First, I would like to thank to Dimka Karastoyanova and Mariano Cilia for all the fruitful discussions, their guidance and support through the course of this project. Thanks also to Prof. Alejandro Buchmann who sponsored my stay at Technische Universität Darmstadt during the spring of 2004

. In this paper, we present Version 2.0 of our tool QPME (Queueing Petri net Modeling Environment) for modeling and analysis of systems using queueing Petri nets. The development of the tool was initiated by Samuel Kounev in 2003 at the Technische Universität Darmstadt in the group of Prof. Alejandro Buchmann

Many persons have contributed to this thesis and I want to thank them for their support. First of all, I have to thank my advisor Prof. Alejandro Buchmann for his demanding questions, his continuous support, and his patience. Without his support this work would not have been possible. My co

appreciation for the support from the Databases and Distributed Systems Group, as well as from the Technische Universität Darmstadt (TUD). They gave me the opportunity to visit Germany, working with them and make me feel almost like at home. Special thanks go to Prof. Alejandro Buchmann, Dr Samuel Kounev

and is fortunately applied, which enabled me to start my thesis work very motivated. I want to thank the people at the DVS Group, particularly to Alejandro Buchmann, Patric Kabus, Samuel Kounev, Ludger Fiege, Andreas Zeidler, Christian Haul, Matthias Meixner and Marion Braun. They supported me in different ways from

con la que me ha dejado explorar, aprender y crear han potenciado enormemente mí carrera y formación profesional. Quiero agradecer especialmente al Prof. Alejandro Buchmann por haberme dado la oportunidad de comenzar este trabajo junto al staff del Databases and Distributed Systems Group y por todo lo

Credit is due to many people who inspired, encouraged and supported me during my research and in the process of writing this thesis. The first to mention at this point is my advisor Professor Alejandro P. Buchmann. He opened the door for me into an interesting and inspiring research environment

Abstract not found

Smart cities are part of the Ambient Intelligence vision that foresees the vanishing of computational devices into the fabric of society and the ubiquitous availability of intelligent services in support of our daily lives. In this vision we should not be burdened by conscious manipulation of devices and ever more powerful but also complex interfaces. Instead, devices should be able to communicate and cooperate and support us in a proactive manner. For this vision to become true, an infrastructure is needed that can provide for the seamless provisioning of intelligent, pervasive, context-aware services throughout all the domains of our daily lives. As we move in our daily activities from the home to means of transportation and public spaces, to spaces for work and leisure, the infrastructure must be capable of supporting us in a variety of places, situations and contexts. Accordingly, the notion of context must be very rich and must encompass a deep understanding of the user and his or her needs and preferences, as well as the availability of resources in a dynamically reconfiguring environment. The spontaneous interaction of devices and the wealth of sensors providing data and detecting events make the traditional computing paradigms based on simple request/reply or point to

Abstract not found