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This paper outlines a novel information sharing method using Binary Decision Diagrams (BBDs). It is inspired by the work of Al-Shaer and Hamed, who applied BDDs into the modelling of network firewalls. This is applied into an information sharing policy system which optimizes the search of redundancy, shadowing, generalisation and correlation within information sharing rules.

This paper discusses privacy enhancing technologies in the field of inter-agency data sharing, a key government objective for efficient public service delivery. We analyse the legal and conceptual framework that governs multi-agency cooperation in particular in the field of child protection work, and develop two approaches to represent relevant data protection ideas computationally in the infrastructure that agencies use to exchange sensitive personal data.

The 3D Finite-Difference Time-Domain (FDTD) method simulates structures in the time-domain using a direct form of Maxwell’s curl equations. This method has the advantage over other simulation methods in that it does not use empirical approximations. Unfortunately, it requires large amounts of memory and long simulation times. This thesis applies parallel processing to the method so that simulation times are greatly reduced. Parallel processing, though, has the disadvantage in that simulation programs require to be segmented so that each processor processes a separate part of the simulation. Another disadvantage of parallel processing is that each processor communicates with neighbouring processors to report their conditions. For large processor arrays this can result in a large overhead in simulation time.Two main methods of parallel processing discussed: Transputer arrays and clustered workstations over a local area network (LAN). These have been chosen because of their relatively cheapness to use, and their widespread availability.The results presented apply to the simulation of a microstrip antenna and to propagation of electrical signals in a printed circuit board (PCB). Microstrip antennas are relatively difficult to simulate in the time-domain because they have resonant pulses. Methods that reduce this problem are discussed in the thesis.The thesis contains a novel analysis of the parallel processing showing, using equations, tables and graphs, the optimum array size for a given inter-processor communication speed and for a given iteration time. This can be easily applied to any processing system.Background material on the 3D FDTD method and microstrip antennas is also provided. From the work on the parallel processing of the 3D FDTD a novel technique for the simulation of the Finite-element (FE) method is also discussed.

Cloud computing offers various computational resources via convenient on-demand service provision. Currently, heterogeneous services and cloud resources are usually utilized and managed through diverse service portals. This significantly limits the effectiveness and efficiency for tasks implementation. Fundamentally, it is due to the lack of adequate specifications for service concepts, operations and interfaces from diverse cloud service models and types. This paper proposes a service management operation semantic description framework for comprehensive cloud service operation specification. Relying on ontological modelling techniques, cloud service operations are specified via entity classification, attribute assertion, relationship assertion and annotation assertion. Further, the proposed framework benefits from operation reasoning application. It enables intelligent assistances for multiple operation preparation and remote execution tasks. Based on the approach, a cloud service operation ontology and a unified service access and manipulation system prototype are implemented. Extensive experiments are conducted over different cloud service providers and for distinct service models. Obtained results demonstrate that the approach outperforms existing practices by facilitating reliable and effective service access, manipulation and interaction tasks.