TUTORIALS

GIS is everywhere, you just don’t know it!

In this tutorial we will discover how everybody is using maps even when they don’t know it. Explore the tremendous opportunities available for IT professionals to work with maps for various applications. We will explore what Geographic Information Systems are and how these systems are actually becoming a main stream field of IT. We will show numerous innovative examples from around the world and the Middle East on how maps and GIS can make a difference in everyone’s life and at the same time provide excellent career opportunities for IT professionals. Finally we will show some examples on how to develop some easy yet powerful GIS applications for the web, smart phones and tablets.

Hossam Sayed is leading the solutions engineering team at Esri regional office in Dubai. He has over 17 years of experience consulting with Esri clients in the fields of geographic information systems and information technology. He has been working at Esri headquarters in Redlands for the last 6 years and recently moved to Dubai to support the Middle East and Africa out of the Esri Dubai office.

Sayed’s primary role is educating and consulting with clients, distributors, and partners about the latest technology from Esri. Sayed’s career includes a diverse set of experience composed of working in the full life cycle of implementing GIS/IT projects. He has worked in such roles as technical support, training, application development, consulting, project management, and technical marketing. He currently manages the technical marketing group in the Esri Dubai office. During his career he worked with various technologies including .NET, Flex, JavScript, Oracle, SQL Server and various Esri GIS software and solutions.

Mr. Sayed has an MBA in IT Management from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater in the US. He also holds GIS/IT diploma from the Information Technology Institute in Cairo, Egypt and a bachelor of Architectural Engineering from School of Engineering, Cairo University

Dr. Hamid Sharif

Dr. Mahmoud Alahmad

The modernization and development of the electrical grid into the Smart Grid creates a broad and reliable real-time communication medium for energy management of local and remote assets such as buildings. Energy consumption monitoring and conservation management are the critical economical and environmental elements in our communities. An effective energy conservation management system requires real-time monitoring of consumption data in local and remote buildings. Dissemination of this data also requires reliable and broad communication channels to inform the end-users on their energy consumptions to influence their behavior for conserving energy. Cyber and traditional communication channels require additional infrastructure for remote areas, where the Smart Grid offers available networks for energy and data distributions. In this tutorial, we present the critical elements for achieving successful energy efficiency in buildings and challenges and the directions for utilizing the Smart Grid as not only a network of power and energy distribution system, but as a real-time communication media for energy management information exchanges for remote sites and buildings. Thus, this tutorial will discuss the following five major components in details: 1) The Smart Grid & the Information Domain; 2) Energy Conservation Management approaches in Buildings; 3) Electricity Consumption & Behavior Changes; 4) Challenges in Smart Grid as a Real-Time Communication Medium, and 5) Smart Grid Reliability and Security.

Dr. Sharif is the Charles J. Vranek Distinguished full Professor in the Department of Computer and Electronics Engineering at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL). He is also the Director of the Advanced Telecommunications Engineering Laboratory at UNL. His research areas include wireless communication protocols, security in wireless communications, wireless sensor networks, security in multimedia transmissions, wireless system performance evaluations, and embedded system designs. He has published over 200 research articles in international journals and conferences. His research projects have been funded by major research agencies such as NSF, DoD, DoT and other national and international organizations. Professor Sharif has been the recipient of a number of best papers and distinguished research and teaching awards. He has been serving on many IEEE and other international journal editorial boards and currently is the Co-Editor-In-Chief for the Wiley Journal of Security and Communication Networks. He has contributed to the IEEE in many roles including the elected Chair of the Nebraska Section, elected Chair of the Nebraska Computer Chapter, elected Chair of the Nebraska Communication Chapter, and the Chapter Coordinator for the IEEE Region 4 in USA. Dr. Sharif received his BSEE degree from the University of Iowa, his MSEE degree from the University of Missouri-Columbia, and the Ph.D. degree from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Dr. Mahmoud Alahmad is an associate Professor in the Durham school of Architectural Engineering and Construction (DSAEC) in the College of Engineering at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. His research interests include real-time power monitoring in the built environment, battery power management, and renewable energy alternatives. To expand his research interest, Dr. Alahmad joined the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), in Golden, Colorado, as a full-time summer employment in 2011. He served as a Researcher Associate working on two energy research projects that closely align with his research on energy, monitoring and conservation. Dr. Alahmad has been involved in multiple funded projects, from NSF and EPA in addition to local and national industries, which relate to reducing energy consumption and behavior research in buildings. He is currently investigating remote monitoring and load forecasting to integrate with the Smart Grid. Dr. Alahmad has published over 60 refereed research articles in national and international conferences and journals. He is a registered Professional Engineer (PE) with over 10 years of industry experience, designing electrical distribution systems for the built environment. Dr. Alahmad Received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering, the M.S. degree in electrical engineering, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Idaho, Moscow, USA in 1989, 1991, and 2005, respectively.

The objective of this tutorial is to introduce game design from a software engineering perspective and to highlight the importance of games in our “modern” life. Games have become so pervasive in our daily life that we do not consider them any more as just leisurely activities, even though the phrase “serious games” is used to qualify games we consider productive. In education, experiential learning is achieved through gameplay.

Major topics to be covered include game concepts and principles, game architectures, techniques to design game engines, motion planning, and intelligent behavior modeling. The nature of games and game genres are surveyed and categorized. Analysis of these games is used to identify the attributes of a good game. A game life cycle is introduced to illustrate the development of video games. A brief survey of tools for game development is given and a specific tool is introduced to illustrate an actual implementation.

Dr. Boumediene Belkhouche is currently Professor of Software Engineering (College of Information Technology, UAE University). His main research interests cover the font-end of the software life cycle, specifically, formal specifications, design, and prototyping. A sample of his publications can be found at http://faculty.uaeu.ac.ae/b_belkhouche/.

To make the tutorial interesting I advice all attendees to bring with them a windows-based laptop, so we can build a game together.