bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Emerging Frontiers of Learning Online
Authors: Finger Glenn , Sun Pei-Chen , Jamieson-Proctor Romina
Published: May 2011

The potential for online education for adult learning have been well argued, and in recent times there have been eLearning initiatives to realise the potential offered by online education. Adult learning institutions, particularly Universities, have adopted and introduced infrastructure to support Learning Management Systems (LMS), Local Area Networks (LAN), Learning Management Content Systems (LMCS), and Virtual Learning Environments (VLE). Following discussion of those eLearning environments, this chapter will suggest that the limitations of those digital systems is leading to the next phase with the development of digitalecosystems conceptualised as learning platforms which keeps learning central, enables interoperability, and forms a base for building upon through use of new technologiesand increased capabilities of educators to use informationand communication technologies (ICT) for curriculum, pedagogy and assessment (Ingvarson & Gaffney, 2008).Digital ecosystems enable the integration of student administration, LAN (requiring teacher and student loginsand passwords), VLE, content repository, community links, utilise Web 2.0 (social networking) technologies, and can have the adult learner as the central focus of the design of the platform and its functionalities. Subsequently, the chapter draws upon the findings of a research project (Sun, Tsai, Finger, Chen, & Yeh, 2007) which identified the critical functionalities for eLearner satisfaction to provide suggestions that the architecture and design of an eLearning system should be informed by the adult learners’ perceived usefulness of the system (Pitnuch & Lee, 2006). More recently, the presentation of face to face teachingand online learning as alternatives has been superseded by conceptualisations of blended learning. Through presenting these learning environments in terms of their possibilities and limitations, and the emergence of blendedlearning, implications for adult learning will be synthesised.
New Functions for Stimulating Learners' Motivation in a Web-Based e-Learning System
Authors: Matsuo Keita , Barolli Leonard , Xhafa Fatos , Koyama Akio , Durresi Arjan
Published: May 2011

Due to the opportunities provided by the Internet, people are taking advantage of e-learning courses and during the last few years enormous research efforts have been dedicated to the development of e-learning systems. So far, many e-learning systems are proposed and used practically. However, in these systems the e-learningcompletion rate is low. One of the reasons is the low study desire and motivation. In our previous work, we implemented an e-learning system that is able to increase the learning efficiency by stimulating learners’ motivation. In this work, we designed and implemented new functionssuch as: interface changing function, new ranking function and learner’s learning situation checking function to improve the system performance.
A Changed Economy with Unchanged Universities? A Contribution to the University of the Future
Authors: Cunha Maria Manuela , Putnik Goran  D.
Published: May 2011

Individualised open and distance learning at the universitycontinuing education and post-graduate education levels is a central issue of today. The advanced information and communication technologies
Transdisciplinary Approach to Service Design Based on Consumer’s Value and Decision Making
Authors: Takenaka Takeshi , Fujita Kousuke , Nishino Nariaki , Ishigaki Tsukasa , Motomura Yoichi
Published: May 2011

Science and technology are expected to support actual service provision and to create new services to promote service industries’ productivity. However, those problems might not be solved solely in a certain research area. This paper describes that it is necessary to establish transdisciplinary approaches to service design in consideration of consumers’ values and decision making. Recent research trends of services are overviewed. Then a research framework is proposed to integrate computer sciences, human sciences, and economic sciences. Three study examples of services are then presented. The first study is a multi-agent simulation of a cellular telephone market based on results of a psychological survey. The second presents a cognitive model constructed through integration of questionnaire data of a retail business and Bayesian network modeling. The third presents a pricing mechanism design for service facilities––movie theaters––using an economic experiment and agent-based simulation.
The Evolving Portfolio of Business-to-Business E-Services
Authors: Legner Christine
Published: May 2011

E-services have been recognized for their contribution to strengthening customer relationships and fostering customer loyalty. While prior research has focused on the role of e-services in business-to-consumer interactions, this chapter studies e-services in the business-to-business domain. More specifically, it explores how the preferences for e-services and electronic channels change over time as a result of developing technology and evolving customer requirements. Based on the case study of ETA SA, a Swiss manufacturer of watch movements and components, three stages of increasing electronic interaction with customers have been identified. The company pioneered online ordering of watch spare parts based on a first generation e-commerce solution and subsequently introduced a comprehensive customer service portal. This research suggests that moving from the e-commerce solution to the customer process portal involved a significant extension of the e-service portfolio (service innovation), whereas the subsequent stage introduced an additional electronic channel (channel innovation). Every stage in this evolution path forces companies to substantially re-architect their interorganizational process and system linkages. From the experiences of ETA SA, we conclude that a well-designed B2B architecture is required to cope with the growing number of e-services and the complexity of serving multiple electronic channels.
Flow-based Adaptive Information Integration
Authors: Chiu Dickson K.W. , Trojer Thomas , Hu Hua , Hu Haiyang , Zhuang Yi , Hung Patrick
Published: May 2011

Assembling a coherent view of distributed heterogeneous information and their processing is challenging but important for inter-organizational business collaboration and service provision. However, traditional integration approaches do not consider dynamic and adaptive issues such as human intervention and exception handling. Therefore, we propose a Workflow-based Information Integration (WII) approach, which is particularly suitable in a loosely coupled Web services environment. Our implementation framework comprises five layers: semantic, application, workflow, service, and message. We focus on the workflow layer for providing adaptiveness from the aspects of various types of flows such as controlflows, data-flows, security-flows, exception-flows and semantic-flows by using the Business Process Execution Language for Web Services (BPEL). We further extend this with our proposed data-integration, semantic-referencing, and exception-handling assertions in order to achieve dynamic and adaptive workflow-based information integration plans. We map information into SOAP messages and link the proposed exception-handling assertions in BPEL to SOAP-fault implementations. We also define semantic referencing in BPEL by using OWL Web Ontology Language. Lastly, we demonstrate the feasibility of our adaptive approach with an intelligence information integration case study at the application layer and examine some typical use cases of exception-handling with semantic support.
Application of the FUSION Approach for Tool Assisted Composition of Web Services in Cross Organisational Environments
Authors: Alexakis Spiros , Bauer Markus , Balogh András , Kiss Akos
Published: May 2011

The research project FUSION aims at supporting collaboration and interconnection between enterprises with technologies that allow for the semantic fusion of heterogeneous service-oriented business applications. The resulting FUSION approach is an enterprise application integration (EAI) conceptual framework proposing a system architecture that supports the composition of business processes using semantically annotated Web services as building blocks. The approach has been validated in the frame of three collaborative commercial proof-of-concept pilots. The chapter provides an overview on the FUSION approach and summarises our integration experiences with the application of the FUSION approach and tools during the implementation of transnational career and human resource management services.
Performance Analysis of a Web Server
Authors: Jijun Lu , Swapna S. Gokhale
Published: May 2011

With the rapid development and widespread use of the Internet, Web servers have become a dominant source of information and services. The use of Web servers in business and critical application domains imposes stringent performance requirements on them. These performance requirements cast a direct influence on the choice of the configuration options of the hardware and the software infrastructure on which a Web server is deployed. In addition to the selection of configuration options, for a given level of load and a particular hardware and software configuration, it is necessary to estimate the performance of a Web server prior to deployment.
A Data Quality Model for Web Portals
Authors: Caro Angélica , Calero Coral , Piattini Mario
Published: May 2011

Web portals are Internet-based applications that provide a big amount of data. The data consumer who uses the data given by these applications needs to assess data quality. Due to the relevance of data quality on the Web together with the fact that DQ needs to be assessed within the context in which data are generated, data quality models specific to this context are necessary. In this chapter, we will introduce a model for data quality in Web portals (PDQM). PDQM has been built upon the foundation of three key aspects: (1) a set of Web data quality attributes identified in the literature in this area, (2) data quality expectations of data consumers on the Internet, and (3) the functionalities that a Web portal may offer its users.
Using Semantic Web Services in E-Banking Solutions
Authors: Cicurel Laurent , Luis Bas Uribe José , Bellido Gonzalez Sergio , Contreras Jesús , López-Cobo José-Manuel , Losada Silvestre
Published: May 2011

Offering public access to efficient transactional stock market functionalities is of interest to all banks and bank users. Traditional service oriented architecture (SOA) technology succeeds at providing reasonable, good Web-based brokerage solutions, but may lack extensibility possibilities. By introducing Semantic Web Services (SWS) as a way to integrate third party services from distributed service providers, we propose in this chapter an innovative way to offer online real-time solutions that are easy-to-use for customers. The combined use of ontologies and SWS allows different users to define their own portfolio management strategies regardless of the information provider. In deed the semantic layer is a powerful way to integrate the information of many providers in an easy way. With due regard for more development of security technological issues, research on SWS has shown that the deployment of the technology in commercial solutions is within sight.
E-Services in Danish Research Libraries
Authors: Scupola Ada
Published: May 2011

This chapter reports the findings of a case study of e-services adoption at research libraries. The case under consideration is Roskilde University Library (RUB), a research library supporting learning activities at Roskilde University. The research focuses on the main issues that RUB had to deal with in the process of adopting e-services and the future challenges that e-services provide for RUB. The chapter also presents the consequences of e-services adoption for Roskilde University library’s organization, its business model and the relationships with customers, publishers (providers of knowledge), and other research libraries in Denmark. The main results can be summarized as follows: (1) adoption of e-services has forced RUB to innovate rapidly. Innovation is driven, among other factors, by ICT developments (technology push), but innovation is also user-driven and pervasive throughout the organization; (2) e-services have changed RUB’s organizational structure and division of labour by moving more and more towards IT-based jobs and competences; (3) e-services have changed the relationships between users and publishers; (4) e-services have changed and continue to change the business model of the library; and (5) RUB is becoming a combination of a virtual and a physical library, moving more and more towards a virtual library with electronic resources and online communities, but still keeping the traditional function of a “knowledge space.”
Morethailand.com – Online Travel Intermediary
Authors: Hoontrakul Pongsak , Sahadev Sunil
Published: May 2011

The case study showcases ‘morethailand.com’ an e-intermediary in the tourism industry. Based out of Thailand, the firm is in the process of finding a niche for itself through innovative online and offline marketing strategies with the constraint of limited resources. The case study attempts to focus on the e-business challenges in the travel and tourism sector especially in a developing country like Thailand. It specifically highlights the clash between the traditional and modern form of intermediaries in the travel and tourism sector and how it is bound to evolve in the future. A comparison between different approaches to search engine marketing offers an interesting perspective to the literature pertaining to on line e-commerce. An economic view on the case is also presented.
GuiMarket
Authors: Cruz-Cunha M. Manuela , Tavares António , Miranda Isabel
Published: May 2011

The healthcare sector has been continuously growing in importance in the past years throughout the entire world, and particularly in most Western countries and the U.S., where we witness an increase of expenditure in health per capita every year. This is related to many aspects of contemporary society, including an increase in life expectancy, the public demand for a better quality of life and better health services. This must be met with more cost-efficient approaches, and new technology-based solutions for providing health and other services. The chapter contextualizes the utilization of electronic marketplaces (e-marketplaces) for the social and healthcare sectors, how this field has been evolving in recent years, current challenges and trends, and their contribut to society. The authors also discuss a pilot project of an e-marketplace for healthcare and social services currently being developed in the Guimarães Municipality, including its goal, definition and implementation, as well as the commercially available enabling technology and tools.
A User Centered Innovation Approach Identifying Key User Values for the E-Newspaper
Authors: Ihlström Eriksson Carina , Svensson Jesper
Published: May 2011

We have studied the pre-adoption phase of the e-newspaper, i.e. a newspaper published with e-paper technology. The research question of this article is: In what way can a user centered innovation process contribute to identifying key values in mobile innovations? The aim of this article is threefold: firstly, to identify key values for the e-newspaper, secondly, to examine the intention to adopt a new possible innovation and thirdly, to explore user centered design processes ability to capture user values early in the innovation process. We have identified seven key user values: mobility, availability, personalization, usability, interactivity, readability and environment. Furthermore, we found that surprisingly many would consider exchanging their traditional newspaper with an e-newspaper in the future, indicating that the e-newspaper have a fair chance of becoming an important innovation. Finally, we propose a four phase model for identifying user values in a pre-adoption phase of an innovation.
Competence of Information Technology Professionals in Internet-Based Ventures
Authors: Kollmann Tobias , Häsel Matthias
Published: May 2011

This chapter articulates the knowledge and skills required by IT professionals in young Internet-based firms. Building on the general IT governance principle of aligning business and IT, it introduces an adequate competence model, outlines its dimensions, and suggests a framework for modeling the effects of factors internal and external to the firm on the value propositions of the different dimensions. The authors hope that a comprehensive understanding of the role of IT-related competence will assist founders not only in finding suitable partners, but also in aligning e-business strategy and information technology in Internet-based ventures.
E-Markets as Meta-Enterprise Information e Systems
Authors: Grieger Martin , Hartmann Evi , Kotzab Herbert
Published: May 2011

Electronic marketplaces are inter-organizational information sharing systems that enable virtual business transactions and allow the exchange of price and product information between buyers and sellers (Kollmann, 2000). For many decades, such information systems were solely utilized for buying and selling of goods under “market conditions.” With the emergence of advanced IT, academia, and also businesses have begun to use electronic marketplaces for information sharing system and it is no longer only a medium for electronic buying and selling processes. In addition, electronic marketplaces are predicted to be a key-stone for integrating the information flows within inter-organizational systems such as supply chains (Grieger, 2004) where borderless organizational structures occur (see Picot, Reichwald, R., Wigand, 2001).
Multi-Agent Architecture for Developing Cooperative E-Business Applications
Authors: Brahimi Mahmoud , Seinturier Lionel , Boufaida Mahmoud
Published: May 2011

This article describes a multi-agent approach that provides solutions to the problems raised during the development of cooperative e-business applications. This approach is organized in the form of cooperative application groups representing the different parts of a company. Agent coordinators orchestrate the cooperative work of these groups. The most requested functionalities inside the company and those offered to the external world can be exported as Web Services. These Web Services are described with DAML-based Web Service ontology (OWL-S) and managed with an intermediate agent called Web Service Finder Agent. The proposed solution provides a new vision of the cooperation context where the companies and their partners share knowledge and offer functionalities as agents and Web Services.
Business Process Reuse and Standardization with P2P Technologies
Authors: Rodrigues Nt José A. , Moreira de Souza Jano , Zimbrão Geraldo , Xexéo Geraldo , Miranda Mutaleci
Published: May 2011

Business Process Management (BPM) brings together the idea of effectively managing organizations and properly using Information Technology to fulfill organizations’ needs. For this purpose, BPM systems are largely used nowadays. However, most process models are started from scratch, not having reuse promoted. Sometimes, large enterprises have the same business process implemented in a variety of ways due to differences in their departmental cultures or environments, even when using a unique integrated system. Additionally, although technology plays an important role in actually improving organizations, the human factor is still fundamental, since any improvement attempt goes through cultural changes. In this chapter, a peer-to-peer (P2P) tool is proposed as a way to cooperatively develop business processes models, minimizing the time needed to develop such models, reducing the differences among similar processes conducted in distinct organizational units, enhancing the quality of models, promoting reuse, and distributing knowledge.
Interactive, Flexible, and Adaptable Decision Support Systems
Authors: Wang John , Yao James , Hsu Jeffrey
Published: May 2011

Over the four decades of its history, decision support systems (DSSs) have moved from a radical movement that changed the way information systems were perceived in business, to a mainstream commercial information technology movement that all organizations engage. This interactive, flexible, and adaptable computer-based information system derives from two main areas of research: the theoretical studies of organizational decision making done at the Carnegie Institute in the 1950s and early 1960s as well as the technical work on interactive computer systems which was mainly performed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Keen & Morton, 1978). DSSs began due to the importance of formalizing a record of ideas, people, systems, and technologies implicated in this sector of applied information technology. But the history of this system is not precise due to the many individuals involved in different stages of DSSs and various industries while claiming to be pioneers of the system (Arnott & Pervan, 2005; Power, 2003). DSSs have become very sophisticated and stylish since these pioneers began their research. Many new systems have expanded the frontiers established by these pioneers yet the core and basis of the system remains the same. Today, DSSs are used in the finance, accounting, marketing, medical, as well as many other fields.
Ranking Potential Customers Based on Group-Ensemble
Authors: Zhang Zhi-Zhuo , Chen Qiong , Ke Shang-Fu , Wu Yi-Jun , Qi Fei , Zhang Ying-Peng
Published: May 2011

Ranking potential customers has become an effective tool for company decision makers to design marketing strategies. The task of PAKDD competition 2007 is a cross-selling problem between credit card and home loan, which can also be treated as a ranking potential customers problem. This article proposes a 3-level ranking model, namely Group-Ensemble, to handle such kinds of problems. In our model, Bagging, RankBoost and Expending Regression Tree are applied to solve crucial data mining problems like data imbalance, missing value and time-variant distribution. The article verifies the model with data provided by PAKDD Competition 2007 and shows that Group-Ensemble can make selling strategy much more efficient.
A Survey of Multidimensional Modeling Methodologies
Authors: Romero Oscar , Abelló Alberto
Published: May 2011

Many methodologies have been presented to support the multidimensional design of the data warehouse. First methodologies introduced were requirement-driven but the semantics of a data warehouse require to also consider data sources along the design process. In the following years, data sources gained relevance in multidimensional modeling and gave rise to several data-driven methodologies that automate the data warehouse design process from relational sources. Currently, research on multidimensional modeling is still a hot topic and we have two main research lines. On the one hand, new hybrid automatic methodologies have been introduced proposing to combine data-driven and requirement-driven approaches. On the other hand, new approaches focus on considering other kind of structured data sources that have gained relevance in the last years such as ontologies or XML. In this article we present the most relevant methodologies introduced in the literature and a detailed comparison showing main features of each approach.
Business IT Systems Implementation
Authors: Gurau Calin
Published: May 2011

The traditional channels of marketing are gradually being transformed by, or assimilated into, the global network represented by the Internet and modern information technology (IT) applications. Unfortunately, in most cases, the current IT systems are not fluid and dynamic enough to cope with ubiquitous customers who can contact the firm through a multitude of communication channels, such as mobile phones, Internet, or fax. The effective implementation of modern marketing strategies depends on the effective use of IT systems and procedures. Internet-based technology can facilitate information dissemination, file transformation, data mining, and processing (Roberts, Raymond, & Hazard, 2005), which creates opportunities for the development and implementation of efficient customer relationship management systems. On the other hand, the new information technologies can also be used to increase the employees’ satisfaction and productivity (Dorgan, 2003; Eichorn, 2004). Thus, the implementation and use of an efficient IT system for business and marketing activities becomes a fundamental task, which should be managed jointly by business specialists and IT professionals (Wierenga & Van Bruggen, 2000). Unfortunately, these opportunities are hindered by many challenges at organisational or managerial levels, such as defining and restructuring the internal and the external sources of information, centralising the marketing database, and integrating the IT and marketing procedures at operational level. Considering all these issues this paper attempts, on the basis of secondary data, to provide an overview of the main issues related with the implementation of IT systems in business organisations and the challenges related with the integration between information technology and marketing systems. After a brief presentation of the previous research on this topic, the paper presents the stages of a gradual integration of IT systems in a business organisation and proposes a theoretical model
Value of Information in Distributed Decision Support Systems
Authors: Sobieska-Karpinska Jadwiga , Hernes Marcin
Published: May 2011

This chapter deals with the analysis of the value of information in a distributed decision support systems. It characterises the basic measures of the value of information, with the stress put to the utility function, the effect of the knowledge discovery techniques in databases on the value of information and multicriteria methods of decisions support. In the chapter, a multi-agent system is presented, which is an example of a distributed decision support system. In the last part of the chapter, the choice methods and consensus methods for increasing the value of information through the eliminate contradiction of information within the system are presented.
Factors Influencing the Use of Decision Support Tools of Enterprise Resource Planning Systems
Authors: Kamhawi Emad M.
Published: May 2011

Over the past few years, the marketplace and the trade press have recognized the value derived from using enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems for decision making support. However, research studies have tended to concentrate primarily on the use of ERP systems on their transactional and recordkeeping aspects. This study used the technology acceptance model (TAM) to evaluate the impact of a set of individual differences (demographics, computer self efficacy, and knowledge of the system), system characteristics (relevance, terminology and screen design), and perceived benefits of the system, on the intentions to use ERP systems for decision support. A field study was used to collect data from managers working in Bahraini enterprises that use ERP systems. The results indicate that individual differences concerning age, gender, level of education, and even computer self efficacy did not influence intentions of using the decision tools of ERP systems. The only individual difference that showed significant influence is the degree of knowledge of the system. In addition, both perceived shared benefits and system characteristics had significant influence on the intention to use the system for decision support tasks, through perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness. The chapt4er discusses the implications of these findings and ends with possible extensions of the study.
The Business Knowledge and Information Policy Model
Authors: San Mujgan
Published: May 2011

As every technological development, information and communication technology also offers new life patterns to human beings. One of them is related to business and its environment. In this context, the main problem is how to manage knowledge and information and assets related to knowledge and information in business. Therefore, we have constructed the business knowledge and information policy model by using triangulation methodology. The business knowledge and information policy model includes the informative business theory, knowledge and information management (KIM) tools and projects. The first one has six characteristics. KIM tools include nine profiles which are common language, strategy, data-information-concepts, personal and social informatics, ICT infrastructure, measurement, cultural informatics and governance. KIM projects could be designed depending on business conditions and goals.
Toward a Theory of IT-Enabled Customer Service Systems
Authors: Lui Tsz-Wai , Piccoli Gabriele
Published: May 2011

As the use of customer service as a tool to create customer value and differentiation continues to increase, the set of customer services that surround the product rather than the product alone will increasingly become a source of competitive advantage and one of the most critical core business processes. However, there is a lack of a strong conceptual foundation for a service economy and a lack of theoretical guidance for optimal customer service systems design. In this chapter, the authors review past research around information systems facilitating customer services and identify the technical and social attributes of IT-enabled customer service systems, as well as the functionalities of customer service systems enabled by these attributes. Moreover, given the key role of customers as co-producers of the customer service experience, the authors address the role of customers’ characteristics in IT-enabled customer service systems. Finally, they identify existing research gaps and call for future research in these areas.
Agents, Trust and Contracts
Authors: Novais Paulo , Andrade Francisco , Machado José , Neves José
Published: May 2011

Inter-systemic contracting may be based upon autonomous intelligent behaviour. Autonomy is an important advantage of software agents. Yet, it brings along several issues concerning the legal consideration (e.g. legal personality/attribution) and the legal consequences of software agent’s behaviour. The intervention of software agents in corporate bodies and the consideration of its roles must also be referred. All this intends interactions based on contracts and relations of trust, at an individual, at a community and at a systemic level. In this regard, it does make sense to speak of the relation between good faith and trust in inter-systemic contracting. And at the systemic level there is a need to focus on special protocols intended to enhance trust in electronic commerce. Chapter 12 proposes smart contracts as a way of enhancing trust and of achieving enforcement in electronic contracting.
Analysis of Benefits and Risks of E-Commerce
Authors: Sainz de Abajo Beatriz , de la Torre Díez Isabel , López-Coronado Miguel
Published: May 2011

The objective of chapter 14 is the study of the art of e-commerce, analyzing the different existing commercial models in the market such as Business to Business (B2B), Business to Consumers (B2C), Business to Business to Consumers (B2B2C), Consumers to Business (C2B), Business to Employee (B2E), Administration to Business/Consumers/Administration (A2/B/C/A), Consumers to Consumers (C2C), Peer to Peer (P2P), Mobile to Business (M2B) and Small Office Home Office (SOHO) amongst others, the level of implementation in the work place as well as the level of acceptation in society and the regulatory framework for the development of the activity. After this study, the central theme will be one of carrying out a study of the pros and cons that e-commerce brings to the client and to the company. Moreover, a study is carried out of the implementation of e-commerce in a Small and Medium Enterprise (SME), analyzing the technological possibilities and the market of the company which is the object of the study, as well as the associated barriers and risks.
Collaborative Practices in Computer-Aided Academic Research
Authors: Leng J. , Sharrock Wes
Published: May 2011

Chapter 16 focuses on sharing information through global communication systems in the context of computer-aided academic research: more specifically, on cross-disciplinary research primarily involving collaborations between natural scientists and colleagues in computational science. The authors interest lies in the visualization and high performance computing (HPC) communities, branches of computational science providing enhanced ways of organising, analysing and presenting materials, models and results of research in other disciplines.
E-Health at Home
Authors: Andrés Gutiérrez Juan José , Pérez-Castrejón Esteban , Calvo-Alcalde Ana Isabel , Vegas Jesús , González Miguel Ángel
Published: May 2011

Chapter 26 describes the present situation of E-Health at home taking into account legal, privacy and security aspects. As a first step, some background and a general description of E-Health activities at home are presented. In order to have a general idea of the current status of this field, we analyze the general legal situation in terms of ICT for E-Health and several related issues on data mining privacy and information recovery aspects. The topics covered include the taxonomy for secondary uses of clinical data and a description of the role that controlled vocabularies play. Concerning the provision of E-Health at home, the chapter revises the current situation in the digital home evolution including topics on sensors and sanitary devices. Furthermore the challenge of digital identity at home and the differences between the domestic environment and the professional one are considered. Finally some ethical considerations under the "InfoEthics" concept and future lines of work are addressed.
Controlling Informational Society
Authors: Morais da Costa Gonçalo Jorge , Alves da Silva Nuno Sotero , Pawlak Piotr
Published: May 2011

“Informational Society” is unceasingly discussed by all societies’ quadrants. Nevertheless, in spite of illustrating the most recent progress of western societies the complexity to characterize it is well-known. In such societal evolution the “leading role” goes to information, as a polymorphic phenomenon and a polysemantic concept. Given such claim and the need for a multidimensional approach, the overall amount of information available online has reached an unparalleled level, and consequently search engines become exceptionally important. Search engines main stream literature has been debating the following perspectives: technology, user level of expertise and confidence, organizational impact, and just recently power issues. However, the trade-off between informational fluxes versus control has been disregarded. Chapter 27 discusses such gap, and for that, the overall structure of the chapter is: information, search engines, control and its dimensions, and exploit Google as a case study.
 
A Systemic Approach to Managing Natural Disasters
Authors: Santos-Reyes Jaime , Beard Alan N.
Published: May 2011

The objective of this chapter is to present a Systemic Disaster Management System (SDMS) model. The SDMS model is intended to provide a sufficient structure for effective disaster management. It may be argued that it has a fundamentally preventive potentiality in that if all the subsystems (i.e., systems 1-5) and channels of communication are present and working effectively, the probability of failure should be less than otherwise. Moreover, the model is capable of being applied proactively in the case of the design of a new ‘disaster management system’ as well as reactively. In the latter case, a past disaster may be examined using the model as a ‘template’ for comparison. In this way, lessons may be learned from past disasters. It may also be employed as a ‘template’ to examine an existing ‘disaster management system’. It is hoped that this approach will lead to more effective management of natural disasters.
ICT Approaches in Disaster Management
Authors: Kuppuswamy Sunitha
Published: May 2011

We live in a world where there are potential sources of disasters with a potential to cause a loss all around us. We could be living close to a coastline that is prone to cyclones or mountainous region vulnerable to earthquakes. On the other hand, we might be living in a place where there may be frequent communal tension. Whatever is the area we live in; we need to be aware of our vulnerability to hazardous events. Better awareness about various hazards, proper education, training and preparedness will enhance the community resilience. Information and communication technologies in the form of audio and video (through community radio, village information centres, video awareness programmes through DVDs, etc) play a vital role in creating public awareness, giving education and training to vulnerable communities. This chapter aims to discuss the various ICT initiatives taken in the coastal districts of Tamilnadu, one of the seven coastal states of India.
United Arab Emirates
Authors: Dhanhani Hamdan Al Ghasyah , Duncan Angus , Chester David
Published: May 2011

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has more exposure to natural hazards than has been previously recognized. In the last 20 years the UAE has been subject to earthquakes, landslides, floods and tropical storms. This chapter examines the structure and procedures for management of natural disasters in the UAE, in particular issues of governance, accountability and communication within states that are part of a federal system. The study involved interviews with officials at both federal and emirate levels and case studies are presented of the impact of recent natural hazard events. Two emirates were selected for more detailed examination, Fujairah the most hazard prone and a rural emirate and Dubai which is a highly urbanized emirate which has undergone rapid development. There is now increasing awareness of natural hazards in the UAR and progress is being made at regional and federal levels. There needs to be a clear delineation between regional and federal roles and an understanding of the need for effective channels of information to relevant agencies.
Mathematical Models Generators of Decision Support Systems for Help in Case of Catastrophes
Authors: Hernández José G. R. , García María J. G.
Published: May 2011

Immediately after the catastrophes that affected Venezuela at the end of 1999, especially the flood of the State of Vargas, a group of investigators of a consultancy company and of a private university of Caracas Venezuela, started working in decisions support systems (DSS) that could be useful in the moment of a catastrophe, helping to minimize the impact of its three principal stages: Pre-catastrophe, Impact and Post-catastrophe. Clearly, for the development of these DSS, it was indispensable to construct mathematical models to support them. The objective of this chapter is to disclose this experience by presenting some of these mathematical models and its conversion in DSS that supports decision making in the case of catastrophes.
Integrating Scenario-Based Reasoning into a Multi-Criteria Decision Support System for Emergency Management
Authors: Comes Tina , Hiete Michael , Wijngaards Niek , Schultmann Frank
Published: May 2011

Multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) is a technique for decision making among multiple alternatives for action providing transparent and coherent decision support for complex situations with conflicting objectives. Managing longer term decisions for environmental incidents is an application domain in which MCDA has proved useful. Yet a difficulty in applying MCDA is when uncertainties abound. Contrarily, scenario-based reasoning is a method allowing for the assessment of multiple possible future developments of the situation. In this way, the use of scenarios is a transparent and easily understandable way to integrate uncertainties into the reasoning process. We propose a mechanism to integrate scenarios. Our theoretical framework can be operationalised by decision support systems relying on both automated systems and human experts. These facilitate the assessment of consequences within a scenario, and may propose new scenarios. We illustrate this mechanism taking the decision making in emergency management after a train crash with potential release of chlorine as an example.
Life Cycle Pattern Study of Malicious Codes
Authors: Wei June C. , Reid Randall , Zhang Hongmei
Published: May 2011

This chapter investigates the patterns of malicious code attacks based on monthly data of the top 10 virus shares from 1998 to 2005. Three parameters were identified for study, overall pattern of the attack, the number reentries into the top 10 most prevalent attacks, and the maximum percentage share. The dataset was validated by comparing it to an independent dataset that measured the same parameters for a subset of the period of the primary dataset. The effects of malicious code that started before or disappeared outside the collection period were found to not have a significant effect. A multivariate regression analysis showed that the number of entries and the maximum share had a strong relationship with the visible life span. Multivariate cluster analysis was conducted on the reentry parameters and yielded six virus clusters classifications. The high impact viruses, 43 of the 230, are identified and further grouped.
Information Technology, the Good and Modernity
Authors: Wong Pak-Hang
Published: May 2011

In Information and Computer Ethics (ICE), and, in fact, in the normative and evaluative research of Information Technology (IT) in general, analyses of the prudential values of IT are often neglected by the researchers. Yet, these analyses contain important insights for answering normative questions about people’s well-being. In this paper, I urge researchers in ICE to take these analyses of IT seriously. A serious study of these analyses will broaden the scope of ICE. But, what are these analyses? I will distinguish the analyses of the prudential values of IT from other types of normative and evaluative analysis of IT by noting their unique guiding ideal, i.e. the Well-being. Then, I will explain why these analyses are not taken seriously by researchers in ICE, and argue why they should not be neglected. After that, I will outline a framework to analyse and evaluate these analyses, and I will apply the framework to analyse and evaluate an actual prudential analysis, i.e. Nicholas Carr’s “Is Google Making Us Stupid”. Finally, I will briefly conclude this paper by outlining the limits of the framework proposed in this paper, and then to identify the further research that that to be done.
Computational Space, Time and Quantum Mechanics
Authors: Nicolaidis Michael
Published: May 2011

We start this chapter by introducing an ultimate limit of knowledge: as observers that are part of the universe we have no access on information concerning the fundamental nature of the elementary entities (particles) composing the universe but only on information concerning their behaviour. Then, we use this limit to develop a vision of the universe in which the behaviour of particles is the result of a computation-like process (not in the restricted sense of Turing machine) performed by meta-objects and in which space and time are also engendered by this computation. In this vision, the structure of space-time (e.g. Galilean, Lorentzian, …) is determined by the form of the laws of interactions, important philosophical questions related with the space-time structure of special relativity are resolved, the contradiction between the non-locality of quantum systems and the reversal of the temporal order of events (encountered in special relativity when we change inertial frames) is conciliated, and the “paradoxes” related with the “strange” behaviour of quantum systems (non-determinism, quantum superposition, non-locality) are resolved.
Infrastructure Sustainability
Authors: Shih Hoi Wai , Thambiratnam David , Chan Tommy
Published: May 2011

Assessing the structural health state of urban infrastructure is crucial in terms of infrastructure sustainability. This chapter uses dynamic computer simulation techniques to apply a procedure using vibration-based methods for damage assessment in multiple-girder composite bridges. In addition to changes in natural frequencies, this multi-criteria procedure incorporates two methods, namely, the modal flexibility and the modal strain energy method. Using the numerically simulated modal data obtained through finite element analysis software, algorithms based on modal flexibility and modal strain energy change, before and after damage, are obtained and used as the indices for the assessment of structural health state. The feasibility and capability of the approach is demonstrated through numerical studies of a proposed structure with six damage scenarios. It is concluded that the modal strain energy method is capable of application to multiple-girder composite bridges, as evidenced through the example treated in this chapter.
3D Mesh Model Coding
Authors: Li Zhen
Published: May 2011

Application of 3D mesh model coding is first presented in this chapter. We then survey the typical existing algorithms in the area of compression of static and dynamic 3D meshes. In an introductory sub-section we introduce basic concepts of 3D mesh models, including data representations, model formats, data acquisitions and 3D display technologies. Furthermore, we introduce several typical 3D mesh formats and give an overview to coding principles of mesh compression algorithms in general, followed by describing the quantitative measures for 3D mesh compression. Then we describe some typical and state-of-the-art algorithms in 3D mesh compression. Compression and streaming of gigantic 3D models are specially introduced. At last, the MPEG4 3D mesh model coding standard is briefed. We conclude this chapter with a discussion providing an overall picture of developments in the mesh coding area and pointing out directions for future research.
Bitrate Adaptation of Scalable Bitstreams in a UMTS Environment
Authors: Tizon Nicolas , Pesquet-Popescu Béatrice
Published: May 2011

In this chapter, we propose a complete streaming framework for a wireless, in particular a 3G/UMTS, network environment. We describe choices one can make in terms of network architecture and then focus on the input parameters used to evaluate network conditions and to perform the adaptation. A particular attention is dedicated to the protocol information one can exploit in order to infer the channel state. In addition, each implementation choice is a compromise between the industrial feasibility and the adaptation efficiency.
Carbon Emissions Management Software (CEMS)
Authors: Philipson Graeme , Foster Pete , Brand John
Published: May 2011

Carbon Emission Management Software (CEMS) is a new category of software that helps organizations manage and report on their carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. These measurements are now becoming a legal requirements for many organizations in many countries. The Kyoto Protocol was the first real international attempt to formalize the measurement, monitoring and mitigation of GHG emissions. The recent Copenhagen summit was an attempt to take the agreement further. Many countries, including the United Kingdom, Australia and most of Western Europe, now have legislation based on the GHG Protocol which mandates the reporting of carbon emissions. CEMS products have been developed largely in response to these legally binding requirements.This chapter looks at the evolution of CEMS, and how and why the products are used. It provides a CEMS taxonomy and looks at the main selection and implementation issues.