This work presents data mining methods for discovering unusual consumption patterns and their associated descriptive models from smart electricity meter data. At present, data mining and knowledge discovery in electricity meter data suffer from three notable weaknesses: 1) insufficient focus on intelligent data analysis of subgroups (subsets) whose patterns vary significantly from aggregate patterns embodied in an entire dataset; 2) a lack of effort towards generating intuitively understandable and practically applicable knowledge for industrial practitioners to identify such subgroups; and 3) limited knowledge regarding the link between unusual consumption patterns and household consumers' socio-demographic characteristics. This paper addresses these practically important but technically challenging issues by applying subgroup discovery algorithms to a real smart electricity meter dataset. Subgroups whose patterns are unusual and whose sizes are large enough are discovered, and their descriptive and predictive models are generated. Furthermore, to enrich subgroup discovery algorithms, three new-quality measures for real-valued targets are proposed. The comparative studies empirically evaluate the effectiveness and usefulness of subgroup discovery on classification accuracy, predictive power, and computational resources. The methodologies and algorithms presented are generic, and therefore applicable to a wider range of data mining problems.

Many graphic artists and designers have adapted their skills to the use of tools that extend static layout applications, allowing the creation of Variable Data Print template documents. These connect text and image placeholders to database fields, allowing creation of a set of instances at job time. Much of the VDP work flowing through digital presses originates this way. However, in the field we have observed limitations to simple approaches which make it hard to create templates that do much more than can be achieved with mail merge and variable backgrounds. In this paper we describe two examples which illustrate the problems. Solutions have been developed but a frequent drawback is that they move the graphic artist out of the loop, either because they do not support the fine layout control creative professionals expect to use, or because they are aimed at programmers and database professionals. Agencies and PSPs however, are so keen to keep creative professionals in the loop that we have seen ingenious but fragile and inefficient in-house solutions which support complex VDP outputs while still keeping the designer in the team. We have developed tools for creative professionals that extend standard layout applications and allow designers to go a step beyond simple VDP. This paper describes the application of these tools to real use cases. We show that the tools can replace custom solutions giving improvements in VDP job creation, database simplification and resilience to changing requirements.

Software development environments are becoming progressively more advanced in their support for construction of large software applications.However, it is still tedious and time consuming for programmers to build even simple applications.This paper describes an exploratory study which identifies some common problems experienced by programmers working with a range of currently available tools.Eight professional programmers were observed while each built the same simple application using a different !software development environment.Problems encountered during the authoring process were noted, Four categories of common problems emerged.Design principles implied by these categories are suggested.