Sharif Digital Repository

Drought is one of the most serious hazards that has more effect on human societies than the others. Scentific researches have important roles in drought planning and management of water resources, especially in time of crisis and predicted big event by the event that the crisis management turnover. The main objective of this research is to develop an approach to analyze the spatial patterns of meteorological droughts based on annual precipitation data in Iran. By using a nonparametric spatial analysis neural network algorithm, the normalized and standardized precipitation data are classified into certain degrees of drought severity (extreme drought, severe drought, mild drought, and... 

The role of context for better decision-making has been a topic of significant research effort over the years. Context-aware systems are able to adapt their operations to the current context without explicit user intervention and thus aim at increasing usability and effectiveness by taking environmental context into account. These systems exploit information about the context of use, such as the location, tasks and preferences of the user, in order to adapt their behavior in response to change operating environments and user requirements. Pervasive computing sketches a pleasant vision for future computing environments that computing power is present anywhere anytime. Utilizing context,... 

The modal analysis of a lossy coupled plasmonic waveguide consisting of two graphene sheets sandwiched among three SiO 2 layers is presented. This analysis extracts even and odd complex propagation constants in addition to even and odd characteristic impedances at various Fermi levels. It is shown that the first even mode is lossless in theory, but other modes are very lossy. Taking into account the losses, first, the transmission line (RLCG) model, including self and mutual elements, is constructed for various Fermi levels and frequencies. Then, the length of a lossy plasmonic directional coupler based on the coupled plasmonic waveguide is designed for a variety of Fermi levels. The... 

In this study, we simulated and analyzed a plasmonic waveguide modulator based on a single layer of graphene. It includes a graphene sheet, which sandwiches between two layers of silicon dioxide. Then, some gates are arranged on either side of the waveguide on a periodic structure. When an electric field is applied perpendicular to the waveguide plate, the Fermi level of graphene under the gates changes. Detailed analysis is performed by the method of lines based on Maxwell's equations along the propagation direction of the waveguide. Computation of the multi-gate device starts by examining the effect of the Fermi level. The transmission coefficient of the magnetic-field norms of the... 

This paper presents the results of diagonal compression tests conducted on a series of un-reinforced and reinforced masonry specimens. Reinforced specimens were strengthened by using three types of mortar coating (with and without inner reinforcement), mesh reinforcement, and PP-band reinforcement. In particular, four different reinforcement methods with mortar coating (bare mortar coating, coating with steel mesh, coating with polymer reinforcement, and coating with GFRP mesh reinforcement), three different mesh-only reinforcement (steel mesh, polymer mesh with larger grids, and polymer mesh with smaller grids), and 2 different arrangements of PP-bands (4 × 4 and 6 × 6) were tested. Also,... 

This paper studies the results of compression diagonal tests conducted on a series of retrofitted and non-retrofitted small-scale masonry walls (which are also known as wallettes). Wallettes with the same characteristics and mechanical properties of large masonry walls were retrofitted by using two arrays of glass fiber reinforcement polymer (GFRP) sheets (grid and diagonal), two arrays of carbon fiber reinforcement polymer (CFRP) sheets (grid and diagonal), and near surface mounted bars (steel and GFRP). FRP sheets were applied to both surfaces of the wallettes, and rebar was mounted onto one of the surfaces in two horizontal and two vertical arrangements. All of the methods significantly... 

Several methodologies with their own characteristics have been proposed in the area of agent-oriented software engineering. Consequently, deciding which methodology to select in a specific case is an important issue and it can lead to decrease software development cost and effort. Thus, importance of evaluation of methodologies will be highlighted in choosing the appropriate methodology in the development process of an application. It can also help in developing new methodologies and improving existing ones. In this paper, we are going to provide an evaluation framework of agent oriented methodologies. To demonstrate the usage of the suggested framework, it is applied to evaluate two... 

Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs) are based on the assumption of that all participants in the network cooperate and forward packets towards the destinations. However, due to the limited nature of the nodes' resources, a node may decide not to cooperate to save its resources while still using the network. Such behavior of some nodes may degrade the whole network performance. To cope with such a situation, we propose a Stable path, Low overhead, Truthful, and Cost efficient (SLTC) routing protocol which stimulates nodes to cooperate. SLTC utilizes the game theoretic notion of mechanism design. To the best of our knowledge, SLTC is the first protocol attaining the message complexity of O(nd),... 

In New applications of Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs), nodes may decide not to cooperate in routing protocols in order to save their limited resources while still using the network to relay their own traffic. Exhibiting such a selfish behavior by even a few nodes may degrade network performance and other cooperating nodes may find themselves unfairly loaded. To cope with such a situation, we propose a Stable path, Low overhead, Truthful, and Cost efficient (SLTC) routing protocol which stimulates nodes to cooperate and act truthfully by utilizing the game theoretic notion of mechanism design. To the best of our knowledge, SLTC is the first protocol attaining the message complexity of O(nd),... 

Prevention of unauthorized access to services in mobile ad hoc networks is a more sophisticated problem than access control in other networks, due to interconnection facilities and lack of any fixed network infrastructure in such networks. Therefore regarding the nature of these networks, controlling access to services should be in a decentralized manner providing good performance and preserving network security. In this paper, we propose a decentralized Cooperation Enforcement Based Access Control (CEBAC) framework for mobile ad hoc networks. CEBAC comprises several groups of Service Authorizers, each issuing Credentials for access to a specific kind of services. The User Authorization for... 

Applications in pervasive computing environment exploit information about the context of use, such as the location, tasks and preferences of the user, in order to adapt their behavior in response to changing operating environments and user requirements. Utilizing context with aid of ontology in data and model, decision support systems can provide better and more desirable support to their users. The effects and advantages of exploiting ontology in user modeling and DSS is discussed. We propose a framework of a Ontology-based Decision Support System (O2DSS), including ontology in model base, database and their advantages. © 2008 IEEE  

Due to the shortcomings of the traditional construction project management system, there is a feeling among those involved in this industry that new tools and approaches should be used to facilitate simple and complex operations. On the contrary, there is no integrated database for all construction sectors, and of course the relationship between these sectors is a major problem for any construction project. The technology and tool that overcomes many of these shortcomings is BIM technology. This paper seeks to identify all the challenges that hinder the successful implementation of BIM and determine important challenges based on Z-DEMATEL-ISM Hybrid approaches. The DEMATEL method is used to... 

In this work, the possibility of capacity enhancement in the South Pars Gas Complex of Iran has been studied. Mass balance is studied and data validation and reconciliation have been carried out in 5th refinery of South Pars Gas Complex in order to achieve the reliable data of the plant. Then the possibility of capacity increase has been studied, taking into account the important parameters such as alteration of the plant pressure profile. Calculation of the key parameters for different equipment at higher feed rate, specified the unit of operations which may have trouble during the capacity enhancement. The performance of export gas compressors, dehydration unit and High-Integrity Pressure... 

In this paper with the use of fuzzy genetic algorithm combination with evolutionary algorithms, as a method for local searching, it has been tried to exploit high capabilities of genetic algorithm, as a search algorithm, beside to other evolutionary algorithms, as local search algorithms, in order to increase efficiency of a rule learning system. For this purpose three hybrid algorithms have been used for solving the intrusion detection problem. These three algorithms are combination of genetic algorithm and SFL and PSO as three evolutionary algorithms which try to introduce efficient solutions for complex optimization problems by patterning from natural treatments. © 2007 IEEE  

Overlay multicast has gained much attention in recent years as an alternative method to network layer multicast, especially for mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). In this paper, we propose a new overlay multicast protocol to achieve simplicity of deployment, rapid adaptation of overlay structure when nodes move, and reduced delay. In our algorithm, to join or leave a multicast group, it is only sufficient for a member node to inform its first upstream member node. This updates the tree structure more rapidly when nodes move. In addition, join and leave delays are reduced and this makes the protocol suitable for multimedia multicasting in MANETs. Simulation results compared to that of ODMRP and...