selected country is a support for the model. Implementation on
a single retailer limits the generalizability of the results; however, the
emphasis of the paper is on construct identification and model
development. The paper enriches the existing literature by proposing
a hybrid multi objective decision model which introduces new soft
dimensions i.e. perceived distance, ethical proximity, humane
orientation to the decision process and facilitates effective decision
making.
Abstract: A lot of computer-based methods have been developed
to assess the evacuation capability (EC) of high-rise buildings.
Because softwares are time-consuming and not proper for on scene
applications, we adopted two methods, fuzzy analytic hierarchy
process (FAHP) and technique for order preference by similarity to an
ideal solution (TOPSIS), for EC assessment of a high-rise building in
Jinan. The EC scores obtained with the two methods and the
evacuation time acquired with Pathfinder 2009 for floors 47-60 of the
building were compared with each other. The results show that FAHP
performs better than TOPSIS for EC assessment of high-rise buildings,
especially in the aspect of dealing with the effect of occupant type and
distance to exit on EC, tackling complex problem with multi-level
structure of criteria, and requiring less amount of computation.
However, both FAHP and TOPSIS failed to appropriately handle the
situation where the exit width changes while occupants are few.
Abstract: The medical studies often require different methods
for parameters selection, as a second step of processing, after the
database-s designing and filling with information. One common
task is the selection of fields that act as risk factors using wellknown
methods, in order to find the most relevant risk factors and
to establish a possible hierarchy between them. Different methods
are available in this purpose, one of the most known being the
binary logistic regression. We will present the mathematical
principles of this method and a practical example of using it in the
analysis of the influence of 10 different psychiatric diagnostics
over 4 different types of offences (in a database made from 289
psychiatric patients involved in different types of offences).
Finally, we will make some observations about the relation
between the risk factors hierarchy established through binary
logistic regression and the individual risks, as well as the results of
Chi-squared test. We will show that the hierarchy built using the
binary logistic regression doesn-t agree with the direct order of risk
factors, even if it was naturally to assume this hypothesis as being
always true.
Abstract: In this paper a novel algorithm is proposed that integrates the process of fuzzy hierarchy generation and rule discovery for automated discovery of Production Rules with Fuzzy Hierarchy (PRFH) in large databases.A concept of frequency matrix (Freq) introduced to summarize large database that helps in minimizing the number of database accesses, identification and removal of irrelevant attribute values and weak classes during the fuzzy hierarchy generation.Experimental results have established the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.
Abstract: In this paper, we have proposed a low cost optimized solution for the movement of a three-arm manipulator using Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP). A scheme is given for optimizing the movement of robotic arm with the help of Genetic Algorithm so that the minimum energy consumption criteria can be achieved. As compared to Direct Kinematics, Inverse Kinematics evolved two solutions out of which the best-fit solution is selected with the help of Genetic Algorithm and is kept in search space for future use. The Inverse Kinematics, Fitness Value evaluation and Binary Encoding like tasks are simulated and tested. Although, three factors viz. Movement, Friction and Least Settling Time (or Min. Vibration) are used for finding the Fitness Function / Fitness Values, however some more factors can also be considered.