A Human-Centric Model for Sustainable Asset Management in Railway: A Case Study

The ongoing digital transformation is changing asset management in the railway industry. Emerging digital technologies and Artificial Intelligence is expected to facilitate decision-making in management, operation, and maintenance of railway by providing an integrated data-driven and model-driven solution. An important aspect when developing decision-support solutions based on AI and digital technology is the users’ experience. User experience design process aims to create relevance, context-awareness, and meaningfulness for the end-user. In railway contexts, it is believed that applying a human-centric design model in the development of AI-based artefacts, will enhance the usability of the solution, which will have a positive impact on the decision-making processes. In this research, the applicability of such advanced technologies i.e., Virtual Reality, Mixed Reality, and AI have been reviewed for the railway asset management. To carry out this research work, literature review has been conducted related to available Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality/Mixed Reality technologies and their applications within railway industry. It has been found that these technologies are available, but not applied in railway asset management. Thus, the aim of this paper is to propose a human-centric design model for the enhancement of railway asset management using Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Reality, and Mixed Reality technologies. The practical implication of the findings from this work will benefit in increased efficiency and effectiveness of the operation and maintenance processes in railway.

Conceptual design of sonic boom stealth supersonic transports

This paper introduces a supersonic transport aircraft design model developed in the GENUS aircraft conceptual design environment. A conceptual design model appropriate to supersonic transports with low-to-medium-fidelity methods are developed in GENUS. With this model, the authors reveal the relationship between the sonic boom signature and the lift and volume distributions and the possibility to optimise the lift distribution and volume distribution together so that they can cancel each other at some region. A new inspiring design concept—sonic boom stealth is proposed by the authors. The sonic boom stealth concept is expected to inspire the supersonic aircraft designers to design low-boom concepts through aircraft shaping and to achieve low ground impacts. A family of different classes of supersonic aircraft, including a single-seat supersonic demonstrator (0.47 psf), a 10-passenger supersonic business jet (0.90 psf) and a 50-seat supersonic airliner (1.02 psf), are designed to demonstrate the sonic boom stealth design principles. Although, there are challenges to balance the volume with packaging and control requirements, these concepts prove the feasibility of low-boom low-drag design for supersonic transports from a multidisciplinary perspective.

ReactiveFnJ: A Choreographed Model for Fork-Join Workflow in Serverless Computing

Function-as-a-Service (FaaS) is an event-based reactive programming model where functions run in ephemeral stateless containers for short duration. For building complex serverless applications, function composition is crucial to coordinate and synchronize the workflow of an application. Some serverless orchestration systems exist, but they are in their primitive state and do not provide inherent support for non-trivial workflows like, Fork-Join. To address this gap, we propose a fully serverless and scalable design model ReactiveFnJ for Fork-Join workflow. The intent of this work is to illustrate a design which is completely choreographed, reactive, asynchronous, and represents a dynamic composition model for serverless applications. Our design uses two innovative patterns, namely, Relay Composition and Master-Worker Composition to solve execution time-out challenges. As a Proof-of-Concept (PoC), the prototypical implementation of Split-Sort-Merge use case, based on Fork-Join workflow is discussed and evaluated. The ReactiveFnJ handles embarrassingly parallel computations, and its design does not depend on any external orchestration services, messaging services, and queue services. ReactiveFnJ facilitates in designing fully automated pipelines for distributed data processing systems, satisfying the Serverless Trilemma in true essence. A file of any size can be processed using our effective and extensible design without facing execution time-out challenges. The proposed model is generic and can be applied to a wide range of serverless applications that are based on the Fork-Join workflow pattern. It fosters the choreographed serverless composition for complex workflows. The proposed design model is useful for software engineers and developers in industry and commercial organizations, total solution vendors and academic researchers.

A Systematic Design Model for Gamified Learning Environments

This formative research study is an attempt to develop a design model for gamified learning experiences situated in real-life educational contexts. This chapter reports on the overall gamification model with the emphasis on the contexts and their interactions. With this focus, this chapter aims to posit an alternative perspective to existing gamification design praxis in education which mainly focuses on separate game elements, by arguing that designing a gamified learning experience needs a systematic approach with considerations of the interrelated dimensions and their interplays. The study was conducted throughout the 2014-15 academic year, and the data were collected from two separate groups of pre-service teachers through observations and document collections (n=118) and four sets of interviews (n=42). The results showed that gamification design has intertwined components that form a fuzzy design model: GELD. The findings also support the complex and the dynamic nature of gamified learning design, and the need for a more systematic approach to design and development of such experiences.

IMPLEMENTING THE ARCS MOTIVATIONAL INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN MODEL TO IMPROVE LEARNING SUPPORT OF DISTANT LEARNING STUDENTS

This study aims to elaborate the use of an instructional design model to enhance the effectiveness of conducting face-to-face students' learning support in the distance education system. Universitas Terbuka (UT) provides various learning supports for its students. The students can use both online and face-to-face tutorial programs to improve their learning process. UT must find the appropriate instructional strategy that enables to enhance students’ motivation in learning. One of the instructional design models that focus on the effort of improving students’ motivation in learning is the ARCS, motivational instructional design model. This model entails essential components that will support the process of learning such as Attention, Relevance, Confidence, and Satisfaction. The study involved 32 distant education students who participated in a face-to-face tutorial program. A pre and post-test session was conducted to get information regarding the impact of using the ARCS instructional design model to facilitate students’ learning. This research has implications for educators or trainers related to designing learning scenarios or developing learning design models.

Artificial Intelligence Technology Assisted Music Teaching Design

With the continuous improvement of the global economic level and scientific level, information technology has penetrated into all fields of people’s life. Today, the strategy of vigorously promoting educational modernization has created conditions for intelligent music teaching and promoted the in-depth application of artificial intelligence technology in education. Intelligent instructional design supported by artificial intelligence technology is the deep integration of information technology and music teaching. Through the intelligent perception technology, learning analysis technology, and emotional computing technology of artificial intelligence, an intelligent music teaching model is established. The online learning and education platform based on big data intelligence provides teachers with rich teaching methods, provides personalized evaluation and adaptive learning services for students’ learning, and helps improve the efficiency of music teaching. The traditional teaching design model cannot effectively guide the intelligent music teaching and cannot meet the needs of students’ development. Therefore, on the basis of previous studies, the author studies the intelligent teaching design supported by artificial intelligence technology. This study uses new generation information technologies such as big data, Internet of things, mobile Internet, and artificial intelligence to build a complete set of scientific intelligent music teaching design model. Wisdom teaching provides a reference for the whole process before, during, and after class, helps guide teachers to better carry out wisdom teaching, helps students explore cooperative and autonomous learning, and promotes the wisdom transformation of teaching methods and learning methods to a certain extent. Music classroom teaching has become more targeted and effective. Therefore, it is of great significance to cultivate intelligent music talents.