bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
A Multi-Agent Simulation of Collaborative Air Traffic Flow Management
Authors: Wolfe Shawn R. , Jarvis Peter A. , Enomoto Francis Y. , Sierhuis Maarten , van Putten Bart-Jan
Published: May 2011

Today’s air traffic management system is not expected to scale to the projected increase in traffic over the next two decades. Enhancing collaboration between the controllers and the users of the airspace could lessen the impact of the resulting air traffic flow problems. The authors summarize a new concept that has been proposed for collaborative air traffic flow management, the problems it is meant to address, and our approach to evaluating the concept. The authors present their initial simulation design and experimental results, using several simple route selection strategies and traffic flow management approaches. Though their model is still in an early stage of development, these results have revealed interesting properties of the proposed concept that will guide their continued development, refinement of the model, and possibly influence other studies of traffic management elsewhere. Finally, they conclude with the challenges of validating the proposed concept through simulation and future work.
Better Knowledge for Better Health Services
Authors: De Luca Stefano , Memo Enrico
Published: May 2011

The expenses in Health Care are an important portion of the overall expenses of every country, so it is very important to determine if the given cares are the right ones. This work is about a methodology, Health Discoverer, and a consequent software, aimed to disease management and to the measure of appropriateness of cares, and in particular is about the data mining techniques used to verify Clinical Practice Guidelines (CPGs) compliance and the discovery of new, better guidelines. The work is based on Quality Records, episode parsing using Ontologies and Hidden Markov Models.
Data Warehouse Benchmarking with DWEB
Authors: Darmont Jérôme
Published: May 2011

Performance evaluation is a key issue for designers and users of Database Management Systems (DBMSs). Performance is generally assessed with software benchmarks that help, for example test architectural choices, compare different technologies, or tune a system. In the particular context of data warehousing and On-Line Analytical Processing (OLAP), although the Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC) aims at issuing standard decision-support benchmarks, few benchmarks do actually exist. We present in this chapter the Data Warehouse Engineering Benchmark (DWEB), which allows generating various ad-hoc synthetic data warehouses and workloads. DWEB is fully parameterized to fulfill various data warehouse design needs. However, two levels of parameterization keep it relatively easy to tune. We also expand on our previous work on DWEB by presenting its new Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL) feature, as well as its new execution protocol. A Java implementation of DWEB is freely available online, which can be interfaced with most existing relational DMBSs. To the best of our knowledge, DWEB is the only easily available, up-to-date benchmark for data warehouses.
Interaction of Agent in E-Business
Authors: Romero Jorge A.
Published: May 2011

Despite the popularity of agents for the information technology infrastructure, questions remain because it is not clear what do e-business agents do for businesses and what could they do for consumers. Who benefits most from agents? Are they practical? Can we trust them? Are they as efficient as human agents? Ar they already implemented in online businesses? In this chapter, we will discuss the role that agents play in e-business applications.
Hybrid Emotionally Aware Mediated Multiagency
Authors: Vincenti Giovanni , Braman James
Published: May 2011

Emotions influence our everyday lives, guiding and misguiding us. They lead us to happiness and love, but also to irrational acts. Artificial intelligence aims at constructing agents that can emulate thinking processes, but artificial life still lacks emotions and all the consequences that come from them. This work introduces an emotionally aware framework geared towards multi-agent societies. Basing our model on the shoulders of solid foundations created by pioneers who first explored the coupling of emotions and agency, we extend their ideas to include inter-agent interaction and virtual genetics as key components of an agent’s emotive state. We also introduce possible future applications of this framework in consumer products as well as research endeavors.
Mapping Hybrid Agencies Through Multiagent Systems
Authors: Collins Samuel G. , Trajkovski Goran
Published: May 2011

In this chapter, we give an overview of the results of a Human-Robot Interaction experiment, in a near zerocontext environment. We stimulate the formation of a network joining together human agents and non-human agents, in order to examine emergent conditions and social actions. Human subjects, in teams of three to four, are presented with a task–to coax a robot (by any means) from one side of a table to the other–not knowing with what sensory and motor abilities the robotic structure is equipped. On the one hand, the “goal” of the exercise is to “move” the robot through any linguistic or paralinguistic means. But, from the perspective of the investigators, the goal is both broader and more nebulous–to stimulate any emergent interactions whatsoever between agents, human or non-human. Here we discuss emergent social phenomena in this assemblage of human and machine, in particular, turn-taking and discourse, suggesting (counter-intuitively) that the “transparency” of non-human agents may not be the most effective way to generate multi-agent sociality.
The Role of Organizational, Environmental and Human Factors in E-Learning Diffusion
Authors: Gwebu Kholekile L. , Wang Jing
Published: May 2011

Improvements in technology have led to innovations in training such as Electronic Learning (E-learning). E-learning aims to help organizations in their training initiatives by simplifying the training process and cutting cost. It also attempts to help employees in their learning processes by making learning readily accessible. Unfortunately, the diffusion of this innovation has not been as successful as was initially predicted. In this paper we explore the drivers behind the diffusion of e-learning. Apart from the factors investigated by previous research, we believe that one more dimension, -human factors- should be taken into account when evaluating the diffusion of a training innovation, since learners are, to a large extent, the central issue of training. In the case of e-learning we believe that motivation plays a key role in the diffusion of e-learning.
Distance Education
Authors: Martz Jr. Wm. Benjamin , Shepherd Morgan
Published: May 2011

Almost 3.5 million students were taking at least 1 online course during the fall 2006 term. The 9.7 % growth rate for online enrollments far exceeds the 1.5 % growth of the overall higher education student population. (Allen and Seaman, 2007) By 2006, the distance education industry was well beyond $33.6 billion (Merit Education, 2003). As with most markets, 1 of the keys to taking advantage of this growing market is customer satisfaction. Therefore the greater the student satisfaction in a distance program, the more likely that program will be successful. This paper identifies 5 key components of satisfaction for distance education programs through a student satisfaction questionnaire and factor analysis. A questionnaire was developed using these variables and administered to 341 distance students. The results revealed 5 constructs for student satisfaction in a distance education program (Martz and Reddy, 2005; Martz and Shepherd, 2007). Using these factors as guidance, this paper extends those findings to provide some operational and administrative implications.
Object-Relational Modeling
Authors: Zendulka Jaroslav
Published: May 2011

Modeling techniques play an important role in the development of database applications. Well-known entity-relationship modeling and its extensions have become a widely-accepted approach for relational database conceptual design. An object-oriented approach has brought a new view of conceptual modeling. A class as a fundamental concept of the object-oriented approach encapsulates both data and behavior, whereas traditional relational databases are able to store only data. In the early 1990s, the difference between the relational and object-oriented (OO) technologies, which were, and are still used together to build complex software systems, was labeled the object-relational impedance mismatch (Ambler, 2003). The object-oriented approach and the need of new application areas to store complex data have greatly influenced database technology since that time. Besides appearance of object-oriented database systems, which fully implement objectoriented paradigm in a database environment (Catell et al., 2003), traditional relational database management systems become object-relational (Stonebraker & Brown, 1999). The most recent versions of the SQL standard, SQL: 1999 (Melton & Simon (2001) and SQL: 2003 (Eisenberg et al., 2004), introduced object-relational features to the standard and leading database producers have already released packages which incorporate them.
Concept-Oriented Model
Authors: Savinov Alexandr
Published: May 2011

The concept-oriented model (CoM) is a new approach to data modeling (Savinov, 2004) that is being developed along with concept-oriented programming (CoP) (Savinov, 2005a). Its major goal consists of providing simple and effective means for representing and manipulating multidimensional and hierarchical data while retaining the possibility to model how the data are represented physically. Thus, this model has two sides or flavors: logical and physical. From the point of view of logical structure, CoM belongs to a class of multidimensional models (Agrawal, Gupta, & Sarawagi, 1997; Gyssens & Lakshmanan, 1997; Li & Wang, 1996) and OLAP technologies (Berson & Smith, 1997). The main difference from the existing approaches is that CoM is based on the theory of ordered sets. Particularly, one source of inspiration when developing CoM was formal concept analysis (FCA) and lattice theory (Ganter & Wille, 1999).
The Linkcell Construct and Location-Aware Query Processing for Location-Referent Transactions in Mobile Business
Authors: Wyse James E.
Published: May 2011

The technologies that enable the transactions and interactions of mobile business are now as ubiquitous as any business-applicable technology that has emerged in recent decades. There is also an exploding base of literature with mobile business as its subject. The variety and volume of literature present a challenge to defining mobile business (m-business) in a way that differentiates it from other forms of technology-enabled business activity. For purposes here, m-business is held to be an extension of electronic business wherein transactions occur through communication channels that permit a high degree of mobility by at least one of the transactional parties. Within m- business, the distinct sub-area of locationbased mobile business (l- business) has recently emerged and is rapidly expanding (Frost & Sullivan, 2006). In l-business, the technologies that support m-business transactions are extended to incorporate location-aware capabilities. A system is ‘location aware’ when it senses a transactional party’s geographical position and then uses that positional information to perform one or more of the CRUD (create, retrieve, update, delete) functions of data management in support of a mobile user’s transactional activities (Butz, Baus, and Kruger, 2000). In their discussion of “location awareness”, Yuan and Zhang (2003) suggest that it “is a new dimension for value creation” applicable to an extensive variety of areas in which mobility is a salient characteristic: travel and tourism, commercial transportation, insurance risk/recovery management, emergency response, and many others.
Using Semantic Web Tools for Ontologies Construction
Authors: Piero Gian
Published: May 2011

The current state of Web technology – the “first generation” or “syntactic” Web – gives rise to well-known, serious problems when trying to accomplish, in a non-trivial way, essential tasks like indexing, searching, extracting, maintaining, and generating information. These tasks would, in fact, require some sort of ‘deep understanding’ of the information dealt with: in a “syntactic” Web context, on the contrary, computers are only used as tools for posting and rendering information by brute force. Faced with this situation, Tim Berners- Lee first proposed a sort of “Semantic Web” where the access to information is based mainly on the processing of the semantic properties of this information: “… the Semantic Web is an extension of the current Web in which information is given well-defined meaning (emphasis added), better enabling computers and people to work in co-operation” (Berners-Lee et al., 2001: 35). The Semantic Web’s challenge consists of being able to access and retrieve information on the Web by “understanding” its proper semantic content (its meaning), and not simply by matching some keywords.
Ontology-Based Semantic Models for Databases
Authors: Kovács László , Barabás Péter , Répási Tibor
Published: May 2011

A key characteristic of database systems is the layered structure and the accomplished independencies as is defined in the ANSI SPARC database reference model. This level-wise approach is also applied in the database development processes. According to the design triangle, the problem area to be mapped into the database is described by a human-oriented description at the initial phase of the design activity. Semantic data model (SDM) as a design tool uses concept-level elements in contrast to database schemas that are models at the logical and physical levels. The main role of semantic models is that they provide an abstract approach; they are easy to understand and they provide database independence.
Expression and Processing of Inductive Queries
Authors: Benítez-Guerrero Edgard , Nieva-García Omar
Published: May 2011

The vast amounts of digital information stored in databases and other repositories represent a challenge for finding useful knowledge. Traditionalmethods for turning data into knowledge based on manual analysis reach their limits in this context, and for this reason, computer-based methods are needed. Knowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD) is the semi-automatic, nontrivial process of identifying valid, novel, potentially useful, and understandable knowledge (in the form of patterns) in data (Fayyad, Piatetsky-Shapiro, Smyth & Uthurusamy, 1996). KDD is an iterative and interactive process with several steps: understanding the problem domain, data preprocessing, pattern discovery, and pattern evaluation and usage. For discovering patterns, Data Mining (DM) techniques are applied.
Privacy-Preserving Data Mining
Authors: Evfimievski Alexandre , Grandison Tyrone
Published: May 2011

Privacy-preserving data mining (PPDM) refers to the area of data mining that seeks to safeguard sensitive information from unsolicited or unsanctioned disclosure. Most traditional data mining techniques analyze and model the data set statistically, in aggregated form, while privacy preservation is primarily concerned with protecting against disclosure of individual data records. This domain separation points to the technical feasibility of PPDM. Historically, issues related to PPDM were first studied by the national statistical agencies interested in collecting private social and economical data, such as census and tax records, and making it available for analysis by public servants, companies, and researchers. Building accurate socioeconomical models is vital for business planning and public policy. Yet, there is no way of knowing in advance what models may be needed, nor is it feasible for the statistical agency to perform all data processing for everyone, playing the role of a trusted third party. Instead, the agency provides the data in a sanitized form that allows statistical processing and protects the privacy of individual records, solving a problem known as privacypreserving data publishing. For a survey of work in statistical databases, see Adam and Wortmann (1989) and Willenborg and de Waal (2001).
Machine Learning as a Commonsense Reasoning Process
Authors: Naidenova Xenia
Published: May 2011

One of the most important tasks in database technology is to combine the following activities: data mining or inferring knowledge from data and query processing or reasoning on acquired knowledge. The solution of this task requires a logical language with unified syntax and semantics for integrating deductive (using knowledge) and inductive (acquiring knowledge) reasoning. In this paper, we propose a unified model of commonsense reasoning. We also demonstrate that a large class of inductive machine learning (ML) algorithms can be transformed into the commonsense reasoning processes based on wellknown deduction and induction logical rules. The concept of a good classification (diagnostic) test (Naidenova & Polegaeva, 1986) is the basis of our approach to combining deductive and inductive reasoning.
On the Query Evaluation in XML Databases
Authors: Chen Yangjun
Published: May 2011

With the growing importance of XML in data exchange, much research has been done in providing flexible query mechanisms to extract data from XML documents. A core operation for XML query processing is to find all occurrences of a twig pattern Q (or small tree) in a document T. Prior work has typically decomposed Q into binary structural relationships, such as parent-child and ancestor-descendant relations, or root-to-leaf paths. The twig matching is achieved by: (a) matching the binary relationships or paths against XML databases, and (b) using the join algorithms to stitch together all the matching binary relationships or paths. In the worst case, the time for doing joins can be exponential (in the number of query nodes or decomposed paths). In this chapter, we discuss a new algorithm for this task with no path joins involved. The time and space complexities of the algorithm are bounded by O (|T|·Qleaf) and O (Tleaf·Qleaf), respectively, where Tleaf stands for the number of the leaf nodes in T and Qleaf for the number of the leaf nodes in Q. Our experiments show that our method is efficient in supporting twig pattern queries.
A Pagination Method for Indexes in Metric Databases
Authors: Villegas Ana Valeria , Ruano Carina Mabel , Herrera Norma Edith
Published: May 2011

Searching for database elements that are close or similar to a given query element is a problem that has a vast number of applications in many branches of computer science, and it is known as proximity search or similarity search. This type of search is a natural extension of the exact searching due to the fact that the databases have included the ability to store new data types such as images, sound, text, and so forth.
Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing Databases
Authors: Zoumboulakis Michael , Roussos George
Published: May 2011

The concept of the so-called Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing was introduced in the early nineties as the third wave of computing to follow the eras of the mainframe and the personal computer. Unlike previous technology generations, Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing recedes into the background of everyday life: “it activates the world, makes computers so imbedded, so fitting, so natural, that we use it without even thinking about it, and is invisible, everywhere computing that does not live on a personal device of any sort, but is in the woodwork everywhere” (Weiser 1991). Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing is often referred to using different terms in different contexts. Pervasive, 4G mobile and sentient computing or ambient intelligence also refer to the same computing paradigm. Several technical developments come together to create this novel type of computing, the main ones are summarized in Table 1 (Davies and Gellersen 2002; Satyanarayanan 2001).
Business-to-Business (B2B) Integration
Authors: Bussler Christoph
Published: May 2011

Businesses world-wide started exchanging electronic business messages with each other around 1970. This coincides with the emergence of wide-area computer networks. Immediately businesses realized the potential in sending electronic messages instead of paper letters in order to conduct business electronically with each other. Computer networks provided a significant increase of transmission speed, less failures due to message loss and direct processing of messages upon receipt without error prone manual transcripts from paper to computer terminals or vice versa. Overall, business interactions became a lot more reliable and efficient.
Describing Agent Societies
Authors: Tsvetovat Maksim
Published: May 2011

Agent-based approaches provide an invaluable tool for building decentralized, distributed architectures and tying together sets of disparate software tools and architectures. However, while the agents themselves have been gaining complexity, and agent specification languages have been gaining expressive power, little thought has been given to the complexity of agent societies, and languages for describing such societies. In this chapter, I propose a declarative language designed specifically for describing in an expressive way a variety of social interactions. I attempt to avoid the fallacies of artificial restriction, and similarly confounding under-specification of the design domain, yet constructing a rigorous, machine- interpretable semantics. It is my hope that introduction of such semantic will lead to a constructive dialogue between communities of agent-based social modeling and agent-based software design, and lead to a greater integration of agent development toolkits and agent-based modeling toolkits.
Communications for Agent-Based Human Team Support
Authors: Sukthankar Gita , Sycara Katia , Giampapa Joseph A. , Burnett Christopher
Published: May 2011

This chapter discusses the problem of agent aiding of ad-hoc, decentralized human teams so as to improve team performance on time-stressed group tasks. To see how human teams rise to the challenge, we analyze the communication patterns of teams performing a collaborative search task that recreates some of the cognitive difficulties faced by teams during search and rescue operations. Our experiments show that the communication patterns of successful decentralized ad-hoc teams performing a version of the task that requires tight coordination differ both from the teams that are less successful at task completion and from teams performing a loosely coupled version of the same task. We conclude by discussing: (1) what lessons can be derived, from observing humans, to facilitate the development of agents to support ad-hoc, decentralized teams, and (2) where can intelligent agents be inserted into human teams to improve the humans’ performance.
A Minimal Dynamical MAS Organization Model
Authors: da Rocha Costa Antônio Carlos , Dimuro Graçaliz Pereira
Published: May 2011

This chapter presents the Population-Organization model, a formal tool for studying the organization of open multi-agent systems and its functional and structural dynamics. The model is minimal in two senses: it comprises a minimal set of extensional concepts able of adequately accounting for the notion of dynamic organization; and, it is a core organization model upon which a certain kind of dynamical rules can be defined, to account for the action of intensional organizational elements like prestige, power, morality, and so forth. The chapter gives a detailed presentation of the core model, in a version adapted for describing organizations where interactions have a periodic character. We also illustrate how the model supports intensional organizational processes, by introducing a sample set of moral rules for agents playing roles in informal organizations.
A Formal Petri Net Based Model for Team Monitoring
Authors: Bonnet-Torrès Olivier , Tessier Catherine
Published: May 2011

This chapter focuses on a Petri Net-based model for team organization and monitoring. The applications considered are missions performed by several robots that cooperate in different ways according to the goals to be achieved. Formal operations on the Petri Net representing the mission plan allow the dynamic hierarchy of subteams to be revealed and the agents’ individual plans – including the relevant cooperation context – to be calculated. The model also allows several failure propagation ways within the team to be highlighted and local plan repair to be considered. Moreover Petri Nets allow direct implementation, and monitoring and control of the plan at each level of the organization: team, subteams, and individual robots.
Redesigning Processes
Authors: Al-Shammari Minwir
Published: May 2011

In today’s turbulent and complex business environments, the focus has shifted from products to services. As a result, services have become a new battleground for competition; and processes, a weapon of war. Organizations wishing to boost their competitiveness need to focus on desired customer outcomes by redesigning business processes through effective use of advanced ICTs and the creativity of their human assets. Organizational reinvention of structure, people, and ICTs are driven by the CKM strategic change with a purpose of adding value to both customers and business firms. Reinventing organizations has the potential to create more flexible, team-based and integrated work activities, both internally and externally, to allow customers to be linked intimately to the business, to improve their experiences, and ultimately to develop enduring and profitable relationships with them. This chapter explores the last part in reinvention, viz. the role of business process redesign in CKM.
Compiling Profiles of Customers
Authors: Al-Shammari Minwir
Published: May 2011

Whether companies are engaged in B2B or B2C transactions, they need to understand their customers. Once customer data are captured and stored in ODSs or DWs, they are then subject to further customer-centric intelligence processing in a manner that facilitates the execution of complex query performance and the competition on ‘analytics’ (Davenport, 2006). It is certainly not true that companies with the most data always win; the success lies in processing the existing data to learn about trends and attitudes of customers. This chapter, as well as the coming chapter, discusses the strategic, or analytical, side of CKM. The term ‘analytical CKM’ is used in this book to refer to both information and knowledge discovery tools. The views presented in this chapter are from the ‘information management’ perspective, whereas the coming chapter adopts a ‘knowledge management’ perspective.
Rights Expression Languages
Authors: Jamkhedkar Pramod A. , Heileman Gregory L.
Published: May 2011

Rights expression languages (RELs) form a central component of digital rights management (DRM) systems. The process of development of RELs transforms the rights requirements to a formal language ready to be used in DRM systems. Decisions regarding the design of the conceptual model, syntax, semantics, and other such properties of the language, affect not only each other, but also the integration of the language in DRM systems, and the design of DRM system as a whole. This chapter provides a detailed analysis of each step of this process and the tradeoffs involved that not only affect the properties of the REL, but also the DRM system using that REL.
A Hardware Approach for Trusted Access and Usage Control
Authors: Anciaux Nicolas , Bouganim Luc , Pucheral Philippe
Published: May 2011

This chapter advocates the convergence between Access Control (AC) models, focusing on the granularity of sharing, and Digital Right Management (DRM) models focusing on conditional authorizations and obligations. The convergence is also expected in terms of control enforcement considering that both AC and DRM models must be equally protected against any form of tampering and piracy. We capitalize on the democratization of powerful secure chip platforms (e.g., smart cards, secure USB dongles) which can be plugged in a variety of client devices (PC, PDA, cell phones, consumer electronics) to design a new architecture of a trusted access and usage control system. The benefits of the proposed architecture are exemplified in two different contexts: a fair DRM scenario and a healthcare scenario.
Virtual Collaboration and Community
Authors: Borda Ann , Bowen Jonathan P.
Published: May 2011

This chapter introduces the concept of a Virtual Organization (VO), using the Internet to link geographically separated participants in an efficient and novel manner. In particular, the chapter contrasts the attributes of Project VOs and Community VOs. The former tend to be more formal and arise for a particular collaborative goal with a limited lifetime. The latter are less formal and more open-ended, with a less specific purpose, largely aimed at developing an online community as an end in itself. The features of Project and Community VOs are compared and the various technologies are discussed. Two case studies are presented as examples. This is a rapidly changing area with new technologies becoming rapidly available, but the underlying concepts and reasons for the existence of VOs in the support of virtual collaborative practice remain more stable.
The Social Derivation of Technical Systems
Authors: Davenport David
Published: May 2011

This chapter analyses the effect that social values have on the design of technical systems. Beginning with an examination of the role technology and accountability play in maintaining social order, it introduces the term “technology creep” to describe situations where conflicting viewpoints produce a technological arms race. Technology functioning in a social-order role inevitably supports one or other of the opposing views, so each side naturally uses it in an attempt to gain the advantage. Peace can be restored only by understanding the social dimensions of the conflict and finding a way of resolving them that is fair to all. The hotly debated issues of anonymity and copyright on the Internet are explored to illustrate this analysis, which, if correct, suggests that designers should consider not only a product’s functionality, safety, its effect on the environment and users, but also non-users, especially those with different values. Awareness of the interplay between the social and technical realms will help optimize future socio-technical systems.
Emerging Cybercrime Variants in the Socio-Technical Space
Authors: Huang Wilson , Wang Shun-Yung Kevin
Published: May 2011

This chapter examines the gaps that arise between reactive social control systems and proactive technology systems. The authors further link these gaps to cybercrime patterns and growth, by a theoretical framework that depicts the role that cybercrime plays in different gaps. This further suggests a typology of cybercrime, based on instrumental vs. expressive differences between offenses. Recent and emerging criminal activities and formal and informal control responses are reviewed and evaluated to illustrate this cybercrime framework and typology. The result is proactive strategies that can help prevent cybercrime from occurring in the disjoints between social and technical systems.
Using Communication Norms in Socio-Technical Systems
Authors: Weigand Hans
Published: May 2011

Often socio-technical systems are designed simply on the basis of what the user asks, and without considering explicitly whether the required process structure is right and wrong. However, poor communication may cause many problems. Therefore, a design cycle should always include diagnosis, and in order to be systematic, the (process) diagnosis should be model-based and driven by explicit communication norms. Such a diagnosis process is outlined and illustrated with a case from a financial service process. Furthermore, it is shown that recognition of universal communication norms can also improve tool design and quality management of socio-technical systems in general.
Building a Path for Future Communities
Authors: Axup Jeff
Published: May 2011

With mobile technologies increasingly weaving themselves into the fabric of our communities, it would be beneficial to increase our understanding of how these devices will affect our quality of life. This chapter presents a case study where a set of prototypes of future social technology concepts were generated and used by groups of backpackers in a mobile community. One of these concepts, which facilitated viewing the locations of other group members, is evaluated with regard to how it might affect community development. This and other examples illustrate that communication technologies form a social path which guides individual and emergent behavior of societies. Determination of where these paths lead can be accomplished through the creation of development projects with positive social aims. Using collaborative research methods, considering design outcome spectra, and adding features with implicit cultural values are promising strategies for influencing future communities.
Community Collective Efficacy
Authors: Carroll John M. , Rosson Mary Beth , Farooq Umer , Burge Jamika D.
Published: May 2011

Socio-technical systems are social systems that incorporate technological infrastructures. At the group level of analysis, the most important question in understanding socio-technical systems is how their technological infrastructures modulate collective capacities for performance and experience. This research addresses collective capacities with respect to various sorts of communities—interest communities, professional communities, and residential communities. One question the authors have pursued is how technological infrastructures can enhance beliefs about collective capacities, as operationalized in Bandura’s social-cognitive construct “collective efficacy”. In this chapter, the authors first review Bandura’s conception of collective efficacy as a social extension of his cognitive construct “perceived self-efficacy”. They then discuss the development of our own community collective efficacy scale, and its use in understanding a range of community-oriented attitudes, beliefs and behaviors in the context of the Blacksburg Electronic Village community network. The next three sections describe applications and extensions of community collective efficacy to three on-going community informatics projects. In each of these cases, the authors explain how the community collective efficacy construct is being applied and extended.
An Analysis of the Socio-Technical Gap in Social Networking Sites
Authors: Coenen Tanguy , Van den Bosch Wouter , Van der Sluys Veerle
Published: May 2011

This chapter views social networking sites as supporting social capital and the advantages which derive from it, namely emotional support, information exchange, and a capacity for concerted action. Social capital is subdivided in three types: relational, cognitive, and structural. The authors derive a number of social needs from these types of social capital and discuss how the social networking sites considered in this study support or fail to support these needs with technical features. The contributions of this chapter include the dimensionalisation of the socio-technical gap in social networking systems and a discussion of elements that reside in the gap.
The Myth of the e-Commerce Serf to Sovereign Powershift
Authors: McLean Rachel
Published: May 2011

As a social activity, the shopping experience can not be recreated or improved through technical design alone. This chapter proposes that there is incongruence in online retail provision and the needs or requirements of customers. It argues that a greater social awareness or sense of “audience” is required by retailers who adopt E-Commerce. Web sites and service provision need to be more closely related to social requirements to reduce the socio-technical gap. This chapter will attempt to deconstruct the belief that E-Commerce in its current format is bringing about a power shift. It focuses on five of the most prevalent strands of the myth that E-Commerce empowers customers. A critical social theory (CST) epistemology is adopted. Through a series of semi-structured interviews with consumers and consideration of the wider empirical evidence the myths are deconstructed. The chapter raises the question “how far can commercial enterprises afford to empower consumers” and reflects that rather than a “power shift” there has been a “responsibility shift”.
Future Living in a Participatory Way
Authors: Claeys Laurence , Criel Johan
Published: May 2011

This chapter introduces the concept of critical user participation as a means to see the socio-technical gap in context aware applications as an opportunity rather then a problem space. It argues that for context aware applications to get integrated in everyday life, the principles of critical user participation as defined in this chapter must be fulfilled. In the first part of the chapter the authors scrutinize the concepts of “context” and “participation” and argue why critical user participation principles should be fulfilled when developing and interacting with context aware applications. The second part consists of an empirical study on the existing vision and context aware applications of the “homes of the future” in Belgium and the Netherlands. In the conclusions a reflection is made upon the opportunities of the socio-technical gap to empower the users of context aware applications.
Governance and Conceptual, Logical and Installed Architecture Alignment Using Work Products and Workflow
Authors: Ramanathan Jay , Ramnath Rajiv
Published: May 2011

Governance and related alignment methods for the management of complex systems are introduced here to facilitate and better decision making. The goal here is to increase re-use and agility. We also show how EA governance can leverage technologies like middleware and workflow to enable service evolution. The methods and work products of the previous Chapter 2 along with the following EA layers guide continual service improvement.
Research Topics in Complex Systems
Authors: Ramanathan Jay , Ramnath Rajiv
Published: May 2011

The Adaptive Complex Enterprise framework presented provides a basis for integrating many related areas of research into a services discipline. We have shown the framework is widely applicable to any kind of organization. Here our focus is on the articulation of further research needed for the IT-enabled business innovation, resilience and effectiveness. At a high level, see Figure 1, the related research topics are 1) ACE Co-engineering Theory which covers the development of context- based methods for the conceptualization, prioritization, and implementation of service-oriented solutions; 2) Knowledge Infrastructure for delivery of services, 3) Integrated Development Environment for service life-cycle management and continuous improvement of highly distributed complex systems, and 4) Transformation and Innovation Practice. While it is true that technology research in emerging trends like bio-info-nano integration will increase in importance, there is also a fundamental realization that the management of complexity will itself become a critical area of research. This is especially true since other related IT trends like virtualization, miniaturization, and distribution will also increase the complexity of deployed systems. Here we will explore the underlying challenges.
EKD
Authors: Stirna Janis , Persson Anne
Published: May 2011

This chapter presents experiences and reflections from using the EKD Enterprise Modeling method in a number of European organizations. The EKD modeling method is presented. The chapter then focuses on the EKD application in practice taking six cases as an example. The authors’ observations and lessons learned are reported concerning general aspects of Enterprise Modeling projects, the EKD modeling language, the participative modeling process, tool support, and issues of Enterprise Model quality. They also discuss a number of current and emerging trends for development of Enterprise Modeling approaches in general and for EKD in particular.
Process Modeling for Holistic Process Management
Authors: Jablonski Stefan
Published: May 2011

This chapter presents a process modeling approach for holistic process management. The main idea is that domain specific process models are required both to capture the contents of a process based application and to present a process model in a user friendly way. We presents how perspective oriented process modeling supports domain specific process model. Besides we describe how this approach can be implemented by applying a multi level meta modeling approach.
Using WfMS to Support Unstructured Activities
Authors: Mourao Hernani , Antunes Pedro
Published: May 2011

In this chapter the authors propose a solution to handle unexpected exceptions in WfMS. They characterize these events deeply and recognize that some of them require immediate reaction and users can not plan their response in advance. Current approaches that handle unexpected exceptions are categorized by their resilience property and it is identified that supporting unstructured activities becomes critical to react to these events. Their proposed system is able to change its behaviour from supporting structured activities to supporting unstructured activities and back to its original mode. They also describe how the system was implemented and we discuss a concrete scenario where it was tested.
Ontology Based Context-Aware Adaptation Approach
Authors: Chaari Tarak , Zouari Mohamed , Laforest Frédérique
Published: May 2011

Pervasive information systems aim to make information available anywhere and at anytime. These systems should be used in different contexts depending on the environment of the user, her/his profile and her/his device. Consequently, one of the main problems of such information systems is the adaptation to context. In this chapter, the authors propose a comprehensive and open strategy that guarantees the adaptation of applications to context on three facets: (i) the services offered to the user, (ii) the multimedia contents returned by these services, and (iii) their presentation to the user. Service adaptation consists of modules that intercept the application’s service calls and modify their behavior using a list of functional adaptation operators. Data adaptation consists in transforming or replacing the non-usable multimedia service outputs in the considered context situation. Presentation adaptation consists in automatically generating the complete code of the user interface that guarantees the interaction with the adapted data and services. The authors’ adaptation strategy has achieved two goals: (i) incrementally integrate context awareness in the application and (ii) guarantee the adaptation starting from a simple description of the services offered to the user. They have validated this strategy by developing a platform that guarantees applications adaptation to context. They used Java, OSGi and Web service technologies to implement this platform. They have also successfully tested our adaptation approach on a home healthcare application concerning dialyzed persons.
Employing Context Information and Semantics to Advance Responsiveness in Service Composition
Authors: Jacob Carsten , Pfeffer Heiko , Steglich Stephan
Published: May 2011

The idea of context-aware services has been around for a long time. The rise of user mobility enabled by well-equipped mobile devices, increasing interconnectedness and available service platforms such as the mobile Web offers new possibilities for context-aware computing, but, at the same time, produces a number of novel challenges. In this chapter, the authors observe current approaches in this active research area, and identify the respective challenges, achievements, and trends. The authors also extend the notion of context-aware services by considering service composition approaches, and present a middleware aiming at the autonomic and context-aware provision of services in mobile peer-to-peer networks. In this regard special attention is paid to a semantic blackboard concept to cache and disseminate context data and a context-aware service composition approach in terms of the identified trends and challenges.
Adaptive Resource and Service Management in a Mobile-Enabled Environment
Authors: Raibulet Claudia
Published: May 2011

Due to its nature, a mobile-enabled environment is very dynamic: reachable resources and services change very often. Users hardly know which resources they can exploit and which services they may require. In such a context, a technical support which identifies the available resources and services and indicates which resource is the best one to execute a service would be very helpful. This chapter proposes an adaptive solution to achieve these issues. Adaptivity is related to the fact that besides searching for the reachable resources or services, this approach proposes the most appropriate one for the current request by exploiting additional information about users, resources and services. Moreover, it ensures that services are delivered with the qualities requested and expected by the users. In the scientific literature adaptivity is exploited for functionality reasons (i.e., a system is not able to do what it was supposed to do) or for performance reasons (i.e., a system is not able to ensure the qualities of the services expected by the users or there is a better configuration for a given task). A challenging issue of adaptivity is the identification and design of the knowledge useful for the adaptation process and how this knowledge is exploited at run-time especially in a highly dynamic environment. This chapter proposes an approach which models the adaptation knowledge through reflective entities, qualities and properties, the management of the adaptation knowledge through views, the decision support through strategies, and the management of the functional and non-functional elements through managers.
Privacy Automation in Context-Aware Services
Authors: Eldin Amr Ali , Daskapan Semir , van den Berg Jan
Published: May 2011

With the growing interest in context-aware services, attention has been given to privacy and trust issues. Context-aware privacy architectures are usually proposed and developed without taking into account the trustworthiness of a service provider. Therefore, this chapter deals with two challenges in context-aware services. The first one is to improve privacy architectures with a trust functionality and the second one is to integrate this refined privacy architecture in larger service-oriented architectures (SOAs).
Integrating New Technologies into Blended Learning Environments
Authors: Carvalho Ana A. , Lustigova Zdena , Lustig Frantisek
Published: May 2011

This chapter describes two European projects that respond to blended learning by integrating innovative technologies into blended learning environments. The first sections describes Portuguese research into the use of podcasts, delivered through the learning management system, Blackboard through which the teacher provided education students with instruction about online discussions and feedback on their online postings and presentations. The students preferred the teacher’s voice in the podcasts to written text and this section provides strategies for teachers to effectively integrate podcasts into their blended learning practice. The chapter then describes research from the Czech Republic on electronic labs (ELabs) through a project that enables the handling of real objects in science experiments by students at remote locations. This section provides an example of how blended learning can involve a blend of real and virtual objects.