A study on social media application as a tool to share information during flood disaster

Kamarul Faizal Hashim, Siti Hasanah Ishak and Mazida Ahmad

Social media is gaining its popularity as one of the most used ICT medium. It allows users to communicate without the space and time boundary. Recently, previous works have acknowledged the important of social media as one of the most widely used ICT tools to share information during the event of disaster. Although social media is gaining popularity it is unknown how this application fit the task of information sharing. Examining the fit between task and technology is very important to ensure that individual can gain desired benefit performing a task using a certain technology/information system. Hence, this study is carried out to determine the what are the determinant factors that influence fitness between social media and information sharing tasks during disaster. This study used task-technology fit (TTF) theory as its underlying theory. Quantitative research method was used. Data for this research is collected using web based questionnaire. The data is analyzed using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) Partial Least Square (PLS) technique. The results of this study show that task characteristic has stronger influence over technology characteristic. This paper end by concluding its contributions and limitations.

Knowledge sharing behavior among flood victims in Malaysia

Mazida Ahmad, Nurzawani Mohamad Zani and Kamarul Faizal Hashim

During a disaster, knowledge sharing plays an important role in helping save lives, delivering immediate relief, supporting victims and minimizing the effect of the disaster. This study investigates the determinant factors of individuals’ knowledge-sharing intentions during a disaster. Social cognitive theory (SCT) is used as the underlying theory to predict victims’ knowledge-sharing behavior. This study used a survey as its data collection technique. The respondents were victims who had shared knowledge during a flood. The data was analyzed using structural equation modeling with SmartPLS. The findings show that self-efficacy, social support, and social recognition significantly influence knowledge-sharing intention. However, reciprocity was not found to significantly influence knowledge-sharing intention. The findings suggest the flood victims’ knowledge-sharing behaviors are strongly influenced by social recognition. Through this research, an initial conceptual model of the determinants of knowledge-sharing behavior is proposed.

Parents' perception towards the adoption of mobile application for monitoring their children's obesity status

Mustafa Moosa Qasim, Abdul Nasir Zulkifli, Mazida Ahmad, Mazni Omar and Juliana Aida Abu Bakar

Obesity among children around the world has now reached an alarming level. Obesity affects one out of every ten children or teenagers all over the world. Parents should be the one responsible for their children well-being. With the advent of mobile technology, various mobile app have been developed to help people to manage their daily lives. This paper discusses on the development and evaluation of the Body Mass Index (BMI) Percentile Monitor, a mobile app for monitoring children's obesity status by parents. The results of the evaluation indicated that the parents highly rated the application in terms of usefulness, ease of use, hedonic motivation, outcome/future Use and satisfaction.

Cognitive energy efficient for closed-proximity devices: An empirical study and standardization issues

Wahidah Hashim, Ahmad Fadzil Ismail, Mohamad Hasan Kamrul, Khairayu Badron, Rajina M. Raj, and Humairah Ahmad Nasir

We describe empirical study findings on the impact of throughput performance when transmission power is adjusted among access points in closed-proximity network devices. The experiment was conducted in an office environment to emulate such wireless LAN network. We introduce a potential energy efficient mechanism based on cognitively learning one of the attributes which then triggers the power selection. We show that similar throughput performance at the client can be obtained at reduced transmission power thus prevent an access point from maximizing power unnecessarily. We have also evaluated the impact of increasing and reducing power to other neighbouring access points. It was found that the improvement of throughput is increased to 44% maximum. Throughput performance alert is introduced in the mechanism to be aware of sudden throughput changes in the system.

Adaptive recurrent neural network for reduction of noise and estimation of source from recorded EEG signals

Jasman Pardede, Mardi Turnip, Darwis Robinson Manalu and Arjon Turnip

Abstract:

In recording the EEG signals are often contaminated by a large of signals called artifacts such that the brain activity (source) is difficult to be estimated. There are different kinds of artifacts such as power line noise, electromyogram, electrocardiogram and electrooculogram. In this research, an adaptive recurrent neural network (ARNN) for estimation of source and reduction of noise from recorded EEG signals is proposed. In the experiment, the EEG signals are recorded on three conditions, which is normal conditions, closed eyes, and blinked eyes. After processing, the dominant frequency of the EEG signal is obtained in the range of 12-14 Hz either on normal conditions, closed eyes, and blinked eyes. The experimental results show that the ARNN method effectively estimated the brain activity according to the given stimulus and remove the artifacts from all subjects.

Reflective sensing and conditioning system in ubiquitous home care for elderly people

Kurnianingsih, Lukito Edi Nugroho, Widyawan and Lutfan Lazuardi

Abstract:

Ubiquitous home care is considered as a promising innovation for addressing the increase of aged population. Equipped with wearable sensors and ambient intelligence, a ubiquitous home care model called Reflective Sensing and Conditioning System Used for Elderly (ReSCUE) is proposed in this paper. A new technique as a contribution of this paper is automatic reflection of sensing gathered from wearable body sensor and ambient intelligence to home appliances, based on the needs and preferences of elderly, in oder to enhance the wellbeing of elderly people. Three essential features in ReSCUE model that are presented in this paper are learning elderly characteristics based on medical references as previous data set and preferences of elderly as experiences acquired over time, alerting to stakeholders if elderly in critical condition, and reporting to stakeholders and wellbeing experts. The combination of reinforced and adaptive learning is used in developing ReSCUE smart system.

A SDLC developed software testing process using DMAIC model

Oythip Onsuk, Pongpisit Wuttidittachotti, Somchai Prakancharoen and Sakda Arj-ong Vallipakorn

The objective of this study is to resolve the software testing processes by creating reliance of a system. With traditional testing processes, there are many issues of unacceptable defects found after the end of testing processes. To solve this problem, we applied quality management according to Six Sigmas quality improvements. From the principles of DMAIC, they found the most of mistakes came from runtime error, logical error and syntax error at 3.83%, 2.83 % and 5.50 %, respectively. This research consists of five stages of problem identification, the root cause analysis to find out the problems, drawn tree and fishbone diagrams help to analyze and solve problems. The quality improvement concepts were implement by using experiment designed techniques which controlled by standard software testing in the final step to ensure that the problems will not occur again. The results show that using quality management with the principles of DMAIC integration can reduce defects referring to Run Time error from 3.83%, 2.83 %, 5.50% to 2.67%, 1.33%, 3.83%.  This benefit will improve the confidence level, and raise the good image of the company.

Data fusion approaches in ligang-based virtual screening: Recent developments overview

Mubarak  Himmat, Naomie Salim, Ali Ahmed, and Mohammed Mumtaz Al-Dabbagh

Abstract:

Virtual screening has been widely used in drug discovery, and it has become one of the most wealthy and active topic areas in Chemoinformatics. Virtual screening (VS) plays a major role in drug discovery process, for the process of drug discovery is costly, Virtual screening has been used to reduce this cost, recently, there are many different virtual screening methods that have been suggested and applied on chemical databases. This paper aims to discuss theoretically the VS approaches, and searching methods, and demonstrates the recent approaches of VS. It’s meanly focus and discuss the issue of using data fusion and how it increases the screening  performance level, and  demonstrate the different types of fusions that are applied in VS, discussing and exploring the enhancements  and effectiveness that happen with applying  the different types of  applied fusion techniques, and discuss future trends of virtual screening.

Arabic opinion target extraction from tweets

Marwa Alhazmi and Naomie Salim

Abstract:

Twitter is an ocean of sentiments; users can express their opinion freely on a wide variety of topics. The unique characteristics that twitter holds introduce a different level of challenge in the field of sentiment analysis. Identifying the topic or the target of the expressed opinion is the aim of this study; Opinion target recognition is a task that has not been considered yet in Arabic Language. In this paper we propose a method to extract the opinion target from tweets written in Arabic language. The task is carried out in three phases.  Phase 1: preprocess the tweet to delete unnecessary entities like mentions and URLs. Phase 2: construct a feature set from tweet words to be used in the classifying phase; these features are part-of-speech, Named entities, English words, tweet hash tags and part-of-speech pattern. Phase 3:  Three classifiers are trained using the extracted features, to assign each word in the tweet to be either an opinion target or not, these classifiers are: Naïve Bayes, Support vector machine and k-nearest neighbor, with an F-Measure result reaching 91%. 500 tweets are used for the experiment, where the opinion target was manually tagged. Finally, a comparison between the results of each model is conducted.

An evidence-based approach for GPS accuracy classification

Haitham M. Amar, Nabil M. Drawil and Otman A. Basir

Abstract:

This paper investigates the accuracy of a GPS device. The GPS accuracy is treated as a pattern recognition problem. Each location estimate is classified into a certain accuracy class. Various observation conditions provided by the GPS device are used as features relating a location estimate to an accuracy band. In this paper we introduce an evidence-based classifier (EBC) in which three independent classifiers are used: namely, feed forward neural network, K-nearest neighbor and the support vector machine. The decisions of these classifiers are combined by a reasoning-based-engine using dempster-shafer (DS) evidence theory for decision fusion. The DS engine will produce the final classification decision. As proof of concept, a comprehensive experimental work including two use-cases is conducted in this paper. Experimental results are discussed at the end of this paper.

Safety alert system using android smart phone via internet connectivity

Hamzah Asyrani Bin Sulaiman, and Soo Kin Yong

This paper describes an android smartphone application that uses the GPS system located inside the smartphone. The apps will enable the system to check for unsafety area and then turn off the online communication of the the device automatically. By using Google Map that accessed through internet connectivity and then try to locate potential unsafety area before turn off the online communication for the smartphone thus disabled the usage of smartphone when entering unsafety area such as petrol stations or hazardous places. This paper concentrate only at the implementation of the system using android smartphone device and successfully creating an alert system.

Wireless fire detection system with GIS technology for fire and rescue application

Muhammad Salihin Ahmad Azmil, Norsuzila Ya’acob, Khairul Nizam Tahar,  Azita Laily Yusof, and Mohamad Aiman Zainali

The purpose of the Fire and Rescue Service is to protect human life, our property, and Earth natural resources from fire and other emergencies. With fluctuation in demands, the Fire and Rescue Service must equip with the best techniques, training regime and equipment to meet public expectations. Mitigation, preparedness and risk management have taken on new benefit with challenges facing the fire service today. Fast response cannot be achieved without good planning and preparedness. As a result, three-Dimensional (3D) city and building models for Fire and Rescue Applications have become an important part of GIS network analysis. This technology can help Fire and Rescue service to work in complex and unfamiliar indoor environments.

Opinions from tweets as good indicators of leadership and followership status

Salamatu Osanga. I. and Naomie Salim

Scores of public opinion about two popular world leaders collected from tweets based on the sentiment they exhibited were classified using two Machine learning techniques (Naïve Bayes and Support vector machines), and four features (Words, unigrams, bigrams and negation) for the classification, we found that the Naïve bayes with unigram features attained a high accuracy of up to 90% therefore  indicating that tweets can be used to suggest potential candidates in political election and ways to improve a leaders reputation.

A framework of secure KMS with RBAC implementation

Azreena Abu Bakar, Rusli Abdullah

Knowledge Management System (KMS) is a tool to support knowledge management (KM) and nowadays it has been a priority to the organizations as to protect the organization intellectual assets. The evolution of internet has brought KMS becomes more powerful while it can serve users in collaborative system. However, though the excitement of expanding KMS capabilities, security issue is critical due to the access and sharing knowledge which from distributed locations. Mostly the issues are regard to the restriction of the access permission to knowledge. Therefore, there is a need to construct a security model towards secure KMS, for managing access restriction in order to avoid unauthorized access as well as to protect knowledge throughout KM activities. Thus, this paper  review the characteristics of collaborative KMS in order to ensure that Role Based Access Control (RBAC) is competent to perform as a security model for KMS and at the same time maintain the advantages of such collaborative system. Consequently, the model of Role Based Access Control- Knowledge Management System (RBAC-KMS) has been formulated which concerning three elements; RBAC, KMS and Information Security (IS). Moreover, the quality dimension model also has been constructed which can be the metrics for quality measurement of RBAC-KMS.

Team formation model of selecting team leader : An analytic hierarchy process (AHP) approach

Mazni Omar, Zahraa Abed Aljasim, Mazida Ahmad,  Fauziah Baharom, Azman Yasin, Haslina Mohd, and Norida Muhd Darus

Teamwork is important element to enhance learning experiences. In order to build effective teamwork, team formation is a critical process to ensure that team consists of effective team members. In a team, leadership is the most significant role which contributes to the success of a software project. However, extant literature demonstrated that criteria which suits into team members specifically for leadership role is inconclusive. Therefore, this study aims to construct a software team formation model for selecting team leader by using AHP approach. AHP is chosen because it is able to achieve high accuracy and robustness in dealing with selection process. To evaluate the model, experimental research design was employed and the sample comprised of 24 students enrolled in Information Technology (IT) course from Universiti Utara Malaysia. The initial results showed that the team using AHP to select team leader experienced significantly higher level of satisfaction compared to team with self-selection team leader. The proposed model provides a mechanism for decision maker to form and select team leader in a group work project, and thus can enhance team performance.

Information extraction methods and extraction techniques in the chemical document's contents: A survey

Muawia Abdelmagid, Ali Ahmed and  Mubarak Himmat

The volume of electronic documents has rapidly increased and the scientific literature has increased too. These huge documents contain considerable information, but it has to be retrieved and managed in a constructive and useful way. Information Extraction (IE) is the field of extracting useful information using different methods and approaches by means of Natural Language Processing (NLP). Researchers still continue to try to identify proper methods to extract information from texts, such as opinions on the internet, medical data, clinical reports, medical reports, notes, papers, patents, etc. Recently a new trend to expand working in IE is taking place by enriching the extraction process to include the extraction of information from images and videos. In this paper, the classification of IE tasks is discussed, as well as the proposed methods and techniques of IE from chemical documents. A more focused approach is then taken into consideration regarding biomedical language processing and ontology. Finally, the paper discusses some of the challenges that the IE field is facing.

Building framework for ICT investments evaluation: value on investment perspective

Farrukh Saleem,  Naomie Salim, Abdullah AL-Malaise AL-Ghamdi and Zahid Ullah

Innovation in the field of information and communication technology (ICT) requires organizations to make prompt investments in providing customers with updated resources. Rapid growth in the field of ICT increases the responsibility of decision-makers in terms of whether to invest or not. This research aims to support such decision making by providing a comprehensive framework for the evaluation of ICT investment. Return on investment (ROI) is the common method used to assess the benefits generated from any type of investment using financial factors. However, this research primarily supports the importance of measuring value on investment (VOI) from ICT investments. This type of evaluation will provide more comprehensive results based on the influence of stakeholders through investments. The vast literature reviewed in this article discusses the limitations of ROI and evaluates ICT investment to present several practitioners’ points of view regarding its limitations and importance. Finally, this research proposes a five-phased strategy of evaluation involving investments, exploring from the point of investment until impact is made on the stakeholder. A stepwise description of the framework is presented in the methodology section to guide decision-makers in the further implementation of this technique to protect their assets and evaluate the investments in an extensive way.

Quality oriented for physical design data warehouse

Munawar, Naomie Salim and Roliana Ibrahim

To construct a data warehouse (DW) as a collection of data marts (DMs) all at once in a single project is very difficult. There is a need to determine the first DM that should be constructed. After two or more DMs are constructed, the next problem is integrating all DMs into the enterprise DW. This paper is adaptation of bus matrix, quality function deployment (QFD) matrix, political factors and DM integration technique to be a single framework in order to determine the priority of DMs that should be constructed and how to integrate the entire DMs into the enterprise DW.

Pattern-based system to extract and distinguish drug-adverse effect relation from other drug-medical condition relations in the same sentence

Safaa Eltyeb, Naomie Salim and Mubarak Himmat

Extraction of drug-adverse effect causal relationship supports pharmacovigilance research and reduces the manual efforts for some tasks such as drug safety monitoring and building databases for adverse drugs effects from free text. In this study, we proposed a pattern-based method to extract drug-adverse effects causal relation from medical case reports and to distinguish this relation from other drug-medical condition relations exist in the same sentences.  For training and evaluation purposes; we used 481 sentences from ADE corpus. Our method combined a concept recognition system with a module for drug-adverse effect relation extraction and discrimination task based on automatic generated numerous patterns and the position of matched pattern in a sentence. Our method achieved recall of 36.1, precision of 30.6 and an F-Score of 33.1. The result of this study provides rapid extraction of machine-understandable drug-adverse effects pairs which can help in many computational drug researches.

Implementing fuzzy approach to assess the best hotel services

Azmi Abu Seman and Norfiza Ibrahim

The focus of this study is to select the best hotel services using the hierarchical Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) model based on fuzzy set theory. This decision support system named Best Hotel Service System (BHoS) relates to the selection of hotel that satisfies all the required criteria from customers. Linguistic variables are used in this study to estimate ranks and weight of the criteria such as beauty, convenience, safety, services, price, entertainment, comfort, food and facilities. These criteria are described in term of triangular or trapezoid fuzzy number. MCDM model is used in order to select the criteria of the hotels. Finally, this study will focus on Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to an Ideal Solution (TOPSIS), a nearness coefficient to specify the ranking of all hotels through calculating distance from both Fuzzy Positive Ideal Solution (FPIS) and Fuzzy Negative Ideal Solution (FNIS) which are simultaneously defined. Evaluation to the application has been done through usability test and user acceptance test. The results have proved the positive impact towards the process of BHoS through the acceptance of all mentioned criteria. The high mean values for user reactions to the system, the interface design, navigation, and content show that BHoS is easy to use and able to recommend the best hotel services based on the user’s preferences.

SNR-based dynamic manet on demand routing protocol for vanet networks

Mohamed Elshaikh, Ong Bi Lynn, Mohd Nazri bin Mohd Warip, Phak Len Ehkan, Fazrul Faiz Zakaria and Naimah Yakoob

Vehicular ad-hoc network (VANET) is gaining the research interest lately due to its advantages in providing valid and fresh information for vehicles on the road. In VANET information exchanges between vehicles and a server in a multi-hop fashion. Multi-hop fashion implies an existence of multi route to a destination, and a routing protocol has the role of determining the best path among the exciting routes to a destination. Most of the current routing protocols use the traditional hop count as a metric to distinguish between routes. In this paper SNR is proposed as routing metric to determine the best path to a destination. Moreover, this paper focuses on development and implementation of routing protocol metric namely SNR for Dynamic MANET on-demand (DYMO) protocol in VANET. The new routing metric is implemented in the DYMO model in INET module under OMNET++ simulator. A simulations study has been carried out to analyze the performances of the improved DYMO with SNR. Moreover, a comparison between the DYMO and modified DYMO is conducted to study the effect of mobility, network road traffic condition and data traffic density. Network performances have been studied in terms of throughput, end-to-end delay and Protocol overhead. The obtained result show that the modified DYMO has better performances compare to the DYMO with the traditional hop-count metric.

Conceptual framework of edutainment animated series  for children: A pious story

Wan Malini Wan Isa, Mat Atar Mat Amin, Azilawati Rozaimee, Wan Mohd Rizhan Wan Idris, Normala Rahim and Irma Shayana Samaden

The objective of this study was to develop a conceptual framework for edutainment animated series for children taking into consideration a pious story. The conceptual framework has been designed and considered as the first step to ensure attainment of the edutainment animated series. Nowadays, multimedia technology plays an important role to deliver the desired information. Animation is one of the ways used to educate children. Most animations have been brought in which implicitly deliver negative values such as violence and aggressiveness.  Due to this factor, local animated series is crucial to be produced to suit with the local moral values. The pious story has been selected and designed to provide the children with the good moral values to be practiced by a good Muslim. Expert review has been conducted with two experts to validate the component in the conceptual framework. The instrument used is questionnaire with 5.00 point Likert scale. The result shows the elements in the conceptual framework are successfully implemented with overall means are above 4.00 of Likert Scale score.  The designed framework could be serving as a catalyst to promote good moral value for animated series which could be used worldwide to develop Islamic edutainment.

Portable teleprenatology system for midwives in rural areas

Yudha Aditya, Noraini Jalil, Hoe Tung Yew, Yuan Wen Hau, and Eko Supriyanto

Decreasing Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR) to improve global health has been a big issue for most developing countries. Limited accesss to health care facilities especially for the poor in rural areas gives a hard declining for MMR around the globe. Midwife as the closest health provider for pregnant women in rural areas, is given a new solution to provide a better care toward community, hence improving maternal health and reducing MMR in the future. By using a computerized clinical pathway and an integrated ultrasound machine, a new portable teleprenatology system for midwives is being proposed. Multi-channel wireless network is also introduced in this system to prevent any interruptions during teleprenatology application.

A knowledge work productivity conceptual model for software development process in SME

Mohd Zarol Yusoff, M. Mahmuddin and Mazida Ahmad

The last decade, there has been a growing interest in the knowledge management literature relating to the factors that influence a company's ability to increase productivity. There is a general consensus that knowledge and skills are necessary to develop the capabilities of knowledge workers. However, there is a very little understanding regarding the knowledge work productivity factors as well as their impacts on the quality of the knowledge work productivity in a software development process. The relationships between the knowledge work productivity factors and its quality of knowledge work productivity in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) environment were explored. SMEs were chosen particularly for two main reasons: a SME constitutes a major part of the economy and it has been quite successful in developing quality knowledge work productivity. The knowledge work productivity factors, determined through literature review, were used to develop the knowledge work productivity conceptual model development. Data were collected from 300 respondents representing the SMEs in Malaysia. In addition, the conceptual model was validated using the structural equation modeling. The results do not only provide evidence on the knowledge work productivity factors that are important to the knowledge work productivity and business success but also have implications for both research and practice in SME.

Branch coverage based test case prioritization

Arnaldo Marulitua Sinaga

Software testing is aimed to detect existing faults in a software. The nature of software shows that modification is unavoided. Testing of a modified software is a must to ensure that the software is still free of failures. This process is named as regression testing. Regression testing can be very expensive if all test cases have to be re-tested. To reduce the cost, it is important to prioritize the test case execution to enhance the capability of detecting failures. Test case prioritization is intended to schedule and order the execution of test case based on the certain criteria. In this research, four test case prioritization methods studied emperically are additional branch coverage prioritization, Manhattan distance-based ART (Adaptive Random Testing), additional branch coverage-based with ART, and ART with additional branch coverage-based. Random Testing, as the basic test selection method, is used as a benchmark of the performance of all studied methods. The conducted experiments using  two programs as under test program are Replace and Space programs. The experiment results show that all studied methods improve the effectiveness of RT significantly for large program. The used effectiveness measurement is F-measure, the number of test cases executed to detect the first failure. The additional branch coverage-based with ART comes as the best method in terms of F-measure. This method combines the advantage of the additional branch coverage method and the ART. It also reduces the complexity of the additional branch coverage.

Brain lesion segmentation using fuzzy c-means on diffusion-weighted imaging

Ayuni Fateeha Muda, Norhashimah Mohd Saad, S.A.R Abu Bakar, Sobri Muda and Abdullah A. R.

This paper presents an automatic segmentation of brain lesions from diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) using Fuzzy C-Means (FCM) algorithm. The lesions are acute stroke, tumour and chronic stroke. Pre-processing is applied to the DWI for intensity normalization, background removal and enhancement. After that, FCM is used for the segmentation process. FCM is an iterative process, where the process will stop when the maximum number of iterations is reached or the iteration is repeated until a set point known as the threshold is reached. The FCM provides good segmentation result in hyperintensity and hypointensity lesions according to the high value of the area overlap, and low value of false positive and false negative rates.  The average dice indices are 0.73 (acute stroke), 0.68 (tumour) and 0.82 (chronic stroke).

Examining the influence of interactive persuasive learning among elderly

Abdul Nasir Zulkifli, Mazida Ahmad, Juliana Aida Abu Bakar, Ruzinoor Che Mat and Nurtihah Mohamed Noor

In this research, we examined how interactive persuasive learning influences elderly. We have identified the relevant constructs and their measurement factors of the interactive persuasive learning that influences the elderly.  Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the fit of the hypothesized model. The findings of this study corroborate the indirect effects of interactive persuasive learning influences on learning outcome, which was mediated by cognitive, motivation, experience, and emotional appeal except the direct effect of emotional appeal towards learning outcome. The findings of this study showed emotional appeal does not influence learning outcome on elderly. These findings suggest, emotional appeal of the interactive media would only persuade elderly to use the computer application but no influence would be on their learning outcomes. These findings provide suggestions on how to enhance the effectiveness of learning and ameliorate the implementation of interactive learning amongst instructional designers and software developers. Overall, this study contributed a theoretical model which can help increase the effectiveness of learning in an interactive learning environment.

Detection of indoor air pollution on wet or moist walls using thermal image processing technique

N. Khamisan, K. H.Ghazali and W. L. Ching

This paper presents a development of an automatic system that's able to detect indoor air thermal pollution automatically by using thermal image processing technique. This research was proposed to enable civilians to improve the quality of indoor air to ensure the building is well-ventilated and getting rid of air pollutants. Indoor air is more dangerous than outdoor air as civilians spend most of the time in indoor. 255 images are used in this simulation process whereby the images are divided into two categories. The first category has been classified consists of 178 images with the colour changes (pollution detected) while another 77 images showed with no colour changes (no pollution detected). Colour conversion, image enhancement and morphological operation were used in this research in order to process the desired output image. The accuracy of the system was measured for the detection of wet or moist wall that will affect the indoor air quality on polluted data shows 94.94%. While 100% accuracy was achieved for no wet or moist walls detected. The experiment results indicate that this proposed method able to detect indoor air thermal pollution on the differences of moisture area and the wet areas.

Interaction testing for an ad-hoc system (queue management system)

Ramli R., Mohamed Zabil M. H., Lim K. C., Yusoff Y. and Yusuff M. S.

The number of student intake to the university has increased significantly for the past few intakes. In normal condition, newly registered student needs to go through various registrations related processes before the registration could be completed. The increment in the number of students has affected the whole registration process that could take hours to complete due to bottleneck condition at some counters. To expedite and smooth the registration process, the Queue Management System (QMS) which is used during the registration day has been revised. In order to increase the confidence level of QMS to be used in real environment setting, the system has been tested using an interaction testing technique to detect as many errors as possible due to interaction. Although the testing activity was done in limited time with inadequate requirement and design documentation, quiet a number of errors have been managed to be detected. During the real environment, no system error was recorded and as the result, the whole registration process takes less time compared to the previous years. The results obtained showed interaction testing is possible to be used in detecting faults given time constraints and lack of requirement documentation. This paper reports how interaction testing is designed and conducted as well as discussing the challenges faced by the researches and strategies to overcome it.

Prospective use of bloom filter and muxing for information centric network caching

Ibrahim Abdullahi, Suhaidi Hassan and Suki Arif

Information dissemination as the main objective of setting up the Internet has seen different folds to improve its course. Information centric networking (ICN) has been introduced with the aim of curtailing some future challenges posed at the traditional Internet in the nearest future.  ICN advantage of caching chunks of information on-path and off-path of the network stands the paradigm out as an alternative shift from host centric network to name centric. ICN caching approach can thereby significantly reduce amount of times a host is visited. Bloom Filter with its advantage of fast searching and false positivity characteristics are seen as form of message retrieval practice to improve interest serving on the network. This paper analyzed the advantages of vending and adopting Bloom Filters and Muxing as research directions to minimize excessive bandwidth consumption, lesser delays, prompt delivery of information, higher throughput and the ability to share information from troubled stations. Concepts are proposed and wider algorithms are pointed out to increase the overall ICN framework as related to caching and other network services.

Performance evaluation of OLSR routing protocol in ad hoc network

Deni Lumbantoruan, Albert Sagala

In this paper, we evaluated the performance of OLSR routing protocol in ad hoc network by using test bed method. Evaluation was conducted to know and understand the performance of ad hoc network in certain conditions and scenarios. Ad hoc network nodes were implemented by using Raspberry Pi with USB Wireless TP-Link WN722N. We have done three types of evaluation, such as: evaluate the availability of ad hoc wireless networks in various distance, evaluate the performace of multi hop ad hoc network, and the mechanism of self healing. Each testing is carried out on different circumstances and different scenarios. Based on some testing that already done in this research, it is known that ad hoc network with OLSR routing algorithm can overcome the problem of unreachable link between two nodes. Two nodes in one hop can reach ±180 metres with line of sight condition. Through testing, it is also shown that OLSR can handle the data delivery failures and find a new route to forward the data packets. Finally, to facilitate users in the future, we have remastered raspbian operating system with OLSR packet. It is hoped that users will be easier and faster to implement ad hoc network node with the Raspberry Pi devices.

Formal specification of software development using business rules approach

Yaya Setiyadi, S. Si, M. T., Oerip S. Santoso, Cecilia E Nugraheni and ST. M.T.

An organization defines rules in its business to achieve the organizational goals. Along with developments and changes facing the business environment, often an organization's business rules have to change. Those changing can infer the software system of the organization. This could lead to an inefficient and ineffective system changing, if the organization has to change the whole system, for every small change of the business rules. This paper discus one approach to separate the business rules from other components of the system, as the changing of the business rules will not influence others components. The approach is called the Business Rules Approach. The approach will be implemented in a case study, the registration process of the academic information system of Del Institute of Technology. In order to check the correctness of the specification, the specification of the system with business rules approach is represented formally, implementing RAISE methodology and using notation of the RAISE Specification Language (RSL). The formal specification has been successfully verified and meets the requirement of the implementation relation criteria.

Formal specification approach in designing database system using Z

Julaily Aida Jusoh, Mohd Yazid Md Saman and Mustafa Man

The requirements for a software system set out what the system should do and define constraints on its operation and implementation. Traditionally, users express the requirement specification of system development by natural language. Natural language is ambiguous, thus the requirement specification statement may result in different apprehension among users, analysts and programmers. Anxieties have been raised by several relevant software developers about the weakness use of natural languages in documenting system requirements. Hence, one of the solutions to solve the problem in capturing user requirements is by using the formal specification approach. Formal specifications are an approach to solve the vagueness and contradiction in natural language descriptions by providing an unambiguous and precise specification. This approach can be validated and verified mathematically leading to the initial detection of specification errors. The use of a formal specification will reduces ambiguity between programmer and end-user while eliminates an errors during software development. If this is done, then we can carry out testing the system aligned to the user requirement specification. This work will discuss on how to implement formal specification approach in designing database system.

Matrix multiplication program: A case study of metamorphic testing

Arlinta Christy Barus

Software testing is one of the phases in software engineering process that has a very important role to determine the quality of software under test. In software testing, after generating and selecting test cases, and executing them, the outputs need to be checked against a test oracle to determine whether any failures detected or not. Oracle problem is one of the biggest problems in Software testing. It is a condition where a test oracle can not be obtained or too expensive to be used in testing. Metamorphic Testing is a new testing approach designed to alleviate oracle problem. This approach makes use the crucial properties of software under testing, to determine some Metamorphic Relations (MRs). MRs is used to generate follow-up test cases based on original test cases, known as source test cases. The relations are also used to verify whether test passes or fails. This paper presents a use of Metamorphic Testing in testing a program implementing a matrix multiplication. Five Metamorphic Relations are identified and implemented to test five Mutant programs having intentionally bug inserted.  All Mutants have been successfully killed by test cases generated by the five Metamorphic Relations. It showed that the generated MRs have been effective enough in conducting Metamorphic Testing for this case study.

Towards good monitoring IT governance in public sector organizations

Lanto Ningrayati Amali, M. Mahmuddin and Mazida Ahmad

IT governance in organizations has strategic roles and makes effective, consistent, and transparent decisions regarding strategies and IT investment. In Indonesia, IT governance has been a necessity, because organizations have been investing a big amount of money for IT. However, many IT projects failed and have not achieved their goals. To determine the level of achievement and the implementation of IT governance, the influence of IT processes over the monitoring and evaluation mechanism needs to be looked into and assessed. In regards to that, a model has been developed, and it is used to test the hypotheses. The findings show that IT governance processes involving the implementation of the outcomes of monitoring and evaluation have influenced especially on the operational, maintenance, and culture.  Meanwhile, system planning, investment management, and system realization have not shown any strong influence. Through this research, an initial theoretical model of the factors that affect the IT processes over the monitoring and evaluation is a contribution.

An analysis on gait recognition of twins

Wan-Noorshahida Mohd-Isa, Junaidi Abdullah, Chikkanan Eswaran, and Amalina Ibrahim

The aim of this paper is to investigate the viability to recognise an individual by gait where this individual is having a twin sibling where he/she is sharing similar facial features, hence may render a challenge to face recognition systems.  To facilitate the investigation, supervised classification experiments are devised to compare the gait of both twins and non-twins siblings and additionally compare both of these with the inclusion of an early SOTON data set to synthesise a small population data set.  An important component of this investigation is to firstly develop data sets consisting of twins and non-twins siblings, which are video-based data sets.  After extraction of lower limbs kinematics signals from the videos, to learn the recognition viability performance, this paper performs classification with a leave-one-out cross validation on the data sets.  The best correct classification rates using the proposed descriptor is 95%, 76%, 82%, and 74% respectively for data sets containing of only non-twins siblings, only twins, both non-twins and twins, and both non-twins and twins including SOTON data set.

Platform development to support tourism in Solo: Service science perspective

Matt Latanzi Tilaar and Santi Novani

As one of the tourism city in Indonesia, Solo tourism was not optimized at all, for example if compared to the nearest city, Yogyakarta. Service science perspective of value co-creation can be used to improve the tourism in Solo. The purpose of this research is to build a platform using information technology which will be used to accommodate the expectations of potential tourists who wants to visit Solo. This paper use service science perspective to build a model of the value orchestration platform. The result of the study is a platform that can accommodate the expectations of potential tourists who wants to visit Solo. In the future, it is expected can be adapted by the other city in Indonesia to accommodate potential tourists to come to their city.

Novel implementation of a worm detection system using protocol graphs

M. R. Muralidharan and Srinivasan Bhargav

Computer worms are self-propagating malicious entities that spread throughout a network or the entire internet, causing irreparable damage. More sophisticated worms emerged and a continuous race between attackers and defenders is ongoing. In order to detect the effects caused by these worms on a network, we have implemented an efficient algorithm that uses the Protocol Graph method for the detection and prevention of worm propagation. The system is implemented using C++ and a Perl wrapper, with a frontend. The system will be able to distinguish malicious traffic in real time based on effective statistical methods. Our algorithm is very efficient and we have included a survey of possible implementation methods and the reason as to why our method proves to be unique and efficient.

Architecture for clinical decision support system (CDSS) using high risk pregnancy ontology

Jostinah Lam, Mohd Syazwan Abdullah and Eko Supriyanto

Shortage of medical professionals in the rural area has been one of the reasons why maternal mortality is still very high. Midwife family program had been introduced to overcome the shortage but the lack of skills in recognizing high risk pregnancy becomes another factor of high maternal mortality rate. A good prenatal care program will help to identify the danger in time and provide early management. Therefore, this paper provides solution by introducing a new architecture of clinical decision support system (CDSS) in the domain of high risk pregnancy. The proposed architecture is composed of seven main components. The ontological approach was used to develop the knowledge repository in the CDSS architecture. The need for CDSS was investigated through interview session, questionnaire distribution and observation. In addition, the comparison with other CDSSs approach is also highlighted in the paper.

Crowd sourcing and project management: Scopus literature review

Roy Deddy Hasiholan Tobing

Nowadays, crowd sourcing becomes trend that eventually affects the way of a project is managed. The success stories of crowd sourcing are noticeable, and so are the failures. Crowd sourcing provides access to diverse and abundant talent pools with relatively low cost. A project manager can easily recruit a geographically separated unknown individual or group to perform a task. However, a project manager should understand the benefits and risks of crowd sourcing as the considerations for adopting it. Moreover, the position of recruited individual or group should be clear, whether they are part of virtual project team or just another form of outsourcing. This research reviews the current literatures on crowd sourcing and project management to study the benefits and risks of crowd sourcing, its relation to project management and how the recruited workers should be positioned in the project. The discussions of crowd sourcing and project management are specifically focused on project attributes.

Software defined network and OpenFlow: A critical review

Shivaleela Arlimatti, Suhaidi Hassan, Adib Habbal and Suki Arif

Software Defined Networks (SDN) is an emerging new network paradigm which enables network programmability and breaks the network vertical integration by separating network intelligence from underlying network devices such as routers and switches. SDN promotes the logically centralized control to program the network. SDN decouples data plane and control plane of the network devices to simplify the network management and great innovation by network programmability, using Open Flow as a communication protocol between SDN controller and network elements. This paper presents a comprehensive critical survey on SDN and Open Flow. The main aim of this paper is to give a brief introduction of SDN, the basic architecture of SDN and to show the control plane and data plane separation. The building blocks of SDN as layers are provided with study of infrastructure, southbound, controllers, northbound and network applications. Later research challenges and distributed computing in SDN are discussed to provide future researcher's brief idea about the future scope in the field.

Parse tree visualization for Malay sentence (BMTutor)

Yusnita binti Muhamad Noor and Zulikha binti Jamaludin

In Malaysia, various efforts have been made by the government and language researchers in improving student’s ability of mastering Malay language (BM) due to their poor ability in grammar and sentence structure. In terms of technology, to date, there is no computer software or a prototype that is available that can help students in learning the BM sentence structure. Thus, BMTutor is introduced as a solution to this problem. BMTutor is a prototype for visualizing Malay sentence combined with sentence checker, sentence correction and word attribute components. BMTutor is intended to facilitate the learning process of sentence construction and grammatical structure in BM. It is also to enhance the learning process in BM that can be used by communities, especially students. An algorithm in designing BMTutor is discussed in this paper. The algorithm of the software is done sequentially as followed: 1) tokenizing 2) checking the number of words, 3) searching and comparing process to check the spelling or conjunctions, 4) assigning each word with a certain word class, 5) matching with rules, and 6) delivering/producing output (sentence correction or parse tree visualization, word attribute components, and parse tree from sentence examples). Based on the testing conducted, output from the development process shows that the prototype can correct all 15 invalid sentences and can produce parse tree visualization for all 20 sentences.

Initial design model of hybrid intelligent decision AID

Norfiza Ibrahim, Norshuhada Shiratuddin and Siti Mahfuzah Sarif

This paper describes an ongoing study related to design model development which specific to youth in assisting them making study and career decisions. Studies show that there is lack of decision aid provided specifically for youth that combines personal personality along with the type of multiple intelligences in the decision-making process. For that reason, this study focuses on the intelligent aspects in the development of intelligent decision aid application. The aid apparently integrates Personality Traits (PT) and Multiple Intelligence data (hybrid) in development of a computerized personal decision aid for youth named as Youth Personal Decision Aid (YouthPDA). Therefore, this study aims at development of precise design model of intelligent YouthPDA as guidance before a helpful decision aid will be utilized. Accordingly, this paper proposes an initial Design Model of Hybrid Intelligent Decision Aid. There are two main phases involved in the design model development; requirement analysis and model development.

Potential use of name data networking in vehicle-to-vehicle communication

Walid Elbreiki, Adib Habbal,  Suhaidi Hassan and Suki Arif

Researchers have proposed several content dissemination techniques for addressing the massive growth in content exchange. Named Data Networking (NDN) is one of the novel ideas in which networks use named data for content dissemination instead of host identities. In NDN, the content itself is presented in the network layer based on user interests. The use of NDN in Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) communication has numerous potential due to the advantages of named based data retrieval against host based data searching. This paper presents an in-depth review of the potential uses of NDN in V2V environment with special emphasis on their advantages and disadvantages. The paper also provides future research direction that could be undertaken on the subject.

Bring your own device organizational information security and privacy

Abubakar Bello Garba, Jocelyn Armarego and David Murray

BYOD is a growing trend in corporate environments, where employees bring their own devices to work. Factors that have led to the growing popularity of BYOD include the benefits of work flexibility, increased productivity, and efficiency of employees. Despite these benefits, there are concerns over information security and privacy. Since BYOD allows employees to access organizational data anytime anywhere, it is necessary to ensure the confidentiality and integrity of organizational information resources and assets. This paper will review BYOD, and information security and privacy in BYOD environments. Three different cases study organisational practices for BYOD security and privacy. Finally, advice on how to handle security and privacy in BYOD environments, using explicit policies, is presented. The paper will assist organisations, information technology and information security/privacy professionals to understand risks associated with BYOD, and policy development to mitigate them.

Serious games in psychotherapy: A comparative analysis of game design models

Norhana Yusof and Riaza Mohd Rias

The use of serious games in various areas is promising these days. In the early version of digital games, it is only used as entertainment tools. To date, digital or serious games are not only utilized in education but also in training, medical, and as military simulation. The popularity of serious games has grown extensively and is broadly accepted by various age groups ranging from children to adults. Given the wide popularity and benefits that can be obtained from using serious games, this has increased the interest of researchers and health professionals to use serious games in treatments as assistive tools. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to report on an ongoing study, which intends to propose a therapeutic game design model to be used in psychotherapy. Two comparative analyses on selected models are also presented in this paper as part of the process in proposing steps or phases that can be considered in therapeutic game design model. In addition, this paper also discusses the potential of utilizing serious games in psychotherapy.

Implementation of high availability concept based on traffic segregation over MPLS-TE

Ruhani Ab Rahman, Farah Adwina Alias, Murizah Kassim, Mat Ikram Yusof and Habibah Hashim

This paper presents performance analysis of high availability concept based on traffic segregation over Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) Traffic Engineering (TE). Recent years presents many deployment of Virtual Public Network (VPN) over Multi Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) network. This deployment benefits an organization or group of business for their own private network at a much lower costs compared to traditional point-to-point (P2P) private link. Hence, enterprise benefits from the VPN in reducing cost, increasing scalability and increasing productivity without costing the security of their network. Basic requirement of today systems on the design enterprise network is high availability. Deployment of high availability in load balancing and redundancy on existing service provider backbone network is still a challenging task. This paper presents ensured implementation on the network traffic. It immediately segregates and transparent to customer when the network edge device or access circuit was failures. Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (VRRP) is configured to support high availability. Two gateways are provided at customer edge router, where one router elected as primary gateway, and another as a standby gateway. This situation presents the backup link which is not fully utilized. Traffic diversity concept is used where Policy Based Routing (PBR) handles the traffic segregation to utilize the traffic at both links. Results on analyzed implementation of high availability concept based on traffic segregation over MPLS-TE are presented.

Stock market direction prediction using data mining classification

Pujana Paliyawan

The key of success in stock trading is to buy and sell stocks at the right time for the right price. “Buy Low, Sell High” sounds easy, but it is so difficult to carry out since the direction of stock market in the near future is almost unpredictable. With the advances in data mining, it has now become possible to predict the future market direction based on historical data. In this study, different approaches are used to predict the future market direction of the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET). Time series forecasting is conducted and a suitable span of time for the stock market data is examined. A novel approach to predict future market direction has been introduced based on chart patterns recognition by using data mining classification. Models are built through different methods including neural network, decision tree, naïve Bayes and k-nearest neighbors. Results were obtained, compared and discussed in details. Important chart patterns to support decision making in stock trading had been found out. In order to visualize the result, a visualization technique is also introduced.

Leaf lesion classification (LLC) algorithm based on artificial bee colony (ABC)

Faudziah Ahmad, Ku Ruhana Ku-Mahamud, Mohd Shamrie Sainin and Ahmad Airuddin

In this paper, an algorithm to classify leaf disease severity based on lesions is presented. The algorithm involved three main steps, filtration, recognition and detection. Artificial Bee Colony, Fuzzy Logic, Otsu and Geometry formula were incorporated to achieve the goal. Ninety-four leaf images were used in this algorithm combination experiment. The study was conducted in four phases, filtration, recognition, detection and evaluation.  Comparison was made with four other algorithms, Otsu, Canny, Robert and Sobel. Results showed that the Leaf Lesion Classification (LLC) algorithm based on Artificial Bee colony (ABC) produced an average 96.83% of accuracy and average 1.66 milliseconds of processing time, indicating that LLC algorithm is better than algorithm such as Otsu, Canny, Roberts and Sobel. The study makes a substantial contribution to the body of knowledge in image processing.

Comparative weighting methods of vector space model

Sasithorn Lertariyatham, Pongpisit Wuttidittachotti and Somchai Prakancharoen

This research aimed to develop a program for data retrieval stored in the form of questions and answers. Fidelity Fascinate Fastness Co., Ltd., Thailand has been used an old traditional of storage and retrieval of knowledge system in the form of Google Drive, which was inconvenient and time consuming when retrieving the desired knowledge. Therefore, the new development of knowledge retrieval based on Vector Space Model (VSM) to facilitate the users in the knowledge retrieval was conducted and invented to solve the problems. For VSM concept, the required knowledge from the database was transformed by with C# and wrapped by the Longtext Matching, then indexed cutting by Inverted Indexing Search. Information retrieval and sorting results was robustness based on algorithm of VSM. The results of knowledge retrieval of 200 questions were processed by 100 queries. The Cosine formula showed the best appropriated formula than Dice and Jaccard formulas which return the higher of their precision (82.50 %), recall values (97.35%), and accuracy (89.31%) measured by F-measurement.

Prediction of risk factors of software development project  by using multiple logistic regression

Thitima Christiansen, Pongpisit Wuttidittachotti, Somchai Prakancharoen and Sakda Arj-ong Vallipakorn

This research aimed to predict the risks in software development projects by applying multiple logistic regression. The logistic regression was used as a tool to control the software development process. These consisted of the risk stratification and causal risk factors analyses. This statistical integration was intended to establish the risk factors, anticipated and minimized the risk, which can occur during processes of software development. The factor analysis incorporated with logistic regression was used to predict the risk classification probability of failure or success of software development. The logistic regression analyses can grade and help to point out the risk factors, which were important problems in development processes.  These analytical results can lead to create and development of strategies and highlighted problems, which are important issues to manage, control and reduce the risks of error. The result from classification of questionnaires of software development risk analyses by SPSS program had overall prediction accuracy at 90.00%.

Performance analysis of FSO with haze attenuation consequence acclimatize in tropical rainforest environment

M. Zuliyana, M. S. Anuar, S. A. Aljunid, A. K. Rahman, C. B. M. Rashidi and M. S. A Bakar

Free Space Optic (FSO) is an attractive link communication due to its outstanding capability to fulfill rapid demands in today’s technology era. The bandwidth and speed FSO possess is similar to fiber optics. However, FSO is highly preferred than fiber optics. This can be seen in comparing the point of the deployment time frame and cost effectiveness. However, since the atmosphere is the transmission medium for FSO, the connection may be attenuated as atmosphere condition varies. The attenuation is due to climate vulnerability and it will distort the FSO link performance especially rains and haze since this type of weather occurring throughout the year in tropical temperate region. This paper is focused on the analysis of haze attenuation with real visibility data from meteorological departments for the mid-year 2012 until mid-year of 2013 and constructs the tropical haze attenuation model especially the maximum range of FSO system deployment. Here, low and moderate visibility was concentrated more in this research due to worst condition for FSO link. The data used is analyzed with theoretical part and simulated using Optisystem software 6.0 version and validated with experimental part (lab scale). Observation performance is characterized through bit error rate (BER) synchronization and power received with related to the link range relationship.

Risk based prediction technique on critical spare parts requirement for plant producer

Jafni A. Ibrahim, Kamal Imran M.S., Zulkifli M Udin and Nor Hasni

The number of major losses and equipment breakdown due to unavailability of spare parts has posed challenges for planning and inventory control. Moreover this issue can lead to unproductive breakdown of the equipment with eventually give impact towards company’s profit. Most of the inventory planner strengthen their inventory policies by maintaining high inventories of spare parts in which resulting irrelevant to the total cost of the asset investment. The inventory planner is considered risk neutral and willing to trade off between the lower profit gains for the protection against possible production losses. Nevertheless, the objectives of maintaining high inventories of spare parts often conflict from meeting the needs of risk averse inventory management. In view of this situation, the management of spare parts becomes critical issue in the company and it is suggested to quantify the potential impact in order to reduce risks. This paper describes the development of risk quantification technique using Spare Parts Probability Derivation Table for the plant inventory control. The table will provide the probabilities of four critical spare parts that has been identified by the maintenance planner. These probabilities can be used to quantify the risk for the spare part failure and later to produce optimization in terms of risk and finding the minimal inventory cost.

Capacity performance of steganography method in text based domain

Baharudin Osman, Roshidi Din and Mohd Rushdi Idrus

Capacity is one of the performance factors in embedding process of any text steganography methods. A better embedding ratio and saving space ratio offers more text can be hidden inside cover text. This paper tries to evaluate several format based techniques of text steganography based on their embedding ratio and saving space capacity factors. This paper analysed the performance of text steganography methods which are Changing in Alphabet Letter Patterns (CALP), Vertical Straight Line (VERT) and Quadruple Categorization (QUAD) methods based on these two factors. Embedding Ratio (ER) and Saving Space Ratio (SSR) is used to measure the performance.  It has been identified that VERT method give a good effort performance compared to CALP and QUAD based method. In future, a robustness of text steganography methods should be considered as a next effort in order to find a strength capability on text steganography.

Immune network algorithm in monthly stream flow prediction at Johor river

Nur Izzah Mat Ali, M. A. Malek and Amelia Ritahani Ismail

This study proposes an alternative method in generating future stream flow data with single-point river stage. Prediction of stream flow data is important in water resources engineering for planning and design purposes in order to estimate long term forecasting. This paper utilizes Artificial Immune System (AIS) in modelling the stream flow of one stations of Johor River. AIS has the abilities of self-organizing, memory, recognition, adaptive and ability of learning inspired from the immune system. Immune Network Algorithm is part of the three main algorithms in AIS. The model of Immune Network Algorithm used in this study is aiNet. The training process in aiNet is partly inspired by clonal selection principle and the other part uses antibody interactions for removing redundancy and finding data patterns. Like any other traditional statistical and stochastic techniques, results from this study, exhibit that, Immune Network Algorithm is capable of producing future stream flow data at monthly duration with various advantages.

Real-time load distribution via particle swarm optimization for wireless sensor network (WSN)

A.T.I. Fayeez, V.R Gannapathy, A.S Baharom, Ida S. Md Isa, M.K. Nor and  N.L. Azyze

Wireless sensor network (WSNs) are highly distributed self-organized systems. They rely on significant numbers of scattered low-cost tiny devices featuring strong limitations in terms of processing, memory, communications and energy capabilities. Sensor nodes collect measurements of interest over a given space, making them available to external systems and networks at special nodes designated sink nodes. In order to maximize the autonomy of individual nodes (and consequently the longevity of the network), power saving techniques are commonly implemented, causing nodes to sleep most of the time, complemented with low power communications that usually lead to multi-hop data transmission from sensor nodes to sink nodes and vice versa. While link reliability mechanisms can significantly reduce the end-to-end packet loss ratio, some critical WSN applications require high or even total end-to-end reliability, demanding the use of a reliable transport layer protocol. Therefore, the objective of this research is to develop and implement a reliable data transfer protocol that can provide an excellent reliability to packets from source to destination via hop by hop basis. The effectiveness of the proposed protocol is evaluated with different scenario parameters such as in terms of throughput, node reliability and energy loss in the network. The results show that the proposed protocol (Real-time PSO ) performs much better in terms of throughput, packet loss and energy loss when compared to real time load distribution (RTLD). The Real-time PSO outperforms RTLD of about 30% in terms of packet delivery rate, packet loss and energy loss. This research work has also contributed towards the improvement of network lifetime.

ESPAC model: Extended software process assessment and certification model for agile and secure software processes

Shafinah Farvin Packeer Mohamed, Fauziah Baharom and Aziz Deraman

In today’s business environment, agile and secure software processes are essential since they bring high quality and secured software to market faster and more cost-effectively. Unfortunately, some software practitioners are not following the proper practices of both processes when developing software. There exist various studies which assess the quality of software process; nevertheless, their focus is on the conventional software process. Furthermore, they do not consider weight values in the assessment although each evaluation criterion might have different importance on the project. Consequently, software certification is needed to give conformance on the quality of agile and secure software processes. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to propose ESPAC (Extended Software Process Assessment and Certification) Model which addresses both software processes and considers the weight values during the assessment. The model has been constructed by using deductive approach, whereby the theoretical and exploratory studies were conducted in order to determine the components of the proposed model. The ESPAC Model consists of six components, which are the target, evaluation criteria, reference standard, data gathering technique, assessment phases and synthesis technique. The proposed model has been validated by seven software practitioners from the practical perspectives through focus group discussion. The validation result shows that the ESPAC Model gained their satisfaction and able to be practically executed in the real environment.

Parametric study of broadband inverted suspended linear polarized antenna

K. S. Phoo, M. Z. A. Abd. Aziz, B. H. Ahmad,  M. A. Othman, M. K. Suaidi,  H. A. Sualiman and F. Abd. Malek

In this paper, the parametric study of a broadband inverted suspended rectangular patch with rectangular slot which performed as linear polarized antenna is presented. The operating frequency for the proposed antenna is at 2.4GHz, which is for Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) application. The performances for the proposed linear polarized antenna are investigated with the variation of different design parameters, which included the width of rectangular slot, X, length of rectangular slot, Y, separation of strip line from rectangular slot, A, and thickness of air gap, Gap. This antenna is designed by using method of inverted suspended, where the copper ground plane and the inverted rectangular patch is separated with air gap. This technique is used to enhance to bandwidth and gain of the proposed antenna. The simulation is done using Computer Simulation Technology (CST) software. The performance of linear polarization antenna can be verified based on the axial ratio result, where the axial ratio for linear polarized antenna is above 3dB.

An anti-phishing tool to verify URLs in email's content

Melad Mohamed Al-Daeef, Nurlida Basir and Madihah Mohd Saudi

Phishing is a threat that causes Internet users to lose the control over their accounts. A variety of anti-phishing approaches have been proposed, one of this variety is anti-phishing client-side tools. Most of these tools are rely on black/white list and heuristic methods. Most of these tools however, still unable to catch all phishing emails, especially zero-day attacks. To success, phishers usually take advantage of weaknesses in implemented anti-phishing methods and human vulnerabilities. Therefore, there is an urgent need for a solution that integrates anti-phishing technical and non-technical (user awareness) approaches. The proposed system (tool) in this paper is an attempt to achieve that goal. The proposed tool is designed to work at user's email browser/platform, and provide the user with basic information about any URL in email's content before clicking it, and probably browse suspicious site. WHOIS query method is employed by the proposed system to obtain required information about URLs in email's content.

A web-GIS based integrated optimum location assessment tool for gas station using genetic algorithms

Rahmadya Trias Handayanto, Anita Setyowati Srie Gunarti and Seta Samsiana, Herlawati

Spatial analysis makes Geographic Information System (GIS) more interesting as it supports the user for making a decision not only by seeing the location but also by counting using some algorithms or statistical methods. We have tried to couple Genetic Algorithm with our GIS in searching the best location of Gas Station in Bekasi district, Indonesia. The location must have minimum risk to other important facilities or environment based on their locations. Testing result showed that the system was able to find optimum location and sending it to our database as a Web-GIS data input after converting from local coordinate into latitude and longitude coordinate system.

Chain-based routing protocols in wireless sensor networks: A survey

Haydar Abdulameer Marhoon, M. Mahmuddin and Shahrudin Awang Nor

In the last few years, wireless sensor networks )WSN( have become an active area for researchers due to its broad and growing application. However, routing is a critical issue that needs consideration as it directly impacts the performance of WSN. Several protocols have been proposed to address this issue as well as reducing energy consumption and prolong a lifetime of the sensor nodes in WSN. The chain-based is one approach from Hierarchical routing protocols which reduces the energy consumption in WSN. However, a problem arises when the chain has long-link (LL) from the base station (BS). This paper presents a comprehensive survey on chain-base hierarchical routing protocols, in terms of details, who to work, Phases, figures, and the main advantage and disadvantage for each protocol. Furthermore, the characteristics of chain-based routing protocols and the performance metrics that are used in WSN are discussed. Finally, this paper presents open challenges for researchers.

A comprehensive review of mobile botnet detection using genetic algorithm: A systematic review

Muhammad Zuhair bin Abd Rahman, Madihah binti Mohd Saudi and Nurlida binti Basir

Nowadays, mobile botnet is considered as one of the biggest cyber threats attacking the smartphones especially on the Android platform. The loss of money, confidential information and productivity due to mobile botnet attacks to the smartphones, have triggered the formation of this research paper. This research paper presents a comprehensive review on the existing techniques in mobile botnet detection. A comparison with the existing works related with mobile detection techniques is further investigated and evaluated. Furthermore, this research paper explores the possibilities to integrate the genetic algorithm in mobile botnet detection to optimize the detection rate. Based on the comprehensive review made, it has been identified that the genetic algorithm is offering a promising result for a higher mobile.

Red blood cell counting analysis by considering an overlapping constraint

Razali Tomari, Wan Nurshzwani Wan Zakaria, Rafidah Ngadengon and Mohd Helmy Abd Wahab

Red blood cells (RBCs) counting in blood smear image is very important to diagnose blood related diseases such as malaria and anemia before a proper treatment can be proposed. The conventional practice for such procedure is executed manually by pathologist under light microscope. However, manual visual inspection is laborious task and depends on subjective assessment which leads to variation in the RBC counting especially when there are many clumped RBC areas. In this paper a computer-aided systems is proposed to automate the process of counting the RBC from the blood smear image by considering an overlapping constraint. Initially RBCs region are extracted from the background by using global threshold method applied on green channel color image. Next, noise and holes in the RBCs are abolished by utilizing morphological filter and connected component labeling. Following that, information from the RBCs’ area is extracted to determine single and overlapping RBC region. The former region can be counted directly while the latter need to be process further to estimate the number of individual cells. In this paper, two estimators which are Distance transform and Hough transform are utilized to count cells in the clumped regions. Eventually, the total RBCs is found by summing up information from the single cell number and from the estimator. The proposed method has been tested on blood cell images and it demonstrates that Hough transform is more reliable to predict number of total RBCs.

BacaMAX: Addressing visual deficit to facilitate reading for dyslexic children

Husniza Husni and Zulikha Jamaludin

This paper proposes BacaMAX, an educational technology application to ease reading and text processing for dyslexic children. Being diagnosed as dyslexics, children (adults too) are facing greater challenge to learn to read. One of the main theories of dyslexia is due to visual impairment, which is not referring to the problems with the eyes but with the information processing that took place inside the brain. Apparently, those who are facing this problem trigger the wrong part of the brain to process text thus creating difficulties in reading. Aiming to reduce this issue, a specific design is proposed mainly for interactive applications to support reading for dyslexics. The design is tailored to meet the dyslexic children’s requirement and need, taking into account the three dimensions of Interaction Design (IxD) and minimalist concept. To prove the concept, a high fidelity prototype, called BacaMAX, has been developed. The prototype was developed using the six steps of Goal Directed Design (GDD) method. Currently, BacaMAX is being tested in a primary school that runs special dyslexia classes. The application’s effect to children’s interest and learning experience has been positive.

Conceptual design model of interactive television advertising: towards influencing impulse  purchase tendency

Azizah Che Omar, Norshuhada Shiratuddin and Siti Mahfuzah Sarif

Various studies have proposed factors of impulse purchase in different advertising mediums like website, mobile, traditional retail store and traditional television. However, to the best of the researchers’ knowledge, none of the impulse purchase model is dedicated towards impulse purchase tendency for interactive TV (iTV) advertising. In addition, through systematic review analysis, this study discovered that all the previous models did not emphasize on the conceptual design model of iTV advertising. Therefore, based on a comparative analysis, this study looked for the components in order to propose a conceptual design model of interactive television advertising toward impulse purchase (iTVAdIP). It is suggested that components of the proposed model is classified classify into three categories; layer of technology, development process and impulse purchase components. These categories are represented through a figure for a better clarity.

Analysis of communication protocols for smart metering

Josef Horalek and Vladimir Sobeslav

This paper deals with the issue of VDWS and DLSM communication protocols that are used for remote reading of intelligent electrometers for smart metering. This article analyzes the real data communication from the distribution network of CEZ, a.s., one of the biggest electricity distributors in EU. Based on the analyzed data the authors then introduce their recommendations and the direction of further development and utilizations of remote readings in smart metering networks.

The design principles of assistive courseware for low vision (AC4LV) learners

Nurulnadwan Aziz, Ariffin Abdul Mutalib and Siti Mahfuzah Sarif

Current phenomenon faced by low vision (LV) learners is that their learning activities are problematic. With the restrictions in their vision, conventional teaching and learning techniques requires them to struggle more compared to their sighted peers. Even though Assistive Technology (AT) provides LV learners with various helpful features but most of them are in the form of hardware or software, which minimally assist the LV learners in accessing the knowledge. Meanwhile, the content applications that are specifically designed for the LV learners are highly scares. This could be seen when most of the existing content applications (i.e. courseware) that available in the market are designed for sighted students. The main objective of this study is to develop an electronic learning material that focuses on content design application in an attempt to cater the needs of LV learners in their learning activities called Assistive Courseware for Low Vision Learners (AC4LV). The results highlight design principles which are categorized into eight elements of AC4LV. They are justified and labeled in the form of snapshots, presented sequentially in this paper. The AC4LV has been designed according to the needs of LV learners. It has to be emphasized that the main objective of this article is to highlight the development of AC4LV and it is also important to stress that the content design of AC4LV has to refer to the determined design principles. This could be as guidance for the developer or anyone who intent to develop AC4LV. The recommended future works is to investigate the user experience of using AC4LV among the LV learners. The target participant would be the LV learners from primary school level aged nine to twelve.

Towards an essential knowledge transfer process model in the flood management domain

Hasniza binti Yahya, Mohammad Nazir Ahmad and Radziah Mohamad

The study of knowledge transfer is becoming important in many areas such as small-medium enterprises, higher education, health management and disaster management. Our study focuses on the process of knowledge transfer in the flood management domain in Malaysia. Currently, there is a lack of standard practice in terms of transferring knowledge between entities in this domain. Thus, based on a review of the literature, we propose the conceptual model of a knowledge transfer process in the flood management domain. The proposed model is a preliminary work which will be evaluated in the next phase.

Utilization of artificial immune system in prediction of paddy production

A.B.M. Khidzir, M.A. Malek, Amelia Ritahani Ismail, Liew Juneng and Ting Sie Chun

This paper proposed an Artificial Immune System (AIS) approach using the Clonal Selection Based Algorithms (CSA) to analyze the pattern recognition capability of the paddy trend, and to predict the paddy production based on climate change effects. Climate factors and paddy production are used as input parameters. High percentage of accuracy ranges from 90%-92% is obtained throughout the training, validation and testing steps of the model. The results of the study were tested using the Root Mean Square Error (RMSE), Mean Average Percentage Error (MAPE) and coefficient of determination (R2). Based on the results of this study, it can be concluded that the CSA is a reliable tool to be used as pattern recognition and prediction of paddy production.

Performance analysis of reactive and proactive routing protocols in MANET

Raaid Alubady, Mohammed Al-Samman, Adib Habbal, Suhaidi Hassan and Suki Arif

In the artificial disaster field, Mobile Ad-hoc Network (MANET) routing is considered a challenging task because of the unpredictable changes in the network topology due to the absence of any centralized control. This routing has led to the development of several different routing protocols for MANET. Thus, it is hard to decide which of these protocols act better than the others. The objectives of this study are of two folds. First, this study provides a performance comparison of MANET routing protocols in terms of delay, packet lost, throughput, jitter, packet delivery ratio (PDR), and normalized routing load (NRL). Second, this study identifies whether MANET routing protocol has an impact on the artificial disaster and suggests which protocols may perform better. For experimental purposes, Network Simulator 2 (NS-2) was used. High density nodes were created in a 1000×1000m location area, and each node was assigned a CBR traffic load. Random Waypoint Mobility mode was used to be implemented with varying pause time and the number of connections. The simulation results show that Destination Sequence Distance Vector (DSDV) protocol provides better throughput and PDR with less jitter, delay and NRL for low or high-traffic load and mobility. However, DSDV still has performance limitations with packet loss parameter. Additionally, the results obtained show that DSDV gives a great improvement for using network resources, especially when the number of connections is high with low mobility. Hence, DSDV is considered as a better routing protocol that is used in the artificial disaster and emergency recovery application.

A multimodal biometric detection system via rotated histograms using Hough lines

Fatma Susilawati Mohamad and Zahradeen Sufyanu

Several systems require full identification of a user, as any misclassification may deteriorate the performance of the entire system. Such systems must grant access only to the genuine user. For this reason, single biometrics becomes insufficient for authentication and identification. Consequently, the need for implementing highly integrated systems is necessary to promote security of such systems. At the same time, multi-biometric attracts much attention. The current study put forward a pioneering multimodal biometric detection approach using the principle of detecting lines through Hough Transform (HT). The images were converted in to histograms using histogram plot function. However, these histograms images were rotated by 30 degrees and HT functions were applied on the rotated histograms to detect the query biometric features. The new technique was tested on face, iris, palm and fingerprint. The final plot accomplished detection of whole biometric features with an average detection time of 4.506 seconds per individual. The new technique can be used to detect the aforementioned biometric traits using the same feature extraction algorithm at limited time, since each biometric trait’s dimensions was drastically reduced. The new system outperformed many methods in the literature reported using conventional detection methods. Hence, the modified algorithm is applicable in multi-biometrics detection prior to recognition especially where little computation and fast performance is highly demanded.

Knowledge transfer in problem based learning teaching method in software engineering education: A measurement model

Mazida Ahmad, Azida Zainol, Norida Muhd Darus, Zaharin Marzuki Matt, Fauziah Baharom and Shafiz Affendi M.Y.

Problem Based Learning (PBL) is a teaching method that is able to transfer tacit knowledge from lecturers to students based on Socialization, Externalization, Combination and Internalization (SECI) model. However, the SECI model does not include the students’ performance factor, which is an indicator to measure the effectiveness of teaching and learning processes. Hence, our study proposes a framework to evaluate the effectiveness of using PBL as a teaching method in Software Engineering (SE) education to transfer the tacit knowledge by enhancing the SECI model. This paper is a part of our study that purposely wants to evaluate a measurement model of knowledge transfer process in PBL teaching method in SE education. This study used survey as a method for data collection. The respondents were students who registered for System Analysis and Design (SAD) courses. The data was analyzed using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) with Analysis of Moment Structures (AMOS). The results have shown that the measurement model fits the data. Therefore, the framework is suitable for PBL teaching method in SE education. Further, this study intends to identify the   relationship between SECI model in PBL teaching method for SE domain.

A computational model for dynamics in effective usage of ICT public access centre

Nor Iadah Yusop, Faudziah Ahmad, Zahurin Mat Aji and Azizi Ab Aziz

In Malaysia, ICTs have been identified as a crucial enabler in the knowledge-based economy to facilitate the acquisition, utilization, and dissemination of knowledge towards enhancing the economic and social values of society. Numerous programmes have been organized, developed, designed and executed to optimize the usage of these ICT Public access centres (telecentres). This paper presents a computational model that addresses important factors contributing to the effective usage of telecentres.  Simulation was used to show the behaviors produced by the model.  Several cases of different scenarios showed various patterns that are consistent with past literatures.  These results indicate that the model is able to illustrate different behaviors when different scenarios are applied.  The model could be used as a justification for conducting an inception study to understand the working model of a telecentre’s operation given a certain scenario.

Assessing personality types preferences amongst software developers : A case of Malaysia

Mazni Omar, Norliza Katuk, Sharifah Lailee Syed Abdullah, Nor Laily Hashim and Rohaida Romli

This paper aims to present personality types preferences among software developers in Northern region of Malaysia. Knowledge in human factor personality types is significant in order to assist project manager for making decision on the right personality types that suit into job tasks assigned to software developers. In addition, there is growing awareness on applying agile methodology during software development. This software methodology claimed to be acknowledged human weaknesses and strengths and thus, has great potential in improving software development effectiveness. Therefore, this study also seeks to compare personality type’s preferences amongst agile and non-agile software developers. A questionnaire that includes personality test questions was distributed amongst 81 software developers that working in the software industry. Results demonstrated that the software developers are mostly Introvert (I) personality types. Furthermore, the dimensions of Intuitive (N), Thinking (T), and Judging (J) are dominant personality types among software developers regardless of software methodology used. This study provides an insight into personality type’s preferences that can guide human resource manager to select the suitable candidate for specific tasks in order to improve team performance.  Future studies will be carried out to collect more empirical data and to build software team personality types composition model.

This paper presents a statistical analysis and best fitted distribution model of internet traffic IP-based Network for tele-traffic engineering. One IP-based campus network architecture is studied which support of 16Mbps Committed Access Rate (CAR) speed line to Wide Area Network (WAN). Solarwinds network monitoring traffic toolbox is setup at the gateway router from inside campus network to the WAN in collecting real live throughput internet traffics. Daily throughput flows in Mbyte are collected in every ten minutes inter-arrival time. Statistical method on fitted Cumulative Distribution Function (CDF) is evaluated on collected throughput with Matlab software. Maximum Likelihood Estimator (MLE) technique is used to identify the maximum MLE log-likelihood which characterized as best fitted CDF distribution. Normal, Lognormal, Exponential and Weibull CDF fitted on throughput are presented. Among the four distributions, CDF Weibull is identified as the best traffic characteristic based on MLE maximum log-likelihood. Day7 is identified as best fitted that presents fitted 2-parameter Weibull which is Scale α =641.04 and Shape β =1.36 and fitted 3-parameter Weibull which is Scale α =551.76, Shape β =1.15 and threshold θ=63. Detail characteristics on day 7 and day 1 are presented and taken as benchmark model for future traffic algorithm.These results are valuable on modeling future tele-traffic engineering algorithm like policing, shaping, scheduling or queue which is based in real IP-based campus network environment. It is also useful for future prediction of tele-traffic models.

PT Askes is a State-owned enterprise that engaged in healthcare. Due to the number of participants and branches as well as the services provided by PT Askes, the business processes are often delayed ("congestion"). Modeling and simulation of business processes (BPM) and BPMN can help resolve the issue. The research method is: collecting data, modeling the system running BP, then performed a simulation of the two simulation models. These two models are compared and analyzed to get the optimal model. So that the number of steps is reduced from 21 to 15. The optimal model was deployed to active designer.

The objective of this research increases efficiency of web cache memory. The Adaptive Web Caching with Interpolation and Web Usage Patterns (AWC-IWUP) simulation is investigated to solve for decision making about web objects replacement based on web usage and dynamic decision. More than 1,000,000 data sets of web usage between January 2013 and October 2013 from Walailak University are used for testing in this simulation. The AWC-IWUP simulation combines many mathematical Statistics theories as follows: Expected value algorithm, Cubic spline technique, MarSpline technique, First Order Condition (FOC) and Bayesian algorithm. The experimental results of this research can conclude that the AWC-IWUP simulation is proposed replacement technique that the AWC-IWUP solves replacement problem of the web cache memory better than the LRU technique. The AWC-IWUP technique increases the hit ratios higher than the LRU technique approximately 25%.