A modelagem de distribuição de espécies tem como objetivo induzir um modelo para predizer a distribuição potencial de uma dada espécie. O modelo é projetado em um mapa de distribuição potencial que representa a probabilidade da presença da espécie em cada ponto. Esse processo de indução está relacionado com a estimativa do nicho fundamental da espécie, através da busca por relações entre dados georreferenciados de ocorrência da espécie e variáveis ambientais. Vários algoritmos de modelagem podem ser utilizados nessa tarefa. Oferecer diversos algoritmos pode tornar as ferramentas de modelagem mais completas. Porém, surge uma questão importante: qual algoritmo de modelagem escolher? Essa questão está relacionada com o desempenho preditivo das técnicas implementadas pelos algoritmos. Nesse contexto, o objetivo principal do trabalho foi organizar e especificar um método de análise de desempenho preditivo dos algoritmos de modelagem de distribuição de espécies. Através do método proposto é possível ter uma visão completa, estruturada e sistemática das etapas previstas em projetos de análise de desempenho preditivo dos algoritmos. O método pode ser utilizado como referência em estudos de validação de novos algoritmos...

A modelagem de distribuição de espécies é uma técnica cuja finalidade é estimar modelos baseados em nichos ecológicos. Esses modelos podem auxiliar nos processos de tomadas de decisões, no planejamento e na realização de ações que visem a conservação e a preservação ambiental. Existem diversas ferramentas projetadas para modelagem de distribuição de espécies, dentre elas o framework openModeller, na qual este trabalho está inserido. Várias técnicas de Inteligência Artificial já foram utilizadas para desenvolver algoritmos de modelagem de distribuição de espécies, como Entropia Máxima. No entanto, as ferramentas estatísticas tradicionais não disponibilizam pacotes com o algoritmo de Entropia Máxima, o que é comum para outras técnicas. Além disso, apesar de existir um software gratuito específico para modelagem de distribuição de espécies com o algoritmo de Entropia Máxima, esse software não possui código aberto. Assim, a base deste trabalho é a investigação acerca da modelagem de distribuição de espécies utilizando Entropia Máxima. Desta forma, o objetivo principal é definir diferentes estratégias para o algoritmo de Entropia Máxima no contexto da modelagem de distribuição de espécies. Para atingir esse objetivo...

Nos últimos anos, vários esforços têm sido realizados para desenvolver ambientes de simulação mais amigáveis para seus usuários (modeladores e tomadores de decisões). Técnicas de computação gráfica tem sido largamente utilizadas na interface com o usuário, tanto para a apresentação dos resultados da simulação em pós-processamento ou durante a experimentação, como para a construção de modelos de simulação através de editores gráficos. Desta forma, vários estudos na área de simulação têm sido direcionados para ambientes que ofereçam facilidades para a modelagem e experimentação, trazendo novos conceitos como simulação interativa visual (VIS - Visual Interactive Simulation) e modelagem interativa visual (VIM - Visual Interactive Modeling). A partir de estudos de diversos sistemas e ambientes de simulação, através de uma análise de seus recursos e facilidades disponíveis, são definidos de forma bem clara os conceitos de VIS e VIM. VIM se refere à construção do modelo de simulação com auxílio de recursos visuais e interativos na fase de modelagem, enquanto que VIS se refere a execução do modelo de simulação (usa a descrição gerada em VIM) através de recursos oferecidos na fase de experimentação. Desta forma...

Parmodel is a web server for automated comparative modeling and evaluation of protein structures. The aim of this tool is to help inexperienced users to perform modeling, assessment, visualization, and optimization of protein models as well as crystallographers to evaluate structures solved experimentally. It is subdivided in four modules: Parmodel Modeling, Parmodel Assessment, Parmodel Visualization, and Parmodel Optimization. The main module is the Parmodel Modeling that allows the building of several models ford a same protein in a reduced time, through the distribution of modeling processes on a Beowulf cluster. Parmodel automates and integrates the main softwares used in comparative modeling as MODELLER, Whatcheck, Procheck, Raster3D, Molscript, and Gromacs. This web server is freely accessible at http://www.biocristalografia.df.ibilce.unesp.br/tools/parmodel. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Este trabalho propõe um modelo fuzzy funcional evolutivo que utiliza uma aplicação do aprendizado participativo para a construção de uma base de regras. O aprendizado participativo é um modelo de aprendizado baseado na noção de compatibilidade para a atualização do conhecimento do sistema. O aprendizado participativo pode ser traduzido em um algoritmo de agrupamento não supervisionado conhecido como agrupamento participativo. O algoritmo intitulado Aprendizado Participativo Evolutivo é proposto para construir um modelo fuzzy funcional evolutivo no qual as regras são obtidas a partir de um algoritmo de agrupamento não supervisionado. O algoritmo utiliza uma versão do agrupamento participativo para a determinação de uma base de regras correspondente ao modelo funcional do tipo Takagi-Sugeno evolutivo. A partir de uma noção generalizada, o modelo proposto é aplicado em problemas de previsão de séries temporais e os resultados são obtidos para a conhecida série Box-Jenkis, além da previsão de uma série de carga horária de energia elétrica. Os resultados são comparados com o modelo Takagi-Sugeno evolutivo que utiliza a noção de função potencial para agrupar os dados dinâmicamente e com duas abordagens baseadas em redes neurais. Os resultados mostram que o modelo proposto é eficiente e parcimonioso...

Business process modeling and management approaches are increasingly used and disclosed between organizations as a means of optimizing and streamlining the business activities. Among the various existing modeling languages, we stress the Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN), currently in version 2.0. BPMN is a widespread OMG standard that is actually used either in academia and in organizations. BPMN enables business process modeling, but does not facilitate the modeling of the information infrastructure involved in the process. However, interest in the data and its preservation has increased in BPMN’s most recent version. The aim of this paper is to study BPMN 2.0, particularly on the usage and persistence of data, and present an approach for obtaining an early data model from the business process modeling, which may then be used as a starting data model in the software development process.

Project-based subject in which students from multiple disciplines are encouraged to develop and investigate systems and ideas from their fields of study as they explore the process of building and testing models and simulations. Explores various modeling software packages, criteria for developing the most appropriate simulation for a given situation, and methods for evaluating the success and utility of models. Students with an education focus consider what and how people learn from simulations, and how modeling tools can be implemented in public school settings. Graduate students are expected to complete additional assignments. From the course home page: Course Description During the past ten years, simulation modeling, especially as it helps people to understand complex systems, has become a mainstream use of computational technology. The widespread popularity of "edutainment" software like SimCity and Civilization gives a clear indication of the extent to which simulation games have permeated popular culture. As these and other games have found places in the classroom, researchers have tried to ascertain what and how students learn from these environments, and what implications this has for software and curriculum design. While it can be useful to experiment with pre-built models like SimCity...

In the past two decades, multi-agent systems (MAS) have emerged as a new paradigm for conceptualizing large and complex distributed software systems. A multi-agent system view provides a natural abstraction for both the structure and the behavior of modern-day software systems. Although there were many conceptual frameworks for using multi-agent systems, there was no well established and widely accepted method for modeling multi-agent systems. This dissertation research addressed the representation and analysis of multi-agent systems based on model-oriented formal methods. The objective was to provide a systematic approach for studying MAS at an early stage of system development to ensure the quality of design. Given that there was no well-defined formal model directly supporting agent-oriented modeling, this study was centered on three main topics: (1) adapting a well-known formal model, predicate transition nets (PrT nets), to support MAS modeling; (2) formulating a modeling methodology to ease the construction of formal MAS models; and (3) developing a technique to support machine analysis of formal MAS models using model checking technology. PrT nets were extended to include the notions of dynamic structure, agent communication and coordination to support agent-oriented modeling. An aspect-oriented technique was developed to address the modularity of agent models and compositionality of incremental analysis. A set of translation rules were defined to systematically translate formal MAS models to concrete models that can be verified through the model checker SPIN (Simple Promela Interpreter). This dissertation presents the framework developed for modeling and analyzing MAS...

Rapid advances in electronic communication devices and technologies have resulted in a shift in the way communication applications are being developed. These new development strategies provide abstract views of the underlying communication technologies and lead to the so-called user-centric communication applications. One user-centric communication (UCC) initiative is the Communication Virtual Machine (CVM) technology, which uses the Communication Modeling Language (CML) for modeling communication services and the CVM for realizing these services. In communication-intensive domains such as telemedicine and disaster management, there is an increasing need for user-centric communication applications that are domain-specific and that support the dynamic coordination of communication services commonly found in collaborative communication scenarios. However, UCC approaches like the CVM offer little support for the dynamic coordination of communication services resulting from inherent dependencies between individual steps of a collaboration task. Users either have to manually coordinate communication services, or reply on a process modeling technique to build customized solutions for services in a specific domain that are usually costly...

The Unified Modeling Language (UML) has quickly become the industry standard for object-oriented software development. It is being widely used in organizations and institutions around the world. However, UML is often found to be too complex for novice systems analysts. Although prior research has identified difficulties novice analysts encounter in learning UML, no viable solution has been proposed to address these difficulties. Sequence-diagram modeling, in particular, has largely been overlooked. The sequence diagram models the behavioral aspects of an object-oriented software system in terms of interactions among its building blocks, i.e. objects and classes. It is one of the most commonly-used UML diagrams in practice. However, there has been little research on sequence-diagram modeling. The current literature scarcely provides effective guidelines for developing a sequence diagram. Such guidelines will be greatly beneficial to novice analysts who, unlike experienced systems analysts, do not possess relevant prior experience to easily learn how to develop a sequence diagram. There is the need for an effective sequence-diagram modeling technique for novices. This dissertation reports a research study that identified novice difficulties in modeling a sequence diagram and proposed a technique called CHOP (CHunking...

In this research, a piezoelectric actuator was modeled using fuzzy subtractive clustering and neuro-fuzzy networks. In the literature, the use of various modeling techniques (excluding techniques used in this article) and different arrangements of inputs in black box modeling of piezoelectric actuators for the purpose of displacement prediction has been reported. Nowadays, universal approximators are available with proven ability in system modeling; hence, the modeling technique is no longer such a critical issue. Appropriate selection of the inputs to the model is, however, still an unsolved problem, with an absence of comparative studies. While the extremum values of input voltage and/or displacement in each cycle of operation have been used in black box modeling inspired by classical phenomenological methods, some researchers have ignored them. This article focuses on addressing this matter. Despite the fact that classical artificial neural networks, the most popular black box modeling tools, provide no visibility of the internal operation, neuro-fuzzy networks can be converted to fuzzy models. Fuzzy models comprise of fuzzy rules which are formed by a number of fuzzy or linguistic values, and this lets the researcher understand the role of each input in the model in comparison with other inputs...

Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.; Documents include Paper and Powerpoint Presentation.; Research and development efforts in modeling and simulation are increasingly focusing on the modeling of human societies, culture, and behavior for improved gaming experiences, analytical and decision tools, training, experimentation, and many other purposes. The rapid growth in this area is creating increasing demands for data, models, tools, and techniques. To investigate the potential need for standards or best practices in this area, the Simulation Interoperability Standards Organization (SISO) has initiated the Human Social Culture Behavior (HSCB) Modeling Standards Study Group. This paper examines the opportunity for development of standards and best practices in this domain and lays out a possible plan of action for the new Study Group.

Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.; Documents include Paper & Presentation.; Research and development efforts in modeling and simulation are increasingly focusing on the modeling of human societies, culture, and behavior for improved gaming experiences, analytical and decision tools, training, experimentation, and many other purposes. The rapid growth in this area is creating increasing demands for data, models, tools, and techniques. To investigate the potential need for standards or best practices in this area, the Simulation Interoperability Standards Organization (SISO) approved establishment of the Human Social Culture Behavior (HSCB) Modeling Standards Study Group. The Study Group kicked off technical activities at the Fall 2010 Simulation Interoperability Workshop. This paper describes objectives of the Study Group and provides a summary of the various technical activities that are in progress to gather information for the Study Group. Additional details and current status of these activities are provided in separate papers being presented in the Spring 2011 SIW.

The competitive market forces organizations to be agile and flexible so as to react robustly to complex events. Modeling helps managing this complexity. However, in order to model an enterprise, many stakeholders, with different expertise, must work together and take decisions. These decisions and their rationale are not always captured explicitly, in a standard, formal manner. The main problem is to persuade stakeholders to capture them. This article synthesizes an approach for capturing and using the rationale behind enterprise modeling decisions. The approach is implemented through a domain-specific modeling language, defined as an extension of a standard enterprise architecture modeling language. It promotes coordination, enables presenting different stakeholders’ points of view, facilities participation and collaboration in modeling activities—activities focused here on enterprise architecture viewpoints. To present its benefits, such as rapid prototyping, the approach is applied to large organizations in the context of telecommunication service design. It is exemplified on modeling and capturing decisions on a conference service.; Vanea Chiprianov, Yvon Kermarrec, Siegfried Rouvrais, Jacques Simonin

Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited; Mathematical modeling forms a bridge between the study of mathematics and the application of mathematics with the intent of explaining or predicting real world behavior. In their book A First Course in Mathematical Modeling, Frank R. Giordano, Maurice D. Weir, and William P. Fox provide an introduction to the entire modeling process. Model verification, an important step(in the modeling process, often requires the analysis of vast amounts of data, making computational support essential. Mathematical Modeling Using MA MATLAB acts as a companion resource to A First Course in Mathematical Modeling with the goal of guiding the reader to a fuller understanding of the modeling process through the employment of MATLAB's powerful computational capabilities. In it, the reader is led through a series of examples, each building upon the previous, which apply MATLAB's computational power to various modeling scenarios. While not intended as a text in modeling, Mathematical Modeling Using MA TIAB is a useful resource for the novice modeler interested in tackling problems too large to be performed manually; http://www.archive.org/details/mathematicalmode00phil; Captain, United States Army

Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited; Current cognitive models not only lack flexibility and realism, they fail to model individual behavior and reduced performance. This research analyzes current cognitive theories (namely, symbolism, connectionism, and dynamicism). It hypothesizes that reduced human performance can be best modeled as a complex adaptive system. The resulting multi-agent model "Reduced Human Performance Model (RHPM)" implements reactive agents competing for cognitive resources. Lack of resources is used to trigger the simulation of imperfect perception and imperfect cognition. The simulation system is calibrated with human experimental data in scenarios involving vigilance decrement, wherein vigilance is decreased during the first 30 minutes of a screening task. RHPM is then validated against previous unknown vigilance task scenarios. RHPM generates realistic reduced human performance with a new cognitive modeling hypothesis. The developed multi-agent system generates adaptive and emergent behavior. Its use for computer generated forces (i.e. radar screen operator) would improve the realism of simulation systems by adding human like reduced performance. This research's main contribution is the development of a well suited tool to mediate between vigilance theories such as signal detection theory and experimental data. It generates insights creating likely hypotheses to improve the theories.; Major...

Visualizing operations environments in three dimensions (3D) supports the warfighters' ability to make rapid, well-informed decisions by presenting complex systems in a naturalistic, integrated display format. Unfortunately, constructing these environments is a time-consuming task requiring specific expertise not typically available in the command center. The future use of 3D visualization in military operations depends on the ability of personnel with minimal graphics experience to create virtual environments quickly and accurately by leveraging data-driven customization of content from model archives with the data available in the command center. Practical 3D visualization depends on standardized scene autogeneration. The Extensible 3D (X3D) Graphics family of specifications is approved by the International Standards Organization (ISO) as the Web-based format for the interchange and rendering of 3D scenes. Previous work has demonstrated that an archive of X3D scenes, such as the Scenario Authoring and Visualization for Advanced Graphical Environments (SAVAGE) library, can be used to autogenerate sophisticated 3D tactical environments. Assembling and making sense of the data necessary to autogenerate a 3D environment requires context and good documentation...

The Marine Corps' Maritime Prepositioning Force (MPF) marries fly-in troops to their gear in an expeditionary environment. The arrival and assembly operation underneath this larger umbrella of MPF Operations proves itself a somewhat chaotic, definitively complex and dynamic logistics operation. From the moment the offload of the ship or ships begins when equipment and rolling stock exit the ships, until it ends as using units sign for their intended equipment, all personnel involved in this process--drivers, assistant drivers, heavy equipment handlers, crane operators, equipment managers--and all equipment involved present a flurry of activity that must be effectively managed, tracked, and optimized. Modeling, Virtual Environments, and Simulation, or MOVES, tools, aid in providing such capability. The creation of a Discrete Event Simulation (DES) using the open-source tool Viskit enables MPF planning, training, and analysis in its ability to portray the effects that size, amount of personnel support, and time have on the operation. Scenario Authoring and Visualization for Advanced Graphical Environments (Savage) comprises an archive of extensible three dimensional (3D) models that, when tied to the DES in an Extensible 3D (X3D) Graphics environment...

The focus of this thesis was on computer-aided protein structure analysis and homology modeling. Proteins are produced in the cell according to their sequences, which are encoded in their genes. Moreover, biological function of proteins depends on their structure. Computer-aided structure prediction is based on statistically significant homology detection applying sequence comparison between a model protein and proteins with known structure. As the direct study of proteins in vitro and in vivo requires laborious experiments, prediction methods relying on homology offer practical alternatives. In this context, bioinformatics methods for sequence analysis can identify homologies between related proteins, which have evolved from a common ancestor. The more structures were solved experimentally, the more it became apparent that proteins with similar sequences predominantly share similar structural architectures (folds). An immediate application thereof is computer-aided modeling of protein structures by homology. Protein structure cannot be regarded as a rigid object, rather it exists in one defined conformational state that is related to biological function and can depend on external effects, e.g. the presence of a ligand. Because there is no signal for conformational changes at the level of sequence...

A Modelagem Orientada a Objetos (MOO) é o processo de construção de modelos de sistemas através da identificação e definição de um conjunto de objetos relacionados, que comportam-se e colaboram entre si conforme os requisitos estabelecidos para o sistema. Esta definição inclui os três aspectos ortogonais, ou dimensões, deste tipo de modelagem: a dimensão estrutural dos objetos, a dimensão dinâmica do comportamento e a dimensão funcional dos requisitos. Conforme a importância relativa dada a cada uma destas dimensões, podem ser definidas três estratégias possíveis para conduzir a MOO. Estas estratégias são as dirigidas por dados, por comportamento e por processos. A estratégia dirigida por processos já esta superada. Atualmente, a estratégia dirigida por dados domina na maioria das técnicas de MOO. A estratégia dirigida por comportamento propõe que a estrutura dos objetos em um sistema pode ser determinada a partir do comportamento externo e interno que o sistema deve apresentar. Esta idéia é interessante, porque permite introduzir tardiamente o encapsulamento na MOO. Conforme é argumentado neste trabalho, as vantagens atribuídas a orientação a objetos são de implementação, isto é, a decisão de orientar ou não a objetos é...