1,000 research outputs found
LIPIcs, Volume 251, ITCS 2023, Complete Volume
LIPIcs, Volume 251, ITCS 2023, Complete Volum
Mapping Black Europe: Monuments, Markers, Memories
Black communities have been making major contributions to Europe's social and cultural life and landscapes for centuries. However, their achievements largely remain unrecognized by the dominant societies, as their perspectives are excluded from traditional modes of marking public memory. For the first time in European history, leading Black scholars and activists examine this issue - with first-hand knowledge of the eight European capitals in which they live. Highlighting existing monuments, memorials, and urban markers they discuss collective narratives, outline community action, and introduce people and places relevant to Black European history, which continues to be obscured today
Advances and Applications of DSmT for Information Fusion. Collected Works, Volume 5
This fifth volume on Advances and Applications of DSmT for Information Fusion collects theoretical and applied contributions of researchers working in different fields of applications and in mathematics, and is available in open-access. The collected contributions of this volume have either been published or presented after disseminating the fourth volume in 2015 in international conferences, seminars, workshops and journals, or they are new. The contributions of each part of this volume are chronologically ordered.
First Part of this book presents some theoretical advances on DSmT, dealing mainly with modified Proportional Conflict Redistribution Rules (PCR) of combination with degree of intersection, coarsening techniques, interval calculus for PCR thanks to set inversion via interval analysis (SIVIA), rough set classifiers, canonical decomposition of dichotomous belief functions, fast PCR fusion, fast inter-criteria analysis with PCR, and improved PCR5 and PCR6 rules preserving the (quasi-)neutrality of (quasi-)vacuous belief assignment in the fusion of sources of evidence with their Matlab codes.
Because more applications of DSmT have emerged in the past years since the apparition of the fourth book of DSmT in 2015, the second part of this volume is about selected applications of DSmT mainly in building change detection, object recognition, quality of data association in tracking, perception in robotics, risk assessment for torrent protection and multi-criteria decision-making, multi-modal image fusion, coarsening techniques, recommender system, levee characterization and assessment, human heading perception, trust assessment, robotics, biometrics, failure detection, GPS systems, inter-criteria analysis, group decision, human activity recognition, storm prediction, data association for autonomous vehicles, identification of maritime vessels, fusion of support vector machines (SVM), Silx-Furtif RUST code library for information fusion including PCR rules, and network for ship classification.
Finally, the third part presents interesting contributions related to belief functions in general published or presented along the years since 2015. These contributions are related with decision-making under uncertainty, belief approximations, probability transformations, new distances between belief functions, non-classical multi-criteria decision-making problems with belief functions, generalization of Bayes theorem, image processing, data association, entropy and cross-entropy measures, fuzzy evidence numbers, negator of belief mass, human activity recognition, information fusion for breast cancer therapy, imbalanced data classification, and hybrid techniques mixing deep learning with belief functions as well
A robotic platform for precision agriculture and applications
Agricultural techniques have been improved over the centuries to match with the growing demand of an increase in global population. Farming applications are facing new challenges to satisfy global needs and the recent technology advancements in terms of robotic platforms can be exploited.
As the orchard management is one of the most challenging applications because of its tree structure and the required interaction with the environment, it was targeted also by the University of Bologna research group to provide a customized solution addressing new concept for agricultural vehicles.
The result of this research has blossomed into a new lightweight tracked vehicle capable of performing autonomous navigation both in the open-filed scenario and while travelling inside orchards for what has been called in-row navigation. The mechanical design concept, together with customized software implementation has been detailed to highlight the strengths of the platform and some further improvements envisioned to improve the overall performances.
Static stability testing has proved that the vehicle can withstand steep slopes scenarios. Some improvements have also been investigated to refine the estimation of the slippage that occurs during turning maneuvers and that is typical of skid-steering tracked vehicles.
The software architecture has been implemented using the Robot Operating System (ROS) framework, so to exploit community available packages related to common and basic functions, such as sensor interfaces, while allowing dedicated custom implementation of the navigation algorithm developed.
Real-world testing inside the university’s experimental orchards have proven the robustness and stability of the solution with more than 800 hours of fieldwork.
The vehicle has also enabled a wide range of autonomous tasks such as spraying, mowing, and on-the-field data collection capabilities. The latter can be exploited to automatically estimate relevant orchard properties such as fruit counting and sizing, canopy properties estimation, and autonomous fruit harvesting with post-harvesting estimations.Le tecniche agricole sono state migliorate nel corso dei secoli per soddisfare la crescente domanda di aumento della popolazione mondiale. I recenti progressi tecnologici in termini di piattaforme robotiche possono essere sfruttati in questo contesto.
Poiché la gestione del frutteto è una delle applicazioni più impegnative, a causa della sua struttura arborea e della necessaria interazione con l'ambiente, è stata oggetto di ricerca per fornire una soluzione personalizzata che sviluppi un nuovo concetto di veicolo agricolo.
Il risultato si è concretizzato in un veicolo cingolato leggero, capace di effettuare una navigazione autonoma sia nello scenario di pieno campo che all'interno dei frutteti (navigazione interfilare). La progettazione meccanica, insieme all'implementazione del software, sono stati dettagliati per evidenziarne i punti di forza, accanto ad alcuni ulteriori miglioramenti previsti per incrementarne le prestazioni complessive.
I test di stabilità statica hanno dimostrato che il veicolo può resistere a ripidi pendii. Sono stati inoltre studiati miglioramenti per affinare la stima dello slittamento che si verifica durante le manovre di svolta, tipico dei veicoli cingolati.
L'architettura software è stata implementata utilizzando il framework Robot Operating System (ROS), in modo da sfruttare i pacchetti disponibili relativi a componenti base, come le interfacce dei sensori, e consentendo al contempo un'implementazione personalizzata degli algoritmi di navigazione sviluppati.
I test in condizioni reali all'interno dei frutteti sperimentali dell'università hanno dimostrato la robustezza e la stabilità della soluzione con oltre 800 ore di lavoro sul campo.
Il veicolo ha permesso di attivare e svolgere un'ampia gamma di attività agricole in maniera autonoma, come l'irrorazione, la falciatura e la raccolta di dati sul campo. Questi ultimi possono essere sfruttati per stimare automaticamente le proprietà più rilevanti del frutteto, come il conteggio e la calibratura dei frutti, la stima delle proprietà della chioma e la raccolta autonoma dei frutti con stime post-raccolta
Play/writing histories: investigating the dramaturgical potential of architectural drawing practices in exploring the hidden histories of built spaces. An architextural study of the Citizens Theatre
This practice research project investigates the dramaturgical potential of architectural drawing techniques and proposes ‘architexting’ as creative methodology for exploring the hidden histories of built spaces. Architexting exploits the relationship between architectural drawing and playwriting as allographic practices, identifying generative territory in their mutual preoccupation with shaping provisional spaces. I suggest that architexting can be used as a tool for a spatial approach to historiography that is organised by site rather than time. In doing so, architexting seeks to reveal and celebrate diachronic communities separated by time but created and connected by the places they share.
This thesis is in three parts. In the first, ‘Project Plan and Methodology,’ I provide an overview of my interdisciplinary approach. In the second, ‘Site Analysis,’ I excavate relevant theoretical fields including architectural theory, dramaturgy, historiography and cultural geography to construct a theoretical framework for architexting. The third section, ‘Portfolio,’ forms the practical output of this project and consists of three architexts: Blueprint, Perspective and Axonometric or How to Build a Place from Memory, each with accompanying critical reflections.
While architexting is a methodology that may be applied to any building, this project specifically investigates the hidden histories of the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow which, in 2018, underwent the most significant redevelopment in its 144-year history. My architexts have been created using material from oral histories and workshops with over sixty adults and young people connected to the Citizens theatre, as well as archival material from relevant collections held by the Scottish Theatre Archives at the University of Glasgow
The mad manifesto
The “mad manifesto” project is a multidisciplinary mediated investigation into the circumstances by which mad (mentally ill, neurodivergent) or disabled (disclosed, undisclosed) students faced far more precarious circumstances with inadequate support models while attending North American universities during the pandemic teaching era (2020-2023).
Using a combination of “emergency remote teaching” archival materials such as national student datasets, universal design for learning (UDL) training models, digital classroom teaching experiments, university budgetary releases, educational technology coursewares, and lived experience expertise, this dissertation carefully retells the story of “accessibility” as it transpired in disabling classroom containers trapped within intentionally underprepared crisis superstructures. Using rhetorical models derived from critical disability studies, mad studies, social work practice, and health humanities, it then suggests radically collaborative UDL teaching practices that may better pre-empt the dynamic needs of dis/abled students whose needs remain direly underserviced.
The manifesto leaves the reader with discrete calls to action that foster more critical performances of intersectionally inclusive UDL classrooms for North American mad students, which it calls “mad-positive” facilitation techniques:
1. Seek to untie the bond that regards the digital divide and access as synonyms.
2. UDL practice requires an environment shift that prioritizes change potential.
3. Advocate against the usage of UDL as a for-all keystone of accessibility.
4. Refuse or reduce the use of technologies whose primary mandate is dataveillance.
5. Remind students and allies that university space is a non-neutral affective container.
6. Operationalize the tracking of student suicides on your home campus.
7. Seek out physical & affectual ways that your campus is harming social capital potential.
8. Revise policies and practices that are ability-adjacent imaginings of access.
9. Eliminate sanist and neuroscientific languaging from how you speak about students.
10. Vigilantly interrogate how “normal” and “belong” are socially constructed.
11. Treat lived experience expertise as a gift, not a resource to mine and to spend.
12. Create non-psychiatric routes of receiving accommodation requests in your classroom.
13. Seek out uncomfortable stories of mad exclusion and consider carceral logic’s role in it.
14. Center madness in inclusive methodologies designed to explicitly resist carceral logics.
15. Create counteraffectual classrooms that anticipate and interrupt kairotic spatial power.
16. Strive to refuse comfort and immediate intelligibility as mandatory classroom presences.
17. Create pathways that empower cozy space understandings of classroom practice.
18. Vector students wherever possible as dynamic ability constellations in assessment
Universität in der Pandemie / L'Université en temps de pandémie
Wie geht die Universität als privilegierter Ort der Wissenschaft mit den Erschütterungen der Covid-19-Pandemie um? Die Beiträger*innen beleuchten die deutsch-französische Forschungslandschaft sowie die Institution Universität während der Covid-19-Pandemie aus interdisziplinärer Sicht und zeigen: Mehr als sonst gerät die Universität ins zentrale Blickfeld gesellschaftlicher Aushandlungen. Das Jahrbuch dokumentiert außerdem das Treffen der Frankreich- und Frankophoniezentren Deutschlands zur 25-Jahr-Feier des Frankreichzentrums der Universität des Saarlandes sowie die französische Gastdozentur 2021 "Theaterarbeit transnational". Rezensionen zu aktuellen wissenschaftlichen Werken aus dem deutsch-französischen Bereich komplettieren den Band
Application of knowledge management principles to support maintenance strategies in healthcare organisations
Healthcare is a vital service that touches people's lives on a daily basis by providing treatment and
resolving patients' health problems through the staff. Human lives are ultimately dependent on the skilled
hands of the staff and those who manage the infrastructure that supports the daily operations of the
service, making it a compelling reason for a dedicated research study. However, the UK healthcare sector
is undergoing rapid changes, driven by rising costs, technological advancements, changing patient
expectations, and increasing pressure to deliver sustainable healthcare. With the global rise in healthcare
challenges, the need for sustainable healthcare delivery has become imperative. Sustainable healthcare
delivery requires the integration of various practices that enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of
healthcare infrastructural assets. One critical area that requires attention is the management of
healthcare facilities.
Healthcare facilitiesis considered one of the core elements in the delivery of effective healthcare services,
as shortcomings in the provision of facilities management (FM) services in hospitals may have much more
drastic negative effects than in any other general forms of buildings. An essential element in healthcare
FM is linked to the relationship between action and knowledge. With a full sense of understanding of
infrastructural assets, it is possible to improve, manage and make buildings suitable to the needs of users
and to ensure the functionality of the structure and processes.
The premise of FM is that an organisation's effectiveness and efficiency are linked to the physical
environment in which it operates and that improving the environment can result in direct benefits in
operational performance. The goal of healthcare FM is to support the achievement of organisational
mission and goals by designing and managing space and infrastructural assets in the best combination of
suitability, efficiency, and cost. In operational terms, performance refers to how well a building
contributes to fulfilling its intended functions.
Therefore, comprehensive deployment of efficient FM approaches is essential for ensuring quality
healthcare provision while positively impacting overall patient experiences. In this regard, incorporating
knowledge management (KM) principles into hospitals' FM processes contributes significantly to ensuring
sustainable healthcare provision and enhancement of patient experiences. Organisations implementing
KM principles are better positioned to navigate the constantly evolving business ecosystem easily.
Furthermore, KM is vital in processes and service improvement, strategic decision-making, and
organisational adaptation and renewal.
In this regard, KM principles can be applied to improve hospital FM, thereby ensuring sustainable
healthcare delivery. Knowledge management assumes that organisations that manage their
organisational and individual knowledge more effectively will be able to cope more successfully with the challenges of the new business ecosystem. There is also the argument that KM plays a crucial role in
improving processes and services, strategic decision-making, and adapting and renewing an organisation.
The goal of KM is to aid action – providing "a knowledge pull" rather than the information overload most
people experience in healthcare FM. Other motivations for seeking better KM in healthcare FM include
patient safety, evidence-based care, and cost efficiency as the dominant drivers. The most evidence exists
for the success of such approaches at knowledge bottlenecks, such as infection prevention and control,
working safely, compliances, automated systems and reminders, and recall based on best practices. The
ability to cultivate, nurture and maximise knowledge at multiple levels and in multiple contexts is one of
the most significant challenges for those responsible for KM. However, despite the potential benefits,
applying KM principles in hospital facilities is still limited. There is a lack of understanding of how KM can
be effectively applied in this context, and few studies have explored the potential challenges and
opportunities associated with implementing KM principles in hospitals facilities for sustainable healthcare
delivery.
This study explores applying KM principles to support maintenance strategies in healthcare organisations.
The study also explores the challenges and opportunities, for healthcare organisations and FM
practitioners, in operationalising a framework which draws the interconnectedness between healthcare.
The study begins by defining healthcare FM and its importance in the healthcare industry. It then discusses
the concept of KM and the different types of knowledge that are relevant in the healthcare FM sector.
The study also examines the challenges that healthcare FM face in managing knowledge and how the
application of KM principles can help to overcome these challenges. The study then explores the different
KM strategies that can be applied in healthcare FM. The KM benefits include improved patient outcomes,
reduced costs, increased efficiency, and enhanced collaboration among healthcare professionals.
Additionally, issues like creating a culture of innovation, technology, and benchmarking are considered.
In addition, a framework that integrates the essential concepts of KM in healthcare FM will be presented
and discussed.
The field of KM is introduced as a complex adaptive system with numerous possibilities and challenges.
In this context, and in consideration of healthcare FM, five objectives have been formulated to achieve
the research aim. As part of the research, a number of objectives will be evaluated, including appraising
the concept of KM and how knowledge is created, stored, transferred, and utilised in healthcare FM,
evaluating the impact of organisational structure on job satisfaction as well as exploring how cultural
differences impact knowledge sharing and performance in healthcare FM organisations.
This study uses a combination of qualitative methods, such as meetings, observations, document analysis
(internal and external), and semi-structured interviews, to discover the subjective experiences of
healthcare FM employees and to understand the phenomenon within a real-world context and attitudes of healthcare FM as the data collection method, using open questions to allow probing where appropriate
and facilitating KM development in the delivery and practice of healthcare FM.
The study describes the research methodology using the theoretical concept of the "research onion". The
qualitative research was conducted in the NHS acute and non-acute hospitals in Northwest England.
Findings from the research study revealed that while the concept of KM has grown significantly in recent
years, KM in healthcare FM has received little or no attention. The target population was fifty (five FM
directors, five academics, five industry experts, ten managers, ten supervisors, five team leaders and ten
operatives). These seven groups were purposively selected as the target population because they play a
crucial role in KM enhancement in healthcare FM. Face-to-face interviews were conducted with all
participants based on their pre-determined availability. Out of the 50-target population, only 25 were
successfully interviewed to the point of saturation. Data collected from the interview were coded and
analysed using NVivo to identify themes and patterns related to KM in healthcare FM.
The study is divided into eight major sections. First, it discusses literature findings regarding healthcare
FM and KM, including underlying trends in FM, KM in general, and KM in healthcare FM. Second, the
research establishes the study's methodology, introducing the five research objectives, questions and
hypothesis. The chapter introduces the literature on methodology elements, including philosophical views
and inquiry strategies. The interview and data analysis look at the feedback from the interviews. Lastly, a
conclusion and recommendation summarise the research objectives and suggest further research.
Overall, this study highlights the importance of KM in healthcare FM and provides insights for healthcare
FM directors, managers, supervisors, academia, researchers and operatives on effectively leveraging
knowledge to improve patient care and organisational effectiveness
The effectiveness of computer-based information systems: definition and measurement
Determining and enhancing the effectiveness of computer-based information systems (1/S) in organisations remains a top priority of managers. This study shows that the essential nature and role of 1/S is changing and that classic views of 1/S effectiveness have become increasingly inappropriate. Drawing on the organisational effectiveness literature, it is argued that user perceptions provide a practical alternative and a conceptually sound basis for defining and measuring 1/S effectiveness. A popular measure - User Information Satisfaction - is examined and empirical studies using this measure are critiqued. This reveal limited theoretical grounding or convergence but a growing emphasis on behavioural theory. Based on prior empirical work by the author and expectancy and motivation theory, a model of 1/S behaviours is offered. The model suggests that fit between the needs of the organisation and the capability of 1/S to satisfy these needs is essential to achieving 1/S effectiveness. Several hypotheses are formulated. The development and validation of a particular measurement instrument is traced. The instrument addresses 37 facets of the overall information systems function and respondents complete perceptual scales tapping the relative importance of these facets and how well each is performed. The instrument is used in a field survey of 1025 managers and 1/S staff in eleven large organisations. Attitudes towards 1/S are found to correlate with perceptions of fit between organisational needs and 1/S capabilities. The survey is complemented by management interviews, document analysis and an assessment of the dynamics of the relevant 1/S groups. Cultural and other features associated with perceived 1/S success are found. It is concluded that perceptions of organisational members are central to the meaning of information systems effectiveness, but that the user information satisfaction construct and purely attitudinal measures are inadequate. Based on the notion of fit, a new definition of 1/S effectiveness is proposed. Guidelines for measurement are presented and it is argued that the instrument used in this study is a satisfactory tool. Specific recommendations for management are made and rich opportunities for future research are identified
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