Project risk management is regarded as a necessary dimension of effective project delivery. Current practices tend to focus on tangible issues such as late delivery of equipment or the implications of technology. This book introduces a framework to identify emergent behavior-centric intangible risks and the conditions that initiate them. Decision Making in Risk Management: Quantifying Intangible Risk Factors in Projects identifies the quantitative measures to assess behavior-induced risks by presenting a framework that limits the interpersonal tension of addressing behavioral risks. Included in the book is an illustrative case study from the oil and gas sector that demonstrates the use of the framework. The missing dimension of behavior-centric intangible risk factors in current risk identification is explored. The book goes on to cover management processes, providing a systematic analytical approach to mitigate subjectivity when addressing behavioral risks in projects. This book is useful to those working in the fields of Project Management, Systems Engineering, Risk Management, and Behavioral Science.

This volume carries the proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Information Systems Development (ISD). ISD progresses rapidly, continually creating new challenges. Progress in ISD comes from research as well as from practice. The aim of the Conference is to provide an international forum for the exchange of ideas and experiences between academia and industry, and to stimulate exploration of new solutions.

Why care about hardware/firmware interaction? These interfaces are critical, a solid hardware design married with adaptive firmware can access all the capabilities of an application and overcome limitations caused by poor communication. For the first time, a book has come along that will help hardware engineers and firmware engineers work together to mitigate or eliminate problems that occur when hardware and firmware are not optimally compatible. Solving these issues will save time and money, getting products to market sooner to create more revenue.
The principles and best practices presented in this book will prove to be a valuable resource for both hardware and firmware engineers. Topics include register layout, interrupts, timing and performance, aborts, and errors. Real world cases studies will help to solidify the principles and best practicies with an aim towards cleaner designs, shorter schedules, and better implementation
Reduce product development delays with the best practices in this bookConcepts apply to ASICs, ASSPs, SoCs, and FPGAsReal-world examples and case studies highlight the good and bad of design processes

Problem-solving and better thinking skills are among the top skills that employers are looking for. This book presents various methods of problem-solving that can be adapted to any field. It focuses on a set of a dozen new approaches with an ending result to finding better solutions to problems that you may have previously found difficult. The book discusses problem-solving based upon new thinking skills and presents the relationship between problem-solving and creativity. A connection between problem-solving and re-engineering is presented as the book explores the ability to tackle new and difficult problems in all aspects of life. It points you in the direction of how to easily find better solutions to problems that previously were found to be difficult. Target audience is general engineers, systems engineers, scientists, technologists, mathematicians, and lawyers.

Emphasises a hands-on approach to modelling Strong emphasis on coding and software tools for systems biology Covers the entire spectrum of modelling, from static networks, to dynamic models Thoughtful exercises to test and enable student understanding of concepts Current chapters on exciting new developments like whole-cell modelling and community modelling

This book presents a concise introduction to the latest advances in robust cooperative control design for multi-agent systems with input delay and external disturbances, especially from a prediction and observation perspective. The volume covers a wide range of applications, such as the trajectory tracking of quadrotors, formation flying of multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and fixed-time formation of ground vehicles. Robust cooperative control means that multi-agent systems are able to achieve specified control tasks while remaining robust in the face of both parametric and nonparametric model uncertainties. In addition, the authors cover a wide range of key issues in cooperative control, such as communication and input delays, parametric model uncertainties and external disturbances. Moving beyond the scope of existing works, a systematic prediction and observation approach to designing robust cooperative control laws is presented. About the Authors Chunyan Wang is an Associate Professor in the School of Aerospace Engineering at Beijing Institute of Technology, China. Zongyu Zuo is a full Professor with the School of Automation Science and Electrical Engineering, Beihang University, China. Jianan Wang is an Associate Professor in the School of Aerospace Engineering at Beijing Institute of Technology, China. Zhengtao Ding is a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at University of Manchester, U.K.

This book promotes an understanding of the purposeful muddling that health care workers rely on to be better able to function and operate in the multitude of complex ecosystems we call "health care." The book argues the case for the importance of recognising and understanding muddling behaviours, practices and activities in order to create resilient care. The book demonstrates how resilient health care principles can enable managers as well as those on the frontlines to work more effectively towards interdisciplinary care by gaining a deeper understanding of real-world practices that manifest in everyday clinical settings. This is done by presenting a set of case studies, theoretical chapters and applications that relate experiences, bring forth ideas and illustrate practical solutions. Primarily aimed at people who are directly involved in the running and improvement of health care systems, it provides practical guidance. It is also of direct interest to health care professionals in clinical and managerial positions as well as researchers. Jeffrey Braithwaite is Founding Director of the Australian Institute of Health Innovation, Professor of Health Systems Research and Director of the Centre for Healthcare Resilience and Implementation Science, Macquarie University (Australia). His research examines the changing nature of complex health systems and he has received over 50 different national and international awards for his teaching and research. Erik Hollnagel is Senior Professor of Patient Safety at Joenkoeping University (Sweden). He is a highly regarded international expert with significant contributions to a variety of fields ranging from nuclear power generation, aerospace and aviation to industry, transportation and, most notably, health care. Garthe Hunte is a Clinical Professor and Emergency Physician holding multiple academic and clinical leadership appointments across Canada. His research programme centres around how safety is created in complex socio-technical systems, and in the application of resilience engineering in health care.

Engineering systems and products are an important element of the world economy and each year billions of dollars are spent to develop, manufacture, operate, and maintain systems and products around the globe. Because of this, global competition is requiring reliability professionals to work closely with other departments involved in engineering development during the product design and manufacturing phase. Applied Reliability for Engineers is an attempt to meet the need for a single volume that addresses a wide range of applied reliability topics. The material is treated in such a manner that the reader will require no previous knowledge to understand the text. The sources of most of the information presented are given in a reference section at the end of each chapter. At appropriate places, the book contains examples along with their solutions. At the end of each chapter there are numerous problems to test reader comprehension. This volume is thus suitable for use as a textbook as well as for reference. Applied Reliability for Engineers is useful to design professionals, system engineers, reliability specialists, graduate and senior undergraduate students, researchers and instructors of reliability engineering, and engineers-at-large.

Patients are increasingly encouraged to take an active role in managing their health and health care. New technologies, cultural shifts, trends in healthcare delivery, and policies have brought to the forefront the "work" patients, families, and other non-professionals perform in the pursuit of health. This volume closely examines notable application areas for the emerging discipline of Patient Ergonomics - the science of patient work. The Patient Factor: Applications of Patient Ergonomics, Volume II reviews the definition of Patient Ergonomics and discusses the application of Patient Ergonomics across contexts. It analyzes patient work performed in emergency departments, transitions of care, home and community settings, retail pharmacies, and online communities. It also examines applications to groups including veterans, pediatric patients, older adults, the underserved, and people engaged in health promotion. The Patient Factor is ideal for academics working in health care and patient-centered research, their students, human factors practitioners working in healthcare organizations or at technology companies, frontline healthcare professionals, and leaders of healthcare delivery organizations.

Sustainability is one of the most embraced topics nowadays. Everybody is affected by issues of sustainability. Every organization needs to pay attention to these issues. As long as more people and more organizations are engaging in business and industry activities, there will always be a need for sustainability. This book presents tools such as lean six sigma to help sustain results by using process focused decisions. This book covers tools and techniques of industrial engineering to promote sustainability. It discusses a systems approach, the evolution of new products, development of sustainability alliances, and highlights the role of sustainability in advancing organizational goals. The book also addresses sustainability as a coordinated project using a project management approach. It includes the interface of humans and technology and presents an integration of analytics. The book is ideal for all engineering, business, and management fields.

This book applies systems thinking to treat project management in a systemic and systematic manner from a problem-solving perspective. Considering the project as a system, the book discusses traditional project planning and organizing, as well as some neglected aspects of the project, namely how to prevent cost and schedule escalation, how to deal with change, recognize problems in time to prevent project failure and what to do when things go wrong during the implementation states of a project. This book provides you with a better understanding of the systems approach to problem-solving and project management that will enable you to be more successful at managing projects. Features Treats projects as systems Presents project management as a problem-solving paradigm Discusses how to incorporate prevention into planning and how to show the value Describes what to do and how to cope with unanticipated problems that arise during the project implementation state Introduces new tools and techniques

Engineering systems are an important element of world economy. Each year billions of dollars are spent to develop, manufacture, operate, and maintain various types of engineering systems about the globe. The reliability and usability of these systems have become important because of their increasing complexity, sophistication, and non-specialist users. Global competition and other factors are forcing manufacturers to produce highly reliable and usable engineering systems. Along with examples and solutions, this book integrates engineering systems reliability and usability into a single volume for those individuals that directly or indirectly are concerned with these areas.

This book presents a comprehensive compilation of practical systems engineering models. The application and recognition of systems engineering is spreading rapidly, however there is no book that addresses the availability and usability of systems engineering models. Notable among the models to be included are the V-Model, DEJI Model, and Waterfall Model. There are other models developed for specific organizational needs, which will be identified and presented in a practical template so that other organizations can learn and use them. A better understanding of the models, through a comprehensive book, will make these models more visible, embraced, and applied across the spectrum. Visit www.DEJImodel.com for model details. Features Covers applications to both small and large problems Displays decomposition of complex problems into smaller manageable chunks Discusses direct considerations of the pertinent constraints that exist in the problem domain Presents systematic linking of inputs to goals and outputs

This book covers the issues related to optimization of engineering and management problems using soft computing techniques with an industrial outlook. It covers a broad area related to real life complex decision making problems using a heuristics approach. It also explores a wide perspective and future directions in industrial engineering research on a global platform/scenario. The book highlights the concept of optimization, presents various soft computing techniques, offers sample problems, and discusses related software programs complete with illustrations. Features Explains the concept of optimization and relevance to soft computing techniques towards optimal solution in engineering and management Presents various soft computing techniques Offers problems and their optimization using various soft computing techniques Discusses related software programs, with illustrations Provides a step-by-step tutorial on how to handle relevant software for obtaining the optimal solution to various engineering problems

This book is open access under a CC BY-NC 2.5 license. This book presents the VISCERAL project benchmarks for analysis and retrieval of 3D medical images (CT and MRI) on a large scale, which used an innovative cloud-based evaluation approach where the image data were stored centrally on a cloud infrastructure and participants placed their programs in virtual machines on the cloud. The book presents the points of view of both the organizers of the VISCERAL benchmarks and the participants. The book is divided into five parts. Part I presents the cloud-based benchmarking and Evaluation-as-a-Service paradigm that the VISCERAL benchmarks used. Part II focuses on the datasets of medical images annotated with ground truth created in VISCERAL that continue to be available for research. It also covers the practical aspects of obtaining permission to use medical data and manually annotating 3D medical images efficiently and effectively. The VISCERAL benchmarks are described in Part III, including a presentation and analysis of metrics used in evaluation of medical image analysis and search. Lastly, Parts IV and V present reports by some of the participants in the VISCERAL benchmarks, with Part IV devoted to the anatomy benchmarks and Part V to the retrieval benchmark. This book has two main audiences: the datasets as well as the segmentation and retrieval results are of most interest to medical imaging researchers, while eScience and computational science experts benefit from the insights into using the Evaluation-as-a-Service paradigm for evaluation and benchmarking on huge amounts of data.

Visual Perception and Control of Underwater Robots covers theories and applications from aquatic visual perception and underwater robotics. Within the framework of visual perception for underwater operations, image restoration, binocular measurement, and object detection are addressed. More specifically, the book includes adversarial critic learning for visual restoration, NSGA-II-based calibration for binocular measurement, prior knowledge refinement for object detection, analysis of temporal detection performance, as well as the effect of the aquatic data domain on object detection. With the aid of visual perception technologies, two up-to-date underwater robot systems are demonstrated. The first system focuses on underwater robotic operation for the task of object collection in the sea. The second is an untethered biomimetic robotic fish with a camera stabilizer, its control methods based on visual tracking. The authors provide a self-contained and comprehensive guide to understand underwater visual perception and control. Bridging the gap between theory and practice in underwater vision, the book features implementable algorithms, numerical examples, and tests, where codes are publicly available. Additionally, the mainstream technologies covered in the book include deep learning, adversarial learning, evolutionary computation, robust control, and underwater bionics. Researchers, senior undergraduate and graduate students, and engineers dealing with underwater visual perception and control will benefit from this work.

This book presents both the importance of energy transition and its associated difficulties. Energy Transition, Second Edition, provides an explanation of the physical concepts of energy and power and also reviews global energy consumption and our dependence on energy. The book discusses the links between the economy and energy. It explains the drawbacks and dangers of different energy sources and tries to compare them. By reviewing future energy resources, it evaluates several transition scenarios. The book shows that the laws of physics prevent the emergence of simple, pleasant solutions, but it proposes potential solutions and encourages readers to develop better processes from energy sources to production to consumption. This book will be of interest to engineers and undergraduate and graduate students studying and working in various fields of energy; producers of fossil, gas, oil, coal, electric, renewable, and nuclear energy; and anyone interested in better understanding these fundamental problems for our future. FEATURES Discusses the current issues with energy transition Covers several energy transition scenarios and their associated difficulties Presents the links between economy and energy Highlights the importance of a global discussion of energy Encourages the development of better, improved processes in energy sources from production to consumption

This book presents both the importance of energy transition and its associated difficulties. Energy Transition, Second Edition, provides an explanation of the physical concepts of energy and power and also reviews global energy consumption and our dependence on energy. The book discusses the links between the economy and energy. It explains the drawbacks and dangers of different energy sources and tries to compare them. By reviewing future energy resources, it evaluates several transition scenarios. The book shows that the laws of physics prevent the emergence of simple, pleasant solutions, but it proposes potential solutions and encourages readers to develop better processes from energy sources to production to consumption. This book will be of interest to engineers and undergraduate and graduate students studying and working in various fields of energy; producers of fossil, gas, oil, coal, electric, renewable, and nuclear energy; and anyone interested in better understanding these fundamental problems for our future. FEATURES Discusses the current issues with energy transition Covers several energy transition scenarios and their associated difficulties Presents the links between economy and energy Highlights the importance of a global discussion of energy Encourages the development of better, improved processes in energy sources from production to consumption

This book is open access under a CC BY NC ND license. It addresses the most recent developments in cloud computing such as HPC in the Cloud, heterogeneous cloud, self-organising and self-management, and discusses the business implications of cloud computing adoption. Establishing the need for a new architecture for cloud computing, it discusses a novel cloud management and delivery architecture based on the principles of self-organisation and self-management. This focus shifts the deployment and optimisation effort from the consumer to the software stack running on the cloud infrastructure. It also outlines validation challenges and introduces a novel generalised extensible simulation framework to illustrate the effectiveness, performance and scalability of self-organising and self-managing delivery models on hyperscale cloud infrastructures. It concludes with a number of potential use cases for self-organising, self-managing clouds and the impact on those businesses.

"The Student's Guide to VHDL" is a condensed edition of "The Designer's Guide to VHDL, " the most widely used textbook on VHDL for digital system modeling. "The Student's Guide" is targeted as a supplemental reference book for computer organization and digital design courses.
Since publication of the first edition of "The Student's Guide, " the IEEE VHDL and related standards have been revised. The "Designer's Guide" has been revised to reflect the changes, so it is appropriate that "The Student's Guide" also be revised.
"In The Student's Guide to VHDL, 2nd Edition, " we have included a design case study illustrating an FPGA-based design flow. The aim is to show how VHDL modeling fits into a design flow, starting from high-level design and proceeding through detailed design and verification, synthesis, FPGA place and route, and final timing verification. Inclusion of the case study helps to better serve the educational market. Currently, most college courses do not formally address the details of design flow. Students may be given informal guidance on how to proceed with lab projects. In many cases, it is left to students to work it out for themselves. The case study in "The Student's Guide" provides a reference design flow that can be adapted to a variety of lab projects.

mental improvements during the same period. What is clearly needed in verification techniques and technology is the equivalent of a synthesis productivity breakthrough. In the second edition of Writing Testbenches, Bergeron raises the verification level of abstraction by introducing coverage-driven constrained-random transaction-level self-checking testbenches all made possible through the introduction of hardware verification languages (HVLs), such as e from Verisity and OpenVera from Synopsys. The state-of-art methodologies described in Writing Test benches will contribute greatly to the much-needed equivalent of a synthesis breakthrough in verification productivity. I not only highly recommend this book, but also I think it should be required reading by anyone involved in design and verification of today's ASIC, SoCs and systems. Harry Foster Chief Architect Verplex Systems, Inc. xviii Writing Testbenches: Functional Verification of HDL Models PREFACE If you survey hardware design groups, you will learn that between 60% and 80% of their effort is now dedicated to verification."

Knowledge Architectures reviews traditional approaches to managing information and explains why they need to adapt to support 21st-century information management and discovery. Exploring the rapidly changing environment in which information is being managed and accessed, the book considers how to use knowledge architectures, the basic structures and designs that underlie all of the parts of an effective information system, to best advantage. Drawing on 40 years of work with a variety of organizations, Bedford explains that failure to understand the structure behind any given system can be the difference between an effective solution and a significant and costly failure. Demonstrating that the information user environment has shifted significantly in the past 20 years, the book explains that end users now expect designs and behaviors that are much closer to the way they think, work, and act. Acknowledging how important it is that those responsible for developing an information or knowledge management system understand knowledge structures, the book goes beyond a traditional library science perspective and uses case studies to help translate the abstract and theoretical to the practical and concrete. Explaining the structures in a simple and intuitive way and providing examples that clearly illustrate the challenges faced by a range of different organizations, Knowledge Architectures is essential reading for those studying and working in library and information science, data science, systems development, database design, and search system architecture and engineering.

Knowledge Architectures reviews traditional approaches to managing information and explains why they need to adapt to support 21st-century information management and discovery. Exploring the rapidly changing environment in which information is being managed and accessed, the book considers how to use knowledge architectures, the basic structures and designs that underlie all of the parts of an effective information system, to best advantage. Drawing on 40 years of work with a variety of organizations, Bedford explains that failure to understand the structure behind any given system can be the difference between an effective solution and a significant and costly failure. Demonstrating that the information user environment has shifted significantly in the past 20 years, the book explains that end users now expect designs and behaviors that are much closer to the way they think, work, and act. Acknowledging how important it is that those responsible for developing an information or knowledge management system understand knowledge structures, the book goes beyond a traditional library science perspective and uses case studies to help translate the abstract and theoretical to the practical and concrete. Explaining the structures in a simple and intuitive way and providing examples that clearly illustrate the challenges faced by a range of different organizations, Knowledge Architectures is essential reading for those studying and working in library and information science, data science, systems development, database design, and search system architecture and engineering.

This updated edition gives readers hands-on experience in real-time DSP using a practical, step-by-step framework that also incorporates demonstrations, exercises, and problems, coupled with brief overviews of applicable theory and MATLAB applications. Organized in three sections that cover enduring fundamentals and present practical projects and invaluable appendices, this new edition provides support for the most recent and powerful of the inexpensive DSP development boards currently available from Texas Instruments: the OMAP-L138 LCDK. It includes two new real-time DSP projects, as well as three new appendices: an introduction to the Code Generation tools available with MATLAB, a guide on how to turn the LCDK into a portable battery-operated device, and a comparison of the three DSP boards directly supported by this edition.

This book serves three basic purposes: (1) a tutorial-type reference for complex systems engineering (CSE) concepts and associated terminology, (2) a recommendation of a proposed methodology showing how the evolving practice of CSE can lead to a more unified theory, and (3) a complex systems (CSs) initiative for organizations to invest some of their resources toward helping to make the world a better place. A wide variety of technical practitioners-e.g., developers of new or improved systems (particularly systems engineers), program and project managers, associated staff/workers, funders and overseers, government executives, military officers, systems acquisition personnel, contract specialists, owners of large and small businesses, professional society members, and CS researchers-may be interested in further exploring these topics. Readers will learn more about CS characteristics and behaviors and CSE principles and will therefore be able to focus on techniques that will better serve them in their everyday work environments in dealing with complexity. The fundamental observation is that many systems inherently involve a deeper complexity because stakeholders are engaged in the enterprise. This means that such CSs are more difficult to invent, create, or improve upon because no one can be in total control since people cannot be completely controlled. Therefore, one needs to concentrate on trying to influence progress, then wait a suitable amount of time to see what happens, iterating as necessary. With just three chapters in this book, it seems to make sense to provide a tutorial introduction that readers can peruse only as necessary, considering their background and understanding, then a chapter laying out the suggested artifacts and methodology, followed by a chapter emphasizing worthwhile areas of application.