Systems-of-systems are formed by the composition of independently created software components. These components are designed to satisfy their individual requirements, rather than the global requirements of the systems-of-systems. We refer to components that cannot be adapted to meet both individual and global requirements as "defiant" components. In this paper, we propose a "cautious" adaptation approach which supports changing the behaviour of such defiant components under exceptional conditions to satisfy global requirements, while continuing to guarantee the satisfaction of the components' individual requirements. The approach represents both normal and exceptional conditions as scenarios; models the behaviour of exceptional conditions as wrappers implemented using an aspect-oriented technique; and deals with both single and multiple instances of defiant components with different precedence order at runtime. We evaluated an implementation of the approach using drones and boats for an organ delivery application conceived by our industrial partners, in which we assess how the proposed approach helps achieve the systemof-systems' global requirements while accommodating increased complexity of hybrid aspects such as multiplicity, precedence ordering, openness, and heterogeneity.

No abstract

Drone simulators can provide an abstraction of different applications of drones and facilitate reasoning about distinct situations, in order to evaluate the effectiveness of these applications. In this paper we describe Dragonfly, a simulator of the behaviours of individual and collection of drones in various environments, involving random contextual variables and different environmental settings. Dragonfly supports the use of several drones in applications and evaluates the satisfaction of requirements under normal and exceptional situations. It simulates adaptive behaviours of drones due to exceptional situations. The adaption of drones is based on the use of wrappers implemented using aspect-oriented programming.

No abstract

The main objective of this research was to analyze the climate data for the host cities of the soccer World Cup held in Brazil in June and July 2014. A great deal of criticism was expressed about the Brazilian climate in the national and international press and media in the run-up to the competition, suggesting that the air temperature and relative air humidity would be the main adversaries of the soccer teams, especially those from Europe, during the competition. An analysis of the weather was done at the places and times of each of the 64 matches held. A human thermal comfort index was calculated (discomfort index (DI)) for each of the matches in order to discover the real climatic conditions in the host cities during the 2014 World Cup and their potential influence on the teams and human comfort in general. During the 2014 World Cup, only two matches were played at temperatures above 30 °C, representing a negligible percentage of the total number of matches. The air temperature for over half the matches (53%) was 20-25 °C. The results showed the air temperature and relative humidity data analyzed here both individually and in the form of an index indicate that the World Cup held in Brazil in 2014 did not put any of the players at risk due to extreme heat.

No abstract

No abstract

Rastreamento de embarcações em imagens satelitais utilizando metodologia Multicritério para a priorização em tarefas de busca e salvamento Tracking vessels in satellite images using Multicriteria methodology for prioritizing search and rescue tasks