Balbir Barn

Middlesex University, School of Science & Technology, Faculty Member

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Dr Balbir Barn is Professor of Software Engineering and Academic Dean of the Faculty of Science and Technology at Middlesex University.

Balbir is a senior academic and leader with a 28-year track record of accomplishment in both industrial and academic research management that includes:
• Over 25 research and consultancy projects approaching £2.2M of income including domains such as learning technologies;
• Senior management and leadership of a large, complex and diverse faculty as Deputy Dean and Head of Department;
• 100+ research publications in peer-reviewed outlets including leading journals, conferences and editorship;
• Change management and strategy in higher education;
• Strategic consultancy to major blue-chip organisations such as JP Morgan Chase;
• A strong record of collaboration and relationship building within both academia and in a commercial setting;
• Delivery of technological innovation in teaching and learning through software tools, successful grant applications and design of new curricula;
• Sustained contribution to the wider HE community through committee membership of the Council for Professors and Heads in Computing;
• A substantial record of designing and delivering modules in a range of subjects in Computer Science;
• Significant experience in leading, designing and managing of UG and PG programmes for full-time, part-time and distance learning provision.

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Papers by Balbir Barn

Actor-Based Methods, Concepts and Tools for Analysing Emergent Behaviour

Proceedings of the 11th Innovations in Software Engineering Conference

Effective organizational decision-making often requires deep understanding of various aspects of ... more Effective organizational decision-making often requires deep understanding of various aspects of an organisation such as goals, structure, business-as-usual, operational processes etc. The large size of an organisation, its socio-technical characteristics, and fast business dynamics make this a challenging endeavor. This tutorial presents a model-based simulation approach to organisational decision-making. We introduce a new technology that supports the approach and illustrate how it is applied to real life problems using real world case studies.

Remora Project Final Report

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Thames Valley Project Plan

Output * Quality Criteria: specify the criteria against which the quality of the output will be m... more Output * Quality Criteria: specify the criteria against which the quality of the output will be measured, e.g. fitness for purpose, best practice for processes, adherence to a specific standard or specification, usability, accessibility, validity, etc. ** Quality Responsibilities: list who is responsible for monitoring and ensuring the quality. *** Quality Tools: list any tools to be used to help ensure the quality.

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Slrtool: A Tool to Support Collaborative Systematic Literature Reviews

Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems, 2014

Systematic Literature Reviews (SLRs) are used in a number of fields to produce unbiased accounts ... more Systematic Literature Reviews (SLRs) are used in a number of fields to produce unbiased accounts of specific research topics. SLRs and meta-analysis techniques are increasingly being used in other fields as well, from Social Sciences to Software Engineering. This paper presents the SLRTool tool-an open source, webbased, multiuser tool that supports the SLR process for a range of research areas. The tool is available at http://www.slrtool.org and is developed using a model-driven approach to enable its adaptation to different disciplines. The functionality of the tool is presented in the context of support for various phases of the SLR process. The use of the tool is illustrated by means of a simulated SLR aiming to map out existing research in the domain of Enterprise Architecture (EA). Commentary on the use of the tool and potential additional benefits are discussed, for example, the role of the tool in non-medical meta-studies.The SLRTool tool supports all phases of the SLR process and lends itself to creating and supporting research communities geared to SLR oriented activities. In particular, the tool could be suitable for the novice researcher community.

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Towards the Essence of Specifying Sociotechnical Digital Twins

16th Innovations in Software Engineering Conference

Digital Twins are now mainstream technology in the engineering domain. Capabilities and underpinn... more Digital Twins are now mainstream technology in the engineering domain. Capabilities and underpinning concepts are well understood and augmented by proven theories from the physical sciences. Nonetheless the design of digital twins in engineering still remains essential a craft. As digital twin technology merges with more traditional computational modelling approaches such as that found in simulation, new application domains are emerging and public policy experts see significant potential in DT for understanding their complex system areas. Such domains have a significant sociotechnical component and as such a new type of digital twin is required, together with a means of specifying such a digital twin. This paper proposes a specification language/method for this purpose. Requirements elicitation for this language utilises a tabletop paper template that serves as a boundary object between domain experts and technical experts. The language is conformant with accepted practice in simulation methods and its semantics provides a route to implementation of a digital twin. We argue that the language is a contribution to a breadcrumb trail for future work in this emerging application area for digital twins. CCS CONCEPTS • Software and its engineering → Domain specific languages; • Computing methodologies → Modeling methodologies; • Applied computing → Law, social and behavioral sciences.

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Digital twin as risk-free experimentation aid for techno-socio-economic systems

Proceedings of the 25th International Conference on Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems

Environmental uncertainties and hyperconnectivity force technosocio-economic systems to introspec... more Environmental uncertainties and hyperconnectivity force technosocio-economic systems to introspect and adapt to succeed and survive. Current practices in decision-making are predominantly intuition-driven with attendant challenges for precision and rigor. We propose to use the concept of digital twins by combining results from Modelling & Simulation, Artificial Intelligence, and Control Theory to create a risk free 'in silico' experimentation aid to help: (i) understand why a system is the way it is, (ii) be prepared for possible outlier conditions, and (iii) identify plausible solutions for mitigating the outlier conditions in an evidence-backed manner. We use reinforcement learning to systematically explore the digital twin solution space. Our proposal is significant because it advances the effective use of digital twins to new problem domains that have new potential for impact. Our approach contributes an original meta model for simulatable digital twin of industry scale techno-socioeconomic systems, agent-based implementation of the digital twin, and an architecture that serves as a risk-free experimentation aid to support simulation-based evidence-backed decision-making. We also discuss the rigor of our validation of the proposed approach and associated technology infrastructure through a representative sample of industry-scale real-world use cases.

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Towards a unified conceptual model for surveillance theories

Proceedings of the 40th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering in Society

Full bibliographic details must be given when referring to, or quoting from full items including ... more Full bibliographic details must be given when referring to, or quoting from full items including the author's name, the title of the work, publication details where relevant (place, publisher, date), pagination, and for theses or dissertations the awarding institution, the degree type awarded, and the date of the award.

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An Exploration of Resilience and Values in the Co-Design of Sociotechnical Systems

International Journal of Systems and Society, 2016

The notion of resilience is becoming an important consideration in addressing the needs of vulner... more The notion of resilience is becoming an important consideration in addressing the needs of vulnerable individuals and groups in the public sector. In Information Systems development, resilience has often been treated as a non-functional requirement such as scalability and little or no work has aimed at building resilience in end-users through systems development. Sociotechnical approaches while not specifically addressing resilience, have strived for a balance between technology and humans. While there are many variants of sociotechnical approaches, in this paper the authors introduce a refinement of the value sensitive action-reflection model used in co-design, first introduced by Yoo et al, that recognises the tension between values and resilience. The authors report on their activities of using this approach for a project aimed at developing mobile apps for promoting better engagement between young people in conflict with the law and their case workers in the UK youth justice sys...

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The Sociotechnical Digital Twin: On the Gap Between Social and Technical Feasibility

2022 IEEE 24th Conference on Business Informatics (CBI)

The last five years has seen an exponential increase in interest around the notion of a digital t... more The last five years has seen an exponential increase in interest around the notion of a digital twin. Multiple systematic reviews have established a base set of findings which are now broadly taken as assumptions in the field. The findings have outlined frameworks, integration patterns, distinctions between product and process oriented digital twins, simulation and the leveraging of artificial intelligence to support prediction and optimisation. As the use cases of digital twins have evolved from a predominance in manufacturing and into the sociotechnical domain to support the social world, a gap emerges between the social requirements and the technical machinery of digital twins. This gap is significant and worthy of exploration as it presents important challenges for digital twin research including use of sociotechnical design methods, problems arising from a so-called abstraction gap and various epistemological concerns. This paper proposes an analytical route to ameliorating the sociotechnical gap which is discussed within a future notion of an Environment Digital Twin.

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With contributions from the REMORA project team

A Simulation Based Aid for Complex Dynamic Decision Making

Modern organisations are large complex systems operating in an increasingly dynamic environment a... more Modern organisations are large complex systems operating in an increasingly dynamic environment and are tasked to meet its goals by adopting suitable courses of action. Deciding an appropriate course of action calls for deep understanding of various aspects of organisation such as its goals, structure, business-as-usual operational processes and business dynamics. The state-of-practice of decision-making that relies heavily on human experts is often reported as ineffective, imprecise and lacking in agility. Dissertation presented in this paper aims to develop a suitable aid that will assist decision makers to arrive at effective decision with increased rigour, precision and agility for complex dynamic decisionmaking activities.

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An improved path planning system for image-guided neurosurgery

While image guided brain intervention offers the benefit of higher clinical precision, rapider co... more While image guided brain intervention offers the benefit of higher clinical precision, rapider convalescing and less psychological and physical scars to patients, such an operation still faces the challenge of designing the optimal surgical path in order to achieve maximum resection of lesions and minimum sacrifice of healthy tissues. As it happens, the underlying issue remains inherent to the images of Magnetic Resonance (MR) that are inept at showing cerebral arteries. In its wake, this research takes the initiative in establishing a template of the brain cerebral vascular network, mainly the Circle of Willis (COW), leading to being conducive to the development of a computer aided system for path scheming (CAPS) and neural intervention.

Making sense of course data: towards the standardisation of curriculum design and course related information

This paper provides a comprehensive description of the research conducted in a number of JISC fun... more This paper provides a comprehensive description of the research conducted in a number of JISC funded projects in the past few years. The authors were involved in the development of educational planning tools supporting the direct comparison of course data. One of the main challenges in today's higher education is the lack of a consistent approach in the design and development of curriculum information. Although several quality assurance agencies exist world wide and ensure that there are certain criteria that must be adhered to when a new course is designed, there is still no widely acceptable format for documenting course data. This has allowed institutions to introduce their own templates, structures and techniques when producing information describing their courses. Furthermore, there are several terms that are frequently used interchangeably, causing confusion to the reader of course brochures (e.g. course, programme, class, module, lesson, learning experience). Typically, s...

Dynamic Reconfiguration of Event Driven Architecture Using Reflection and Higher-Order Functions

Int. J. Softw. Informatics, 2013

Component-based modelling is used as the basis of a number of approaches including Enterprise Arc... more Component-based modelling is used as the basis of a number of approaches including Enterprise Architecture and System Architecture Design. Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is a popular component-based approach but it has been criticised as not being suficiently flexible. A more flexible alternative is Event Driven Architecture (EDA) that can support Complex Event Processing. Dynamic reconfiguration of component behaviour is attractive because it allows an architecture to be extended and modified in situ without being taken off-line, updated and redeployed. This article shows how higher-order functions and reflection can support dynamic reconfiguration and how this approach is integrated with EDA. The approach is defined as patterns expressed in a component modelling language called LEAP and validated through a case study.

Skills and education planning tools for curriculum design

This paper provides a detailed description of the ongoing work in the field of course data and in... more This paper provides a detailed description of the ongoing work in the field of course data and in particular the development of skills and education planning tools. The paper discusses how a number of JISC funded projects coordinated under the e-learning programme provided the output for managing course related information. The authors were engaged in a number of projects over a period of several years in an effort to utilize the eXchanging Course Related Information – Course Advertising Profile (XCRI-CAP), a XML-based information model for capturing and managing course information. The produced toolkits presented in the paper allow the use of course data, which are represented in the form of XCRI-CAP fields for a number of tasks ranging from curriculum design and development to alignment of courses with employability opportunities and job profiles.

Programme design, accreditation and APEL/APCL support tools

MUSKET project aimed to support employer engagement and workforce planning requirements by provid... more MUSKET project aimed to support employer engagement and workforce planning requirements by providing a tool that can provide an integrated view of curriculum provision, both of employer based and of the higher education sector of UK. The MUSKET tool that allows: 1. end users to import documents containing course descriptions from professional providers, employer specific training and HE and provide a semantic similarity between the documents. 2. facilitate the defining of types of course information required to support employer-led learner route planning.

Modelling and Enterprises - The Past, the Present and the Future

Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Model-Driven Engineering and Software Development, 2013

Industry has been practicing model-driven development in various flavours. In general it can be s... more Industry has been practicing model-driven development in various flavours. In general it can be said that modelling and use of models have delivered on the promises of platform independence, enhanced productivity, and delivery certainty as regards development of software-intensive systems. Globalization market forces, increased regulatory compliance, ever-increasing penetration of internet, and rapid advance of technology are some of the key drivers leading to increased business dynamics. Increased number of factors impacting the decision and interdependency amongst the key drivers is leading to increased complexity in making business decisions. Also, enterprise software systems need to commensurately change to quickly support the business decisions. The paper presents synthesis of our experience over a decade and half in developing model-driven development technology and using it to deliver several business-critical software systems worldwide.

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Do You Own a Volkswagen? Values as Non-Functional Requirements

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2016

Of late, there has been renewed interest in determining the role and relative importance of (mora... more Of late, there has been renewed interest in determining the role and relative importance of (moral) values in the design of software and its acceptance. Events such as the Snowden revelations and the more recent case of the Volkswagen "defeat device" software have further emphasised the importance of values and ethics in general. This paper posits a view that values accompanied by an appropriate framework derived from non-functional requirements can be used by designers and developers as means for discourse of ethical concerns of the design of software. The position is based on the Volkswagen "Dieselgate" case study and a qualitative analysis of developers views from Reddit discussion forums. The paper proposes an extension of an existing classification of requirements to include value concerns.

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BPMN, Toolsets, and Methodology: A Case Study of Business Process Management in Higher Education

Information Systems Development, 2009

This chapter describes ongoing action research which is exploring the use of BPMN and a specific ... more

Content-based Retrieval of 3D Medical Images

While content-based image retrieval (CBIR) has been researched for more than two decades, retriev... more While content-based image retrieval (CBIR) has been researched for more than two decades, retrieving 3D datasets has been progressing considerably more slowly, especially in respect to its application to the medical domain. This is in part due to the limitation of processing speed when trying to retrieve high-resolution datasets in real-time. Another barrier is that most existing methods have been developed based on 2D images instead of 3D, leaving a gap to be filled. At present, a significant number of exploitations are focusing on the extraction of 3D shapes. However, it appears other information tends to be equally important in clinical decision making. In this paper, Local Binary Pattern (LBP), a texture based approach stemming from 2D forms, has been studied extensively through the application to 3D images from a collection of MR brain images in a content-based image retrieval system (CBIR). The initial results show LBP not only can achieve a precision rate of up to 78% but als...

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