Implementing imperfect information in fuzzy databases

Information in real-world applications is often vague, imprecise and uncertain. Ignoring the inherent imperfect nature of real-world will undoubtedly introduce some deformation of human perception of real-world and may eliminate several substantial information, which may be very useful in several data-intensive applications. In database context, several fuzzy database models have been proposed. In these works, fuzziness is introduced at different levels. Common to all these proposals is the support of fuzziness at the attribute level. This paper proposes first a rich set of data types devoted to model the different kinds of imperfect information. The paper then proposes a formal approach to implement these data types. The proposed approach was implemented within a relational object database model but it is generic enough to be incorporated into other database models.ou

A Policy Development Perspective on Drinking Water Policy

This paper seeks to address the lack of knowledge in the water industry of how policy development can be understood to have shaped the development and application of European Union (EU) drinking water policy. In particular, the paper develops a comparative understanding of how policy development can be viewed as having affected the development and application of the Drinking Water Directive (80/778/EEC) in England/Wales and the Republic of Ireland. As a result of this focus, the paper explores policy development issues relating to conflicting interests, invalid causal theories, political symbolism, lack of attention to detail by policy makers, and the allocation of duties and resources. It is subsequently established that consideration of these issues is useful in fostering a focused understanding of how policy development may have affected policy application. Despite the significant changes which took place with regard to the development of the current Drinking Water Directive (98/883/EC), the paper concludes by arguing that greater attention should be accorded the conflicting interests and abilities of Member States during the development of EU water policy, particularly if attempts are to be made to identify measures targeted at improving the application of EU water policy in a diverse political and economic union of member states.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Evaluating the impact of policy formation on implementation: the case of the Drinking Water Directive (80/778/EEC)

Acknowledging that polices are rarely made in a rational manner does not prevent the researcher from wanting to understand why particular policy responses were constructed the way they were, and how this can impact upon implementation (Winter, 2003). This paper explores the suitability of four hypotheses developed by Winter (2003) to explain the impact of the policy formation stage on the implementation of public policy. The Drinking Water Directive (80/778/EEC) and its implementation in England/Wales and the Republic of Ireland provide the background for analysis. It is concluded that the policy formation stage of the Directive did contribute to the failures and delays of implementation. In particular, failures of implementation are attributed to conflict, invalid causal theories, political symbolism, and poor attention by policy makers.Peer reviewe

Organizing as Improvisations (Methodological Temptations of Social Constructivism)

Academic communities in social sciences are still dominated byneo-positivist paradigm, but communities of practice developing socialconstructivism have started to redress paradigmatic imbalances.According to the latter man-made organizational reality is processualand saturated with sensemaking (Weick). Social constructivistssucceeded in reconstructing complex organizational disasters andcontributed to organizational innovation and change (for instance inthe wake of ICT challenges). They belong to postmodernist critics ofmodernity's failure to regulate social development and contribute to abetter understanding of organizing (e.g. implementing a new technologyor managing knowledge production) as patchworking and improvising. Inspite of discriminating practices, they survive in academiccommunities.critical theory;managerialism;improvisation;relativism;social constructivism

Managing Vagueness with Fuzzy in Hierarchical Big Data:INNS Conference on Big Data 2015 Program San Francisco, CA, USA 8-10 August 2015

AbstractOut of the web of linked open data, comes a sense of networked “Big Data.” This large scale interconnected data is hierarchical, and often messy and full of subjective bias particularly when mass collaboration is concerned (e.g. wikipedia). In this paper we apply fuzzy set theory, specifically the X-μ approach which is shown to be more efficient than a standard fuzzy approach, to attributes within linked data. We look at hierarchical structures, using an example from the films subset of the DBpedia data repository. The hierarchical nature of film categories lends itself well to our application, and we apply fuzzy models to handle the vagueness in attributes such as film length, film budget, and box office takings

Metadata Augmentation for Semantic- and Context- Based Retrieval of Digital Cultural Objects

Cultural objects are increasingly stored and generated in digital form, yet effective methods for their indexing and retrieval still remain an open area of research. The main problem arises from the disconnection between the content-based indexing approach used by computer scientists and the description-based approach used by information scientists. There is also a lack of representational schemes that allow the alignment of the semantics and context with keywords and low-level features that can be automatically extracted from the content of these cultural objects. This paper presents an integrated approach to address these problems, taking advantage of both computer science and information science approaches. The focus is on the rationale and conceptual design of the system and its various components. In particular, we discuss techniques for augmenting commonly used metadata with visual features and domain knowledge to generate high-level abstract metadata which in turn can be used for semantic and context-based indexing and retrieval. We use a sample collection of Vietnamese traditional woodcuts to demonstrate the usefulness of this approach