Computing and Information Systems - Theses
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ItemDigital forensics: increasing the evidential weight of system activity logs( 2007)The application of investigative techniques within digital environments has lead to the emergence of a new field of specialization that may be termed ‘digital forensics’. Perhaps the primary challenge concerning digital forensic investigations is how to preserve evidence of system activity given the volatility of digital environments and the delay between the time of the incident and the start of the forensic investigation. This thesis hypothesizes that system activity logs present in modern operating systems may be used for digital forensic evidence collection. This is particularly true in modern organizations where there is growing recognition that forensic readiness may have considerable benefits in case of future litigation. An investigation into the weighting of evidence produced by system activity logs present in modern operating systems takes place in this thesis. The term ‘evidential weight’ is used loosely as a measure of the suitability of system activity logs to digital forensic investigations. This investigation is approached from an analytical perspective. The first contribution of this thesis is to determine the evidence collection capability of system activity logs by a simple model of the logging mechanism. The second contribution is the development of evidential weighting criteria that can be applied to system activity logs. A unique and critical role for system activity logs by which they establish the reliability of other kinds of computer-derived evidence from hard disk media is also identified. The primary contribution of this thesis is the identification of a comprehensive range of forensic weighting issues arising from the use of log evidence that concern investigators and legal authorities. This contribution is made in a comprehensive analytical discussion utilizing both the logging model and the evidential weighting criteria. The practical usefulness of the resulting evidential weighting framework is demonstrated by rigorous and systematic application to a real-world logging system.
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ItemUnderstanding the business benefits of ERP system use( 2006)ERP systems are large, complex, integrated software packages used for business transaction processing by thousands of major organizations worldwide. Yet outcomes from ERP system implementation and use can be very different, and current understanding of how and why such variation exists is limited. Since most studies of ERP systems to date have focused on ERP implementation, this research focused on the post-implementation period. The aim was to better understand the 'what', 'how' and 'why' of achieving business benefits from ERP systems during ERP use. Achieving business benefits from ERP systems was considered as a process of organizational change occurring over time within various societal and organizational contexts. A retrospective, interpretive case study approach was used to study this process. The post-implementation periods of four Australian manufacturing organizations that had implemented ERP systems were studied. This study makes three important contributions to the information systems research literature. First, a new framework was developed to explain 'how' and 'why' business benefits were achieved from ERP systems. This explanatory framework is theoretically based and is firmly grounded in the empirical data. Three types of themes, along with the interrelationships between them, were identified as influencing the business benefits achieved from ERP systems. The first group of themes, the process themes, are 'Education, training and support', 'Technochange management' and 'People resources'. The second group of themes, the outcome themes, are 'Efficient and effective use of the ERP system', 'Business process improvement' and 'New projects to leverage off the ERP system'. The third group of themes, the contextual themes, are the 'External context', the 'Internal context' and the 'ERP planning and implementation phases'. This new framework makes a significant contribution to understanding how and why some organizations achieve more business benefits from ERP systems than others. Second, the case studies provide a rich description of four manufacturing organizations that have implemented and used ERP systems. Examining the 'what' of business benefits from ERP systems in these four manufacturing organizations resulted in a confirmed, amended and improved Shang and Seddon (2000) ERP business benefits framework. This replication and extension of previous research is the third contribution of this study. The results of this research are of interest not only to information systems researchers, but also to information systems practitioners and senior management in organizations that either plan to, or have implemented ERP systems. Overall this research provides an improved understanding of business benefits from ERP systems and a sound foundation for future studies of ERP system use.
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ItemHierarchical clustering and summarization of network traffic data( 2008)An important task in managing IP networks is understanding the different types of traffic that are utilizing a network, based on a given trace of the packets or flows in the network. One of the key challenges in this task is the volume and complexity of the data that is available in traffic traces. What is needed by network managers in this context is a concise report of the significant traffic patterns that are present in the network. In this thesis, we address the problem of how to generate a succinct traffic report that contains a set of aggregated traffic flows, such that each aggregate flow corresponds to a significant traffic pattern in the network. We view the problem of generating a report of the significant traffic patterns in a network as a form of clustering problem. In particular, some distance-based hierarchical clustering techniques have advantages in terms of scalability when analyzing the types of large traffic traces that arise in this context. However, there are several important problems that need to be addressed before we can effectively use these types of clustering techniques on network traffic traces. The first research problem we address is how to handle non-numeric attributes that appear in network traffic data, such as attributes with a categorical or hierarchical structure. We have proposed a hierarchical similarity measure that is suitable for comparing hierarchical attributes in network traffic data. We have then developed a one-pass, hierarchical clustering scheme that can exploit the structure of hierarchical attributes in combination with categorical and numerical attributes. We demonstrate that our clustering scheme achieves significant improvements in both accuracy and execution time on a standard benchmark dataset, compared to an existing approach based on frequent itemset clustering. The second research problem we address is how to improve the scalability of our hierarchical clustering scheme when computing resources are limited. We propose an adaptive, two-stage sampling technique, which controls the rate at which records from frequently seen patterns are received by our clustering scheme. This enables more computational resources to be allocated to clustering new or unusual traffic patterns. We demonstrate that our two-stage sampling technique can identify less frequent traffic patterns with greater accuracy than when traditional systematic sampling is used. The third research problem we address is how to generate a concise yet accurate summary report from the results of our hierarchical clustering. We present two approaches to summarization, based on the size and the homogeneity of the clusters in the hierarchical cluster tree. We demonstrate that these approaches to summarization can substantially reduce the final report size with little impact on the accuracy of the report.
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ItemStatistical modeling of multiword expressions( 2008)In natural languages, words can occur in single units called simplex words or in a group of simplex words that function as a single unit, called multiword expressions (MWEs). Although MWEs are similar to simplex words in their syntax and semantics, they pose their own sets of challenges (Sag et al. 2002). MWEs are arguably one of the biggest roadblocks in computational linguistics due to the bewildering range of syntactic, semantic, pragmatic and statistical idiomaticity they are associated with, and their high productivity. In addition, the large numbers in which they occur demand specialized handling. Moreover, dealing with MWEs has a broad range of applications, from syntactic disambiguation to semantic analysis in natural language processing (NLP) (Wacholder and Song 2003; Piao et al. 2003; Baldwin et al. 2004; Venkatapathy and Joshi 2006). Our goals in this research are: to use computational techniques to shed light on the underlying linguistic processes giving rise to MWEs across constructions and languages; to generalize existing techniques by abstracting away from individual MWE types; and finally to exemplify the utility of MWE interpretation within general NLP tasks. In this thesis, we target English MWEs due to resource availability. In particular, we focus on noun compounds (NCs) and verb-particle constructions (VPCs) due to their high productivity and frequency. Challenges in processing noun compounds are: (1) interpreting the semantic relation (SR) that represents the underlying connection between the head noun and modifier(s); (2) resolving syntactic ambiguity in NCs comprising three or more terms; and (3) analyzing the impact of word sense on noun compound interpretation. Our basic approach to interpreting NCs relies on the semantic similarity of the NC components using firstly a nearest-neighbor method (Chapter 5), then verb semantics based on the observation that it is often an underlying verb that relates the nouns in NCs (Chapter 6), and finally semantic variation within NC sense collocations, in combination with bootstrapping (Chapter 7). Challenges in dealing with verb-particle constructions are: (1) identifying VPCs in raw text data (Chapter 8); and (2) modeling the semantic compositionality of VPCs (Chapter 5). We place particular focus on identifying VPCs in context, and measuring the compositionality of unseen VPCs in order to predict their meaning. Our primary approach to the identification task is to adapt localized context information derived from linguistic features of VPCs to distinguish between VPCs and simple verb-PP combinations. To measure the compositionality of VPCs, we use semantic similarity among VPCs by testing the semantic contribution of each component. Finally, we conclude the thesis with a chapter-by-chapter summary and outline of the findings of our work, suggestions of potential NLP applications, and a presentation of further research directions (Chapter 9).
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ItemInterest-based negotiation in multi-agent systems( 2004)Software systems involving autonomous interacting software entities (or agents) present new challenges in computer science and software engineering. A particularly challenging problem is the engineering of various forms of interaction among agents. Interaction may be aimed at enabling agents to coordinate their activities, cooperate to reach common objectives, or exchange resources to better achieve their individual objectives. This thesis is concerned with negotiation: a process through which multiple self-interested agents can reach agreement over the exchange of scarce resources. In particular, I focus on settings where agents have limited or uncertain information, precluding them from making optimal individual decisions. I demonstrate that this form of bounded-rationality may lead agents to sub-optimal negotiation agreements. I argue that rational dialogue based on the exchange of arguments can enable agents to overcome this problem. Since agents make decisions based on particular underlying reasons, namely their interests, beliefs and planning knowledge, then rational dialogue over these reasons can enable agents to refine their individual decisions and consequently reach better agreements. I refer to this form of interaction as “interested-based negotiation.” (For complete abstract open document)
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ItemThe effects of decision aid structural restrictiveness on decision-making outcomes( 2008)This study examines the effects of structural restrictiveness embedded within a decision aid on users’ decision-making outcomes. Structural restrictiveness is determined by the rules embedded within computerized decision aids that restrict how users interact with the decision aid. For example, a structurally-restrictive decision aids might force users to consider information and answer specific questions in a prescribed sequence. In contrast, a less structurally-restrictive decision aid would be designed so that users are free to consider information in whatever sequence they desire. The more structurally-restrictive design imposes more limits on users’ decision-making process because they are forced to adapt their decision-making process to match the decision aid. However, it is unclear whether restricting how users interact with decision aids affects their decision-making outcomes. The results indicate that the more structurally-restrictive decision aid did not assist participants to identify more prompted items compared with the less structurally-restrictive decision aid. However, it increased the decision-making bias in recalling non-prompted items. The results contribute to the decision aid literature by highlighting the cost of increasing the degree of structural restrictiveness embedded within decision aids.
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ItemAgent-based 3d visual tracking( 2000-07)We describe our overall approach to building robot vision systems, and the conceptual systems architecture as a network of agents, which run in parallel, and cooperate to achieve the system’s goals. We present the current state of the 3D Feature-Based Tracker, a robot vision system for tracking and segmenting the 3D motion of objects using image input from a calibrated stereo pair of video cameras. The system runs in a multi-level cycle of prediction and verification or correction. The currently modelled 3D positions and velocities of the feature points are extrapolated a short time into the future to yield predictions of 3D position. These 3D predictions are projected into the two stereo views, and are used to guide a fast and highly focused visual search for the feature points. The image positions at which the features are re-acquired are back-projected in 3D space in order to update the 3D positions and velocities. At a higher level, features are dynamically grouped into clusters with common 3D motion. Predictions from the cluster level can be fed to the lower level to correct errors in the point-wise tracking.
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ItemQoS-based scheduling of workflows on global grids( 2007-10)Grid computing has emerged as a global cyber-infrastructure for the next-generation of e-Science applications by integrating large-scale, distributed and heterogeneous resources. Scientific communities are utilizing Grids to share, manage and process large data sets. In order to support complex scientific experiments, distributed resources such as computational devices, data, applications, and scientific instruments need to be orchestrated while managing the application workflow operations within Grid environments. This thesis investigates properties of Grid workflow management systems, presents a workflow engine and algorithms for mapping scientific workflow applications to Grid resources based on specified QoS (Quality of Service) constraints. (For complete abstract open document)
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ItemCoordinated resource provisioning in federated grids( 2007-07)A fundamental problem in building large scale Grid resource sharing system is the need for efficient and scalable techniques for discovery and provisioning of resources for delivering expected Quality of Service (QoS) to users’ applications. The current approaches to Grid resource sharing based on resource brokers are non-coordinated since these brokers make scheduling related decisions independent of the others in the system. Clearly, this worsens the load-sharing and utilisation problems of distributed Grid resources as sub-optimal schedules are likely to occur. Further, existing brokering systems rely on centralised information services for resource discovery. Centralised or hierarchical resource discovery systems are prone to single-point failure, lack scalability and fault-tolerance ability. In the centralised model, the network links leading to the server are very critical to the overall functionality of the system, as their failure might halt the entire distributed system operation.
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ItemStigmergic collaboration: a theoretical framework for mass collaboration( 2007-12)This thesis presents an application-oriented theoretical framework for generalised and specific collaborative contexts with a special focus on Internet-based mass collaboration. The proposed framework is informed by the author’s many years of collaborative arts practice and the design, building and moderation of a number of online collaborative environments across a wide range of contexts and applications. The thesis provides transdisciplinary architecture for describing the underlying mechanisms that have enabled the emergence of mass collaboration and other activities associated with ‘Web 2.0’ by incorporating a collaboratively developed definition and general framework for collaboration and collective activity, as well as theories of swarm intelligence, stigmergy, and distributed cognition. (For complete abstract open document)