Search

The recast of the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive 844 from 2018 stipulates the need of meeting the criteria of nearly Zero Energy Buildings, at both new and existing buildings. Although that the target is starting to get embraced by the design community, the process of modelling such buildings is very time consuming. The modelling and simulation of the construction joints, known as thermal bridges implies knowledge regarding numerical simulation and also the acquisition of commercial licenses in order to model these cases. Thus, designers use atlases of thermal bridges to reduce the time needed to asses such joints. Nevertheless, the thermal bridges cases are very numerous, and is very difficult to find all needed cases in the existing atlases. In order to solve this issue, the paper presents and online modelling and simulation tool that can be used by designers in a quick and reliable way. The software can also be used by beginners in the field, without the need of having advance modelling and simulation knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Image matting is a technique to extract the foreground from an image. A Web-based image matting tool, NIM 3.1, is presented in this paper. To extract the foreground, the user paints roughly the boundary between the foreground and background. The computation begins when painting begins, and a partial result can be shown immediately. The tool uses new techniques and incorporates new functions to perform better than earlier versions of NIM. It can extract quality, competitive foregrounds and is faster than non-online, well-known Adobe Photoshop. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

How can the artistic and research performance of about 550 university staff members be measured? And how can the staff be made to participate in an online tool designed to measure their performance? At the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz (Austria), we developed a comprehensive system to represent the wide-spread range of activities of our artists and researchers in particular and other staff members too. We implemented this tool as part of our existing campus management system. The roll-out in 2008 was accomplished by various challenges to be reported. The presentation deals with the situation before and immediately after the roll-out of this ICT-tool. We examine (a) the design process, (b) the technical implementation especially considering user-friendliness, and (c) the accompanying measures of the roll-out. In these respects, we have learned that (a) high effort for involving a wide range of persons pays off twice afterwards, (b) sometimes research and management interests in data collection have to be pared down, and (c) extensive instructions, personal assistance, and highlighting beneficial features can make even skeptics or unskilled computer users participate in an ICT-based performance recording. The new system rapidly was accepted by the majority of the staff members: the participation rate is two thirds of the staff members in the first year of use. They observe additional personal advantages from the new ICT-tool. We now have a fine-working tool to measure artistic and research performance. Both quality and quantity of the collected data were strongly increased as compared to former approaches to measure artistic and research performance of our staff members. The tool provides fundamental data for performance statistics of single persons, departments, and our university, in our Intellectual Capital Report for instance. Enhancements are ongoing, based on user feedback as well as additional management requirements. A process will be developed to assure the quality of individual entries without restricting the individuality of artistic and research activities. Aside, we cooperate with another Austrian university to adjust our system to their specific needs and to transfer it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At University of Music and Performing Arts Graz (Austria), we have developed and implemented a comprehensive online system to measure artistic and scientific performance in 2007. Since the roll-out in 2008, more than 20.000 entries are made by the staff members. The main topic in the beginning was to make the staff members use the new tool. Now, we have deal with different topics: We have to keep them motivated to enter further data. We have to handle the big amount of data. And we have to increase benefits from collecting data for staff members, departments, and the university. The paper presents some of our approaches to generate these benefits and thereby also come up to the other requirements. For instance, an easy-to-handle reporting and exporting solution is now available for persons and departments. Indicators for quality management and evaluation purposes shall be derived from the tool in the upcoming future. Administrative work load analyses based on out tool influence the human resources' allocation to departments. In any case, there is a strong need to reduce complexity and we must not spread the whole data set over different purposes. We conclude that more data might be better with regard to reporting, rankings, or funding, but also raise problems that have to be solved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teaching software engineering (SE) is now critical part of all major curricula in computer science programs. The ultimate goals of such programs include development of teamwork practices and techniques important for software (SW) development and application of modern SE practices and processes. One of the most challenging parts in these activities is the assessment process whose goal is to evaluate student's achievement of those learning objectives, namely adherence to the software engineering process and their ability to develop adequate SW product. The challenges of the assessment process include the following: a) Fairness of the assessment process — reflection of individual performance and contribution as well as of ability of students to work in collaborative environment and support teamwork; b) Effectiveness, efficiency and ease of implementation; c) Fast and timely access to the relevant feedback about performance and collaboration of the students; d) Automation of the process and availability of the recorded data for further analysis. To address these questions we have designed a tool Elassys for assessment and analysis of teamwork and individual student performance in software engineering projects. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]