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Engineering and Science projects are facing new data management challenges, which are currently being addressed through the development of data management plans. However, project stakeholders are unable to proper assess if their plan is representative of good data management practices. To address this issue, we propose a risk management framework to assist the definition of a data management plan in engineering and science projects. To validate our proposal, we present an application to a civil engineering project concerning dam safety.

Digital preservation aims to keep digital objects accessible over long periods of time, ensuring the authenticity and integrity of these digital objects. In such complex environments, Risk Management is a key factor in assuring the normal behaviour of systems over time. Currently, the digital preservation arena commonly uses Risk Management concepts to assess repositories. In this paper, we intend to go further and propose a perspective where Risk Management can be used not only to assess existing solutions, but also to conceive digital preservation environments. Thus, we propose a Risk Management-based approach to design and assess digital preservation environments, including: ·the definition of context and identification of strategic objectives to determine specific requirements and characterize which consequences are acceptable within the identified context; ·the identification, analysis and evaluation of threats and vulnerabilities that may affect the normal behaviour of a specific business or the achievement of the goals and conformance to the requirements identified in the context characterization; and, ·definition of actions to deal with the risks associated with the identified threats and vulnerabilities. We generalize and survey the main requirements, threats, vulnerabilities and techniques that can be applied in the scope of digital preservation.

Digital preservation aims at maintaining digital objects accessible over long periods of time, ensuring the authenticity and integrity of these digital objects. In this paper, we propose three different approaches to address the digital preservation problem. First, we survey the main requirements specific to the preservation arena. Next, we show how digital preservation can be approached as a specific case of System of Systems Engineering. Then, we introduce Enterprise Architecture as a framework which is regularly used to assist information systems design and maintenance, but can also be applied to System of Systems and consequently to digital preservation. Finally, in such complex environments, Risk Management is a key factor to assure the normal behavior of systems along time. Thus, we propose a Risk Management based approach to design and assess digital preservation environments, enclosing the definition of context and requirements, and the identification of threats and vulnerabilities, to be used as the basis of the definition of actions to deal with the risks associated with those threats and vulnerabilities. We generalize and survey the threats, vulnerabilities and techniques that can be applied in the scope of digital preservation.

The emerging context of e-Science imposes new scenarios and requirements for digital preservation. In particular, the data must be reliably stored, for which redundancy is a key strategy. But managing redundancy must take into account the potential failure of component. Considering that correlated failures can affect multiple components and potentially cause a complete loss of data, we propose an innovative solution to manage redundancy strategies in heterogeneous environments such as data grids. This solution comprises a simulator that can be used to evaluate redundancy strategies according to preservation requirements and supports the process to design the best architecture to be deployed, which can latter be used as an observer of the deployed system, supporting its monitoring and management.

Digital preservation aims at maintaining digital objects accessible over long periods of time, ensuring the authenticity and integrity of these digital objects. In such complex environments, Risk Management is a key factor to assure the normal behaviour of systems along time. Currently, the digital preservation arena commonly uses Risk Management concepts to assess repositories. In this paper, we intend to go beyond and propose a perspective where Risk Management can be used to assess existing solutions, but also to conceive digital preservation environments. Thus, we propose a Risk Management based approach to design and assess digital preservation environments, enclosing: (i) the definition of context and identification of strategic objectives to determine specific requirements and characterize which consequences are acceptable within the identified context; (ii) the identification, analysis and evaluation of threats and vulnerabilities that may affect the normal behaviour of a specific business or the achievement of the goals and conformance to the requirements identified in the context characterization; and, (iii) definition of actions to deal with the risks associated with the identified threats and vulnerabilities. We generalize and survey the main requirements, threats, vulnerabilities and techniques that can be applied in the scope of digital preservation.

Digital preservation aims at maintaining digital objects and making data accessible over long periods of time. The emerging context of e-Science imposes new scenarios and new requirements for digital preservation. This paper presents the main issues, current solutions and prominent projects for digital preservation and e-Science data management. Finally, it presents the problem to be addressed, the solutions to explore, the proposed methodology and expected contributions of the associated PhD work.

Large civil engineering structures are continuously monitored to assure their structural safety. The Portuguese National Laboratory for Civil Engineering currently monitors several types of structures, like concrete dams, bridges or other transportation infrastructures. The consequences of a structural failure are potentially catastrophic, varying from loss of life or environmental damage to high economic impacts. The management and preservation of structural monitoring data is crucial to support decisions concerning the structural safety. However, preserving data also entails several risks and threats’, comprising strong safety requirements as happens in civil engineering structures.

Digital preservation aims at maintaining digital objects accessible over a long period of time, regardless of the challenges of organizational or technological changes or failures. In particular, data produced in e-Science domains could be reliably stored in today’s data grids, taking advantage of the natural properties of this kind of infrastructure to support redundancy. However, to achieve reliability we must take into account failure interdependency. Taking into account the fact that correlated failures can affect multiple components and potentially cause complete loss of data, we propose a solution to evaluate redundancy strategies in the context of heterogeneous environments such as data grids. This solution is based on a simulation engine that can be used not only to support the process of designing the preservation environment and related policies, but also later on to observe and control the deployed system.

Digital preservation is the ability to retrieve, access, and use digital objects through time, while ensuring the authenticity and integrity properties of these objects. Data grids represent a model of storage systems designed for data management and sharing, which concept also has been proposed for digital preservation. However, since data grids are not specifically designed for this purpose, they present weaknesses that have to be handled. This poster will present a set of services to address a problem in the metadata catalog of the iRODS data grid, strengthening that platform for digital preservation purposes.

Digital preservation aims at maintaining digital objects and data accessible over long periods of time. The emerging context of e- Science imposes new scenarios and new requirements for digital preser- vation. This paper presents the main issues, current solutions and promi- nent projects for digital preservation and e-Science data management. Fi- nally, it presents the problem to be addressed, the solutions to explore, the proposed methodology and expected contributions of the associated PhD work.

Apart from being a technological issue, digital preservation raises several organizational challenges. These challenges are starting to be addressed in the industrial design and e-Science domains, where emerging requirements cannot be addressed directly by OAIS. Thus, new approaches to design and assess digital preservation environments are required. We propose a Reference Architecture as a tool that can capture the essence of those emerging preservation environments and provide ways of developing and deploying preservation-enabled systems in organizations. This paper presents the main concepts from which a Reference Architecture for digital preservation can be built, along with an analysis of the environment surrounding a digital preservation system. We present a concrete Reference Architecture, consisting of a process to derive concrete digital preservation architectures, which is supported by an architecture framework for organizing architecture descriptions. In that way, organizations can be better prepared to cope with the present and future challenges of digital preservation.

The OAIS reference model is a well established “framework to understand significant relationships among the entities” involved in digital preservation, which aims to provide an abstract quality measure for the design of archival systems or repositories. However, it also details on structural and behavioural issues. In order to better decouple fundamental processes (required to be OAIS compliant) from optional processes, and avoid the risk of subjective interpretations on non-formal models, we propose to align OAIS with the Enterprise Architecture approach, providing a formalization of the OAIS “Functional Model” using the Business Process Modelling Notation. Finally, we claim that this approach is an effective advance to better assess OAIS and its relevance in the development of digital preservation solutions.

It is now assumed that poor quality data is costing large amounts of money to corporations all over the world. Although research on methods and techniques for data quality assessment and improvement have begun in the early nineties of the past century and being currently abundant and innovative, it is noted that the academic and professional communities virtually have no dialogue, which turns out to be harmful to both of them. The challenge of promoting the relevance in information systems research, without compromising the necessary rigor, is still present in the various disciplines of information systems scientific area [1,2], including the data quality one. In this paper we present “data as a corporate asset” as a business philosophy, and a framework for the concepts related to that philosophy, derived from the academic and professional literature. According to this framework, we present, analyze and discuss a single explanatory case study, developed in a fixed and mobile telecommunications company, operating in one of the European Union Countries. The results show that, in the absence of data stewardship roles, data quality problems become more of an "IT problem" than typically is considered in the literature, owing to Requirements Analysis Teams of the IS Development Units, to become a “quality negotiator” between the various stakeholders. Other findings are their bottom-up approach to data quality management, their biggest focus on motivating employees through innovative forms of communication, which appears to be a critical success factor1 (CSF) for data quality management, as well as the importance of a data quality champion [3] leadership.

Presently, we are well aware that poor quality data is costing large amounts of money to corporations all over the world. Nevertheless, little research has been done about the way Organizations are dealing with data quality management and the strategies they are using. This work aims to find some answers to the following questions: which business drivers motivate the organizations to engage in a data quality management initiative?, how do they implement data quality management? and which objectives have been achieved, so far? Due to the kind of research questions involved, a decision was made to adopt the use of multiple exploratory case studies as research strategy [32]. The case studies were developed in a telecommunications company (MyTelecom), a public bank (PublicBank) and in the central bank (CentralBank) of one European Union Country. The results show that the main drivers to data quality (DQ) initiatives were the reduction in non quality costs, risk management, mergers, and the improvement of the company’s image among its customers, those aspects being in line with literature [7, 8, 20]. The commercial corporations (MyTelecom and PublicBank) began their DQ projects with customer data, this being in accordance with literature [18], while CentralBank, which mainly works with analytical systems, began with data source metadata characterization and reuse. None of the organizations uses a formal DQ methodology, but they are using tools for data profiling, standardization and cleaning. PublicBank and CentralBank are working towards a Corporate Data Policy, aligned with their Business Policy, which is not the case of MyTelecom. The findings enabled us to prepare a first draft of a “Data Governance strategic impact grid”, adapted from Nolan& MacFarlan IT Governance strategic impact grid [17], this framework needing further empirical support.

Digital preservation, as a research and technical problem, is related with the purpose of maintaining digital objects accessible over a long period of time, regardless the challenges concerning technological or organizational changes or failures. In this poster we propose solutions that can evaluate and support the design of strategies in the context of preser- vation systems based on federations of data grids. The purpose is to have in place techniques that, when in the presence of veri ed failures or potential risks, automatically apply speci c business rules considering the perceived state of the system. This means that federations of data grids, as preser- vation systems, must be able to react to threats in order to keep the main properties of the system aligned with its business objectives. Ideally, those reactions should result in a self-organization of the system, especially when the changes occur between some limits. When out of those limits, the re- actions should be e ective at least to request human intervention.

The complexity of digital preservation increases with the fact that each type of digital object has its own particularities and special requirements. The collaborative environment of the scientific community, and associated services and infrastructures, usually known as e-Science (or enhanced Science), involves the requirement of interoperability and the respective data sharing. In a broad sense, e-Science concerns the set of techniques, services, personnel and organizations involved in collaborative and networked science. It includes technology but also human social structures and new large scale processes of making science. It also means, on the same time, a need and an opportunity for a better integration between science and engineering processes. Thus, long-term preservation can be thought as a required property for future science and engineering, to assure communication over time, so that information that is understood today is transmitted to an unknown system in the future.

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Neste artigo apresenta-se o trabalho desenvolvido e discutem-se as conclusões obtidas relativamente à identificação e definição das dimensões da qualidade dos dados relativos ao controlo da segurança de grandes obras de engenharia civil. A análise do comportamento e o controlo da segurança daquelas obras depende, fundamentalmente, da qualidade dos dados recolhidos através de sensores, denominados dados de observação, da dos modelos de análise utilizados e, naturalmente, do perfil dos especialistas. Para além disso, o LNEC trata e preserva os dados de observação sobre grandes obras de engenharia civil, que representam uma importante fonte de pesquisa para o LNEC e as Universidades, o que configura um cenário de e-Science1. De forma diversa de outros autores de ambientes de e-Science, este trabalho não se restringe às dimensões objectivas, cujas medidas podem ser calculadas automaticamente. Afigura-se, a partir da opinião de especialistas, que algumas dimensões subjectivas podem enriquecer a qualidade da informação a disponibilizar sobre os dados arquivados, à custa de algum trabalho adicional de data curation. No desenvolvimento desta investigação foi utilizado o método Delphi com a técnica Q-Sort, numa versão online, complementado a montante com entrevistas a especialistas e a jusante com uma reunião com peritos. Obtiveram-se dez dimensões para a qualidade de dados de observação, ordenadas por ordem de importância, que são o erro-de-observação, coerência, relevância, interpretabilidade, actualidade, completude, acessibilidade, volume de dados apropriado, segurança e preservação.

O trabalho que se apresenta foi desenvolvido no âmbito do PIP 2005-2008 (Plano de Investigação Programada) do LNEC, área Software Livre para sistemas de informação científicos. Nesta comunicação é apresentado o trabalho de implantação do Repositório Digital de Documentos do LNEC, recorrendo à plataforma de software livre DSpace. São apresentadas as diferentes fases do projecto, bem como as preocupações, dificuldades e soluções encontradas. São também exemplificadas algumas implementações de funcionalidades extra e de ferramentas adicionais necessárias para a adaptação da plataforma à realidade do Laboratório. É ainda delineado um objectivo mais largo, onde o Repositório se insere, nomeadamente o de servir de repositório de backend único para todas as aplicações em funcionamento no Laboratório que manipulem documentos.

To support the safety control of large civil engineering structures as dams and bridges, raw data is collected from sensors placed in strategic points of the structures. This data is gathered through automatic or manual methods, and transformed into engineering quantities by specific algorithms. The life-cycle of this information is affected by different processes and systems, often involving different data schemas and file formats to store the same type of information. The Portuguese National Laboratory of Civil Engineering - LNEC is using a new system to store and manage the data collected from dams, which is also shared with EDP (National power company owning the dams). However, this system was designed for operational purposes, and not for long-term preservation and interoperability. Thus, it does not handle crucial provenance information required for data quality, preservation and interoperability purposes. According to the Portuguese law, LNEC is specifically responsible to maintain an updated record of the data and knowledge about the dams’ safety and behavior. Thus, the preservation of this data is not only an option but a legal obligation. For that, this data also requires complementary detailed context and provenance information, which might imply the need to define and put in place new descriptive and curation processes.

Com a evolução das tecnologias de informação, a migração de dados legados é essencial para garantir o correcto funcionamento das novas aplicações. A eficiência e correcção das aplicações depende, fortemente, da qualidade dos dados armazenados. A criação de processos de migração de dados através da implementação de Software específico é bastante complexa. Por isso, é fundamental disponibilizar mecanismos de apoio à realização de tarefas de tratamento e migração de dados. A framework Ajax disponibiliza vários operadores para limpeza e transformação de dados. Não sendo uma ferramenta exclusivamente orientada para a migração de dados, pretende-se que a sua utilização na migração de um projecto real permita validar a respectiva aplicação. Todas as lacunas dos operadores do Ajax podem, assim, ser preenchidas através do refinamento e extensão da lógica dos operadores, nomeadamente, no suporte à identificação de registos errados e ao carregamento incremental de dados nos sistemas alvo. No âmbito do projecto gestBarragens, desenvolveu-se um processo de migração que inclui o carregamento de um sistema de informação legado e vários sistemas simples relacionados com informação acerca da segurança de barragens de betão em Portugal.

Manual translation of UML diagrams to programmatic code is tedious and error prone. Many CASE tools allow computer code to be generated from Class Diagrams, but fewer, if any, allow the transformation of Activity Dia- grams (ADs) in executable and workflow defining computer code. Our project aims at: • Translating UML ADs into the ISCO programming language; • Building a workflow execution system that runs the translations; • Building a graphical tool to create and edit workflows, and visualize the executions. Defending that UML ADs can specify executable workflows, we present an ISCO based workflow engine, acting over the information extracted from Activity Diagrams and integrated into a platform that allows a user to graph- ically model and manage workflows within a web environment. The server, built with ISCO, assures the data persistence and the execution of the work- flows. Communication with the server is performed through AJAJ.

As sociedades contemporâneas estão crescentemente dependentes das tecnologias de informação e de comunicação. Embora estas tecnologias tragam benefícios inegáveis às sociedades, aumentam as ameaças e os riscos que resultam da sua dependência. Por esse motivo têm sido tomadas medidas em Portugal para dotar o país de uma melhor resposta operacional a ciberataques. Sendo esta realidade pouco conhecida dos agentes da sociedade e da administração pública, este relatório apresenta uma panorâmica da situação atual da área de cibersegurança no plano organizativo e legislativo.

O presente relatório descreve a atividade realizada pelo Núcleo de Tecnologias da Informação em Engenharia Civil, no âmbito do processo “PiSCA – Serviços e Ferramentas de Suporte à Computação Paralela em Ambientes Distribuídos”, durante o período compreendido entre 1 de julho de 2015 e 30 de junho de 2016.

Ao longo dos anos recentes, a atividade desenvolvida nas áreas de engenharia tem-se apoiado cada vez mais na utilização de ferramentas de software apropriadas. Estas ferramentas são muitas vezes desenvolvidas especificamente para dar resposta a um problema muito bem definido, faltando-lhes a capacidade para resolver de forma eficiente problemas semelhantes computacionalmente mais exigentes. A paralelização destas ferramentas é uma das abordagens existentes para permitir aumentar a sua eficiência e aumentar a complexidade dos problemas admissíveis. Este relatório introduz o programa ParFludan, um programa paralelo para análise estrutural pelo método dos elementos finitos, que surgiu da necessidade de melhorar o desempenho do programa Fludan-RAS. Executado no cluster Medusa do LNEC, este novo programa permite tratar problemas de maior complexidade do que o original, com melhorias significativas ao nível dos tempos de execução. Além da descrição do processo de paralelização do programa original e das tecnologias para tal utilizadas, é também feita a análise do programa desenvolvido e são dadas instruções para a sua utilização, com o objetivo não só de facilitar a utilização do ParFludan como também de providenciar algumas linhas de orientação para a paralelização de outros programas em condições semelhantes.

A otimização de programas de computação científica é um problema extremamente relevante em engenharia pois uma otimização eficaz pode trazer ganhos de algumas ordens de grandeza em diversas dimensões: tempo de execução, memória utilizada, custo, precisão numérica, dimensão dos dados de entrada, tempo de programador, etc. Este relatório discute a otimização de memória e, em particular, pretende fornecer linhas de orientação para a otimização eficaz de um programa de computação científica em termos de memória. Descreve-se brevemente um modelo simples de um computador que permite compreender os conceitos mais relevantes da memória de um computador, e descrevem-se várias estratégias de otimização. Estas estratégias são discutidas e exemplificadas, e compiladas numa checklist com vista a ser percorrida e analisada aquando da otimização de memória de um programa de computação científica. É discutido um caso de estudo em que foi feita a análise dos objetivos da otimização e das características do programa. Feita esta análise foram escolhidas três estratégias da checklist que permitiram, com pouco esforço, resolver completamente o problema original.

O LNEC mantém desde 2007 uma infraestrutura cluster, o Medusa, com o objectivo de proporcionar aos seus investigadores acesso a capacidades modernas de computação científica para resolução de problemas de engenharia. No entanto, algumas características do cluster têm atrasado a sua adoção generalizada pelos investigadores, sendo uma delas a necessidade de utilizar um ambiente Linux para interagir com o Medusa da forma convencional. Neste relatório é introduzida uma alternativa a esta forma convencional de utilização do Medusa, recorrendo ao ambiente de desenvolvimento integrado (IDE) Eclipse e à ferramenta Parallel Tools Platform (PTP), que permite evitar a interacção com o ambiente Linux e utilizar o cluster a partir de um ambiente mais familiar, como o Windows. A expetativa é que esta solução alternativa contribua para facilitar a transição dos investigadores para o Medusa, conduzindo a um melhor aproveitamento dos recursos computacionais disponíveis no laboratório e à exploração de novas possibilidades no domínio da resolução de problemas de cálculo complexos.

Este trabalho introduz os princípios da computação paralela tendo em vista a sua aplicação como ferramenta de computação científica, em particular para acelerar a execução e alargar o escopo de aplicação de programas de cálculo científico. São introduzidos os principais conceitos relativos à computação paralela, as diferentes arquitecturas de máquinas paralelas e os diferentes modelos de paralelização que se podem adoptar, com destaque para o modelo de message-passing e a ferramenta MPI. São ainda descritos os métodos de operação com o cluster do LNEC, o Medusa, e um estudo de caso que ilustra a aplicação de MPI e de uma estratégia de paralelização à resolução de um problema real.

O Repositório Digital de Documentos do LNEC tem vindo a crescer continuamente, desde que entrou oficialmente em produção, em 2009, evoluindo desde esta altura, e cumprindo a sua função de acervo centralizado das publicações do Laboratório e facilitando a consulta das mesmas por parte dos funcionários. Este documento descreve a evolução da plataforma desde a sua entrada em produção, os seus problemas e o que se fez para os resolver, e apresenta uma visão crítica do estado atual da mesma, propondo alguns pontos chave para assegurar a continuidade do repositório no LNEC.

Cada vez mais, o acesso expedito à informação é essencial para o adequado desempenho dos processos envolvidos na Engenharia Civil. É procedimento habitual o LNEC enviar livros e documentos para os diversos Laboratórios de Engenharia dos PALOP, dadas as suas carências a nível de literatura. Dada experiência positiva do LNEC com o seu Repositório Digital, e por se considerar benéfica uma colaboração direta com os PALOP no sentido de partilhar conhecimento entre os Laboratórios, o LNEC, com a colaboração da CPLP, iniciou o processo de capacitação dos Laboratórios de Engenharia dos PALOP com repositórios digitais. Este documento descreve os esforços já empreendidos com três dos países dos PALOP, nomeadamente Cabo Verde, Moçambique e Angola.

Este relatório apresenta-se sobre a forma de manual de utilização do repositório digital do Laboratório, pretendendo não só servir de base de apoio para novos utilizadores como também responder a algumas perguntas comuns e mostrar algumas “boas práticas” aos utilizadores mais habituais e/ou mais avançados.

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