Preface

The last four years of my life have been dedicated to writing this thesis and to making it as perfect as possible. These years have witnessed days and nights of hard work, discussion, stress, frustration, anguish, insomnia, as well as praise, relief, travelling and fun.

If you are going to read this thesis, I hope that you will find it interesting. If you are just going to browse through it quickly, I hope that you will find the models as beautiful as I do. If you are only interested in this preface, I hope it will leave you with a nice memory.

Bergen, 3rd October 2011

Acknowledgements

This thesis would not have been possible without the contribution of the outstanding individuals I have met during these four years.

First of all, I would like to thank my supervisor Uwe Wolter, for teaching me a lot of interesting knowledge which spans from mathematics to philosophy and history, as well as for giving me invaluable feedback about my research. He deserves much of the credit for this thesis and I am indebted to him for all his help and inspiration, scientifically and otherwise. I would also like to thank my co-supervisor Khalid A. Mughal, for suggesting that I enrol in a PhD programme and for supporting all my choices when I finally followed his suggestion. With time I realised that his initiative saved me from becoming a frustrated software engineer.

A special thanks goes to Adrian Rutle, for helping me to get started with my research and for sharing many good times with me, both in Bergen and while travelling. He has been a brilliant colleague and a good friend, and I have many good memories from these years.

I am grateful to my parents Pompilio and Loretta, for all they have done for me, especially for setting my life on what I believe is the right path. I hope that this thesis will make them as proud of me as I am of them.

“Tusen takk” to Synnøve Solberg Tokerud, for her love and friendship, for teaching me about Norwegian and Norway, as well as for her beautiful smile which always helped me to stay positive.

The Department of Informatics at the University of Bergen has given me a private office, a good salary and great financial support, and I am thankful for that. I would like to thank the Programming Theory group, especially Marc Bezem, Torill Hamre, Anya Helene Bagge, Valentin David, Dag Hovland and Federico Mancini, for creating a stimulating environment to work in, for all the chats about informatics and teaching, for all the empirical studies on espresso and on chocolate spreads, as well as for all the feedback they gave me about my work. I am also grateful to the administration of the Department of Informatics, especially Ida Holen, for patiently listening to my rants every time I needed to vent my frustration, Petter Bjørstad and Torleiv Kløve, for supporting my stays abroad, and Steinar Heldal, for guiding me through the bureaucracy of the University.

My research was carried out in cooperation with fellow researchers from the Department of Computer Engineering at the Bergen University College. Thanks to Yngve Lamo, for his suggestions about how to deal with the Norwegian system, and Florian Mantz, for being an excellent flatmate and for preparing pancakes every Sunday.

Part of this thesis was written during my 4-month stay at the Department of Computer Engineering at the Autonomous University of Madrid. “Muchas gracias” to Juan de Lara and Esther Guerra, for taking care of me during my stay and for giving me plenty of insights which ended up being almost half of this thesis.

I would like to thank my opponents Reiko Heckel and Einar Broch Johnsen, for all the time they have spent reviewing this work, and Michal Walicki, for coordinating the committee. I am also grateful to all my fellow researchers and anonymous reviewers who pointed out flaws and suggested possible improvements in my research.

Despite all the time spent preparing this thesis rather than hanging out, I still have many friends left and they should all be awarded for their patience. In Bergen, Mikal Carlsen Østensen helped me with practically everything before and after my move to Norway. Diego Fiore has been one of my closest friends, who shared countless discussions about the grotesque society we live in with me and was a perfect companion on many suffocating trips around the world. Paolo Angelelli has also been a very good friend, who contributed a lot to the discussion about how to develop an ideal society. My stay in Madrid would not have been the same without Lucia Cammalleri, Teresa Terrana and Daniele Sidoti, who treated me like a close friend since the first day we met. In Italy, my good, old friends Maura Brandimarte, Albert Marsili, Marino Di Carlo, Graziano Liberati and Angelo Di Saverio have been there every time I was back home, and I really appreciate it.

Finally, this thesis would have not reached this level of art without the free and open source software I use and enjoy. A special thanks goes to the communities behind GNU, Linux, KDE, Firefox, Kile, Inkscape, Subversion and Git.

Research fellows at the University of Bergen are encouraged to spend from three to six months abroad to get in touch with another research group and work in a different environment. During the MoDELS 2010 conference in Oslo, me and my supervisor discussed the possibility of my exchange stay with Juan de Lara and Eshter Guerra from the Autonomous University of Madrid. The idea of staying some months in the south of Europe after three years in the North was very appealing for me, and Juan and Esther seemed very positive as well. Eventually the idea became a plan and I came to Madrid in February.

I lived in the very centre of Madrid, which happens to be the very centre of Spain as well. My flat was located 200 meters away from the so-called Kilometre zero, the ancient starting point of all the measurements in Spain. I loved the atmosphere of the city centre, incredibly lively and dynamic… I even loved the noise that you hear in the bars… Yes, the noise of people speaking and toasting and laughing and enjoying life, something that reminded me a bit of Italy and that I missed so much in Norway, where people are usually scared of speaking too loud or too much.

Juan and Esther have been very kind with with me. They helped me with the accommodation and the transportation, provided me an office and a workstation, introduced me to the campus and the city. It has been a rewarding experience to work with them, both scientifically and personally, and I sincerely hope that we will continue the cooperation in the future.

But my stay in Madrid would have not been the same without the people I met there. Thanks to Serena, I got in touch with a group of people from Italy, France and Spain. It was a pleasure to meet Federica, Antonino, Mathilde, Vani, Ysa, Clara and Jose. But above all, it was fantastic to meet Lucia, Teresa and Daniele; lovely people, who treated me like a close friend since the first day we met. I wish most of Italians were people like them, I would consider to move back to Italy.

On the 14th of September 2006 the University Board decides to initiate a project called MegaCentre for the new student centre, to which it allocates half a million EUR. The University has, among others, a Department of Architecture, a Department of Engineering and a Department of Facility Management. One might expect that the University Board would assign the management of MegaCentre to one of these Departments. On the contrary, however, the University Board assigns the management of MegaCentre to the Student Affairs Centre. The Student Affairs Centre forms a working group composed of a project leader, a project co-leader, a technical leader and two co-workers. Again, one might expect that someone from the Department of Architecture, Engineering or Facility Management would cover one of these roles. On the contrary, however, all members of the working group, except for the technical leader, belong to the Student Affairs Centre. The project leader and co-leader do not have specialist educations in architecture or engineering. The technical leader of the working group has an education in engineering but does not belong to the University. The working group spends more than one year and half a million EUR planning MegaCentre.

On the 13th of September 2007 the working group presents the plans for MegaCentre to the University Board. According to these plans, the construction of the building will be assigned to the external construction company Nonchalant, which guarantees the use of state-of-the-art construction techniques. Moreover, once the building comes into service, the maintenance will be assigned to the Department of Facility Management. The University Board accepts the plans and allocates an additional 0.9 million EUR to the project. Nonchalant spends more than one year on construction of the building, on completion of which it presents a bill of 1.1 million EUR.

On the 4th of February 2009 the building is inaugurated with due ceremony, after which it enters into service. Unfortunately, faults in the building’s design immediately become evident, with problems such as poor insulation, a leaky roof, an unreliable alarm system and poor handicap access, to name but a few. Both employees and students soon become frustrated. Again, one might expect that the working group of MegaCentre would demand Nonchalant to honour its contractual agreement, repair all faults and pay any necessary fines for damage caused. On the contrary, however, the working group simply allows the Department of Facility Management to deal with the faults as they see fit. The Department of Facility Management hires construction workers and assigns them to the repairs and alterations. The construction workers do what they can, but after one year many design issues remain unresolved. The head of the Department of Facility Management, who has an education in engineering, decides to perform a thorough evaluation of the building. On doing so, he discovers that the building is constructed with obsolete, rather than state-of-the-art techniques, and that these would not guarantee minimal safety in the event of a natural disaster. Finally, he concludes that it will in fact be necessary to reconstruct the building from scratch using appropriate techniques.

On the 29th of April 2010 the head of the Department of Facility Management presents the evaluation to the University Board. At this point the University Board finally acknowledges that severe action must be taken and sues Nonchalant for damages, excludes the Student Affairs Centre from the project, hands the management of MegaCentre to the Department of Facility Management and fires the employees responsible for public money wasted hitherto.

Do you find this story unbelievable? Well, now replace the name Smallville with Bergen, MegaCentre with EksternWeb and Nonchalant with Bouvet, and read it again here…

Countries visited

Italy
France
Norway
Spain
Russia
Germany
Estonia
United Kingdom
Switzerland
Hungary
Denmark
Latvia
Moldova
Cyprus
Ukraine
Finland

Mountains climbed

Fløyen (400m)
Ulriken (640m)
Rundemanen (560m)
Sandviksfjellet (417m)
Lyderhorn (396m)
Damsgårdsfjellet (350m)
Løvstakken (477m)
Corno grande (2912m)
Preikestolen (604m)
Kjerag (1110m)

Airlines taken

Klm
SAS
Iberia
Ryanair
Sterling (now Cimber)
S7
Aeroflot
Lufthansa
Estonian Air
Alitalia
Norwegian
Vueling
AirBaltic

Laptops owned

Sony Vaio PCG-FX801
Toshiba Satellite A100-703
ASUS Eee PC 1101HA
Dell Latitude E6500

Mobiles owned

Nokia 5110
Nokia 6110
Nokia 7110
SonyEriccsson Z1010
Siemens MT50
Siemens C55
SonyEricsson K610i
Nokia 5800 XpressMusic

Camera owned

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-P72
Canon EOS 350D
Olympus μ 1030 SW

Cars owned

Skoda Fabia 1.9TDI (1999 ed.)

Motorcycles owned

Yamaha FZR-600

There are actually many other things I could write down, but all in all I have been lucky to have had so many opportunities. I am curious to see how these lists will look like in ten years time…

First schedule:

flight LH 4065 from Florence (18:50) to Frankfurt (20:30), connected with
flight LH 3128 from Frankfurt (21:25) to Bergen (23:20)

The first flight was cancelled. I was rescheduled for the next day and sent to a Hilton hotel.

Second schedule:

flight LH 4067 from Florence (06:35) to Frankfurt (08:15), connected with
flight LH 3126 from Frankfurt (09:05) to Bergen (11:00)

The first flight was delayed 45 minutes. I missed the connection and was rescheduled for some hours later.

Third schedule:

flight LH 3132 from Frankfurt (11:30) to Oslo (13:20), connected with
flight SK 269 from Oslo (14:25) to Bergen (15:15)

The first flight was delayed 45 minutes. I missed the connection and was rescheduled for some hours later.

Fourth and last schedule:

flight SK 273 from Oslo (15:50) to Bergen (16:40)

In the end, I came back to Bergen 17 hours and 20 minutes later than originally planned, with the burden of three check-ins (two in Florence, one in Oslo) and four security checks (two in Florence, one in Frankfurt, one in Oslo).

Lufthansa, “There’s no better way to fly”… Are we really sure?

The hike was too long even for Sports Tracker, which crashed after 8 hours. This means that I only have incomplete and maybe corrupted data of my hike. The firm developing this software will for sure hear from me…

Special thanks to Synnøve, who shared with me all the editions. Without her, I would have never managed this result.

Update 6 June 2010

It looks like the Sports Tracker data of my hike is not corrupted. It is only incomplete since I started the tracking again only half-hour after Sports Tracker crashed.

Screenshots:

I spent about 3800 NOK (460 EUR) to buy an Asus Eee PC 1101HA last Saturday. Now I can not return it to the reseller. In other words, I am screwed.

As far as I am concerned, I just wanted to have a trip to an east European country, eventually an ex USSR country. The idea was to go to a country which was culturally, architecturally, geographically and economically speaking very different to what I am used to. After several discussions with Diego about which country to visit, Moldova caught our curiosity… And there we went.

I have to admit that I knew really little about this country before to go, and two things impressed me the most there. The first is, unfortunately, the poverty. The time seems to have stopped in the Nineties there. The average monthly salary in Moldova is around 2500 MDL (151 EUR) while in Norway is 30000 NOK (3533 EUR). Of course, life is cheaper in Moldova than in Norway, but even normalising the salary to the cost of life the difference remains huge.

The other thing that left me puzzled is the lack of linguistic and cultural identity. Native Moldovans belong to the Romanian ethnic group. The official language in Moldova is Romanian, although natives speak a Moldavian dialect which is not so different from the original Romanian. However, Russians and Ukrainians form a large ethnic group in Moldova. Russian is then the default second language at all levels of education, and everyone in the country can speak it fluently. Oddly enough, local Russians refuse to speak Romanian and oblige native Moldovans to speak Russian. Walking around Chişinău I heard more conversations in Russian rather than Romanian, which is quite sad. Maybe this is a superficial analysis of the integration problems, but what kind of cultural identity is this?

I learned a lot from this “very original” trip… especially to give value to the things I am lucky to have in my life. Being at home with all the comforts seems like a luxury now… I hope I will always remember about it.

As always I travelled together with Adrian and this time I had to share the hotel room with him since my travelling budget for 2009 has been in red since July… Fortunately Adrian is not employed at the University of Bergen but at the Bergen University College, and it seems that funding is less problematic there.

The conference was very well organised and covered very many topics of computer science. We had the presentations of our two abstracts almost at the end of the conference and we spent a lot of time modifying the slides rather than listening to the talks, but everything went fine in the end.

During my stay I had the chance to test my skills in Scandinavian languages with some local. Just for the records, written Danish and Norwegian (in the bokmål variant) are rather similar, so similar that reading Danish is not a problem for me… but the spoken counterparts are definitely very different. Spoken Danish sounds to me like a continuous stream of (guttural) sounds, with no chances to understand when a word stops and when the next starts. I hope that no one will take it personally if I say that it seems like Danes do not make any effort to pronounce words clearly.

But there is even more… Danish has a rather weird number system. The tens from fifty on are not based on the number 10, as is the case in most European languages (French being another outstanding exception). This strange system combines two archaic ways of counting: 20-based instead of 10-based and fossilized expressions for two and a half, three and a half and four and a half. This is the result:

After this experience, I think that these Norwegian comedians are not so far from reality.

Buona lettura!