John Dalton

Director

John Dalton

John Dalton is Director of the EDC. Previously he was a Senior Research Associate joining the EDC in September 2000 after completion of his Masters Degree.

Contact:

Tel: +44(0)191 222 8556

email: John.Dalton@ncl.ac.uk

Qualifications

  • M.Res in Engineering in Marine Technology
  • B.Eng (Hons) Mechanical Engineering

Research Interests

John Dalton has a large number of research interests. These include:

  • The Integrated Modelling Environment
  • Knowledge Management
  • Techniques for recording and retrieving Design Rationale
  • Traceability
  • Multi-Criteria Decision Techniques, i.e.
    • Generic optimisation techniques
    • Multi-Attribute Decision Methods (MADM) and Genetic Algorithms.
    • Modelling and simulation
  • Object Oriented Modelling, including:
    • The Unified Modelling Language (UML)
    • Model Driven Architecture (MDA)
    • Executable UML (exUML)
  • All aspects of programming, i.e. Java, Pascal, C++ etc, specifically to do with cross-platform applications, i.e. Windows, Unix, Linux etc..

Projects

The Integrated Modelling Environment

John is currently working as part of the EDC team in support of the Integrated Modelling Environment (IME), sponsored by BAE SYSTEMS. The basis of this work is to develop tools and methods to aid the design of complex systems.

The IME work has involved the development of a modelling framework methodology using accepted UML and MDA techniques. This has resulted in a working cross-platform software application (written in Java) which has been used to demonstrate case study material.

Development as part of the IME research program has also included:

  • Generic traceability methods: These are primarily applied to system properties but can be extended to include other information model formats such as design rationale.
  • A design reuse approach as part of an overall knowledge management capability.
  • Derived a methodology for implementing optimisation within the MFR using accepted Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) techniques. This includes Genetic Algorithms, as well as several Multi-Attribute Decision Making (MADM) methods.

Publications

Selected publication