bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Model-Driven Software Refactoring
Authors: Mens Tom , Taentzer Gabriele , Müller Dirk
Published: May 2010

In this chapter, we explore the emerging research domain of model-driven software refactoring. Program refactoring is a proven technique that aims at improving the quality of source code. Applying refactoring in a model-driven software engineering context raises many new challenges such as how to define, detect and improve model quality, how to preserve model behavior, and so on. Based on a concrete case study with a state-of-the-art model-driven software development tool, AndroMDA, we explore some of these challenges in more detail. We propose to resolve some of the encountered problems by relying on well-understood techniques of meta-modeling, model transformation and graph transformation.
From Requirements to Java Code
Authors: Bucchiarone Antonio , Di Ruscio Davide , Muccini Henry , Pelliccione Patrizio
Published: May 2010

When engineering complex and distributed software and hardware systems (increasingly used in many sectors, such as manufacturing, aerospace, transportation, communication, energy, and health-care), quality has become a big issue, since failures can have economic consequences and can also endanger human life. Model-based specifications of component-based systems permit to explicitly model the structure and behaviour of components and their integration. In particular Software Architectures (SA) have been advocated as an effective means to produce quality systems. In this chapter by combining different technologies and tools for analysis and development, we propose an architecture-centric model-driven approach to validate required properties and to generate the system code. Functional requirements are elicited and used for identifying expected properties the architecture shall express. The architectural compliance to the properties is formally demonstrated, and the produced architectural model is used to automatically generate Java code. Suitable transformations assure that the code is conforming to both structural and behavioural SA constraints. This chapter describes the process and discusses how some existing tools and languages can be exploited to support the approach.
Quality-Aware Model-Driven Service Engineering
Authors: Pahl Claus , Boškovic Marko  , Barrett Ronan , Hasselbring Wilhelm
Published: May 2010

Service engineering and service-oriented architecture as an integration and platform technology is a recent approach to software systems integration. Quality aspects ranging from interoperability to maintainability to performance are of central importance for the integration of heterogeneous, distributed service-based systems. Architecture models can substantially influence quality attributes of the implemented software systems. Besides the benefits of explicit architectures on maintainability and reuse, architectural constraints such as styles, reference architectures and architectural patterns can influence observable software properties such as performance. Empirical performance evaluation is a process of measuring and evaluating the performance of implemented software. We present an approach for addressing the quality of services and service-based systems at the model-level in the context of modeldriven service engineering. The focus on architecture-level models is a consequence of the black-box character of services.
Evaluating Healthcare IT and Understanding the Work of Healthcare are Entangled Processes
Authors: Schulman Joseph
Published: May 2010

Parallel to the monumental problem of replacing paper- and pen-based patient information management systems with electronic ones is the problem of evaluating the extent to which the change represents an improvement. Meaningful and useful evaluation rests upon: a) explicitly conceptualizing the goals and tasks of the daily clinical work; b) thinking of electronic information management technology as a cognitive tool; c) explicitly representing in the tool the pertinent information elements; d) selecting among possibilities for representing a problem formulation so as to facilitate the solution; and e) appreciating the dynamic interaction between the work and the tool–that changing a tool necessarily changes the work. Anchored in the story of how one hospital committee learned to think about the purpose and impact of a patient information management system, this chapter gives practical insight to these evaluative considerations.
Interactive Sociotechnical Analysis
Authors: Harrison Michael I. , Koppel Ross
Published: May 2010

Many unintended and undesired consequences of healthcare information technologies (HIT) are generated by interactions between newly introduced HIT and the existing healthcare organization’s sociotechnical system--its workflows, culture, social interactions, physical environment, and technologies. This chapter presents and illustrates a model of these interactions that we call interactive sociotechnical analysis (ISTA). ISTA places special emphasis on recursive processes (i.e., feedback loops that alter the uses of the newly introduced HIT) promote second-level changes in the social system, and sometimes lead to changes in the new HIT systems themselves. We discuss ISTA’s implications for improving HIT implementation practices and suggest how clinicians, IT specialists, and managers can better anticipate likely consequences of introducing HIT; more effectively diagnose unforeseeable consequences which emerge during implementation; and better respond to these emerging consequences.
Improving Patient Safety with Information Technology
Authors: Anderson James G.
Published: May 2010

Over three-quarters of a million people are injured or die in hospitals annually from adverse drug events. The majority of medication errors result from poorly designed health care systems rather than from negligence on the part of health care providers. Health care systems, in general, rely on voluntary reporting which seriously underestimates the number of medication errors and adverse drug events (ADEs) by as much as 90%. This chapter reviews the literature on (1) the incidence and costs of medication errors and ADEs; (2) detecting and reporting medication errors and related ADEs; (3) and the use of information technology to reduce the number of medication errors and ADEs in health care settings. Results from an analysis of data on medication errors from a regional data sharing consortium and from computer simulation models designed to analyze the effectiveness of information technology (IT) in preventing medication errors are summarized.
Emergency Medical Data Transmission Systems and Techniques
Authors: Zubairi Junaid Ahmed , Misbahuddin Syed , Tasadduq Imran
Published: May 2010

Patients in critical condition need Physician’s supervision while they are in transit to the hospital. If the ambulance is linked to the emergency room, the physician can monitor patient’s vital signs and issue instructions to the paramedics for stabilizing the patient. When a disaster strikes, scores of people are transferred to the hospital in ambulances. During an emergency situation, the number of patients in critical condition reaches overwhelming proportions. In this chapter, we discuss the state of the art in transferring emergency medical data from the disaster site or ambulance to the hospital and outline some case studies. We present a scheme called MEDTOC (Medical Data Transmission Over Cellular Network) for transferring in-ambulance multiple patients’ data to the hospital by UMTS. This system enables the transfer of vital signs to the hospital in reduced and packed format using limited bandwidth wireless network. Medical data can be transmitted over 3G cellular network using various modes and quality of service parameters available in UMTS. This could help the physicians in monitoring several patients who are either in transit or at a triage unit on a disaster site. Results of the application of data reduction algorithm over CAN packets and feasibility studies in transfer of data over UMTS are presented and discussed.
Resource Alignment of ICT in Taiwanese Small Dialysis Centers
Authors: Huang Yu-An , Lin Chad
Published: May 2010

The literature on cooperative alliances has been criticized for its relatively narrow concentration on large firms and for ignoring small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) alliances where large firms do not operate in similar ways. Due to their size SMEs are more likely to seek external expertise. For small dialysis centers, they often form alliances to obtain these scarce resources. Unlike large firms which own a lot of slack resources to be able to form alliances with many partners, these small dialysis centers tend to form alliances with only a small number of partners and therefore, their dependence on these partners is higher than large firms. Hence, we conducted case study to investigate the use of complementary and supplementary information communication technology (ICT) resources among several small healthcare centers in Taiwan and evaluated how different types of resource alignment affect the performances of alliances. One contribution of the chapter is that the contribution of dissimilar ICT resources by both the focal and partner firms has a significant positive impact on alliance sustainable commitment. The results also reveal that there is a positive relationship between the contribution of dissimilar ICT resources by the partner firms and alliance performance. However, the contribution of dissimilar ICT resources alone by the focal dialysis centers has no significant impact on alliance performance.
Guideline Representation Ontologies for Evidence-Based Medicine Practice
Authors: Zheng Kai , Padman Rema , Johnson Michael P. , Hasan Sharique
Published: May 2010

An ontology in the context of guideline representation is a specification of conceptualizations that constitutes evidence-based clinical practice guidelines. It represents the elements of a guideline by specifying its attributes and defining the relationships that hold among them. For example, a guideline representation ontology would define a set of medical decisions and actions (concepts), as well as a set of rules (relationships) that relate the evaluation of a decision criterion to further reasoning steps or to its associated actions. A rigorously defined computational ontology provides considerable promise of producing computable representations that can be visualized, edited, executed, and shared using computer-based systems. A widely acknowledged ontology, or standard representation schema, is the key to facilitating the dissemination of guidelines across computer systems and healthcare institutions. The first part of this chapter presents the evolution of ontology research in guideline representation. Several representative ontologies are reviewed and discussed, with in-depth analyses of two popular models: GLIF (Guideline Interchange Format) and PROforma. The second part of the chapter analyzes seven key elements constituting a guideline representation. It also discusses the criteria for evaluating competing ontologies and some known limitations in the existing models. At the end of this chapter, four key steps are outlined that converts a guideline into computerized representation, which can be then used in Clinical Decision Support Systems (CDSSs).
Electronic Government
Authors: Ladner Roy
Published: May 2010

In this chapter we provide an overview of electronic government as it pertains to national security and defense within the Department of Defense (DoD) and Department of Homeland Security (DHS). We discuss the adoption of web services and service oriented architectures to aid in information sharing and reduction of Information Technology (IT) costs. We also discuss the networks on which services and resources are being deployed and explain the efforts being made to manage the infrastructure of available services. This chapter provides an overview of e-government for national security and defense and provides insight to current initiatives and future directions.
Electronic Government Implementation
Authors: Chen Yining , Chen H.M. , Ching Russell K.H. , Huang Wayne W.
Published: May 2010

Over the last decade, the Internet has become one of the most important means of communication in all social areas. The success of Web technology adoption in the private sector has put pressures on the public sector to adopt the Internet to present information and service resources. The concept of creating more efficient and convenient interaction between government and the interacting parties using Internet technology is referred to as electronic government (or digital government). Recent studies have shown an increase in the adoption of electronic government by various countries (Archer, 2005; I-Ways, 2005; Janssen et al. 2004). Nevertheless, the level of implementation diverges from country to country. This study identifies critical success factors of electronic government and proposes an implementation framework. This chapter presents an extensive case study to illustrate how the proposed framework can be used to analyze electronic government strategies in a developed country (United States) and a developing country (China). In conclusion, recommendations are made to developed and developing countries for their implementation of electronic government.
Australia Local Government and E-Governance
Authors: O’Toole Kevin
Published: May 2010

This chapter analyses local government’s response to the pressure to modernise its structures through its use of Information Communication Technologies (ICT) to execute its broad range of tasks. The chapter begins by discussing Chadwick and May’s (2003) three basic models of e-government; managerial, consultative and participatory. Using data collected from an analysis of 658 local government websites in Australia together with existing survey research the chapter then analyses the extent to which local government sites fit into the three models. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the issues and problems faced by local government in its attempt to develop e-governance as both an extension of administrative as well as democratic functions.
Engaging the Community Through E-Democracy in South Australia
Authors: Alport Kate
Published: May 2010

This chapter examines the spread of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in South Australia. It starts by assessing South Australia’s leading role in the adoption of democratic reforms in the nineteenth century. It then suggests that there is not the same enthusiasm for the more contemporary reforms found in the implementation of e-democracy. The chapter draws from an appraisal of internet based initiatives by government, not for profit and private agencies and sets these against best practice models for community engagement. Based on this research it concludes that there is little originality and initiative in the formal State Government sites and that there is little designed to foster e-democracy. What innovation there is can be found in more local and specific community based applications of ICT.
A Methodology for Ontological Mediation in Multi-Agent Systems
Authors: Rahimi Shahram
Published: May 2010

The effectiveness of current search and retrieval systems is restricted as they do not use the semantics of the data but mainly utilize keywords. Multi-agent systems in which agents gather information and organize it, by creating ontologies, are being utilized to improve the performance and quality of the data gathering and integrating systems. Major difficulties that arise during collaboration among such agents are ambiguity and data misinterpretation. This is due to the diversity of ontology creators, differences in linguistics and ontological overlapping. Users may also knowingly or unknowingly add incorrect information to ontologies. Ontological Mediation tries to address such collaboration issues relating to ambiguous and unfamiliar information arising due to various reasons. We propose a communication based approach for ontological mediation. In the process, we also present a classification model for ontological mediation.
Governance in European Hospitals
Authors: Eeckloo Kristof , Delesie Luc , Vleugels Arthur
Published: May 2010

Hospital governance refers to the complex of checks and balances that determine how decisions are made within the top structures of hospitals. In this chapter, authors introduce hospital governance as a policy domain in which data mining methods have a large potential to provide insight and practical knowledge. The chapter starts by exploring the essentials of the concept, by analysing the root notion of governance and comparing it with applications in other sectors. Recent developments and examples from the UK, France and The Netherlands are outlined. Based on an evaluation of the current state of affairs, a research agenda is developed. The chapter concludes with an introduction to the European Hospital Governance Project, which follows the outlines of the described research agenda. Methods of data mining and information visualisation that are used in this project are explained by means of a real data example.
Data Mining as Part of Intelligence-Led Policing in the Finnish Police
Authors: Juntunen Arla
Published: May 2010

The field of knowledge management has emerged in response to organizational needs to capture and manage what they know. This chapter discusses how a public sector organization made an effort to enhance their collaborative processes and organizational knowledge base in a specific functional area and how they implemented KM-tools to improve knowledge and information sharing and transferal both within the organization and between partners. The main expectations for the information management included the specific knowledge of its own area as well as core competencies created and systematically developed around its own areas of expertise. The implementation of KM-tools in the crime analysis function as part of intelligence-led policing assisted in preventing more crimes and creating safer communities. Decision-making in the police changed gradually from just analyzing and following past events to predicting and preventing crimes. The use and recognition of the benefits of KM-tools also facilitated the development of continuing learning and education in all the levels and in all the fields and locations of the organization. This chapter aims to promote knowledge management and KM-tools usage in government and to identify the challenges and benefits gained by an implementation of analytical solutions. It describes the managerial and organizational implications of the usage of analytical solutions and the effects on political decision-making and government programs.
Virtual Assistants for E-Government Interaction
Authors: Sandoval-Almazán Rodrigo , GutiérrezAlonso Mario Arturo
Published: May 2010

The objective of this chapter is to provide an example of a user-friendly interface for knowledge management and information retrieval, through the use of virtual assistants in E-government applications. The chapter is going to provide a short state of the art on virtual assistants technology, highlighting the knowledge management aspects. Two case studies: the Mexican state of Guanajuato, and the Federal Government Citizen’s Web Page will be presented and discussed. These case studies provide new insights into access methods, interfaces and ways to query and present information in e-government applications.
Digital Divide and its Implication on Malaysian E-Government
Authors: Ambali Abdul Raufu
Published: May 2010

There is no doubt that e-government application in public administration and its productive use of information technologies (ICTs) would improve the interface between respective governments and their citizens in both service deliveries and provisions of basic needs. However, it is recognized that while there are many benefits that have been obtained by implementing e-government, there are many sectors of society that are not part of this growing electronic culture. Perhaps, economics, lack of access to the Internet and other technologies, low literacy levels and often lack of interest or willingness to use the new technologies, contributes to a country’s disparities in e-government practices. It is argued that the concept of citizen’s disparities in e-government application in public sectors is based on the hypothesis that there are both “information-haves and information-have-nots” in the ICT Era. In addition, the basis for such division may include demographic characteristics such as income, educations, ethnicity, regions and locality. Most of the governments all over the world recognized these fundamental divisional issues but fail to include them along the implementation of their e-government programs. Therefore, from a public policy perspective, the research questions to be asked are: does citizen’s disparity matter in a successful application of e-government in public sectors? How much do these fundamental disparities (such as illiteracy, economic conditions of individual citizens, family and groups, disabilities and lack of interest or willingness levels) prevent citizens from appreciating the application of e-government? How much do these issues impact on the relationship between government and the citizenry in relation to the thesis of e-government programs? What kinds of policies might be needed by governments to ensure that large segments of the citizens are included in the e-government implementations? This chapter seeks to address the digital divide associated with e-government, which can serve as impediment for application of ICT. As a case study, the chapter explores the various initiatives that have been undertaken by the Malaysian government to bridge the gap.
Intellectual Capital Reporting
Authors: Nielsen Christian , Roslender Robin , Bukh Per Nikolaj
Published: May 2010

During the last decade, many calls for improving disclosure practices, in relation to intellectual capital and intangibles, have been uttered in the standard setting, academic, and business communities. There seem to be two types of solutions to this problem. One angle of attack is to seek to improve transparency through implementation of global accounting standards, and moving from historic value to fair-value practices. Another way of dealing with the problem is to step outside the accounting paradigm to see if transparency and relevance problems can be solved by way of supplementary disclosures. For some, this is a logical step. However, for many, this represents shaky ground. It is ironic that while supplementary information has been shown to reduce investors’ uncertainty, it is not being acknowledged as a key element in solving the existing problems by standard setters and academics. This chapter is a wake-up call to the drowsy constituents of academia and policy making, asking them to see beyond their normative accounting paradigm and in turn, showing them how far the strategy-oriented solutions they choose to ignore have come. In this chapter, we thus illustrate for the reader how reporting and management of companies’ knowledge resources and intellectual capital is possible through the strategic ideas of the Danish guideline for IC statements.
Managing the Information Technology
Authors: Hsu Huei-Chen
Published: May 2010

The main points of this chapter are probing for the combination of information technology and virtual work, and how to change the distribution of different types of knowledge across individuals, teams, and even the organization. The discussion in the chapter will assess the dynamics between the individual, the organization, and information technology in the context of teams that vary in their virtualness. Information technology can make convenient spread of knowledge across the organization; even the point of making virtual teams a viable alternative to face-to-face work. However, unless managed, information technology may destabilize the relationship between organizations and their employees when it comes to the transform of knowledge. Therefore, this chapter advances theory and informs practice by illustrating the dynamics of knowledge development and transfer in more and less virtual teams.
The Building of the Intellectual Capital Statement in Multinationals
Authors: Lytras Miltiadis D. , Ordóñez de Pablos Patricia
Published: May 2010

Multinational companies (MNCs) are facing important challenges within the current economic context. Rapid technological changes, the globalization of the economy, the existence of increasingly demanding consumers are, among other factors, the origin of the difficulties involved in achieving and sustaining a competitive advantage in the long term.One of the keys for overcoming these difficulties is to manage knowledge-based resources appropriately. However, in order to be able to manage these resources, the multinationals need to know, with complete transparency, just what these resources are, and this is achieved by quantifying them. The quantification of knowledge-based resources and the preparation of intellectual capital statements represent two strategic challenges for the MNCs.
Web Application Process-Oriented Design for Internal Users
Authors: Paiano Roberto , Guido Anna Lisa , Pandurino Andrea
Published: May 2010

As more times underlined within this book, when the application is turned to the inside, users of the company that do not need information of contour in comparison to those necessary for the carrying out the task of the process, the alone design of the process is enough to come up to the final application. It is necessary, however, to submit the initial design to a transformation that allows making it suitable to the requests of whom will have called then to implement the application. In this process of passage from a high-level design (what is that aim to define the business processes) up to the final implementation of the application, of course, both the business experts and the IT experts are involved, each of them needing different levels of detail. The business experts, understanding the problems present in the company, try to delineate its underlying processes in a clear and unambiguous way; to do, the use of the BPMN™ notation (OMG, 2006) is a great help. Among the receivers of the documents produced by the business analyst there are the IT experts that will have to realize the final application on the base of such documentation.
Code Generators
Authors: Paiano Roberto , Guido Anna Lisa , Pandurino Andrea
Published: May 2010

In this chapter, the design and the development of the code generating tools based on the technologies (described in Chapter XI) are presented. In detail, the chapter describes the development of the tools that manages P-IDM design as a Web application input model (the design does not take care the presence of the process level); also, it describes the tool that considers as input model the P-IDM process design. It is clear that the two designs will be represented using the ontological language OWL (W3C, 2004). In the description of the tool that uses the P-IDM model as input, the main focus is on the page composition (based on the framework tiles) (http://www.apache.org) and thus, the focus is on the final graphical aspect of the generated application. In the description of the tool that uses the P-IDM process, the main focus is on the aspect related to navigational aspect; the navigation is driven by the process and so the tool description is mainly oriented to show the process flow configuration.
XML and LDAP Integration
Authors: Koutsonikola Vassiliki , Vakali Athena
Published: May 2010

Nowadays, XML has become the standard for representing and exchanging data over the Web and several approaches have been proposed for efficiently managing, storing, querying and representing XML data originating from diverse and often heterogeneous sources. The Lightweight Directory Access Protocol is a promising technology for XML data storage and retrieval since it facilitates access to information organized under a variety of frameworks and applications. As an open, vendor-neutral standard, LDAP provides an extendable architecture for centralized storage and management of information that needs to be available for today’s distributed systems and services. The similarities between XML and LDAP data representation have led to the idea of processing XML data within the LDAP framework. This chapter focuses on the topic of LDAP and XML integration with emphasis on the storage and retrieval approaches implemented so far. Moreover, the chapter includes an overview and survey of the theoretical background and the adopted practices as realized in the most popular and emerging frameworks which tune XML and LDAP.
XML Stream Query Processing
Authors: Wei Mingzhu , Li Ming , Rundensteiner Elke A. , Mani Murali , Su Hong
Published: May 2010

Stream applications bring the challenge of efficiently processing queries on sequentially accessible XML data streams. In this chapter, the authors study the current techniques and open challenges of XML stream processing. Firstly, they examine the input data semantics in XML streams and introduce the state-of-the-art of XML stream processing. Secondly, they compare and contrast the automatonbased and algebra-based techniques used in XML stream query execution. Thirdly, they study different optimization strategies that have been investigated for XML stream processing – in particular, they discuss cost-based optimization as well as schema-based optimization strategies. Lastly but not least, the authors list several key open challenges in XML stream processing.
Recent Advances and Challenges in XML Document Routing
Authors: Moro Mirella M. , Vagena Zografoula , Tsotras Vassilis J.
Published: May 2010

Content-based routing is a form of data delivery whereby the flow of messages is driven by their content rather than the IP address of their destination. With the recognition of XML as the standard for data exchange, specialized XML routing services become necessary. In this chapter, the authors first demonstrate the relevance of such systems by presenting different world application scenarios where XML routing systems are needed and/or employed. Then, they present a survey of the current state of the art. Lastly, they attempt to identify issues and problems that have yet to be investigated. Their discussion will help identify open problems and issues and suggest directions for further research in the context of such systems.
Modeling XML Warehouses for Complex Data
Authors: Boukraa Doulkifli , Messaoud Riadh Ben , Boussaid Omar
Published: May 2010

Current data warehouses deal for the most part with numerical data. However, decision makers need to analyze data presented in all formats which one can qualify as complex data. Warehousing complex data is a new challenge for the scientific community. Indeed, it requires revisiting the whole warehousing process in order to take into account the complex structure of data; therefore, many concepts of data warehousing will need to be redefined. In particular, modeling complex data in a unique format for analysis purposes is a challenge. In this chapter, the authors present a complex data warehouse model at both conceptual and logical levels. They show how XML is suitable for capturing the main concepts of their model, and present the main issues related to these data warehouses.
Social Semantic Web and Semantic Web Services
Authors: Sfakianakis Stelios
Published: May 2010

In this chapter the authors aim to portray the social aspects of the World Wide Web and the current and emerging trends in “Social Web”. The Social Web (or Web 2.0) is the term that is used frequently to characterize Web sites that feature user provided content as their primary data source and leverage the creation of online communities based on shared interests or other socially driven criteria. The need for adding more meaning and semantics to these social Web sites has been identified and to this end the Semantic Web initiative is described and its methodologies, standards, and architecture are examined in the context of the “Semantic Social Web”. Finally the embellishment of Web Services with semantic annotations and semantic discovery functionality is described and the relevant technologies are explored.
Developing User Interfaces for Community-Oriented Workflow Information Systems
Authors: Guerrero Garcia Josefina , Vanderdonckt Jean , Gonzalez Calleros Juan Manuel
Published: May 2010

Technology to support groups is rapidly growing in use. In recent years, the Web has become a privileged platform for implementing community-oriented workflows, giving rise to a new generation of workflow information systems. Specifically, the Web provides ubiquitous access to information, supports explicit distribution of business process across workers, workplaces, and computing platforms. These processes could be all supported by platform-independent user interfaces. This chapter presents a model-driven engineering method that provides designers with methodological guidance on how to systematically derive user interfaces of workflow information systems from a series of models. For this purpose, the workflow is recursively decomposed into processes which are in turn decomposed into tasks. Each task gives rise to a task model whose structure, ordering, and connection with the domain model allows the automated generation of corresponding user interfaces in a transformational approach. The various models involved in the method can be edited in a workflow editor based on Petri nets and simulated interactively.
Cross-Organization Virtual CoPs in E-Tourism
Authors: Vidakis Nikolas , Kotsalis Dimitrios , Milolidakis Giannis , Vellis George
Published: May 2010

This chapter describes recent work and experience in setting up and supporting cross-organization virtual communities of practice to facilitate new product development. The authors’ reference domain is tourism and the community’s joint enterprise is assembly of vacation packages. The chapter contrasts existing practices involved in building vacation packages against the computer-mediated practices flourishing in an electronic village of local interest on regional tourism. The electronic village is considered as an aggregation of thematic virtual communities (i.e., neighborhoods) each with own rules, policies and primitive offerings covering tourism services such as accommodation, transportation, cultural resources, etc. Electronic squads are formed as cross-neighborhood communities of practice to engage in computermediated assembly of vacation packages. The chapter presents key tasks involved in managing both electronic squads and the workflows through which the shared resources are combined and transformed into new collective offerings.
Social Interactive Media and Virtual Community Practices
Authors: Akoumianakis Demosthenes
Published: May 2010

This chapter attempts to consolidate concepts, ideas and results reported in this volume in an effort to synthesize an agenda and sketch a roadmap for future research and development on virtual community practices facilitated by synergistic combination of social interactive media. In this endeavor, the author revisits the notions of new media, communities and social practice, in the light of the preceding chapters and with the intention to pickup seemingly heterogeneous concepts and sketch the puzzle of social interactive media and virtual community practice. The ultimate target is to make inroads towards a reference model for understanding and framing online social practice under the different regimes constituted by new media and social computing.
An Ontology Supporting an On-Board Vehicle Multimodal Interaction System
Authors: Pisanelli Domenico M. , De Lazzari Claudio , Innocenti Emilio Bugli , Zanetti Norma
Published: May 2010

This chapter introduces a modular ontology supporting an on-board vehichle multimodal interaction system. Such a system is aimed at making road transport more efficient and effective, safer, and more environmentally friendly. The role of the ontology is that of enabling semantic interoperability in order to allow cooperation between the road infrastructure and assisting the driver to perform certain traffic related actions also increasing the infrastructure efficiency. In particular, the project is engaged in the development of applications such as intelligent speed adaptation, including static (new roads, speed limits changed by authorities), temporary (road works, schools), and dynamic (traffic responsive, road and/or weather conditions) speed limits and cooperative early information that is shared in (almost) real time among vehicles and infrastructures in critical conditions. The chapter sketches out the main issues related to ontologies and emphasize the relevance of top-level (i.e., domain independent or foundational) ontologies in order to integrate different domain models. We define five domain ontologies for the purpose of the system: Vehicle Security, Road and Traffic Security, Meteorological, Users’ Profiles,and Travel. The last one reports concepts concerning a given travel (departure, destination, vehicle, road) and imports concepts from the other ones. We emphasize the role of ontologies in enabling semantic interoperabilty in such an intensive knowledge-processing contexts.
Designing Pervasive and Multimodal Interactive Systems
Authors: Barricelli Barbara R. , Marcante Andrea , Mussio Piero , Provenza Loredana Parasiliti , Padula Marco
Published: May 2010

This chapter presents a participatory and evolutionary methodology for pervasive and multimodal interactive systems design that is being developed capitalizing experiences from different target applicative domains. The methodology supports collaborative and evolutionary design of an interactive system; it considers usability problems that users face during the interaction; it is based on a network of software environments, conceived in analogy with the workshop of an artisan, each one customizable to and tailorable by users belonging to different cultures. The requirements, design issues, and a proposal of the architecture of the software environment will be discussed highlighting their pervasiveness, multimodality, and interactivity, the ability offered to users to coordinate desktop and mobile devices, and to access a shared knowledge base. The architecture has been defined and revised exploiting experience gained from different case studies that will be illustrated. The novelty of the approach is that the methodology sprang from empirical experience got by handling problems faced on the field. In the chapter, specific aspects of the presented approach are discussed in relation to the state of the art.
Adapted Multimodal End-User Interfaces for XML-Content
Authors: Encelle Benoît , Baptiste-Jessel Nadine , Sèdes Florence
Published: May 2010

Personalization of user interfaces for browsing content is a key concept to ensure content accessibility. This personalization is especially needed for people with disabilities (e.g,. visually impaired) and/or for highly mobile individuals (driving, off-screen environments) and/or for people with limited devices (PDAs, mobile phones, etc.). In this direction, we introduce mechanisms, based on a user requirements study, that result in the generation of personalized user interfaces for browsing particular XML content types. These on-the-fly generated user interfaces can use several modalities for increasing communication possibilities: in this way, interactions between the user and the system can take place in a more natural manner.
The Nature of Culture in Design
Authors: Young Patricia A.
Published: May 2010

There have been many definitions of culture hypothesized by theorists and scholars as a way to understand human beings, other species and entities; human nature; Mother Nature, and artifacts (Giles & Middleton, 1999; Hall, 1996; Kroeber & Kluckhohn, 1966; Williams, 1958). Culture has been characterized as being descriptive, historical, normative, psychological, structural, and genetic (Kroeber & Kluckhohn, 1966). Kroeber (1948) theorized culture as “how it comes to be” versus “what it is” (p. 253). Therefore, culture is socially constructed. Geertz (1973) interpreted culture as a “historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which men communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes toward life” (p. 89). Hofstede (1991) proposed that culture is learned; it is not part of one’s genetic makeup. In the area of cultural studies, culture is concerned with how meanings are interpreted and created in a society (Gray & McGuigan, 1997; Hall, 1997). Williams (1958), a cultural theorist, believes that “culture is ordinary” (p. 74). It is made in the human mind, making possible effort, examination, and explication. This means culture is what is known (tradition) and what comes to be known through investigation and invention (creativity). Baumeister (2005) argued that culture is not innately human. Other species (e.g., monkeys and chimpanzees)show patterns of learned behavior that is passed on from generation to generation. Culture is artificial; it is civilization. (Kroeber, 1948). A simple question-and-answer scenario about culture might proceed as follows: What is culture? Culture is everything human made and nature made. What is the purpose of culture? The purpose of culture is to serve humans. How does culture function? Culture functions as directed by humans. When will culture end? When humankind ends, culture will end. Where is culture? Culture is everywhere. Why do we need culture? We need culture to tell our history.
CBM Inquiry, Development
Authors: Young Patricia A.
Published: May 2010

Inquiry (11-16) monitors development, automates the internal flow of the design process, and functions as internal sensors. This monitoring checks and rechecks that the process is executing properly1. It is interactive and always operational if used by the design team. Inquiry provides a series of questions to be asked and answered during preproduction, production and postproduction. These questions outline the design of the product and allow for a review of the product before, during, and after production; this is a surface assessment. The list of questions is not exhaustive, but they provide a broad selection of questions meant to focus on the needs of the target audience, enable the design process, and screen for bias. These questions are reviewed and reiterated throughout the design process to keep it active.
CBM Team, Assessments, Brainstorming
Authors: Young Patricia A.
Published: May 2010

Team (T1–T3) focuses on the recruitment of a culturally sensitive design team that includes a cultural expert, an educator, and other culturally informed members. These experts become a united team who seek to fulfill the needs of the target audience as a central goal. This is where much of the decision making happens.
CBM Elements I
Authors: Young Patricia A.
Published: May 2010

Elements (E1-E25) facilitate content development. These Elements are intended to be comprehensive in providing the fundamental total of which all culture is composed. Most of those things that formulate a culture are included in the 25 Elements. The tangibles and intangibles define the Elements. Tangibles have material qualities and intangibles nonmaterial qualities (see Table 7.1). The meanings of the terms culture and society can overlap, but they should be viewed separately within the space of design. A society is a group of people who share commonalities that are understood by all and collectively inhabit a particular physical area (Germain & Bloom, 1999; Segall, Dasen, Berry, & Poortinga, 1999). Every society has a culture or ways of being, doing and thinking. This culture shapes societies behavior (Ember & Ember, 1996; Hofstede & Hofstede, 2005). In understanding a culture, there must also be an understanding of its past and present histories and the histories of its people (Kim & Park, 2006). The Elements are divided into three sections: the anthropology of culture, the psychology of culture, and the science of culture. These divisions are consistent with research in the disciplines of cultural anthropology, cultural psychology, and science; however, there are modifications to provide application of these concepts as design constructs. An overview of each section is provided as context for the Elements. Then each design factor is defined, described, and illustrated through relevant cross-cultural examples. A set of guiding questions for the design process are offered that are specific to the culture and the target audience.
CBM Elements III
Authors: Young Patricia A.
Published: May 2010

This chapter continues with CBM Elements and the design factors related to the anthropology of culture. Cultural demographics and Cultural environment are covered in their entirety. Cultural demographics provide the characteristics of a population for a geographic area. Geographic areas are identified by levels such as nation, state, city, county, tracks, blocks, province, and so forth (U.S. Census Bureau [USCB], 2005). This information is usually statistical. Demographic data provide mostly a quantitative picture of a population and aid in predicting economic or market trends. Through the use of demographic data, predictions about populations can be made in reference to increases in the demand for food, clothing, educational achievement, entertainment, housing, insurance, investments, health services, and so forth. Examples of Westernized demographic trends include: baby boom years, single parent families, two income families, and nuclear families. Demographic data are also culture-specific and can not be generalized to other populations. A culture-specific example is data from Japan’s 2000 census that calculated the total population of males at 62,110,764 males to 64,815,079 females. The number of females outnumbers males by 2,704,315 (Statistics Bureau of Japan, 2000). The collection of demographic data is unique to each society or culture. What works for one culture may not work for another. Or the collection of such data may not be operational due to other social, political, or economic factors. The characteristics of a population might include data based on the following: age, assets, birth, death, density, disease, educational achievement, ethnicity, family, growth, housing, incarceration, income, language, marital status, migration, mobility, occupation, race, sex, and size (USCB, 2005). All of these characteristics are described in this chapter. The collection of demographic data could begin with an examination of characteristics in a population such as “age” and multiple characteristics of a population, such as sex, income, household, geographic areas, disease, marriage, and so forth. Therefore, the data collection might look at age and its relation to sex, or age and income, or age and household. The guiding questions, in this section, focus on human beings; however they can be adapted to other species and entities.
CBM Elements V
Authors: Young Patricia A.
Published: May 2010

This chapter continues with CBM Elements and the design factors related to the anthropology of culture. Cultural knowledge, Cultural language, Cultural physiology, Cultural relations and Cultural resources are covered. Cultural knowledge examines what is known and what one comes to know (Thomas, 2001). It is the acquisition, learning, translation, transfer, teaching, recording, documentation, preservation, creation, accessibility, use, and application of knowledge “Most of what anyone knows is cultural knowledge (D’Andrade, 1995, p. xiv).” Over the course of a human’s life, they learn a wealth of knowledge. Humans store and pass on this knowledge from generation to generation. This cultural knowledge is contained in words, narratives, artifacts, and human experiences (Dougherty, 1985).