The quantum threat to cybersecurity has accelerated the standardization of Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC). Migrating legacy software to these quantum-safe algorithms is not a simple library swap, but a new software engineering challenge: existing vulnerability detection, refactoring, and testing tools are not designed for PQC's probabilistic behavior, side-channel sensitivity, and complex performance trade-offs. To address these challenges, this paper outlines a vision for a new class of tools and introduces the Automated Quantum-safe Adaptation (AQuA) framework, with a three-pillar agenda for PQC-aware detection, semantic refactoring, and hybrid verification, thereby motivating Quantum-Safe Software Engineering (QSSE) as a distinct research direction.
The automotive industry generates vast amounts of data from sensors, telemetry, diagnostics, and real-time operations. Efficient data engineering is critical to handle challenges of latency, scalability, and consistency. Modern data lakehouse formats Delta Parquet, Apache Iceberg, and Apache Hudi offer features such as ACID transactions, schema enforcement, and real-time ingestion, combining the strengths of data lakes and warehouses to support complex use cases. This study presents a comparative analysis of Delta Parquet, Iceberg, and Hudi using real-world time-series automotive telemetry data with fields such as vehicle ID, timestamp, location, and event metrics. The evaluation considers modeling strategies, partitioning, CDC support, query performance, scalability, data consistency, and ecosystem maturity. Key findings show Delta Parquet provides strong ML readiness and governance, Iceberg delivers high performance for batch analytics and cloud-native workloads, while Hudi is optimized for real-time ingestion and incremental processing. Each format exhibits tradeoffs in query efficiency, time-travel, and update semantics. The study offers insights for selecting or combining formats to support fleet management, predictive maintenance, and route optimization. Using structured datasets and realistic queries, the results provide practical guidance for scaling data pipelines and integrating machine learning models in automotive applications.
UI automation is a useful technique for UI testing, bug reproduction, and robotic process automation. Recording user actions with an application assists rapid development of UI automation scripts, but existing recording techniques are intrusive, rely on OS or GUI framework accessibility support, or assume specific app implementations. Reverse engineering user actions from screencasts is non-intrusive, but a key reverse-engineering step is currently missing - recognizing human-understandable structured user actions ([command] [widget] [location]) from action screencasts. To fill the gap, we propose a deep learning-based computer vision model that can recognize 11 commands and 11 widgets, and generate location phrases from action screencasts, through joint learning and multi-task learning. We label a large dataset with 7260 video-action pairs, which record user interactions with Word, Zoom, Firefox, Photoshop, and Windows 10 Settings. Through extensive experiments, we confirm the effectiveness and generality of our model, and demonstrate the usefulness of a screencast-to-action-script tool built upon our model for bug reproduction.
Proto-personas are commonly used during early-stage Product Discovery, such as Lean Inception, to guide product definition and stakeholder alignment. However, the manual creation of proto-personas is often time-consuming, cognitively demanding, and prone to bias. In this paper, we propose and empirically investigate a prompt engineering-based approach to generate proto-personas with the support of Generative AI (GenAI). Our goal is to evaluate the approach in terms of efficiency, effectiveness, user acceptance, and the empathy elicited by the generated personas. We conducted a case study with 19 participants embedded in a real Lean Inception, employing a qualitative and quantitative methods design. The results reveal the approach's efficiency by reducing time and effort and improving the quality and reusability of personas in later discovery phases, such as Minimum Viable Product (MVP) scoping and feature refinement. While acceptance was generally high, especially regarding perceived usefulness and ease of use, participants noted limitations related to generalization and domain specificity. Furthermore, although cognitive empathy was strongly supported, affective and behavioral empathy varied significantly across participants. These results contribute novel empirical evidence on how GenAI can be effectively integrated into software Product Discovery practices, while also identifying key challenges to be addressed in future iterations of such hybrid design processes.
The Xiliu Songhua River Basin in northeast China was selected as the research object to quantitatively analyze the driving mechanism of climate change and human activities on runoff evolution under the background of global warming and reveal the evolution law of water cycle in cold regions and its eco-hydrological effects. A precipitation phase discrimination model was constructed based on the wet-bulb temperature threshold method, and the Budyko equation was improved by introducing the snowfall ratio. Combined with multi-source methods such as spatial interpolation of meteorological data, Pettitt mutation test, Mann-Kendall trend test, and land use transfer matrix, the synergistic effect of climate factors and underlying surface parameters was systematically evaluated. The annual runoff at Fuyu Station and Jilin Station increased significantly at a rate of 0.12 mm/a and 1.77 mm/a, respectively. The annual average precipitation and annual average snowfall ratio in the basin showed a continuous increasing trend, while the annual average potential evapotranspiration showed a continuous decreasing trend. In terms of spatial distribution, the annual average precipitation and annual average snowfall ratio in the basin showed a trend of less in the north and more in the south, while the annual average potential evapotranspiration showed a pattern of more in the north and less in the south. The contribution rate of precipitation humidification to runoff change reached 57.24%~66.89%, and the contribution rate of human activities was only 4.39%~7.52%. The proposed SR-Budyko coupling framework effectively solved the defects of traditional models in rain and snow phase identification and freeze-thaw energy and water exchange characterization and provided a new theoretical tool for the optimization of water resources systems in cold regions, spring flood disaster prevention and control, and the protection of ecological barriers in northeast China. It has important practical guiding value for water security decision-making in climate change-sensitive areas.
River, lake, and water-supply engineering (General)
Marco Autili, Martina De Sanctis, Paola Inverardi
et al.
As testified by new regulations like the European AI Act, worries about the human and societal impact of (autonomous) software technologies are becoming of public concern. Human, societal, and environmental values, alongside traditional software quality, are increasingly recognized as essential for sustainability and long-term well-being. Traditionally, systems are engineered taking into account business goals and technology drivers. Considering the growing awareness in the community, in this paper, we argue that engineering of systems should also consider human, societal, and environmental drivers. Then, we identify the macro and technological challenges by focusing on humans and their role while co-existing with digital systems. The first challenge considers humans in a proactive role when interacting with digital systems, i.e., taking initiative in making things happen instead of reacting to events. The second concerns humans having a reactive role in interacting with digital systems, i.e., humans interacting with digital systems as a reaction to events. The third challenge focuses on humans with a passive role, i.e., they experience, enjoy or even suffer the decisions and/or actions of digital systems. The fourth challenge concerns the duality of trust and trustworthiness, with humans playing any role. Building on the new human, societal, and environmental drivers and the macro and technological challenges, we identify a research roadmap of digital systems for humanity. The research roadmap is concretized in a number of research directions organized into four groups: development process, requirements engineering, software architecture and design, and verification and validation.
Deformation monitoring is a critical measure for intuitively reflecting the operational behavior of a dam. However, the deformation monitoring data are often incomplete due to environmental changes, monitoring instrument faults, and human operational errors, thereby often hindering the accurate assessment of actual deformation patterns. This study proposed a method for quantifying deformation similarity between measurement points by recognizing the spatiotemporal characteristics of concrete dam deformation monitoring data. It introduces a spatiotemporal clustering analysis of the concrete dam deformation behavior and employs the support vector machine model to address the missing data in concrete dam deformation monitoring. The proposed method was validated in a concrete dam project, with the model error maintaining within 5%, demonstrating its effectiveness in processing missing deformation data. This approach enhances the capability of early-warning systems and contributes to enhanced dam safety management.
River, lake, and water-supply engineering (General)
The current paper deals with the progressive and sustainable approaches of development of tree plantation through Miyawaki method at Sabarmati Riverfront Development Corporation Limited. Miyawaki forests are one approach that has recently received a lot of attention. The Miyawaki method of reforestation, named after Japanese botanist and plant ecologist Akira Miyawaki, is a method of ecological engineering that advocates the growth of forests even in small areas by first treating the top layer of soil and then planting the local species that can thrive on their own. Ahmedabad's municipal corporation, which has Kobe, Japan as a sister city, is experimenting with this and hopes to develop such green spaces not only on land but also now on completely flowing Sabarmati River. ‘We chose this fast-growing urban forestry method, as it has reported 15% faster growth rate per year compared to the other reforestation methods,’ said Dr. Asif Memon, General Manager (Parks and Garden), and Sabarmati Riverfront Development, who is overseeing the reforestation initiatives. Moreover, for maintenance, all that a Miyawaki forest requires is good water supply and weeding for two years. Thereafter, it will be self-sustaining, need no external support. The current study gathers the strategic objectives for developing tree plantations using the Miyawaki method, as well as the benefits to nature and other ecosystems.
Ali Khosronejad, Ajay B. Limaye, Zexia Zhang
et al.
In meandering rivers, interactions between flow, sediment transport, and bed topography affect diverse processes, including bedform development and channel migration. Predicting how these interactions affect the spatial patterns and magnitudes of bed deformation in meandering rivers is essential for various river engineering and geoscience problems. Computational fluid dynamics simulations can predict river morphodynamics at fine temporal and spatial scales but have traditionally been challenged by the large scale of natural rivers. We conducted coupled large-eddy simulation (LES) and bed morphodynamics simulations to create a unique database of hydro-morphodynamic datasets for 42 meandering rivers with a variety of planform shapes and large-scale geometrical features that mimic natural meanders. For each simulated river, the database includes (i) bed morphology, (ii) three-dimensional mean velocity field, and (iii) bed shear stress distribution under bankfull flow conditions. The calculated morphodynamics results at dynamic equilibrium revealed the formation of scour and deposition patterns near the outer and inner banks, respectively, while the location of point bars and scour regions around the apexes of the meander bends is found to vary as a function of the radius of curvature of the bends to the width ratio. A new mechanism is proposed that explains this seemingly paradoxical finding. The high-fidelity simulation results generated in this work provide researchers and scientists with a rich numerical database for morphodynamics and bed shear stress distributions in large-scale meandering rivers to enable systematic investigation of the underlying phenomena and support a range of river engineering applications.
A method of Sequential Log-Convex Programming (SLCP) is constructed that exploits the log-convex structure present in many engineering design problems. The mathematical structure of Geometric Programming (GP) is combined with the ability of Sequential Quadratic Program (SQP) to accommodate a wide range of objective and constraint functions, resulting in a practical algorithm that can be adopted with little to no modification of existing design practices. Three test problems are considered to demonstrate the SLCP algorithm, comparing it with SQP and the modified Logspace Sequential Quadratic Programming (LSQP). In these cases, SLCP shows up to a 77% reduction in number of iterations compared to SQP, and an 11% reduction compared to LSQP. The airfoil analysis code XFOIL is integrated into one of the case studies to show how SLCP can be used to evolve the fidelity of design problems that have initially been modeled as GP compatible. Finally, a methodology for design based on GP and SLCP is briefly discussed.
Daniel Regulin, Thomas Aicher, Birgit Vogel-Heuser
For improving flexibility and robustness of the engineering of automated production systems (aPS) in case of extending, reducing or modifying parts, several approaches propose an encapsulation and clustering of related functions, e.g. from the electrical, mechanical or software engineering, based on a modular architecture. Considering the development of these modules, there are different stages, e.g. module planning or functional engineering, which have to be completed. A reference model that addresses the different stages for the engineering of aPS is proposed by AutomationML. Due to these different stages and the integration of several engineering disciplines, e.g. mechanical, electrical/electronic or software engineering, information not limited to one discipline are stored redundantly increasing the effort to transfer information and the risk of inconsistency. Although, data formats for the storage and exchange of plant engineering information exist, e.g. AutomationML, fixed domain specific structures and relations of the information, e.g. for automated material flow systems (aMFS), are missing. This paper presents the integration of a meta model into the development of modules for aMFS to improve the transferability and consistency of information between the different engineering stages and the increasing level of detail from the coarse-grained plant planning to the fine-grained functional engineering.
Masoud Vafaei, Mohammad Taghi Dastorani, Mohammad Rostami Khalaj
Introduction
Flood has been one of the natural disasters in the world in the past decades, which has had many economic, social, and environmental consequences. In recent years, the increase in population, and the lack of attention to the capacities of the environment, and the improper use of resources have caused the spread of damages, and this problem reveals the necessity of applying efficient management for mitigating flood damages. Therefore, flood zoning, which includes determining the range of flood progress and its height, and also the characteristics of floods in different return periods, is very important. Since the Ferdowsi University of Mashhad is one of the largest and most important scientific centers in the country and is located at the bottom of several large urban basins, this research was conducted with the aim of assessing the flood risk in the campus of Ferdowsi University of Mashhad.
Materials and Methods
In this study, in order to investigate the characteristics of floods entering the campus of the university, the inlets flow to the campus of the Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, which includes the four main inlet branches of Ab_o Bargh, Pazhuhesh, Loizan, and Chahar Cheshme were investigated. Due to the urban development, conversion of natural lands into residential surfaces, and encroachment of watercourses in the studied area, disturbance of the natural channels and the reduction of their capacity has occurred which has been effective in the hydrologic and hydraulic behavior of these areas. For this purpose, the map obtained from Mashhad District Nine municipality was reviewed and revised with the help of field observations, slope direction, the topography of the area, the use of Google Earth satellite images and geographic information system (ArcGIS software), and the changes and also the real borders for the related catchment was identified. The inflow data generated based on the amount of precipitation in the upstream area of the Ferdowsi University of Mashhad campus, including discharges with return periods of 25 and 50 years, were collected from Razavi Khorasan Regional Water Company. The input flows to each channel were calculated based on the upstream area of that channel based on the values of the total area of the upstream basin, based on Krieger's second equation. Then, using the HEC-RAS model and the HEC-GeoRAS extension, floods with different return periods were zoned and simulated in the channels inside the campus, and problematic areas were identified. In the present research, in order to collect the required data, it was necessary to have field visits in the study area to make the necessary measurements in addition to data obtained from the relevant organizations. In this regard, to measure the parameters of slope, width, and height of water transmission channels as well as the roughness of the channels in the campus of the Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, several sections of these channels were observed and evaluated in different branches. For these measurements, different tools such as an inclinometer, Jalon, and geological meter were used.
Results and Discussion
The results showed that the canals in the studied area have the ability to transfer floods with a return period of two and ten years, but with the increase of the return period, it becomes flooded due to the low height of the bridges in some sections. Based on these results, in the area of the final outlet of the campus and also the Ab_o Bargh canal, floods with a return period of 25 years and above will cause some problems due to the presence of various obstacles. Also in parts of the Pazhuhesh channel, floods with a return period of 50 years and above would cause damage. Considering the importance and location of the campus of Ferdowsi University of Mashhad and the possibility of damage caused by discharges of more than 10 years of floods in this area, in this research various scenarios were proposed for the exit section of the campus to increase the capacity of the channel for floods with different return periods. These five scenarios which have been proposed and tested in this research are as follows:
First scenario: removing the protection bars of the bridge opening.
The second scenario: reopening one of the blocked openings of the bridge on the exit section.
Third scenario: reopening one of the openings together with removing protective bars.
Fourth scenario: reopening both blocked openings of the bridge on the exit section.
Fifth scenario: reopening both blocked openings together with removing protective bars.
According to the results obtained from flood zoning in this research, at the water entrance of Ab_o Bargh, discharges with return periods of 25 years and above, and also in parts of the Pazhuhesh area, discharges with return periods of 50 years and above have the potential to cause damage. Therefore, it is suggested that by constructing a protective wall on the left and right banks of these areas, the transfer capacity of these parts should be increased and adapted for discharges with a return period of up to 50 years. For this purpose, the considered protective wall in these sections has a height of 1.5 m and is considered to be 0.5 m away from the left and right banks. With the construction of these walls, discharge with a return period of 50 years has the ability to pass without causing damage.
Conclusion
Assessment of the results showed Examination of sections and modeling results show that all sections have the ability to pass floods with a return period of up to 10 years. Also, it is possible to prevent the risk of flooding in the campus of the Ferdowsi University of Mashhad by modifying sections in the outlet of the campus and creating a protective wall in the areas of Ab_o Bargh and Pazhuhesh canals to prevent the risk of flooding until the return period of 50 years. According to the obtained results, the largest area of flooding in different return periods on the campus of the Ferdowsi University of Mashhad is related to the final exit section of the campus.
River, lake, and water-supply engineering (General), Engineering geology. Rock mechanics. Soil mechanics. Underground construction
Satya R. T. Peddada, Nathan M. Dunfield, Lawrence E. Zeidner
et al.
Systematic enumeration and identification of unique 3D spatial topologies of complex engineering systems (such as automotive cooling systems, electric power trains, satellites, and aero-engines) are essential to navigation of these expansive design spaces with the goal of identifying new spatial configurations that can satisfy challenging system requirements. However, efficient navigation through discrete 3D spatial topology (ST) options is a very challenging problem due to its combinatorial nature and can quickly exceed human cognitive abilities at even moderate complexity levels. This article presents a new, efficient, and scalable design framework that leverages mathematical spatial graph theory to represent, enumerate, and identify distinctive 3D topological classes for a generic 3D engineering system, given its system architecture (SA) -- its components and their interconnections. First, spatial graph diagrams (SGDs) are generated for a given SA from zero to a specified maximum number of interconnect crossings. Then, corresponding Yamada polynomials for all the planar SGDs are generated. SGDs are categorized into topological classes, each of which shares a unique Yamada polynomial. Finally, within each topological class, 3D geometric models are generated using the spatial graph diagrams (SGDs) having different numbers of interconnect crossings. Selected case studies are presented to illustrate the different features of our proposed framework, including an industrial engineering design application: ST enumeration of a 3D automotive fuel cell cooling system (AFCS). Design guidelines are also provided for practicing engineers to aid the application of this framework to different types of real-world problems such as configuration design and spatial packaging optimization.
Rihan Hai, Christos Koutras, Christoph Quix
et al.
Data lakes are becoming increasingly prevalent for big data management and data analytics. In contrast to traditional 'schema-on-write' approaches such as data warehouses, data lakes are repositories storing raw data in its original formats and providing a common access interface. Despite the strong interest raised from both academia and industry, there is a large body of ambiguity regarding the definition, functions and available technologies for data lakes. A complete, coherent picture of data lake challenges and solutions is still missing. This survey reviews the development, architectures, and systems of data lakes. We provide a comprehensive overview of research questions for designing and building data lakes. We classify the existing approaches and systems based on their provided functions for data lakes, which makes this survey a useful technical reference for designing, implementing and deploying data lakes. We hope that the thorough comparison of existing solutions and the discussion of open research challenges in this survey will motivate the future development of data lake research and practice.
Quantum computing (QC) represents the future of computing systems, but the tools for reasoning about the quantum model of computation, in which the laws obeyed are those on the quantum mechanical scale, are still a mix of linear algebra and Dirac notation; two subjects more suitable for physicists, rather than computer scientists and software engineers. On this ground, we believe it is possible to provide a more intuitive approach to thinking and writing about quantum computing systems, in order to simplify the design of quantum algorithms and the development of quantum software. In this paper, we move the first step in such direction, introducing a specification language as the tool to represent the operations of a quantum computer via axiomatic definitions, by adopting the same symbolisms and reasoning principles used by formal methods in software engineering. We name this approach formal quantum software engineering (F-QSE). This work assumes familiarity with the basic principles of quantum mechanics (QM), with the use of Zed (Z) which is a formal language of software engineering (SE), and with the notation and techniques of first-order logic (FOL) and functional programming (FP).
Community water supply is the local, consumer-level segment of water supply. For its ubiquity, an ability to predict the energy demand for community water supply would help better quantify the water-energy nexus at the community level. However, communities differ in size and distance from the water source, among other variations; no formalism is currently in use for making this energy prediction. Here, we describe a conceptual model and mechanistic formulation for predicting the energy demand of a community water supply in the context of a regional, multi-community supply system. We make the novel methodological integration of scaling analysis and life cycle assessment to account for both network effects and life cycle effects on energy intensity. We also make the novel mechanistic integration of hydraulic energy loss and allometric energy scaling to account for both linear transmission energy and nonlinear distribution energy. With these integrative steps, we create a novel “leaf on a stem” network model and mechanistically parameterized formula for predicting the energy demand of a community water supply, given in life cycle quantity and as the sum of community distribution energy in sublinear scaling with community size and regional transmission energy in linear scaling with the community’s distance from the regional water source. We validate the predictive model by empirically verifying the model parameters through a detailed case study of consumption communities within a regional supply system in the US Great Lakes region. This simple, mechanistic predictive model may help substantiate the concept of water-energy nexus and facilitate energy assessment for community water supply.
River, lake, and water-supply engineering (General), Water supply for domestic and industrial purposes
In 2017, a spillover dam was constructed in the middle course of the Amazar River of Russia, forming a reservoir to provide water to the Amazar Pulp and Saw Mill project known as Polyarnaya. The dam uses an integrated approach, combining hydrochemical, hydrobiological, and ichthyological methods, as well as echo sounding. Comprehensive studies of the transformation of the Amazar River into a reservoir demonstrate the initially low biodiversity of hydrobionts characteristics for a semi-mountain river under the conditions of the sharply continental climate of the Trans-Baikal region. During the initial stage of formation, the reservoir was similar to the original watercourses in physical and chemical parameters and in the composition of the flora and fauna. It featured extensive shoals that were gradually turning into silt-covered and plant-filled shallow bays. These bays will eventually be locations of maximum concentration and diversity of hydrobionts and future nursery and spawning grounds for fish. The construction of the dam has significantly changed the hydrology of the Amazar River downstream of the dam. These findings reveal problems related to fish migration to the Thymallidae and Salmonidae spawning areas, as well as reductions in the biodiversity and quantity of the macrozoobenthos typical for run-of-river reservoirs.
River, lake, and water-supply engineering (General)