return to: www.cathrynpeoples.com


cathrynpeoples: Project Supervision



University of Essex Online (UoEO) / Kaplan Open Learning (KOL)



Current:

Evaluation of safety and efficiency measures in Rust for WebAssembly-based serverless applications

Security Event Log Deidentification: A Security Analyst Training and Intrusion Detection Research Solution

Performance comparison of state management approaches in Angular

An Efficient Phishing Attack Awareness and Prevention Portal Based on Self-Assessment

Investigating Cyber Security Threats in Offshore Law Firms: A Comparative Analysis of The Cayman Islands

Communication Standard Matter

Zero Trust Security for Airport Networks

The Design & Development of a Framework for Security Risk Assessment on Public Cloud Computing

The Design and Development of a sports stadium monitoring and management system to provide early threat detection and prevention of cyber threats to Cyber Physical Systems (CPS).

Exploring Novel Techniques for Automated Device Driver Synthesis

An appraisal of User Experience (UX) characteristics of disaster applications that affect a user’s perception of usability due to heightened emotion – An exploratory study towards understanding appropriate UX techniques for disaster applications

Securing 5G containerized control plane workloads deployed on edge clouds.

A Re-design of the Real-time Data Warehouse Pipeline Design in the Cloud that Complies with the Personal Data Protection Regulations in Indonesia

Proposed design of a secure cloud pharmacy management system for bridging hospital and community pharmacy practices in Hong Kong




Past:

Integrating multiple data sources into a single platform utilising Quantum Geographic Information Systems to assist e-scooter Use in London: A Case Study

The Design of a Homomorphic Encryption Library for the Resource-constrained IoT with Efficiency Objectives

The Design & Development of a Secure E-examination System

iHatch: Towards an Energy Efficient Temperature and Humidity Monitoring System

Improving Financial Institutions' Cybersecurity in Public Clouds Using MACsec Encryption

A Decision Support System to reduce data leakage in email communications between General Practitioners of medicine and patients in Italy

A Systematic Review on the Use of Blockchain in Electronic Health Record Management Systems for Access Control

February 2023-September 2023 (The Open University - T452):


..

...

..

...





February 2022-September 2022 (The Open University - T452):


Determining the root cause of Vehicle Voice Command System poor performance to design and test a solution to improve usability

The pegless washing line - Dual line design with high friction coating

Innovative Re-using of metal waste for sustainability benefits in wrench design

Developing sustainable body armour, using a material and design analysis, that is safer, lighter and more durable





February 2023-September 2023 (The Open University - TM470):


...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

February 2022-September 2022 (The Open University - TM470):


Creation of an Android Application for the 360GamerCast Podcast for better community engagement and ease of access to audio and social media

Tracking personnel and equipment to assist with extinguishing wildfires, whilst using Cursor-on-Target messaging through Mobile Ad-hoc Networks

Development of a Database Application for the Management of Drone Batteries

Designing an application for a children's football club

BODY MAPPING SKIN CONDITIONS AND INJURIES IN SOCIAL CARE

Connecting unused urban places into the food supply chain

A web application that teaches young children how to use a computer through optimised UI design

A Personal Trainer Web Application for Improved Usability Using NextJS & Strapi

Development of a system for managing the mentoring of volunteers in a charity

Assessing 60GHz Wi-Fi as a solution to the challenge of providing high dates rates, low latency, and physically unrestrictive virtual reality headsets.



October 2021-September 2022 (The Open University - TMXY475):


Replacement and redesign of _a Network_, removing unsupported End of Life Routers/Firewalls/Access switches, and out of contract WAN connections

Replacement of _a_ display network infrastructure to improve reliability and performance

CREATING A NETWORK FIT FOR MODERN EDUCATION

THE DESIGN, DEVELOPMENT AND DEPLOYMENT OF A LOCAL AREA NETWORK (LAN) TO SUPPORT BODY WORN CAMERA DEPLOYMENT

IMPROVING NETWORK RESILIENCY AT REMOTE SITES: A PROOF OF CONCEPT

Organisational Resilient Development Network Project



February 2021-September 2021 (The Open University - TM470):


Reconfigure SolarWinds Orion IT Monitoring System to Improve System Availability at The White Company

The output of this project will be a documented monitoring solution that is set up to monitor all important aspects of the IT infrastructure including reconfigured alerting and added dashboard for the Network & Infrastructure team. Lastly, the solution will be up to date with security patches and feature updates will be applied on a regular basis as per a defined patching schedule.

The IT team will have a clear visibility of the state of the network and infrastructure and will be able to respond to alerts rapidly. This will potentially translate to higher availability of services, plus perhaps higher customer satisfaction and revenue. Maintenance activities on the system can be performed more easily and the SolarWinds software will be able to use the system resources more efficiently. Moreover, a fully up to date system will also provide more functionality, support from the vendor with software updates and fixes and more robust security.

A Web application utilising PHP to support statistical data capturing, informing military commander's decision making in relation to airfield operations to achieve resource efficiencies.

The Design and configuration of a Campus LAN in Packet Tracer focusing on security

The company sells garden sheds and to increase its consumer base, must expand the business and take sales online. The business will be organised by functional department. The network must provide the functionality required to separate the business into departments, allowing the interconnectivity needed between these departments when required. The network must allow departments to function independently, allowing for the specialisation of labour, accountability and efficiency. Secure network practices will ensure data confidentiality and access to a company website via the public Internet for customers. Without a suitable campus LAN design, the company cannot meet organisational demands nor serve customers competently through a publicly accessible website to generate revenue.

A Motivational Remote Working Employee Support System Offering Feedback and Gamification with a Reward Programme.

Due to the current Covid-19 pandemic, most employees are working remotely from home, which has created some challenges for both employees and employers (Routley, 2020). Findings from an interview and article by Stevens (2020) reveal that employees find it hard to:
- Set a schedule to follow when working from home.
- Synchronise project tasks with other employees without direct human interaction or a system to manage it from home.

A study conducted by Hubstaff (2019) shows that the biggest challenges for companies when employees are working remotely are:
- Performance tracking, coordination, task assigning and scheduling. Moreover,.
- Lack of a workplace social interaction has led to low motivation levels; employees can no longer walk to each other and directly communicate to express their ideas.

Companies need a system that will help them with feedback, recognition, and performance rating. We can identify task coordination/scheduling and performance tracking as the main problems when working from home, for both employees and employers.

A web-based application for booking and managing swims at a fishing venue

Currently, most angling societies or syndicates do not use a booking system for fishing locations (known as swims) within their venue, and access to a swim is based on a first-come-first-serve basis. This leads to some members being unable to access popular swims, which can lead to arguments or loss of membership numbers to the angling society or syndicate. When a booking system is used, it is often managed using a paper system, with bookings made via the telephone. During busy periods it can be frustrating for anglers to reach bailiffs to book a swim and means the fishing venue must dedicate a bailiff to managing bookings and answering the phone. This takes the bailiff away from their regular duties of managing the venue grounds and interacting with anglers around the venue. This project aims to solve these issues by creating an online swim booking system. Availability of swims will be visible to anglers and bailiffs.

ACHIEVING GREEN MASTERS AT SCALE IN GAME DEVELOPMENT

Giant monolithic source-control and vast CI/CD supporting infrastructure for gaming have, in general, grown larger as projects become more complex, thus making traditional AAA game development nearly unsustainable despite efforts to streamline and compartmentalise. It is a continuous battle to try to utilise available hardware effectively and tweaking build jobs to be optimal.

A Web-based restaurant management Application built with Django and Python

Most of the data required for the daily running of the bar is processed using a loose collection of Microsoft Excel spreadsheets (Appendix 1). The original files are kept stored on a desktop PC in the office. The users usually make a copy of these files to work in on them using their personal computers. Each copy is unlinked from the others, with the consequence that changes made are not synchronised. Spreadsheets, because of their ease of use, are very popular within the company. Over the years, as the volume of data increased, the spreadsheets have become larger and impractical, less comprehensible, and hard to maintain. The most common issues are: Data gets duplicated, product prices are not updated in some records, orders are not recorded properly or are missing, staff must navigate through hundreds of records to find what they are looking for, tasks are performed twice, and gross profit calculation is often? inaccurate. In fewer words: the data held in spreadsheets is becoming increasingly inconsistent, often leading to the wrong decisions being made. A different method to record and manipulate data is needed.

Network firewall security improvements for small businesses

The issue that this project will address is the gap that has been identified in the small business sector regarding network security. Many small businesses currently do not have adequate network security leaving their information and business venerable to cyber-attacks where personal and financial data can be stolen. "43% of SMBs Lack Any Type of Cybersecurity Defense Plans". (15 Small Business Cyber Security Statistics That You Need to Know - Hashed Out by The SSL Store, 2021) This lack of security can be due to multiple reason, the main ones being the cost of implementing higher security and the absence of IT knowledge in this sector from the small business owner. "VIPRE's SMB Security Trends survey results indicate that nearly half of the CISOs and IT pros surveyed find data security to be their biggest IT security challenges" (15 Small Business Cyber Security Statistics That You Need to Know - Hashed Out by The SSL Store, 2021).

This projects outcome will be a solution that will resolve the following common security attacks;

1. Data breaches
2. A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack
3. Unauthorized access to the network

Each threat carries a different risk to the small business, data breaches can cost a company millions of pounds. In 2020 IBM estimated that data breaches cost businesses an average of 3.86 million USD (Cost of a Data Breach Study, 2021). and with the recent introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) this can now cost significantly more. (Data protection, 2021)

By having increased security on their business router using a combination of improving hardware and creating specific software tailored for small businesses this will help reduce the probability of a successfully security attack.

THE DESIGN OF A SCADA SYSTEM TO SUPPORT A TYRE PRODUCTION LINE AT PIRELLI

This project proposes the design and implementation of a Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system to support a single tyre production line at Pirelli.





February 2021-September 2021 (The Open University - T452):



The Design of an Auto Rotator for Enhancing Maritime Motor Storage by Responding to Bearing Brinelling for Cost Objectives

When new or spare motors are stored for a period of time, they are required to be rotated a minimum of 15 times every 3 months or more often (Baldor (ABB), 2009). This requirement is to prevent the bearings remaining in the same position causing brinelling (small indentations occurring in the inner and outer bearing races) and to redistribute the grease within the bearing.

Presently the only method for performing the rotations required by bearings is manual, requiring already stretched personnel to have a system in place to ensure all stored motors are rotated. By relying on a system to be in place and followed we begin to introduce the risk of improper storage through human error. Auto Rotator is a solution which seeks to change this.

Improvement of the design of a modular tool storage system for mass production woodwork for improved usability and cost objectives

Improving the sustainability of a Windows Mixed Reality (WMR) motion controller

The aims for this project were have been developed after noting that, when playing certain VR room scale games with a play space meeting the typical minimum area requirements (2.0 m x 2.0 m), boundaries were often breached by the motion controllers resulting in frequent impacts to the surrounding walls and furniture. When wearing a head mounted display (HMD) the user relies entirely on a play space boundary system, which is displayed within the VR environment to remain centred in the play space. Since the HMD displayed boundary is only a visual reference, breaching it with an arm or hand is easy to do and often results in controller impact to objects outside of the play space.

Considering that VR controllers are relatively expensive compared to traditional handheld controllers, or gamepads, and typically cannot be bought separately (left and right) this presents cost implication to a user that breaks a controller during use.

The aims of this project are to (i) reduce the risk of breakage, specifically separation of the tracking ring from the controller due to fracture of the L-bracket, and (ii) reduce potential cost to users by reducing the risk of breakage and the need to buy replacement controllers.



February 2020-September 2020 (The Open University):



PROJECT MANAGEMENT OF AN APPLICATION THAT RECORDS THE ANNUAL LEAVE OF EMPLOYEES

Chatbot Acronym Educator

The Acronym Chatbot Educator project is aimed at solving a common problem faced across the IT industry with regard to the use and understanding of acronyms. There is a wealth of acronyms in use across multiple organisations and research presented in this report shows how it is often the case that people do not understand the acronyms, despite using them in their daily language. This presents a much wider issue in that by using acronyms that we do not understand, we could be saying something that is factually incorrect.

The solution is a web application that takes an acronym as an input (from the user) and provides the definition of the acronym as an output. By giving employees access to this application, we create a world where all employees can speak the same language as they can use the application to get a common definition of an acronym. The impact this has on an organisation's reputation is that all employees are speaking a common language and therefore we avoid creating unnecessary confusion with our clients.

Improving the Usability and Functionality of Interactive RESTful API Documentation

A 'Developer Portal' is currently in-development to provide a marketing platform for selling the APIs.



Planning and Designing a library's new network infrastructure - Secure, Safe and Expandable

A Randomised and Replayable Adventure Game: Increasing the replayability within the point and click adventure game genre via the implementation of randomisation of pre-made parts

A Football Fantasy

In many businesses and corporations around the country, internal competitions are regularly set up to encourage teambuilding and staff interaction. One example of this that is often chosen is fantasy football, based upon the UK's premier league. (Premier League, 2020). These competitions are also very popular amongst social groups.

Many people are lured into these annual competitions and a fair proportion of them are avid football supporters and fantasy players. However, the rest of them are made up of casual supporters, and those with minimal football knowledge or experience with the fantasy game itself, and those just wanting the social engagement.

Various websites and social media sources offer significant amounts of data that can be used to gain a competitive advantage, but these can quickly overwhelm newer players, deterring them from getting fully involved. Conversations with players in my organization have identified that they often struggle to understand vast amounts of data and find it difficult to form any coherent plan, or be able to predict results with accuracy, and therefore score poorly each week, leaving them disheartened with the competitions and their engagement wanes fast.

This project aims to address that problem by:

- Automatically gathering pertinent data, both premiership and fantasy, from suitable data sources, whilst filtering out data that could overwhelm or confuse newer players.
- Presenting that data so that inexperienced players can understand it and allow them to make informed decisions and feel more engaged with the competition.
- Using complex computer algorithms to give match predictions, increasing a player's insight, and their chances of scoring well each week, and therefore increasing their enjoyment.
- Providing a simple method to compare premiership players so that users can easily make their transfer and selection choices and create their team with increased chance of success.

The Development of a Gamified Appointment Scheduling Application for an Aesthetics Business using Java

The Design and Development of a System to Monitor the Production and Distribution of Cider for Older Users

I work for a farm that produces a range of ciders and apple juices. As a registered cider producer, we legally have to keep records of the movement of cider, how much we have in stock and who we sell our cider to (The Cider and Perry Regulations 1989). I have had discussions with our cider maker about the lack of systematic record keeping, he is aware that we should be keeping more detailed records but does not want to spend his time recording the information on a computer. He currently keeps paper records of the information that we need, but it is time consuming and not readily accessible if we need to look something up. Keeping paper records has number of well-known challenges; for example: "These challenges can be broken down into accessibility, productivity and security. The volume of files needed on site can take up space quickly and it can be difficult to locate the documents and identify key pieces of information. Regarding security, it is nearly impossible to accurately account for each person who accesses a paper-based file and audit their use of that record." (Logan, 2015). It is therefore to such problems that this project aims to contribute.

Analysing, Designing and Implementing Network and Security Fundamentals on a Flat Network

Bipolar Early Intervention Application

The impact on both the patient and the health services is significant when the patient, diagnosed with Bipolar Effective Disorder, suffers a shift in their condition towards either a depressed or abnormally euphoric mood. The clinical definition of bipolar, which re-enforces this statement according to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE, 2014) is:

"a potentially lifelong and disabling condition characterised by episodes of mania (abnormally elevated mood or irritability and related symptoms with severe functional impairment or psychotic symptoms for 7 days or more) or hypomania (abnormally elevated mood or irritability and related symptoms with decreased or increased function for 4 days or more) alternating with episodes of depressed mood."

A typical symptom when a sufferer is in a euphoric state is known as flight of ideas. This involves the sufferer experiencing rapidly changing thought patterns resulting in the inability to focus on a task. Typical symptoms when experiencing a depressed state of mood can be the withdrawal from friends and family, poor diet and the inability to look after one's self. These symptoms can result in the sufferer losing the ability respond to the early indicators of a departure from normalcy. The end result is often a hospital admission to a specialist mental health unit.

According to Knott (2015) The basis for the Community Care Act 2012 is ..

"Community care services are intended to help people who need care and support to live with dignity and independence in the community and to avoid social isolation. The services are aimed at the elderly and those who have mental illness, learning disability and physical disability. The main aim in providing community care services is to enable people to remain living in their own homes and to retain as much independence as possible"

This implies that a hospital admission should be avoided wherever possible. In addition to this, where a hospital admission is unavoidable there will be an impact on Mental Health services, in particular the financial cost of each admission. The article "Mental health rehabilitation inpatient services" published by the Care Quality Commission (2018) states that the median daily cost of a complex care bed amounts to £356 per day.

According to Das Gupta and Guest (n.d.), the mean length of a hospital admission lasts 5.5 weeks. This equates to an average cost of £13706 per admission.

In conclusion, the project's objective is to deliver an application that empowers the patient and their care team to detect changes in mental state early on. This will prompt early intervention by clinicians, thus minimising the demand on inpatient mental health services, as well as the negative impact on the individual.

Design and Implementation of a GUI to Interact with Open Source Tools that Simulate Various Data Traffic Conditions and make SIP Calls under these Traffic Conditions, for the Evaluation of a VoIP Device

Rebound MTB Club App: A cross platform mobile application supporting a Scottish mountain biking charity using Google's Flutter framework and Firebase development platform

Rebound is a registered charity based in Lennoxtown near Glasgow, formed with the aim of improving both the physical and mental health of the local community through advocacy of the sport of mountain biking.

The charity currently offers a number of activities, including a weekly guided bike ride, mountain biking trail skills and maintenance coaching sessions. Additionally, they are undertaking a project to negotiate a lease to build, run and maintain a mountain bike trail centre near Falklands, Fife.

Rebound is supported by a website, http://www.lennoxmtb.com/ (Figure 1) where they can post news and information about the group, as well as maintaining a Facebook profile, https://www.facebook.com/LennoxForest (Figure 2) where they post news and updates, a feed of which is displayed on the main website - currently the only dynamic aspect of the webpage, which currently has no scope for user interaction.

To date the charity webpage has been managed on a voluntary basis by friends of Rebound and is therefore not updated regularly. As such, it does little to actively encourage participation with the club.

The aim of this project is to deliver a cross-platform mobile application to support the charity's main goal, which is increasing participation with the club thus encouraging users to get out and ride bikes.

Increasing Network Resilience and Maintainability within Datacentres





February 2019-September 2019 (The Open University):

Development of a Web Application using Gamification to Improve Running Performance on a Ketogenic Diet

The author of this report is an enthusiastic endurance runner and part of Telford Running club. Competition between members is rife and they are always looking for ways to improve their race times, and at the same time, stay healthy and injury free. Over the past 10 years, the author has had a plethora of running related injuries which has hindered race performance and running frequency.

Whilst on a quest to improve this abysmal statistic, in June 2018 the author adopted a ketogenic diet, also referred to as 'keto'. Whilst the current dogma surrounding endurance athletes is to consume a high volume of carbohydrates, keto advocates a high-fat and low carbohydrate diet. By adopting keto, a person is forcing their body to burn fat as opposed to glucose, which according to Volek & Phinney (2012), "you can then train harder, perform longer, and recover faster!". Volek & Phinney goes on to explain you should not eat more than 50 grams of total carbs (25-30 grams of net carbs) on a ketogenic diet. Remarkably, this increased the frequency and distance of the authors training, reduced the rate of injuries, and more importantly improved race times.

Reynolds (2015) points out that "For decades, recreational and competitive athletes have believed that we should - even must - consume a diet rich in carbohydrates to fuel exertion". Members at the club still agree with this belief. Therefore, to change a runner's perception using a short and temporary experiment, a diary of food intake as well as race results were recorded on a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. Visualisations showed positive trends in race times based on the food recorded. For instance, during a 1-week period in August 2018 of consuming a strict ketogenic diet (consisting of 70% fat, 25% protein and 5% carbohydrate) the author managed to run a total of 85 miles that week, as well as staying injury free.

The popularity of longer distance running is growing, with Sports Marketing Surveys Inc (2014) suggesting that "800,000 runners, or 10% of the UK adult running population, competed in a marathon, half-marathon or triathlon in the last 12 months." However, Huang et all (2018) explains that such prolonged endurance is accompanied by fatigue and muscle soreness. This could contribute towards long term injury and unwillingness to continue. Nevertheless, the paper concludes that keto has the potential to be used as a fatigue-preventing and/or recovery-promoting diet approach. By adopting a ketogenic diet, the chances of injury can drastically reduce, thus increasing participation in long distance running. Therefore, it's important this project emphases the link between a ketogenic diet and subsequent improvement in running performance.

The Development of a Point of Sale Application for Street Traders using an Android System

A Ruby on Rails Crowdsourced Drum Advice Platform with an Advice Ranking System and Secure Session Management

Finding reliable, tried, and tested drumming advice can be difficult with so many information sources on the web that sometimes offer contradictory advice. Also, as cybersecurity incidents are common in the media (BBC, 2018), (Leskin p, 2018), and businesses are held responsible for the security of personal data, the ICT solution to this problem is developed with security in mind.

2.2 Description of problem and project

The project focuses on a two-fold problem whose solution is introduced in the order below:

1. Providing an application for crowd-sourcing reliable drumming advice, through an advice reviewing and ranking system.
2. Securing the application.

These problems are intertwined, and each was focused on as appropriate.

A Mobile Application and MongoDB Database System to Identify Fly-tipping Black-spots using Crowd-sourced data

Development of a Website with Gamification for a Community Running Group

In recent years the number of people participating in recreational or non-professional running has increased dramatically . Parkrun, a nationwide weekly event that holds a free, timed, 5k run for anyone who wants to attend has grown from 50,000 runners a week in 2015 to 155,000 runners in 2019 (parkrun, 2019a). Alongside this, the number of running clubs has increased (England Athletics, 2018) as runners look to local groups for training, motivation and socialising. The booming market of wearable technology has also meant that runners can track and analyse their activities in great detail and share their achievements on social media.

This report covers the creation of a website to support a community running group and its members. The group have expressed a wish to have a website that has public pages advertising the group with a separate members-only section. Within the members' section, each runner can have a profile page to record and display their runs to other members, a section to organise group attendance at events and a motivational tool. The final aspect is implemented through the use of the gamification technique of leaderboards, which have been proven beneficial as a motivational tool in these settings (Jia et al., 2017) (Tu et al., 2018).

Development of an Android Mobile Application to Support The Chelmsford Table Tennis League using Google Cloud's Firebase

The Chelmsford Table Tennis league, CTTL, operates their own format that consists of five divisions, containing ten to twelve competing teams in each. The teams have up to four players, with one of the players designated as the team captain. The league organises different competitions split into two categories, league and cup.

The league matches involve two teams of three players. The three players from both teams play each other, resulting in nine singles matches and one doubles match. The overall match result can either be a win, lose or a draw.

The home team captain is responsible for collating the match results. This information is recorded on a league match card which is obtainable from the league website.

Once all matches have been played and the score tallied up, both team captains need to sign the card before a photograph of the card is taken and then emailed to the league's website address, for processing. The league then has allocated committee members assigned to each division who are reasonable for ensuring the league results are updated at least once per week.

Even though the present solution has been in practice for a number of years, it isn't without short comings, namely:

- If the committee member isn't available, i.e. is on holiday, league result updates are delayed.
- If the match card isn't filled out correctly, this needs to be completed again. Common issues are:
- Illegible handwriting;
- Mistakes made with set scores, this could be marking a player to have won a game although the set scores don’t correlate that result;
- Mistakes made with game results, this can manifest if an arithmetic error is made when totalling up the games won and lost on the evening. This is easily done when matches can be played to up to 11 pm at night and tiredness occurs.
- In relation to cup fixtures, these need to be prioritised over league results as sometimes rescheduled league matches, on occasion, would clash with cup fixtures. This would result in further delays in getting results released.
- Annually, each club has a meeting to discuss who will be taking responsibility of being captains for the teams prior to informing the league. This is always met with a lot of resentment due to the administrative overhead required, i.e. obtaining the required amount of match cards for all the fixtures, league and league cup, organising the playing teams, the sending of fixture results on a weekly basis. The lack of willing volunteers to be captains, increases the reliance on the previous year's team captains, resulting in overall reluctance for players to take on responsibility in future seasons.

These issues can be resolved by computerising the process and providing clear, structured means of recording this information which would limit the mistakes currently experienced with the present system.



October 2018-June 2019 (Ulster University):

Coping After a Suicide

Develop a system which supports a community after a suicide, and helps to avoid situations of suicide contagion.

Stop Suicide

Develop a system which can be used to:
1) explore reasons for current suicide rates in Northern Ireland, and
2) allow a person to determine their mental state.

Student Personalisation

Develop a system which allows a tutor to characterise the personality of students:
1) with special needs, and
2) without special needs.

Drug Addiction

Develop a website to support the needs of those who are directly and indirectly affected by drug addiction.

Teaching Children to Read

Develop a tool which helps children learning to read, and parents to track their progress.





February 2018-September 2018 (The Open University):

Developing a User-focused Interface Design for Local Monitoring and Servicing of Combined Heat and Power Systems

Centrica Business Solutions produces Combined Heat and Power (CHP) systems used in municipal buildings, sports centres, gyms and similar premises to provide both heat and electric power from natural gas in place of conventional boilers, which only provide heat. The resulting improvement in energy efficiency results in financial and environmental savings with a reduction in both electricity costs and overall CO2 emissions.

This project aims to update the Human-Machine Interface (HMI) component of the CHP, to improve the Situational Awareness of the operators of the system while also updating the look and feel of the product to correspond to recent changes to company branding.

The existing human-machine interface (HMI) device is based on an outdated single-board computer and touchscreen display which is nearing the end of its service life. The user-interface application was developed specifically for this platform by an engineer who has long-since left the company and left very little documentation making the product effectively unmaintainable. The existing product uses a proprietary language for defining display elements which is quite simplistic. This enables rapid development of basic interfaces but leaves little scope for refinement. Since the company has changed ownership and is undergoing a re-branding exercise, now is the time to update this system to a newer better-supported platform, and for a new user-interface to be designed to conform to the updated company branding guidelines and to improve the user-experience.

A re-design of the HMI will be carried out using the Interaction Design method, as taught in the OU Module M364, resulting in a paper prototype of the new design. Additional design guidelines will also be derived from the industrial best-practise recommendations detailed in a selection of white-papers. The paper-based prototype will then be extended to an interactive prototype, with a user interface developed for demonstration on a touch-screen device with a Raspberry Pi.

Development of a Garage Software System built on a 'Clean' Model-View-Presenter Architecture

The Honiton MOT Centre is a local business that provides vehicle servicing, MOTs and repairs. The business has been using a paper-based system for managing their appointments, customer contacts, invoices and staff records. The business has successfully grown over the years and this paper-based method has become cumbersome. The client previously considered using a combination of separate solutions such as spreadsheets, databases and word documents to aid the business functions. The main issue the client faced with these solutions was the lack of computer literacy within their workforce. The mechanics found these methods to be more unwieldy than the paper-based system they were trying to migrate from. Complete off-the-shelf software solutions have been considered such as:

- Dragon2000 (2018)
- Motasoft Virtual Garage Management (Motosoft, 2017)
- AutoRepair Cloud (AutorepairCloud, 2014)
- GarageHive (GarageHive, 2018).

The client rejected many of these off-shelf solutions because of one or more of the followings issues:

- Too many unused features - for example, GarageHive includes features such as parts stock management and fleet maintenance, which the business does not need.
- Too expensive - for example, AutoRepair Cloud has a subscription fee of $48 a month, which is something the client states they cannot afford at the moment.
- Lack of functionality - for example, all the systems above do not offer functionality to deal with courtesy car hire, which is a service the business offers.
- Complicated to use - when there are many generic features that are not relevant to the business it can make the user interface more convoluted than is necessary.
- Relies on an internet connection - for example, AutoRepair Cloud and the many cloud-based software solutions rely on an internet connection to be able to provide the functionality that they state.
- Does not scale up - for example, Motasoft advertises a lot of useful functions, but support for multiple garages is not listed as one them.

It is therefore the problem of unavailable software solutions that fully meet the business needs that this project aims to address.

The proposed solution involved designing and developing a software system that handles the following business functions:
- managing work bookings (MOT/servicing/repairs)
- managing customer and staff records
- managing vehicle records, including MOT history.

Mobile Application for Management of Remote Electricity Access and Billing

Traditionally, consumers in the UK contract with an electricity supplier to provide electricity at a specific residential (domestic) or business (commercial) property. However, there are growing opportunities for consumers to access electricity at sites remote from their main point of supply e.g. for charging electric cars, powering boats in marinas, caravan parks and camping sites.

Currently these consumers using remote electricity supply point are either:

1. Supplied free of charge or at a supplemented rate, or;
2. Charged directly by the supply point provider at whatever rate, and through whatever mechanism, the provider deems commercially acceptable e.g. billed at the point of sale via a credit card.

This has become an issue because, in the long term, point 1 above is not sustainable from the provider’s point of view and limits the attraction of investment in these facilities, and point 2 above may deter consumers from utilising these facilities or negatively influencing their decisions against major purchases.

This project looks specifically at the opportunity for Electric Vehicle (EV) charging from remote stations, however other applications may be possible in the future.

Improving User Satisfaction of Unitemps.com

Unitemps is a franchise network that provides a platform for Higher Education temporary staffing which aids universities to fill roles in a tax-efficient way leaving external agencies out. Unitemps is part of the Warwick Employment Group (WEG) and supported by the WEG IT, a shared development and support provider and the IT Services team of University of Warwick. Unitemps helps candidates to improve their financial situation meanwhile students often gain real life experience in their chosen career also. "... the job provided good opportunities to develop the skills required for other future job[s]." - Former Employee (Glassdoor.com.au, 2018).

Unitemps.com is the front end, the user interface (UI) that consultants, candidates and contacts interact with. It is developed and maintained by a third-party supplier. Adapt is the Application Tracking System (ATS) that handles the data of different entities like jobs, assignments or profiles using Windows servers. Licence to use this system is purchased from a different third-party supplier. Development on Adapt is carried out internally. The ATS is accessible for consultants, support staff and the internal and external developer teams only. Unitemps.co.uk previously had three major releases since its inception in 1997. The last one was carried out in 2014 , it is when the domain was updated to unitemps.com too. The software was due to get some updates to its look and functionality, because in 4 years' time the technology, legal environment and competitors have advanced or changed.

Design and development of a user friendly Home from Homes Room Booking Website using User-centred design concepts, HTML and Accessibility Principles

A not-for-profit organization provides temporary accommodation, close to principal treatment centres, for families whose children undergo hospitalisation. The organisation has been praised and recognized for its ongoing commitment to the delivery of sensitive, flexible and unlimited levels of support in response to family's needs, undergoing critical life experiences.

Currently, the organization manages three Homes from Home (HfH) centres across the UK including Edinburgh, Glasgow and London with future plans to expand services to two new locations: Southampton and Belfast.

The members of HfH centres staff provide continuous emotional support and assistance to visiting guests, carry out house maintenance jobs as well as perform administrative tasks, such as respond to user inquiries, process request and manage booking records.

As a result of the planned expansion of family centres the management introduced plans to implement improvements of the existing arrangements supporting management of HfH centres by creating an easy way of accessing information including online calendars, contact forms with particular consideration of a user friendly room booking function, recognized as a core element in automating a booking system.

Consequently, the existing methods and processes supported by the use of basic tools traditional writing pads and computer based Microsoft for Windows Excel spreadsheet (Microsoft, 2018)) are to be supplemented by an online web based solution, Home from Homes website.

The Design of an Accessible User Interface for an Annual Leave Management System

Requesting, changing and cancelling annual leave at a medium sized company as well as keeping track of holidays taken while having access to the company’s calendar and allowing the users of the system to see which employees are on annual leave on which dates. This topic was chosen as this is an area that needs improvement within the company.



October 2017-June 2018 (Ulster University):

Network Quality Monitoring in the Internet of Things:

Network quality monitoring in the IoT is challenging due to the rapid evolution of applications and changing user requirements. A standard approach to quality monitoring in the IoT does not currently exist, and interoperability between IoT deployments is restricted.

The objective of this project is therefore to develop a set of rules to monitor application performance and the real-time state of the network in the Internet of Things (IoT). The objective of this ruleset is to achieve Quality of Service (QoS) from the network perspective and Quality of Experience (QoE) from the user perspective. The solution proposed should support the range of applications and devices which exist in the IoT, both now and potentially in the future. It should also accommodate the expectations of users and the volume of network traffic.

This project will use C++ or Python in the ns-3 IDE. The success of the project implementation will be measured using simulation.

Donald Trump in a Dress!:

"Fake news means fictious deliberately fabricated and presented as non-fiction with the intent to mislead recipients into treating fiction as fact or into doubting verifiable fact." [theguardian.com]

The goal of this project is to develop an algorithm which allows a user to detect fake news. A user should be able to enter a news headline through a front-end interface, and the system should respond by telling them if the headline is fake or not.

This will involve the implementation of an algorithm which processes the phrase entered, and outputs a true or false decision.

In your implementation, you should demonstrate the use of the most appropriate data structures, and sorting and searching techniques, such that the response is returned by the system quickly.

The algorithm should be implemented in Java, and the system front-end should be implemented using HTML5. A database should also be incorporated into the implementation to retain news story details and their associated status of fakeness.

A Website to Capture Student Personalities for use to Influence Teaching Practices:

In distance education, perhaps more so than in face-to-face teaching, it is important for the tutor to formally characterise each student such that their personality may be understood. This allows the teaching and learning approach to subsequently be adapted specific to these needs, with the overall goal being to maximise the student learning rate of success.

The goal of this project is therefore to develop a website which will allow the personality characterisation of students to be performed. The questions presented to students through the front-end should be researched and have a proven success rate in terms of their ability to accurately characterise personalities. The system should also present an administrator view which summarises the student responses collected.

Teaching Adults Aged 60+ How to Code:

Teaching anyone at any stage of life should be approached sensitively - each group of students has their own specific demands and it is essential to respond to these in order to achieve a successful teaching and learning experience. Older adults, as a specific user group, have certain needs: "Older adults do not want to be patronized, to be talked down to, or made to play with "kids" toys." [acm.org]

The objective of this project is therefore to develop a website which helps adults aged 60+ to code. The programming language being taught may be selected by the student. Part of the training programme should include a quiz to test subject knowledge.

The Development of a Gym Membership Management System with Gamification Support

The objective of this project is to develop a website or application which allows a gym user to manage all of the benefits associated with being a member. This includes the ability to view and book upcoming classes, to view personal trainer profiles, and to approach specific personal trainers to discuss the possibility of one-to-one training. The system should also have a member's profile page where they are able to manage their membership by updating and amending direct debit details and personal training contracts.

In relation to the research element of this project, the system should implement a goals and achievements interface to add an element of gamification to the system. The aim of this is to encourage and motivate users to continue using the gym facilities on a regular basis throughout their fitnes journeys, whilst being able to achieve points which earn badges. These achievements can then be shared with other members of the gym through the social media feature of the system. The system will use notifications to prompt and motivate members by highlighting each new 'Gym Challenge' set by the gym team, which members have the choice of either accepting or declining.

PregnancyPal for Dads

The objective of this project is to develop a website which supports dads during their partner's pregnancy.

The website could present reminders of mum's medical appointments, general information on baby growth throughout pregnancy, recommendations of food choices for mum dependent on the stage of pregnancy, and an advisory for social activities which they can explore together throughout pregnancy.

An element of gamification should also be incorporated into the website's design to encourage dads in their support of mums.

PregnancyPal for Mums

The objective of this project is to develop a website which supports mums during pregnancy.

The website could present exercise recommendations based on the user's vital statistics input, food recommendations based on their stage of pregnancy, general updates on baby growth, information to prepare mums for the birth, together with a calendar and a tool for mum to record her results from medical appointments.

An element of gamification should also be incorporated into the website design to support and encourage mums in their exercise regime throughout pregnancy.

The Programmable Smart City

The Internet of Things supports communication between mobile devices for a variety of applications, such as a smart fridge or a driverless car. IoT scenarios generally have the goal of a more comfortable way of life for the citizens of a city.

The objective of this project is to select one aspect of a programmable city, and develop a front- and back-end system through which it may be operated, managed, and maintained. This will involve an awareness of the range and types of data which need to be collected for the smart city domain and the use of relevant data structures to support the information in the programmed system, development of an algorithm to use the data for smart decision-making, and output of relevant decisions to achieve an intelligent and programmable city.

Smart city concepts which may be considered as part of this project include: social inclusion and crowdsourcing.



February 2017-September 2017 (The Open University):

An Algorithm to Control the Auto-deployment of Staff in a Next Retail Distribution Warehouse

In the warehouse, there are packing stations that receive items in a chute. These items are then scanned by an operative and a computer tells them which pigeon hole to place the item in. Once all the items for that parcel have been placed in the pigeon hole, the operative is told to pack all the items and place the parcel in a sack. When there are no more items left in the chutes, the operative then requests a new station and the auto-deployment system will send them to the next busiest station.

Packing stations can pack parcels for different depots and these depots each have a different time when all the items must be packed from the station and sent to despatch (this is called the dispatch time), even if some of the parcels have missing items.

The current auto-deployment system does not recognise which stations are dispatching first and therefore operatives may be sent to a station that is not dispatching yet, but has more items than a station that is dispatching presently, meaning that the station may not get dispatched on time.

Other problems include packing stations not being recognised as being completed of all work and having been dispatched; operatives logging into a station and the auto-deployment system automatically moving them to another busier station and not allowing them to override the decision and the auto-deployment system not having access to operatives training records and sending them to packing stations they are not trained to pack on.

The objective of this project is therefore to develop a system that was is capable of accurately and reliably sending staff to the correct packing stations at the right times to meet dispatch deadlines.

The Design and Development of an iOS Application for Gym Membership Management with Firebase Integration and Gamification Support

The gym I am a member of has been, for a while now, using several different systems to manage all the associated benefits that members have access to as part of their membership. Some of these benefits include the ability for members to view up and coming classes and book onto them, view Personal Trainer (PT) profiles and if interested, use online electronic methods to(?) approach that PT to discuss the possibility of one-on-one training. Users currently are unable to manage their direct debit, amend their existing direct debit if they wish, for example, to sign-up for PT, but instead must go through the tedious process of arranging an appointment to speak to a membership consultant to carry out these tasks.

The problem lies in the fact that there is no one central system that members have access to that includes all the mentioned business systems intended to support and encourage members with regards to the management of their gym membership. These disparate systems are error-prone and outdated, making it difficult for members to accomplish simple tasks due to them having to use several different systems to utilise these benefits which in turn, increases errors made and as a result, the satisfaction of members decreases.

Combining of all the mentioned systems into one singular system, accessible by all its members, should help make the management of a member’s gym membership and any associated benefits far more easier and more satisfying by removing the pre-existing errors associated with the current systems which should, in turn, help increase both member satisfaction and retention.

The envisaged solution will be a mobile application native to the iOS platform. The system will utilise Firebase as its backend database allowing dynamic content relating to user challenges and information to be stored and accessed throughout.

The system will implement a goals and achievements interface, adding an element of gamification to the system in an attempt to encourage and motivate users along their fitness journey to continue using the gym facilities on a regular basis whilst in doing so, being able to achieve points which in turn will earn them badges, which can then be shared with other members of the gym through the social media-side of the system.

A Management and Distribution System for Engineering Drawings

The management of a company called ‘TGE Co.’ has decided that a review and update of their system for engineering drawing control and distribution is needed. It has been reported that some manufacturing drawings on the shop floor have either expired (obsolete issues used) or are inaccurate (the current issue is used but the product does not comply due to changes in the design of its components that were not reflected in the drawing yet). This introduces many problems, not only in terms of quality (including costly product recalls and reworks or production delays) but also in standard-compliance and failed audits, for example.

The proposed system will store both the current and archived issues of drawings. Each drawing will hold a list of references to its components’ drawings and a list of users (or groups of users) to be notified by an email whenever a new issue is approved. The system will allow Engineers and Engineering Managers to upload a new issue of a drawing, change details of such a drawing (unless submitted for validation) and to submit it for a validation. When submitted for validation, Quality Engineer users will be notified and will be able to either validate the drawing, which will prompt Engineering Manager users to approve it, or refuse the document, in which case it will be returned to its originator with comments attached and changes permitted again. If an Engineering Manager approves the drawing, the system will send an email to each member of each associated mailing group and the previous issue of the drawing will automatically be made obsolete. Otherwise the document will return to its originator to be reworked, with comments attached and changes permitted.

The system will allow guest users (users unknown to the system) to access all current issues but not any archived or uploaded but not approved documents. It will manage user access rights, manage the validation and approval processes and the distribution by notifying relevant users. The system should also include a database solution to ensure persistency of all the important objects, such as individual issues of a drawing, distribution details or user details.

The new system will enforce a compliance with the ‘ISO 9001:2015 Quality Management Systems - Requirements’ (ISO, 2015) more efficiently than the current one. This document provides basic guidelines for companies, defining how the product (or service) quality should be managed to deliver compliance and continuous improvement and how the knowledge should be safeguarded. The company does not currently have a tool to enforce document version control and distribution.

Designing and Developing an Android Mobile Application for Healthcare Professionals to Review, Record and Calculate Medical Information to Improve the Quality and Efficiency of Patient Care

Paperwork and documentation are a core aspect of care in the NHS today. For every action taken by a doctor, nurse, healthcare assistant, or any other healthcare professional involved with the care of a patient, this action will be documented to some degree. Further to this, documentation will be kept on all aspects pertinent to the patient’s condition whilst they are being cared for in an NHS hospital.

However, some within the NHS feel that patient care is hampered by the focus on paperwork and documentation that has become the norm within the NHS. It has been estimated that one fifth of a nurse’s time is spent dealing with paperwork, representing over one million nursing hours per week.

This project aims to streamline documentation in the NHS by designing and building a mobile application that will consolidate the different forms and documents filled out every day by NHS staff, and provide staff with automation of their most important and complicated tasks.

A Java Application to Gamify Music Practice and Track Progress for Teachers and Students

Keeping track of pupils’ progress across different musical instruments and lessons, and what they are meant to be practicing, can be challenging. The usual solution would be to use a practice book in which teachers can write notes in and pupils can record their practice. However, this can easily get lost or become illegible and does not allow a consistent view across the whole class. Furthermore, music education and self-directed practice is one area of ‘education’ that has not previously been gamified and so an application could be created to track practice whilst also gamifying the learning of the instrument. The benefits of gamification are multiple: A better learning experience is created if the student can have fun and a good gamification strategy will give high levels of engagement and it can provide instant feedback so that students know what to improve on. Gamification can prompt behavioural change through the use of badges and leaderboards, to aid practicing the right things.

The proposal is to build a Java application that will be accessible from mobile devices and can run natively as a website, supported by a database behind the system. Using the application teachers can set practice work for students and in turn, students can record their progress. By using the application, the teacher would know what to focus on in further lessons and as a gamification strategy is also a feature of the system (enabling students to compete against each other to learn new pieces of music and/or scales) students can then track their progress and compare this with other students, which encourages motivation to outperform their peers and subsequently accelerates learning. They can gain virtual badges when the teacher marks items as being learnt successfully (an approach now found in many other forms of digital education such as CodeAcademy, an online learning platform for coding languages, and many Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) such as those offered by universities such as Dartmouth and George Washington University, with the effect of incentivising the student to practice.

A Java and MySQL Application Designed as an Alternative to Legacy and Paper-based Systems Used Daily in a Dixons Stores Group Store

This aim of this project is to design an application in Java that provides a solution to some problems identified in the day to day running of a Currys PC world superstore that will allow the branch management team to be more effective on a day to day basis. The problems being responded to in this project relate to the current systems instore being a collection of legacy systems with poor or non-existent connectivity between them resulting in long and laborious actions needed to get even the most basic of information. This information can include, colleague’s contact details, the branch’s payroll spend, the balance of different types of colleagues in store whether they are sales, admin, warehouse etc, a range of useful forms which are printed daily but are stored on a variety of different intranet sites and the availability of colleagues to work late shifts or Sundays.



November 2015-June 2016 (Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications):

Managing the Digital Legacy in 'Green' Clouds:

The objective of this project is to develop a cloud management algorithm to manage online resources for efficiency objectives and, specifically, remove those resources from the cloud once they are identified as being stored redundantly and are no longer accessed by a living person. Decisions could be taken by the management mechanism which are dependent on the duration of time for which the data has been inactive. The scheme could also involve reorganising data in the cloud for improved operational efficiency, a technique applicable to data which is accessed less frequently (complete project description).

A Protocol to Support Device-to-device Communication in the Smart City:

The objective of this project is to develop a protocol which supports interoperable operation between devices in the smart city IoT for application objectives within a chosen domain: As part of this project, the protocol solution proposed should be specific to a clearly defined domain, which can include the: smart car, smart home, smart business/office, smart shop, or smart health (complete project description).

A Protocol to Support Device-to-Infrastructure Communications in the Smart City:

The objective of this project is to determine how to communicate effectively and efficiently from devices operating in the Internet of Things to the cloud repository, the specific operational mechanics of the protocol involved, and the fields which must be communicated to support operation of the protocol. The design of the protocol should also take into account other operational objectives, such as efficiency (complete project description).

A Middleware to Support Operation in the Smart City:

The task in this project is to develop a middleware architecture, in terms of its organisation and the protocol which facilitates its operation, to provision a generic approach which supports operation across the smart city IoT, and a vendor-specific approach where vendors participate in the scheme. The middleware and operational protocol provisioned should be extensible to support new applications and devices as the IoT evolves (complete project description).

Efficient Quality of Service (QoS) Monitoring in Smart City Data Repositories:

This project involves the development of an algorithm for managing a repository of information which supports smart city operation, taking into account the monitoring, organisation, and evaluation of data collected. Of specific interest is data which has been collected for energy-associated implications. The scheme itself should also be developed with efficiency as a priority. A default option might be to monitor the repository at a periodic rate, such as every second. This, however, is likely to be inefficient, particularly in situations where data is not being frequently uploaded to or downloaded from the cloud repository. The objective is therefore to develop an algorithm which is intelligent, fulfilling application requirements while achieving this in a manner which is energy efficient. This rate should be adaptable in response to application requirements. It should also be adaptable to the rate of traffic flow (complete project description).

A Website to Promote Wellbeing in Smart Cities:

This project involves the development of a website which supports the promotion of wellbeing in smart cities. The specific way in which wellbeing can be positively contributed to can be determined by the student undertaking this project, but must demonstrate that this is a solution which fills a unique research gap and is based on proven techniques identified in the related work. An algorithm should be developed as part of the system proposed which evaluates the extent to which wellbeing is considered to be achieved within the context of the system developed. The algorithm should additionally provide recommendations to the user on ways in which they may work towards improving their wellbeing, such as encouraging movement, encouraging skills training, or promoting relaxation (complete project description).

Routing Money in the Smart City IoT:

The challenge of this project is to develop a routing protocol which is suitable for operation in the smart city IoT. It should take into account the fact that different packets carrying different application data have different associated financial implications and should therefore be treated with different levels of priority (complete project description).

Bitcoin Incentive Programme: An Algorithm to Dynamically Adapt the Incentive Offered for Optimised Uptake:

The objective of this project is to develop an algorithm to automatically calculate the value of the incentive dynamically depending on the region from which the bitnode may be joining, the number of bitnodes already in the region, and the market value of the Bitcoin. This will require the use of information collected in real time to identify the number of regions in which bitnodes exist and their distribution. It will also take into account the number of bitnodes present in a region. The incentive offered should update in real-time as new bitnodes are added to the network. The calculation should take into account the current market price for the Bitcoin. This information can be collected using detail at [6], and should be processed in a relevant manner for use, the manner of which is determined by the student undertaking this project and is developed based on the research (complete project description).



July 2015-September 2015 (Ulster University):

Improving Social Inclusion in a Smart City:

One aspect which can have a significant impact on a citizen's quality of life, but is largely overlooked in current smart city infrastructure, is their 'mood'. The ability to automatically assess a person's mood and capture how they feel about services provided by a city over a period of time, could contribute benefits to the city. Citizens can also be empowered to become active stakeholders in how their community is serviced and developed by the city.

The objective of this project is therefore to develop a web-based front-end interface which presents users with a questionnaire to allow their mood to be determined. Data structures and algorithms will be used as part of the back-end database to support the evaluation and decision-making process.

Publications associated with the project include:

D. O'Neill and C. Peoples, "A Web-based Portal for Assessing Citizen Wellbeing," IT Professional, Apr. 2017, pp. 24-30; doi: 10.1109/MITP.2017.17.

D. O'Neill and C. Peoples, "Using IT to Monitor Well-being and City Experiences," IEEE Potentials, Nov. 2016, pp. 29-34; doi: 10.1109/MPOT.2016.2555518.




Managing your Digital Legacy: The Cloud Afterlife:

The issue of what happens to your online accounts and data in the cloud once you are no longer able to access them is new territory. To support such change in our day-to-day life, it is important that traditional estate planning services adapt to these new challenges. Wills, however, are not the ideal method for dealing with digital assets because wills eventually become public. Passwords, accounts, and usernames should therefore never be placed into a will. Furthermore, the rapid changes in digital assets could render a will's provisions invalid or out-of-date before an individual has a chance to redraft the will. The objective of this project is therefore to create a website and management system which has capability to allow a user to self-manage their online assets for ease of their control after the account holder's death.

This project will involve the development of a suitable website front-end interface using the HTML5, CSS3 and Javascript programming languages, through which a client may enter their account details. System activity will be supplemented with the use of a back-end database into which the data will be stored and managed, and eventually transferred to their next of kin.

A paper has been prepared on this work - "The Cloud Afterlife: Managing your Digital Legacy" - and has been presented at the IEEE International Symposium on Technology and Society in November 2015.

This work has also been showcased in IEEE Computer Student Design Showcase: G. Byrd, "Immortal Bits: Managing our Digital Legacies," in IEEE Computer, Mar. 2016, pp. 100-103.



A Website to Support a University Research Group:

The current website of the Information and Communications Engineering Research Group (ICE) requires development and expansion in order to fulfil the requirements of end users and the ICE research group. The existing site has a number of issues resulting from a lack of maintenance and an overall disinterest among the ICE research group. The project hopes to address these issues, through an overhaul of the site design and the addition of the new features and functionality. These new features are designed to make updating and maintaining the site an easier process and shall hopefully encourage more engagement with the site amongst the ICE research group. The goal is to create a site that is as dynamic as possible which requires minimal work to maintain.

ICE research group staff members can register and login to the site to access the full capabilities of the website. During login and registration, details are properly validated to ensure security. The new functionality gives each staff member the ability to add information to the site and edit information currently on the site. Changes made to the site are displayed automatically. A MySQL database is used to facilitate these transactions. Twitter Bootstrap is incorporated to aid in the design and layout improvements. Background research conducted into Human Computer Interaction (HCI) design principles is taken into account when deciding upon the final layout and colour schemes.

Final testing of the new website is conducted by members of the ICE research group. The project is then evaluated to determine whether the system meets the desired requirements. The entire development process is examined critically and suggestions made for possible further development. It is hoped that the new design will provide a modern and professional impression of the ICE research group.






October 2014-April 2015 (Ulster University):

Recommendations on an Optimised Linux Server Operating System for the Deep Space Environment:

Operating systems used in the deep space environment are custom-built, specific to the requirements of each mission. There is a cost overhead associated with such an operational approach, which is one reason for the slow rate at which deep space missions have been rolled out to date. Planning and design for the Deep Impact mission to probe a comet, for example, involved a development process lasting from November 1999 through to May 2011. The lack of a generic infrastructure and ability to rapidly deploy missions is therefore a limiting force on scientific exploration in this field.

The objective of this project is to explore the resource footprint of a range of open source Operating Systems which may be generically used to support aspects of deep space missions, and assess their suitability for deployment on-board interplanetary hardware. This will also take into account the available packages which may support functionality and performance on each.




October 2014-January 2015 (Ulster University):

The Management of Waste Data for Smart City Operation: A Website, Database and Management Algorithm supporting Intelligent Disposal Systems:

Smart technology employed within the waste management industry focuses on enhancing the efficiency of collection and separation. The main driver behind these technologies has been cost reduction and the need for many cities to improve their recycling performance. Waste is a by-product of economic activity and the SMART management of waste will have economic implications which will influence economic productivity, government expenditure and the global environment.

This project will explore the design of data structures and algorithms to manage data aspects associated with smart waste management, with the overall objective of contributing to state-of-the-art research in this field . This involves understanding the types of data which may be collected and the decisions which may subsequently be applied such that they can be storied and sorted for efficiency purposes and searched for informed intelligent decision-making.

Research Objectives:
- Develop a universal design that will allow for SMART management and control over municipal waste.
- Understanding the data types which will be collected and using this technology to collect, store and sort data to allow for efficient decision making.
- Consequently the data will be analysed and interpreted to help achieve reduced rate of waste sent to landfills.
- All information on Datasets will be made available on a website for everyone to view; real-time 'commercial' bins to display how full bins are, where recycled items are going to and the current rates of recycling.



Data Structures and Algorithms supporting Emergency and Unplanned eHealthcare:

When an individual is admitted to hospital whilst in a foreign country, their medical records will not be available locally. Therefore the clinician in the foreign hospital will not be able to access the patient's medical history, a fact which may result in less efficient and effective treatment. The e-health Action Plan 2012-2020 of the European Commission aims to improve cross-border care making it possible for patients to have a summary of their electronic health record available when visiting another country within the EU. The electronic health record may contain information such as allergies, recent procedures or details of on-going/ chronic illnesses.

In the case of emergency/ unplanned healthcare in a foreign country, suitable computerised applications could help the challenge of sharing patient data across EU member states.

Suitable data structures and algorithms will be implemented in Java to respond to unplanned healthcare.



A Website to Support the Pink Ladies Cancer Charity:

The Pink Ladies, a Cancer Support Charity in Derry/Londonderry, has recently expanded from a breast cancer support group to become a charity that additionally provides support for men and children affected by cancer. They need a website that reflects this.







cathrynpeoples@hotmail.com
page last updated: 31 March 2023