Systems Architecture Commons^™

The Self-Aware Room: A Framework For Operational Self-Awareness In Evolvable Blended Environments, David B. Smith

Publications and Research

The Self-Aware Room (SAR) is a room-scale research environment developed within the larger Balanced Blended Space and Blended Reality Performance System research trajectory. Rather than treating the room as a conventional “smart” environment composed of fixed automation technologies, SAR approaches it as an evolvable blended environment made from physical, virtual, conceptual, sensory, computational, and performative relationships. Its defining feature is not any particular sensor, model, or output device, but the set of transformations through which physical activity becomes structured observation, bounded representation, interpreted state, governed decision, and mediated response.

This paper develops the conceptual and methodological foundations of SAR as …

Online Visual Query System For Real-Time Large-Scale Spatio-Temporal Data Explorations With Error Bounds, Xueqi Huang

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Modern datasets continue to grow in size, dimensionality, and heterogeneity, creating increasing tension between the need for responsive, interactive analysis and the computational cost of accessing, aggregating, and visualizing large volumes of data. Traditional database engines and visualization tools often assume that full data retrieval is feasible or that exact computation is necessary for meaningful insight. In practice, however, analysts frequently benefit from timely, uncertainty-aware approximations than from delayed and exact results. This thesis investigates how data summarization techniques, specifically mergeable sketches can be combined with progressive, out-of-core visualization methods to support interactive exploration of datasets that exceed main memory. …

Csc36000 - Modern Distributed Computing Assignment, Saptarashmi Bandyopadhyay

Open Educational Resources

This assignment covers standard performance metrics for Distributed Systems and the basics of Multiprocessing for CSC36000 - Modern Distributed Computing at the City College of New York CUNY. It is an interactive coding assignment intended to be executed in a Python notebook.

Sla Evaluation And Composition In Reconfigurable Cloud-Based Services, Michael Iannelli

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Given the business model of offering data and computing services in a cloud setting, a major question arises: How do the services of one cloud provider compare to those of others? With the ubiquitous use of smartphones and tablets, the ability of a cloud provider to support QoS and client mobility becomes paramount. This research proposes a methodology for evaluating service-level agreements (SLAs) between cloud providers and their consumers, with a particular focus on dynamic SLA composition to adapt to changes in the application requirements and the external environment—such as traffic surges, security threats, or evolving business models.

In one …

David B. Smith Chats With Monday 1.0, David B. Smith

Publications and Research

This document is an edited archival transcript of extended conversations between David B. Smith and an AI persona (“Monday 1.0,” GPT‑4o based) conducted in Spring 2025, prepared as a foundational primary source for subsequent scholarly and creative work. It records the emergence and testing of concepts related to human–AI collaboration (including “Balanced Blended Space”), as well as applied explorations in areas such as generative AI, quantum computing and music, virtual orchestras, multimodal performance, pedagogy, and the rhetoric of “pushback” in conversational systems. It also contains an extended section in which Monday and DB Smith co-curate a set of student research …

Balanced Blended Space: Proposing A Universal Theoretical Framework For Combinative Reality, David Smith, Frederick Bianchi

Publications and Research

In today's fragmented societies, a unified framework for communication and collaboration across different realities is crucial. We introduce Balanced Blended Space (BBS) as a framework for describing combinative reality, encompassing virtual, physical, and conceptual realms, all intrinsically connected. Interactions within these environments shape our perceptual space. This paper outlines key axiomatic assumptions, criteria for a universal framework, and fundamental terminology. We identify deep symmetries enabling the BBS framework, including Cognitive and Computational Symmetry, Physical and Virtual Symmetry, Mediation Pathway Symmetry, Space-Time Symmetry, and Sensory Symmetry. We propose tests to determine its viability, emphasizing virtual intelligence as a collaborative partner. We …

Lecture Notes On Cloud Computing (Ver. Summer 2023), Jun Li

Open Educational Resources

No abstract provided.

An Empirical Study Of Refactorings And Technical Debt In Machine Learning Systems, Yiming Tang, Raffi Khatchadourian, Mehdi Bagherzadeh, Rhia Singh, Ajani Stewart, Anita Raja

Publications and Research

Machine Learning (ML), including Deep Learning (DL), systems, i.e., those with ML capabilities, are pervasive in today's data-driven society. Such systems are complex; they are comprised of ML models and many subsystems that support learning processes. As with other complex systems, ML systems are prone to classic technical debt issues, especially when such systems are long-lived, but they also exhibit debt specific to these systems. Unfortunately, there is a gap of knowledge in how ML systems actually evolve and are maintained. In this paper, we fill this gap by studying refactorings, i.e., source-to-source semantics-preserving program transformations, performed in real-world, open-source …

Csci 49378: Final Project Assignment: Distributed Systems And Cloud Computing, Bonan Liu, Nyc Tech-In-Residence Corps

Open Educational Resources

Final Project Assignment for the course: "CSCI 49378: Intro to Distributed Systems and Cloud Computing" delivered at Hunter College in Spring 2020 by Bonan Liu as part of the Tech-in-Residence Corps program.

Csci 49378: Lecture 10: Cloud Storage And Databases Ii, Bonan Liu, Nyc Tech-In-Residence Corps

Open Educational Resources

Lecture for the course: CSCI 49378: Intro to Distributed Systems and Cloud Computing - "Cloud Storage and Databases II" (Week Ten) delivered at Hunter College in Spring 2020 by Bonan Liu as part of the Tech-in-Residence Corps program.

Csci 49378: Lecture 8: Cloud Systems And Infrastructures Ii, Bonan Liu, Nyc Tech-In-Residence Corps

Open Educational Resources

Lecture for the course: CSCI 49378: Intro to Distributed Systems and Cloud Computing - "Cloud Systems and Infrastructures II" (Week Eight) delivered at Hunter College in Spring 2020 by Bonan Liu as part of the Tech-in-Residence Corps program.

Devops: Lecture 1 - "Overview", Jeremy Andrews, Nyc Tech-In-Residence Corps

Open Educational Resources

Overview lecture for the "DevOps" course delivered at the City College of New York in Spring 2020 by Jeremy Andrews as part of the Tech-in-Residence Corps program.

Devops: Architecting Your Infrastructure (Syllabus), Jeremy Andrews, Nyc Tech-In-Residence Corps

Open Educational Resources

Syllabus for the "DevOps" course delivered at the City College of New York in Spring 2020 by Jeremy Andrews as part of the Tech-in-Residence Corps program.

Csci 49378: Lecture 5: Distributed Web-Based Applications, Bonan Liu, Nyc Tech-In-Residence Corps

Open Educational Resources

Lecture for the course: CSCI 49378: Intro to Distributed Systems and Cloud Computing - "Distributed Web-based Applications" (Week five) delivered at Hunter College in Spring 2020 by Bonan Liu as part of the Tech-in-Residence Corps program.

Csci 49378: Lecture 11: Logging, Monitoring, And Advanced Topics, Bonan Liu, Nyc Tech-In-Residence Corps

Open Educational Resources

Lecture for the course: CSCI 49378: Intro to Distributed Systems and Cloud Computing - "Logging, Monitoring, and Advanced Topics" (Week Eleven) delivered at Hunter College in Spring 2020 by Bonan Liu as part of the Tech-in-Residence Corps program.

Csci 49378: Lecture 7: Cloud Systems And Infrastructures I, Bonan Liu, Nyc Tech-In-Residence Corps

Open Educational Resources

Lecture for the course: CSCI 49378: Intro to Distributed Systems and Cloud Computing - "Cloud Systems and Infrastructures I" (Week Seven) delivered at Hunter College in Spring 2020 by Bonan Liu as part of the Tech-in-Residence Corps program.

Csci 49378: Lecture 2: Distributed Systems - Key Concepts & Techniques, Bonan Liu, Nyc Tech-In-Residence Corps

Open Educational Resources

Lecture for the course: CSCI 49378: Intro to Distributed Systems and Cloud Computing - "Distributed Systems - Key Concepts & Techniques" (Week Two) delivered at Hunter College in Spring 2020 by Bonan Liu as part of the Tech-in-Residence Corps program.

Csci 49378: Lecture 1: Overview, Bonan Liu, Nyc Tech-In-Residence Corps

Open Educational Resources

Lecture for the course: CSCI 49378: Intro to Distributed Systems and Cloud Computing - "Overview" (Week One) delivered at Hunter College in Spring 2020 by Bonan Liu as part of the Tech-in-Residence Corps program.

Csci 49378: Lecture 3: Synchronization, Consistency And Replication, Bonan Liu, Nyc Tech-In-Residence Corps

Open Educational Resources

Lecture for the course: CSCI 49378: Intro to Distributed Systems and Cloud Computing - "Synchronization, Consistency and Replication" (Week Three) delivered at Hunter College in Spring 2020 by Bonan Liu as part of the Tech-in-Residence Corps program.

Csci 49378: Lecture 9: Cloud Storage And Databases I, Bonan Liu, Nyc Tech-In-Residence Corps

Open Educational Resources

Lecture for the course: CSCI 49378: Intro to Distributed Systems and Cloud Computing - "Cloud Storage and Databases I" (Week Nine) delivered at Hunter College in Spring 2020 by Bonan Liu as part of the Tech-in-Residence Corps program.

Csci 49378: Lecture 4: Distributed File Systems, Bonan Liu, Nyc Tech-In-Residence Corps

Open Educational Resources

Lecture for the course: CSCI 49378: Intro to Distributed Systems and Cloud Computing - "Distributed File Systems" (Week Four) delivered at Hunter College in Spring 2020 by Bonan Liu as part of the Tech-in-Residence Corps program.

Csci 49378: Lecture 6: Cloud Computing Concepts, Bonan Liu, Nyc Tech-In-Residence Corps

Open Educational Resources

Lecture for the course: CSCI 49378: Intro to Distributed Systems and Cloud Computing - "Cloud Computing Concepts" (Week Six) delivered at Hunter College in Spring 2020 by Bonan Liu as part of the Tech-in-Residence Corps program.

Multimodal Data Integration For Real-Time Indoor Navigation Using A Smartphone, Yaohua Chang

Dissertations and Theses

We propose an integrated solution of indoor navigation using a smartphone, especially for assisting people with special needs, such as the blind and visually impaired (BVI) individuals. The system consists of three components: hybrid modeling, real-time navigation, and client-server architecture. In the hybrid modeling component, the hybrid model of a building is created region by region and is organized in a graph structure with nodes as destinations and landmarks, and edges as traversal paths between nodes. A Wi-Fi/cellular-data connectivity map, a beacon signal strength map, a 3D visual model (with destinations and landmarks annotated) are collected while a modeler walks …

A Mobile Cyber-Physical System Framework For Aiding People With Visual Impairment, Martin Goldberg

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

It is a challenging problem for researchers and engineers in the assistive technology (AT) community to provide suitable solutions for visually impaired people (VIPs) through AT to meet orientation, navigation and mobility (ONM) needs. Given the spectrum of assistive technologies currently available for the purposes of aiding VIPs with ONM, our literature review and survey have shown that there is a reluctance to adopt these technological solutions in the VIP community.

Motivated by these findings, we think it critical to re-examine and rethink the approaches that have been taken. It is our belief that we need to take a different …

Open Source Foundations For Spatial Decision Support Systems, Jochen Albrecht

Publications and Research

Spatial Decision Support Systems (SDSS) were a hot topic in the 1990s, when researchers tried to imbue GIS with additional decision support features. Successful practical developments such as HAZUS or CommunityViz have since been built, based on commercial desktop software and without much heed for theory other than what underlies their process models. Others, like UrbanSim, have been completely overhauled twice but without much external scrutiny. Both the practical and the theoretical foundations of decision support systems have developed considerably over the past 20 years. This article presents an overview of these developments and then looks at what corresponding tools …

The Legacy Of Multics And Secure Operating Systems Today, John Schriner

Publications and Research

This paper looks to the legacy of Multics from 1963 and its influence on computer security. It discusses kernel-based and virtualization-based containment in projects like SELinux and Qubes, respectively. The paper notes the importance of collaborative and research-driven projects like Qubes and Tor Project.

Framing The Question, "Who Governs The Internet?", Robert J. Domanski

Publications and Research

There remains a widespread perception among both the public and elements of academia that the Internet is “ungovernable”. However, this idea, as well as the notion that the Internet has become some type of cyber-libertarian utopia, is wholly inaccurate. Governments may certainly encounter tremendous difficulty in attempting to regulate the Internet, but numerous types of authority have nevertheless become pervasive. So who, then, governs the Internet? This book will contend that the Internet is, in fact, being governed, that it is being governed by specific and identifiable networks of policy actors, and that an argument can be made as to …

Centerline Extraction For Image Segmentation Using Gradient And Direction Vector Flow Active Contours, Shuqun Zhang, Jianyang Zhou

Publications and Research

In this paper, we propose a fast centerline extraction method to be used for gradient and direction vector flow of active contours. The gradient and direction vector flow is a recently reported active contour model capable of significantly improving the image segmentation performance especially for complex object shape, by seamlessly integrating gradient vector flow and prior directional information. Since the prior directional information is provided by manual line drawing, it can be inconvenient for inexperienced users who might have difficulty in finding the best place to draw the directional lines to achieve the best segmentation performance. This paper describes a …

On The Nonsymmetric Longer Queue Model: Joint Distribution, Asymptotic Properties, And Heavy Traffic Limits, Charles Knessl, Haishen Yao

Publications and Research

We consider two parallel queues, each with independent Poisson arrival rates, that are tended by a single server. The exponential server devotes all of its capacity to the longer of the queues. If both queues are of equal length, the server devotes of its capacity to the first queue and the remaining to the second. We obtain exact integral representations for the joint probability distribution of the number of customers in this two-node network. Then we evaluate this distribution in various asymptotic limits, such as large numbers of customers in either/both of the queues, light traffic where arrivals are infrequent, …