bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Social Capital
Authors: Bocigas Pablo Blasco
Published: May 2010

The competitive dynamics of a firm take place through the interaction with different agents inside as well as outside of its organizational limits. Firms have elements of social character that are visible through the interactions between individuals, groups and organizations at different levels. The social capital would allow a firm to connect diverse agents to obtain and exchange resources and transfer knowledge. For this reason, the purpose of this chapter is to focus on finding an adequate defintion for social capital and in the identification of the forms that the research proposed to make this topic operative: networks and relations.
Analysis and Description of Education Employing Technological Platforms
Authors: Childs Mark
Published: May 2010

This chapter aims to provide a background to two aspects that figure prominently in later chapters of this book, by introducing many of the concepts relevant to them, and establishing a consistent terminology with which to describe them. The first of these aspects is that of the technological platforms employed. Technological platforms are used in a range of different activities within interprofessional learning. These activities include accessing learning objects, conducting situative learning in order to establish jointly developed knowledge, providing an opportunity to develop an online professional identity and creating links within a community. In this discussion, one particular platform is particularly referred to throughout. That is the immersive virtual worlds (IVW), also referred to as multi-user virtual environments (MUVE). This is to provide more information for those unfamiliar with immersive virtual worlds and because these particular environments form the basis of many of the case studies described in the remainder of the book. Experience of virtual worlds also indicates that they may have special relevance to interprofessional education, particularly around notions of ‘presence’, ‘embodiment’ and ‘identity’, and these are concepts that have been given a fuller explanation for this reason. Secondly, a range of different theoretical frameworks for understanding the education activities and interactions that take place using these technological platforms are introduced and discussed.
Case Studies of Creating Reusable Inter Professional E-Learning Objects
Authors: Wharrad Heather , Windle Richard
Published: May 2010

Reusable learning objects can play an important part in enhancing interprofessional learning. They provide flexible support to students of health care and provide an opportunity during the creation process, for interprofessional educators to share knowledge and understand more about each other’s roles. When creating learning objects, a development and evaluation framework including technical expertise and quality control at critical stages is important, however it is the interprofessional community brought together at workshops at the start of the development cycle and the underlying pedagogical design principles that ensure the materials are fit for purpose and guarantee reuse across professional groups.
Interdisciplinary Studies in Built Environment Education
Authors: Wood Gerard , Wu Song
Published: May 2010

The School of the Built Environment at the University of Salford redesigned its undergraduate programmes to include multidisciplinary project work at all 3 levels. This chapter provides a case study of the development and implementation of the interdisciplinary module at final level catering for students from five different disciplines. Overall, students responded positively to the module and academic tutors and visiting practitioners were also positive about student performance, but thought insufficient time had been allocated for module delivery and management, which was demanding than the traditional lecture/tutorial pattern. The use of a dedicated website for communications was seen as a useful co-ordinating and cohesive device although the use of ICT could be significantly expanded. The greatest challenges concern operational difficulties associated with managing large numbers of students in teams, and composing clear requirements with associated assessment criteria.
Accessible Mobile Learning
Authors: Dearnley Christine , Walker Stuart , Fairhall John
Published: May 2010

This chapter explores the use of mobile devices in supporting practice based learning for health and social care students and practitioners, against a background of current UK disability legislation. The authors present the ‘Mobile Enabled Disabled Students’ case study in depth, accounting for its methodology and discussing the outcomes and implications. They will demonstrate how the features of mobile devices can support the organisational, memory and writing needs of dyslexic students specifically and how they can add value generally to learning and assessment processes. They make recommendations for implementing mobile assessment for practice learning based on a theory of mobile learning designed for accessibility.
Integrating K-12 Hybrid Online Learning Activities in Teacher Education Programs
Authors: Niemitz Matthew , Slough Scott , St. John Kristen , Leckie R. Mark , Peart Leslie , Klaus Ann
Published: May 2010

The School of Rock (SOR) expedition was a unique at-sea teacher education workshop that sought to introduce inservice teachers to scientific ocean drilling and collaborate in developing ways to extend this science content to K-12 classrooms. During the workshop teachers used an expedition website to communicate their learning and the “results” of the expedition to an onshore audience of students. While adventure learning/hybrid online learning is common in K-12 classrooms, the SOR expedition was unique in that teachers were the explorers and the workshop sought to use technology to enhance both the learning of students onshore and the learning of the participants of the workshop (Niemitz et al., 2008). Here, the authors examine how the SOR expedition website enhanced the teacher education goals of the workshop and compare and contrast their reflections with the literature on integrating technology into teacher education programs. The SOR experience identifies two new elements to consider as teacher educators design ways to integrate technology into education programs: 1) situations where pre- or in-service teachers can use technology to communicate narratives of inquiry can lead to engaging and formative learning experiences for both teachers and students; and 2) using technology to communicate new content knowledge to students in real or near real-time can reinforce a mindset for applying this knowledge to student learning needs as the teacher learning is in progress. The authors identify two examples of how to scale this model for integrating technology into teacher education and provide recommendations on appropriate technologies for doing so.
Peer to Peer
Authors: Johnson Karen J.
Published: May 2010

Ten elementary education student teachers communicated with each other on an electronic discussion board for thirteen weeks. Despite being overwhelmed at times with the demands of student teaching, participants posted 283 messages offering each other ideas and support. Students were grouped into two different discussion boards based on the grade level they were assigned to student teach, resulting in very specific help and feedback from peers who were experiencing the same or similar teaching topics or situations. Results indicate that 70% of the participants used an idea that had been posted on the discussion board by a peer and 100% of the participants stated that the discussion board was a means of support during student teaching. Although an electronic discussion board is not a new technology, it is underutilized, especially as a means to connect geographically distant student teachers so they can offer each other support and ideas for teaching.
From Online Role-Play to Written Argumentation
Authors: Vapalahti Kati , Marttunen Miika , Laurinen Leena
Published: May 2010

This chapter reports on a teaching experiment conducted during a blended learning course in social work in a Finnish university of applied sciences (polytechnic). The aim was to investigate how students’ multidimensional understanding of social problems could be fostered. As argumentative methods, the study used writing tasks, online role-play, and drama work. The data consisted of essays written by 65 students (experimental group 29; controls 36) in each of three phases, plus online discussions. The essays were based on 1) the students’ personal experiences, 2) general facts, and 3) a fictional case taken from the online role-play. Varying the focus of the writing task affected students’ standpoints on the effects of adolescents’ intoxicant use on their well-being. Moreover, the use of argumentative methods applied in the blended learning environment both broadened and deepened the students’ argumentation, helping them to understand the diverse nature of an ill-structured problem.
Game-Based Learning
Authors: Gros Begoña
Published: May 2010

Children and young people today are introduced to the virtual world via video games, and the way that they interact with technology is changing ways of learning and the production of knowledge. The design of a learning environment based on the educational properties of games seems to be an ideal way of increasing learning. Digital games offer a very good example of the principles of successful learning environments; they are users-centered, and they promote challenge, co-operation, engagement and the development of problem-solving strategies. Games can help students learn to collaborate, solve problems, collect and analyse data, test hypotheses, and engage in debate. But there are differences between using digital games for play and using them in a formal context. For this reason, methodologies must be developed for their use in the classroom. In this chapter, the author proposes examples of methods that can be applied to the use of video games in formal education.
Online Learning Engages Students of the Digital Age
Authors: Ashbaugh Earman Jill A.
Published: May 2010

Technology capabilities are rapidly growing in the world of education. As distance education applications are being designed to be more user-friendly, online learning opportunities are becoming more of a reality in secondary schools and institutions of higher education, with students enrolling in online and blended courses. Many of the early and current distance learners are “digital immigrants,” that is, they are not well-versed in technology systems and need to adjust to a whole new way of learning to succeed in the online environment. However, future students enrolling in online courses will be “digital natives,” students who have grown up surrounded by the ever-evolving technology of the digital age. Digital natives acquire and process information in ways that are far different than previous generations, requiring educators to re-think the design and delivery of relevant curriculum. This chapter will discuss the phenomenon of digital natives and immigrants, current practices and perceptions, and a successful model of online learning in an upper elementary school classroom.
Gender Differences in Online Communication of Teacher Preparation Students
Authors: Gibbs William J. , Bernas Ronan S.
Published: May 2010

Research has shown that gender disparities exist in online communication. Understanding the factors that enable students to effectively communicate online and ultimately manage their own discussions has important learning and pedagogical implications. This study examined the communication and interactional processes of peer-directed online discussions. Gender disparities were found in communication styles and in the use of socio-emotional content. Men were expository whereas messages posted by women were of an epistolary nature. Women used socio-emotional content more than men. However, interactions, such as the extent to which men and women persisted in message threads as well as responded to one another, were comparable overall. Although not significant, women posted more messages of longer length but men received more replies to their messages. The findings have important pedagogical implications for educators who wish to engage students in peer-directed text-based asynchronous discussions.
A Multimedia Learning Tool that Allows High School Teachers and their Students to Engage in Scientific Research
Authors: McLaughlin Jacqueline S.
Published: May 2010

This chapter presents a new and different type of multimedia learning tool, the so-called “research module.” This unique, learner-centered, multimedia tool aims to create a learning environment wherein high school teachers and their students engage in higher-order, inquiry-based activities that allow them to “do” actual scientific research in the classroom. This chapter also describes the design and implementation of these computer-based resources, as well as assessment data on student learning, and perceptions of both textbooks and computer-based learning tools. It also reveals high school teachers’ attitudes toward the use of both computer-based resources and textbooks.
Designing and Delivering Technology Integration to Engage Students
Authors: Biesinger Kevin D. , Crippen Kent J.
Published: May 2010

In order for educators to effectively build, select and integrate technology into the delivery of curriculum and pedagogy, an accepted set of critical program design and delivery elements is needed. The authors propose that research based components such as user validation functions, trace methods, and worked examples be among these accepted design elements of technology supported learning environments. As for the pedagogical methods employed to effectively integrate technology into K-12 curricula, an epistemological shift is needed by which more instructors view learning from a student-centered perspective. Systematic changes needed to foster this view include a migration away from the traditional computer lab scenario, on-going professional development as a continuous support system, and the expectation that technology integration is required as an indication of quality instruction as evidenced in teacher evaluations.
Trust in Computers
Authors: Lee Jong-Eun Roselyn , Nass Clifford I.
Published: May 2010

Research based on the Computers-Are-Social-Actors (CASA) paradigm has documented that people’s responses to computers are fundamentally “social”—that is, people apply social rules, norms, and expectations core to interpersonal relationships when they interact with computers. In light of the CASA paradigm, identifying the conditions that foster or undermine trust in the context of interpersonal communication and relationships may help us better understand the trust dynamics in human-computer communication. This chapter discusses experimental studies grounded in the CASA paradigm that demonstrate how (1) perceived people-computer similarity in personality, (2) manifestation of caring behaviors in computers, and (3) consistency in human/non-human representations of computers affect the extent to which people perceive computers as trustworthy.
The Role of Trust in Online Relationship Formation
Authors: Fiore Andrew T. , Cheshire Coye
Published: May 2010

Trust plays a key role in the formation of any romantic relationship, but it is particularly salient to the formation of relationships online. In this chapter, the authors examine how trustworthiness, relational trust, general trust, and confidence in systems shape the experience of online dating. The authors propose that each of these trust-related phenomena becomes salient at different points in the process of finding a potential date, contacting him or her, meeting face-to-face, and beginning an offline relationship. Moreover, the authors suggest that the constraints and affordances of online interaction have the potential both to help and to hinder the assessment of trustworthiness and the development of relational trust.
Impediments to and Affordances of Creating Trust over the Internet
Authors: Golan Oren
Published: May 2010

In spite of obstacles to trust-building over the Internet, as well as continuous warnings on the part of educators, parents and social movements about the dangers of unsupervised web surfing by children and adolescents, an avid culture of youth has emerged over the Internet and created spaces for trust-building. This paper aims to display the key impediments encountered in the formation of trust relations over the Internet among youth, and the ways that these obstacles are engaged. Observations and conversations with Israeli adolescents yielded three intertwined impediments to online trust: (1) Lies and truths. (2) Anonymity/Disclosure (3) Transparency/Opacity. Uncovering the ways that youth create and maintain trust may illuminate our understanding of how youth communicate and fraternize in today’s Information and Communication Technology society. Basing itself on these findings, this study contributes to the understanding of challenges and bridges for instilling social integration through computer-mediated-communication (CMC).
Technology
Authors: Robbins Blaine G. , Grigoryeva Maria S.
Published: May 2010

The country-level determinants of generalized trust that usually command the most research are ethnic homogeneity, institutional performance, civic culture, and economic development. Despite the popularity and insight of this research, there is little quantitative empirical evidence that explores the impact of technology—a necessary and exogenous condition for many of these determinants—on generalized trust. In this chapter, technology measures from the World Bank are combined with a generalized trust measure from the World Values Survey and other country-level predictors from various data sources to test two competing theories of generalized trust across 57 countries. One theory, new institutional economics, argues that technology will yield formal institutions, which structure incentives and reduce uncertainty, that, in turn, increase generalized trust. The other perspective, overjustification and crowding theory, argues that actors constrained by extrinsic motivators, such as technology and institutional incentives, will attribute trust to the incentive rather than to the individual, and generalized trust, as a result, will decrease. Structural equation model results confirm the new institutional economics claim that the positive effects of technology on generalized trust are positively mediated by formal institutions. The authors conclude by outlining various managerial implications and directions for future research.
Social Trust as Seed
Authors: Wong Andrew
Published: May 2010

This chapter examines the role the mobile phone plays in the poor urban youth’s social life. This chapter argues that one can better grasp their social life by looking through the new technology lens. It seeks to examine the collective-mediated learning, sharing, and experimenting with the emergent patterns of trust in the social context. The emergence of three types of social trust genres that correspond respectively to the stage of domestication by the poor urban youth are described: social trust as a seed for peer-to-peer learning, social trust as a seed for group underground sharing, and social trust as a seed for fueling the experimental spirit. It concludes that social trust functions as a seed for increasing positive interdependent towards others play an important role in nurturing trust among the poor urban youth as they domesticate new media technology, such as the mobile phone, into their everyday lives.
Anonymous Workblogging and Organizational Coping Strategies
Authors: Schoneboom Abigail
Published: May 2010

In recent years, the rise of blogging has led to debate about whether employees should be free to talk about their employers on the Internet, and whether they should be able to blog on company time. Several high-profile cases of fired bloggers between 2002 and 2006, drew attention to important labor and civil rights issues that led to debate among human resources and employment law experts in the mainstream media. The negative publicity surrounding the cases of fired bloggers has given rise to an alternative management strategy – a cautious embrace of blogging by employers, who saw the practice as a potential opportunity for marketing and professional development. However, efforts by bloggers to retain their right to blog anonymously signify continuing tensions, revealing the contradictions between workplace surveillance and an “enlightened” management doctrine based on openness and trust, indicating a refusal by some employees to align their blogging endeavors with the interests of their employer. This chapter examines the workblogging phenomenon as an intersection of organizations, technology, and trust, and makes some tentative connections between Guerra et al.’s (2003) concept of “trust-tension” and the critical management literature.
Two Spatial Watermarking Techniques for Digital Images
Authors: Burdescu Dumitru Dan , Stanescu Liana , Mihaescu Marian Cristian
Published: May 2010

The rapid growth of digital multimedia technologies brings tremendous attention to the field of digital authentication. Digital watermarking has become widely recognized as an effective measure for copyright protection of multimedia data. The owner or the distributor of the digital images can insert a unique watermark into copies for different customers or receivers, which will be helpful to identify the source of illegal copies. In this chapter the authors present two original spatial authentication techniques for digital images. These new algorithms yield an invisible watermark that is robust to various kinds of attacks. The main principle is the utilization of a virtual (2D or 3D) graph embedded into the digital images. Then, the colors of some vertices of the virtual graph are slightly modified for obtaining the watermark. The proposed techniques modify pixels or voxels of the object by a spatial watermark insertion scheme. These techniques can be used for all kinds of digital images, color or black and white, and the new algorithms produce an invisible robust watermark. The techniques lower the computational complexity that normally rises with the traditional watermarking algorithms. This approach reduces computation and implementation complexity of the algorithms. These techniques seem to replace advantages of the transform domain techniques with those of the spatial domain techniques.
Data Secrecy
Authors: Rabie Tamer
Published: May 2010

This chapter describes a framework for image hiding that exploits spectral properties of the Fourier magnitude and phase of natural images. The theory is that as long as the Fourier phase of an image is maintained intact, the overall appearance of an image remains specious if the Fourier magnitude of the image is slightly modified. This hypothesis leads to a data hiding technique that promises high fidelity, capacity, security, and robustness to tampering. Experimental results are presented throughout the chapter that demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach.
Blind Watermarking of Three-Dimensional Meshes
Authors: Wang Kai , Lavoué Guillaume , Denis Florence , Baskurt Atilla
Published: May 2010

Digital watermarking of three-dimensional (3-D) meshes has numerous potential applications and has received more and more attention from both academic researchers and industrial practitioners. This chapter focuses on the study of blind mesh watermarking techniques, which do not need the original cover mesh for watermark extraction and thus have a much larger application range than the non-blind techniques. The authors first review the existing methods proposed so far, by classifying them into three groups: fragile schemes, high-capacity schemes and robust schemes. They then present their recent work on quantization-based blind watermarking of semi-regular meshes. Finally, some future working directions are suggested.
Techniques for Multiple Watermarking
Authors: Zaidi Abdellatif
Published: May 2010

The watermarking problem is relatively well understood in the single watermark case, but it lacks theoretical foundation in the multiple watermarks case. The goal of this chapter is to provide important technical insights as well as intuitive and well developed discussions onto how multiple watermarks can be embedded efficiently into the same host signal. The authors adopt communication and information theoretic inclinations, and they argue that this problem has tight relationship to conventional multiuser information theory. Then they show that by virtue of this tight relationship design and optimization of algorithms for multiple watermarking applications can greatly benefit from recent advances and new findings in multiuser information theory.
Errors and Missing Values in the Dataset
Authors: Cerrito Patricia , Cerrito John
Published: May 2010

Many of the datasets provided by the federal government have been well cleaned. However, like many other datasets collected for health outcomes research, these datasets contain errors and missing values. Both errors and missing values should be accommodated unless they represent less than 5% of the total values in the dataset. If the proportion of missing values is greater, then it is necessary to accommodate them in some way; otherwise, the missing values can impact the outcome of the study. Errors are more difficult to work with because it is not possible to know just what the proportion of errors actually is. In this chapter, we examine both errors and missing values and provide some techniques on how to investigate them.
Example of Wound Care Using Medpar Data
Authors: Cerrito Patricia , Cerrito John
Published: May 2010

Medpar Data is used for billing Medicare; it typically is “packed” into different sheets of data. The first step required to use the data is to “unpack” it into its component sheets and then to merge the necessary data. Once that is finished, we can examine patients in sequence to investigate the total care of wounds, especially patients who have diabetic foot ulcers. This particular dataset was received from a clinic that specialized in the treatment of wounds. It contains detailed diagnosis information for inpatient and outpatient care. One of the problems is that there are two different coding sets that are used in the Medpar data. Inpatient data are coded using the ICD9 codes; outpatient data are coded using HCPCS codes. The advantage of such a dataset is that the wound care is highly concentrated within it, so that we can focus and drill down into wound care. The disadvantage is that the different coding systems have to be matched for analysis purposes. In this section, we want to look at the type of outpatient care prior to inpatient treatment, and to see if there is a progression of treatment that leads to better patient outcomes.
Discussion
Authors: Cerrito Patricia , Cerrito John
Published: May 2010

Now that the data are more readily available for outcomes research and the techniques to analyze that data are available, we need to use the tools to investigate the total complexity of patient care. We should no longer rely upon basic tools while ignoring sequential treatments for patients with chronic diseases or the issue of patient compliance, and we can start investigating treatments from birth to death. It is no longer possible, with these large datasets, to rely on t-tests, chi-square statistics and simple linear regression. Without the luxury of clinical trials and randomizing patients into treatment versus control, there will always be confounding factors that should be considered in the data. In addition, large datasets almost guarantee that the p-value in a standard regression is statistically significant, so other methods of model adequacy must be used. If we do not start using outcomes data, we are missing crucial knowledge that can be used to improve patient outcomes while simultaneously reducing the cost of care. If we continue to use inferential statistical methods that were not designed to work with large datasets, we will not extract the information that is readily available in the outcomes datasets.
International Collaboration in Distance Education in Sub-Saharan Africa
Authors: Adekanmbi Gbolagade , Boitshwarelo Bopelo
Published: May 2010

This chapter examines international collaboration in distance education in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), focusing on efforts aimed at utilizing technology. It identifies a number of significant collaborative endeavors. The collaborative efforts observed have a similar goal of pooling together ICT resources and expertise towards improving educational outcomes. The prevalence of teacher education and training across the initiatives, in the context of the Millennium Development Goals, is noted. Institutions outside Africa are actively involved in the funding and provision of expertise. Also, the AVU consortium model seems to be a viable approach to collaboration, with notable results seen. With the challenges facing technology-focused collaboration, such as a lack of enabling policies and the digital divide, the chapter suggests that African countries and institutions should pursue a culture of change and be more flexible. More formal training in distance education, utilizing Africans in the Diaspora and promoting dialogue across international spectrums are also recommended.
Development of E-Learning in Niger
Authors: Yaye Aissetou Drame
Published: May 2010

The University Abdou Moumouni (UAM) of Niamey in Niger mainly focused on traditional face to face learning, and even the existence of the African Virtual University since the years 1999 did not change the situation. It is only after the official opening at the University of the Francophone Digital Campus in December 2003 that lecturers and students started overseeing and taking advantages of all the benefits of e-Learning and distance learning. The present paper builds on the author’s personal initiatory experience in e-Learning to highlight some specific challenges that traditional universities such as the UAM face in their efforts to introduce e-Learning and distance learning as a new mode of course delivery. The study shows that even though challenges are big, political and institutional support can freshen the perspectives and change opportunities into realities.
SMASH
Authors: Meletiou-Mavrotheris Maria , Mavrotheris Efstathios
Published: May 2010

At a time when mathematics and science provide essential knowledge tools and the foundations for lifelong learning skills, cross-national studies of student achievement in Europe indicate lack of mathematical and scientific competence for a considerable proportion of the student population. Acknowledging the central role of parents in children’s learning, the EU-funded project SMASH aims to raise the educational standards of European youth in mathematics and science by cultivating underlying home cultures as springboards for learning. The project consortium has developed an innovative intercultural parent-trainer training course and related resources for professionals involved in parent education initiatives. The course, which is delivered through combined use of e-learning and physical meetings, provides these professionals with current knowledge, techniques, and implementation tools for the provision of high-quality, culturally differentiated training in mathematics and science education to parents of elementary and middle school children (ages 6-15) in their communities. Online multilingual resources support and promote the program’s activities and objectives by offering open access to the parent-trainer training course content and tools.
Challenges in Aligning Pedagogical Practices and Pupils' Competencies with the Information Society's Demands
Authors: Arnseth Hans Christian , Hatlevik Ove E.
Published: May 2010

The authors discuss why it seems to be difficult to change educational practices in ways that put them in alignment with the competencies needed in a networked society and global economy. During the past decade most developed countries have invested heavily in improving education with ICT. However, these efforts’ effects have not met people’s high expectations. The authors provide insights into the complexities involved in changing institutional practices and argue that using new technologies to make learning and teaching active, innovative and productive must be cultivated over time. Furthermore, change requires a systemic perspective because multiple factors interact to determine what actually happens in classrooms. Teachers’ competencies are particularly crucial. Furthermore, ambitious plans setting out new goals for students’ learning need to be matched with assessment practices that assess the skills we want to develop in students.
Architecture of Vehicular Ad Hoc Network
Authors: Bhattacharyya Debika , Bhattacharyya Mr. Avijit
Published: May 2010

Over the last few years Vehicular Ad hoc Networks (VANETs) have gained much attention within the automobile industry and the research applications. Vehicular Ad hoc networks (VANETs) are a subgroup of mobile adhoc networks (MANETs) with the distinguishing property that the nodes are vehicles like cars, trucks, buses and motorcycles. Nodes are expected to communicate by means of North American direct short-range communication (DSRC) standard [1] that employs the IEEE 802.11p standard for wireless communication and describes a MAC and PHY specifications for wireless connectivity. This chapter deals with the basic architecture of VANET and wired and wireless technology for intra-vehicular communication. Two prominent networking technologies such as Local Interconnect Network (LIN) and the Controller Area Network (CAN) for wired intra-vehicular communication have also been discussed. The objective of this chapter is to explain inter-vehicular communication and the components of a smart vehicle.
Medium Access Protocols for Cooperative Collision Avoidance in Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks
Authors: Hassan Md. Imrul , Vu Hai L. , Sakurai Taka
Published: May 2010

It is envisaged that supporting vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communications with a Vehicular Ad-Hoc Network (VANET) can improve road safety and increase transportation efficiency. Among the candidate applications of VANETs, cooperative collision avoidance (CCA) has attracted considerable interest as it can significantly improve road safety. Due to the ad hoc nature of these highly dynamic networks, no central coordination or handshaking protocol can be assumed and safety applications must broadcast information of interest to many surrounding cars by sharing a single channel in a distributed manner. This gives rise to one of the key challenges in vehicle-to-vehicle communication systems, namely, the development of an efficient and reliable medium access control (MAC) protocol for CCA. In this chapter, we provide an overview of proposed MAC protocols for VANETs and describe current standardization activities. We then focus on the performance of the IEEE 802.11 carrier sense multiple access (CSMA) based MAC protocol that is being standardized by the IEEE standards body for VANET applications. In particular, we review prominent existing analytical models and study their advantages, disadvantages and their suitability for performance evaluation of the MAC protocol for VANETs. After a discussion of the shortcomings of these models, we develop a new analytical model in the second half of the chapter. Explicit expressions are derived for the mean and standard deviation of the packet delay, as well as for the packet delivery ratio (PDR) at the MAC layer in an unsaturated network formed by moving vehicles on a highway. We validate the analytical results using extensive simulations and show that good accuracy can be achieved with the proposed model for a range of topologies and traffic load conditions. More importantly, using the model, we show that hidden terminals can have a severe, detrimental impact on the PDR, which may compromise the reliability required for safety applications.
Analyzing IEEE 802.11g and IEEE 802.16e Technologies for Single-Hop Inter-Vehicle Communication
Authors: Aquino-Santos Raúl , Rangel-Licea Víctor , Méndez-Pérez Aldo L. , Garcia-Ruiz Miguel A. , Edwards-Block Arthur , Flores-Flores Eduardo
Published: May 2010

This chapter analyzes two prominent technologies, IEEE 802.11g (WiFi) and IEEE 802.16e (WiMAX), for single-hop inter-vehicular communication (SIVC). We begin our analysis by comparing the physical and MAC layers of both standards. Following this, we simulate two scenarios, one with IEEE 802.11g and the other with IEEE 802.16e, in a single-hop inter-vehicular communication network. In both scenarios, the Location-Based Routing Algorithm with Cluster-Based Flooding (LORA-CBF) was employed to create a hierarchical vehicular organization that acts as a cluster-head with its corresponding member nodes. The simulation scenarios consist of five different node sizes of 20, 40, 60, 80 and 100 vehicles, respectively. We propose a novel simulation model that is suitable for mesh topologies in WiMAX networks and provide preliminary results in terms of delay, load and throughput for single-hop inter-vehicle communication.
Survey of Routing Protocols in Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks
Authors: Lee Kevin C. , Lee Uichin , Gerla Mario
Published: May 2010

The chapter provides a survey of routing protocols in vehicular ad hoc networks. The routing protocols fall into two major categories of topology-based and position-based routing. The chapter discusses the advantages and disadvantages of these routing protocols, explores the motivation behind their design and trace the evolution of these routing protocols. Finally, it concludes the chapter by pointing out some open issues and possible direction of future research related to VANET routing.
Reliable Routing Protocols in VANETs
Authors: Yan Gongjun , Rawat Danda B. , El-Tawab Samy
Published: May 2010

One of the notoriously difficult problems in vehicular ad-hoc networks is to ensure that established paths do not break before the end of data transmission. This is a difficult problem because the network topology is changing constantly and the routing links are inherently unstable. This chapter reviews several routing protocols which are designed for vehicular network environment. Currently, there are five major types of routing protocols based on the metrics used for routing: 1) flooding based routing, 2) mobility based routing, 3) infrastructure based routing, 4) geographic position based routing, and 5) probability model based routing. We give a survey of each type of routing method. Since probability theory is an ideal tool to describe the dynamics of vehicles, we present one probability model based routing method as a detailed example.
Clustering, Connectivity, and Monitoring Challenges in Vehicular Ad hoc Networks
Authors: Daeinabi Ameneh , Rahbar Akbar Ghaffarpour
Published: May 2010

Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs) are appropriate networks that can be applied for intelligent transportation systems. Three important challenges in VANETs are studied in this chapter. The first challenge is to defend against attackers. Because of the lack of a coordination unit in a VANET, vehicles should cooperate together and monitor each other in order to enhance security performance of the VANET. As the second challenge in VANETs, scalability is a critical issue for a network designer. Clustering is one solution for the scalability problem and is vital for efficient resource consumption and load balancing in large scale VANETs. On the other hand, due to the high-rate topology changes and high variability in vehicles density, transmission range of a vehicle is an important issue for forwarding and receiving messages. In this chapter, we study the clustering algorithms, the solutions appropriate to increase connectivity, and the algorithms that can detect attackers in a VANET.
Political Power, Governance, and E-Planning
Authors: Al-Kodmany Kheir
Published: May 2010

Spatial information is a crucial cornerstone of e-planning. This paper explains the process of constructing a mega geospatial database for the Hajj, the annual Muslim Pilgrimage to Makkah, Saudi Arabia. It discusses the complex process and influence of top-down political power on the comprehensive planning process for the Hajj. It specifically examines how the process led by a politically powerful agency impacted the creation and adoption of a mega geospatial database. The paper provides transferable and useful lessons on GIS misconceptions and solutions, as well as insight on how and when political power may help in advancing the planning process.
ICTs and Participation in Developing Cities
Authors: Repetti Alexandre , Bolay Jean-Claude
Published: May 2010

Developing cities are experiencing substantial gaps in urban planning. They are due to approaches and instruments that do not correspond to the realities of the developing city including the prevalence of informal sector and slums, urban governance problem, and few resources. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) now offer enormous possibilities to use information flows, communication, and land-use models better. ICTs offer solutions that take greater account of informal activities, enable discussions with civil society and Internet forums to take place, etc. ICTs can enhance the planning of developing cities, if conditions are right. The chapter provides a review of the situation in developing cities. It analyses the challenges and potential of using ICTs to improve urban planning. Lastly, it puts forward key conditions for the successful and relevant implementation of ICTs in order to create the best conditions for real technological added value.
Integrating ICT into Sustainable Local Policies
Authors: Caperna Antonio
Published: May 2010

This chapter analyses the Information and Communication Technologies (hereafter referred to as ICT) phenomenon, the opportunities it offers, the potential problems, and the relationship with local policies. It moves on the actions needed to develop, within the Agenda 21 process, a framework able to define some fundamental features for a new spatial theory in the information age, which will eventually consider Information and Communication Technology not just a simple tool, but a crucial aspect of a sustainable policy, capable, if well addressed, to mitigate various current or emerging territorial challenges such as literacy and education, public participation in the planning process, social and geographical divide, institutional transparency, etc.. This chapter will illustrate a framework able to assist politicians and planners in planning a sustainable development through ICT.
E-Planning Applications in Turkish Local Governments
Authors: Velibeyoglu Koray
Published: May 2010

This chapter examines the pivotal relationship between e-planning applications and their organizational context. It employs various evaluation frameworks by searching explicit and implicit structures behind the implementation process. The study is largely based on the statement that ‘the organizational and user dimension of implementation factors more than technical ones, constitute the main obstacles to the improvement of e-planning tools in urban planning agencies’. The empirical part of the study scrutinizes the personal and situational factors of users in the process of implementation, benefits and constraints of an e-planning implementation and planning practitioners’ perception of new technologies on urban planning practice and debate. Using a case study research in Turkish local governments, the findings of this study reveal that the organizational and human aspects of high order information systems are still the biggest obstacle in the implementation process.
An Evaluation Framework for E-Government Projects
Authors: Fitsilis Panos , Anthopoulos Leonidas , Gerogiannis Vassilis C.
Published: May 2010

E-government progress is being evaluated by multiple surveys, carried out by international and supranational organizations national observatories and individual parties. All surveys evaluate e-government progress using different methods, indices and perspectives. E-government progress evaluation is complex, since e-government projects vary from infrastructural, to software and to political ones. In this chapter, an evaluation framework for e-government software projects’ progress and results is introduced. The framework consists of indices extracted from e-government related literature and from the project management field of knowledge. Major benchmarking approaches -from the Information Society Directorate General, United Nations, World Bank etc. - were analyzed for the purposes of this framework. The approach results in the development of an “e-government balanced scorecard”, able to measure facets such as product and process issues, as well as project management processes. Each facet of the scorecard has a set of objectives and utilizes a set of measurements to evaluate e-government projects from various perspectives, interrelated to strategic planning, such as product, process and project management as well as service quality management.
Transparency and E-government in developing countries
Authors: Pérez Maria del Carmen Caba , Bolívar Manuel Pedro Rodríguez , Hernández Antonio Manuel López
Published: May 2010

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have become an important tool to be used in order to meet NPM objectives in public administrations, by enhancing information flows and active participation by citizens, constituting a valuable tool for building trust and enhancing government-citizen relations, by identifying, assessing and, thus, satisfying public needs. This chapter focuses on the Internet, one of the tools that is most widely used by the public, and on on-line access to government financial information (Borins, 2002). Concretely, this chapter examines and discusses the approach taken by local governments in developing countries to using the Web as a means of making government disclosures, thus combating corruption and enhancing accountability by means of information transparency. To achieve this aim, a series of aspects to provide an overview of the degree of on-line information and the accessibility of this information in Latin-American capital cities are analyzed. This way, this chapter discusses the e-government process and its implications on democracy, accountability and information transparency and describes the state of the art of e-government initiatives and legislation in the sample governments. The results obtained and the main conclusions of the research indicate that Latin-American capital cities are still not fully aware of the potential importance of the Internet in enabling the achievement of e-democracy initiatives. Indeed, the Internet is still not an important means by which sample governments disclose their local government information to the public.
Human Factors in Implementing E-Government in Developing Countries
Authors: Hamner Marvine , Taha Doaa , Brahimi Salah
Published: May 2010

Even today only modest gains have been made since the implementation of E-Government. A veritable plethora of human factors affect the success, or failure, of technology initiatives like E-Government. These human factors include everything from simple resistance to change and peer pressure to more complex factors brought about by the value pluralism that exists in today’s increasingly global society and its impact on technology acceptance. This chapter seeks to initiate a dialogue in which the broad range of issues and challenges for implementing E-Government can be discussed. It includes data and anecdotal information acquired from citizens, government managers, and experts in the field. This chapter also includes a discussion about reducing the risk associated with ICT initiatives such as E-Government by applying principles of systems engineering, usability engineering and human-computer interaction. Further, this article describes how risk reduction can be achieved by taking a phased approach to E-Government implementation.