British Columbia Institute of Technology

About: British Columbia Institute of Technology is a education organization based out in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Smart grid & Belief revision. The organization has 458 authors who have published 785 publications receiving 16140 citations.

Seasonal Indoor Humidity Levels of Apartment Suites in a Mild Coastal Climate

Abstract: It is essential to design and operate buildings with good indoor air quality because people spend most of their time indoors, and their productivity, comfort, and health depend on the quality of the indoor air. In addition to other indoor-air-quality parameters, the indoor humidity and temperature need to be controlled and maintained within acceptable ranges. Elevated indoor humidity creates favorable conditions for mold growth and building-envelope damage. To minimize such problems, it is important that designers have insight into the level of indoor humidity that will be expected in a building operating under a set of conditions and weather variation. In this paper, the results of monitoring the indoor temperature and humidity of four apartment suites with different occupancy levels are reported. Along with the indoor-air conditions, the local outdoor temperature and relative humidity were continuously measured for 17 months. The indoor humidities in the suites were correlated with the outdoor a...

Reconciling graduate attribute assessment with existing outcome-based assessment

Abstract: Historically, accreditation of engineering programs has relied on the use of input-based assessment of a program by framing major categories and identifying accreditation unit totals for each category. Beginning in 2014, compliance with an outcomes-based assessment of program quality and implementation of a program improvement process is also required. The introduction of graduate attributes assessment at BCIT prompted faculty members to question the relationship between existing learning outcomes and indicators of graduate attributes. Since both outcomes and indicators are written to describe competencies, faculty hypothesized that correlation exists between them. Upon further investigation, faculty, staff, and administrators at BCIT came to understand that there is a relationship between learning outcomes and indicators of graduate attributes, but they are not synonymous. Indicators are required to build a normalizing bridge between outcomes and attributes. They provide a rational relationship between a curriculum’s individual course learning outcomes and the twelve graduate attributes mandated by the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board.. This is especially important for subjective expectations of learning where there is not an obvious one-to-one relationship between learning outcomes and attributes

Monte Carlo Tree Search for Cross-Stratum Optimization of Survivable Inter-Data Center Elastic Optical Network

Abstract: In last few years, cloud computing and other services based on data centers have evolved from an emerging technology to a recognized approach that is gaining broad acceptance and deployment. Therefore, there is a significant need to provide efficient and reliable operation of inter-data center networks based on optical technologies. In this article, we focus on cross stratum optimization of an inter-data center elastic optical network with additional survivability requirements. We propose a novel optimization approach that employs machine learning Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) algorithm for simulation of future traffic to improve the performance of the network regarding blocking probability and operational cost. We evaluate the performance of the proposed method and other reference algorithms under various network scenarios, using representative topologies and real data provided by Amazon Web Services. The main conclusion is that the approach based on the MCTS algorithm enables better coordination of resource allocation in both strata, which results in lower blocking of requests and lower cost taking into account the survivability requirements, in comparison to other algorithms.

Closing the Interoperability Gap: Connecting Open Service Interfaces with Digital Repository Interoperability

Abstract: Interoperability between e-learning systems and repositories is one of the hottest topics in e-learning community. With an availability of standards and specification for the single learning objects, courses and related learning artifacts the technical focus of the e-learning community has shifted towards the interoperability of between different learning systems and learning systems and other sources of digital objects such as digital libraries. In this paper we start with a review of the interoperability initiatives. Next, we describe eduSource’s ECL and OKI’s OSIDs: two approaches to interoperability and highlight their strengths and how they complement each other. Finally, we describe our present effort in merging the two approaches together with first results and observations from the implementation of the ECL/OKI connector within the scope of LionShare project.