In an ideal world the need to provide data communications between facilities separated by a large ocean would be filled simply. One would estimate the bandwidth requirement, place an order with a global telecommunications company, then just hook up routers on each end and start using the link. Our experience was considerably more painful, primarily due to three factors: 1) The behavior of some ...

In this paper we describe a mobile camera localization system that is able to accurately estimate the pose of an hand-held camera inside a known urban environment. The work leverages on a precomputed 3D structure obtained by a hierarchical Structure from Motion pipeline to compute the 2D-3D correspondences needed to orient the camera. The hierarchical cluster structure, given by the SfM, guides...

PV systems are frequently used in a stand-alone configuration. In solar PV-based energy-producing system, power fluctuation is natural occurrence. Alternative sources of energy, including such hybrid grid-tied or energy storage systems, could be discovered when run off-grid to satisfy regional demands for reliable supply. This research uses an unusual system that can function both grid-connecte...

The TISDAG (Technical Infrastructure for Swedish Directory Access Gateway) project provided valuable insight into the current reality of deploying a wide-scale directory service. This document catalogues some of the experiences gained in developing the necessary infrastructure for a national (i.e., multi-organizational) directory service and pilot deployment of the service in an environment wit...

The last decades have seen the emergence of the sea of objects paradigm for structuring complex distributed systems on workstations and local area networks. In this approach, applications and system services are composed of and communicate among themselves through reliable and transparently accessible object interfaces, leading to the interaction of hundred or thousands of unstructured objects....

Sharing global remote data over large networks poses two major problems: rstly, the data must be discovered; and secondly, the data must be made accessible to the application. Our aim is to provide a single uniied interface to both local and remote data, removing location dependence and improving performance. Our solution incorporates shared memory and caching techniques. A location server prov...

The study of the dynamics taking place during power system blackouts is a subject that receives continuous attention in view of its inherent complexity and relevant consequences. Within this context, the paper aims at studying the role of the frequency control reserves (FCRs) on the cascading outages and the relevant short-term dynamics associated with the blackout mechanisms. The relationship ...

Information and referral systems such as 2-1-1 can be key partners in responding to community-wide health crises and other emergency and disaster events. This paper describes the experience of Toronto 2-1-1 dealing with the 2003 severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic and later that year the Great Northeastern Blackout. It shares five lessons learned from these experiences and describ...