A Software Product Line Approach to Ontology-based Recommendations in E-Tourism Systems

This study tackles two concerns of developers of Tourism Information Systems (TIS). First is the need for more dependable recommendation services due to the intangible nature of the tourism product where it is impossible for customers to physically evaluate the services on offer prior to practical experience. Second is the need to manage dynamic user requirements in tourism due to the advent of new technologies such as the semantic web and mobile computing such that etourism systems (TIS) can evolve proactively with emerging user needs at minimal time and development cost without performance tradeoffs. However, TIS have very predictable characteristics and are functionally identical in most cases with minimal variations which make them attractive for software product line development. The Software Product Line Engineering (SPLE) paradigm enables the strategic and systematic reuse of common core assets in the development of a family of software products that share some degree of commonality in order to realise a significant improvement in the cost and time of development. Hence, this thesis introduces a novel and systematic approach, called Product Line for Ontology-based Tourism Recommendation (PLONTOREC), a special approach focusing on the creation of variants of TIS products within a product line. PLONTOREC tackles the aforementioned problems in an engineering-like way by hybridizing concepts from ontology engineering and software product line engineering. The approach is a systematic process model consisting of product line management, ontology engineering, domain engineering, and application engineering. The unique feature of PLONTOREC is that it allows common TIS product requirements to be defined, commonalities and differences of content in TIS product variants to be planned and limited in advance using a conceptual model, and variant TIS products to be created according to a construction specification. We demonstrated the novelty in this approach using a case study of product line development of e-tourism systems for three countries in the West-African Region of Africa

Perceiving is Believing. Authentication with Behavioural and Cognitive Factors

Most computer users have experienced login problems such as, forgetting passwords, loosing token cards and authentication dongles, failing that complicated screen pattern once again, as well as, interaction difficulties in usability. Facing the difficulties of non-flexible strong authentication solutions, users tend to react with poor acceptance or to relax the assumed correct use of authentication procedures and devices, rendering the intended security useless. Biometrics can, sort of, solve some of those problems. However, despite the vast research, there is no perfect solution into designing a secure strong authentication procedure, falling into a trade off between intrusiveness, effectiveness, contextual adequacy and security guarantees. Taking advantage of new technology, recent research onmulti-modal, behavioural and cognitive oriented authentication proposals have sought to optimize trade off towards precision and convenience, reducing intrusiveness for the same amount of security. But these solutions also fall short with respect to different scenarios. Users perform currently multiple authentications everyday, through multiple devices, in panoply of different situations, involving different resources and diverse usage contexts, with no "better authentication solution" for all possible purposes. The proposed framework enhances the recent research in user authentication services with a broader view on the problems involving each solution, towards an usable secure authentication methodology combining and exploring the strengths of each method. It will than be used to prototype instances of new dynamic multifactor models (including novel models of behavioural and cognitive biometrics), materializing the PiB (perceiving is believing) authentication. Ultimately we show how the proposed framework can be smoothly integrated in applications and other authentication services and protocols, namely in the context of SSO Authentication Services and OAuth

Applications of Virtual Reality

Information Technology is growing rapidly. With the birth of high-resolution graphics, high-speed computing and user interaction devices Virtual Reality has emerged as a major new technology in the mid 90es, last century. Virtual Reality technology is currently used in a broad range of applications. The best known are games, movies, simulations, therapy. From a manufacturing standpoint, there are some attractive applications including training, education, collaborative work and learning. This book provides an up-to-date discussion of the current research in Virtual Reality and its applications. It describes the current Virtual Reality state-of-the-art and points out many areas where there is still work to be done. We have chosen certain areas to cover in this book, which we believe will have potential significant impact on Virtual Reality and its applications. This book provides a definitive resource for wide variety of people including academicians, designers, developers, educators, engineers, practitioners, researchers, and graduate students

Ubiquitous Computing

The aim of this book is to give a treatment of the actively developed domain of Ubiquitous computing. Originally proposed by Mark D. Weiser, the concept of Ubiquitous computing enables a real-time global sensing, context-aware informational retrieval, multi-modal interaction with the user and enhanced visualization capabilities. In effect, Ubiquitous computing environments give extremely new and futuristic abilities to look at and interact with our habitat at any time and from anywhere. In that domain, researchers are confronted with many foundational, technological and engineering issues which were not known before. Detailed cross-disciplinary coverage of these issues is really needed today for further progress and widening of application range. This book collects twelve original works of researchers from eleven countries, which are clustered into four sections: Foundations, Security and Privacy, Integration and Middleware, Practical Applications

24th International Conference on Information Modelling and Knowledge Bases

In the last three decades information modelling and knowledge bases have become essentially important subjects not only in academic communities related to information systems and computer science but also in the business area where information technology is applied. The series of European – Japanese Conference on Information Modelling and Knowledge Bases (EJC) originally started as a co-operation initiative between Japan and Finland in 1982. The practical operations were then organised by professor Ohsuga in Japan and professors Hannu Kangassalo and Hannu Jaakkola in Finland (Nordic countries). Geographical scope has expanded to cover Europe and also other countries. Workshop characteristic - discussion, enough time for presentations and limited number of participants (50) / papers (30) - is typical for the conference. Suggested topics include, but are not limited to: 1. Conceptual modelling: Modelling and specification languages; Domain-specific conceptual modelling; Concepts, concept theories and ontologies; Conceptual modelling of large and heterogeneous systems; Conceptual modelling of spatial, temporal and biological data; Methods for developing, validating and communicating conceptual models. 2. Knowledge and information modelling and discovery: Knowledge discovery, knowledge representation and knowledge management; Advanced data mining and analysis methods; Conceptions of knowledge and information; Modelling information requirements; Intelligent information systems; Information recognition and information modelling. 3. Linguistic modelling: Models of HCI; Information delivery to users; Intelligent informal querying; Linguistic foundation of information and knowledge; Fuzzy linguistic models; Philosophical and linguistic foundations of conceptual models. 4. Cross-cultural communication and social computing: Cross-cultural support systems; Integration, evolution and migration of systems; Collaborative societies; Multicultural web-based software systems; Intercultural collaboration and support systems; Social computing, behavioral modeling and prediction. 5. Environmental modelling and engineering: Environmental information systems (architecture); Spatial, temporal and observational information systems; Large-scale environmental systems; Collaborative knowledge base systems; Agent concepts and conceptualisation; Hazard prediction, prevention and steering systems. 6. Multimedia data modelling and systems: Modelling multimedia information and knowledge; Contentbased multimedia data management; Content-based multimedia retrieval; Privacy and context enhancing technologies; Semantics and pragmatics of multimedia data; Metadata for multimedia information systems. Overall we received 56 submissions. After careful evaluation, 16 papers have been selected as long paper, 17 papers as short papers, 5 papers as position papers, and 3 papers for presentation of perspective challenges. We thank all colleagues for their support of this issue of the EJC conference, especially the program committee, the organising committee, and the programme coordination team. The long and the short papers presented in the conference are revised after the conference and published in the Series of “Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence” by IOS Press (Amsterdam). The books “Information Modelling and Knowledge Bases” are edited by the Editing Committee of the conference. We believe that the conference will be productive and fruitful in the advance of research and application of information modelling and knowledge bases. Bernhard Thalheim Hannu Jaakkola Yasushi Kiyok

Intensional Cyberforensics

This work focuses on the application of intensional logic to cyberforensic analysis and its benefits and difficulties are compared with the finite-state-automata approach. This work extends the use of the intensional programming paradigm to the modeling and implementation of a cyberforensics investigation process with backtracing of event reconstruction, in which evidence is modeled by multidimensional hierarchical contexts, and proofs or disproofs of claims are undertaken in an eductive manner of evaluation. This approach is a practical, context-aware improvement over the finite state automata (FSA) approach we have seen in previous work. As a base implementation language model, we use in this approach a new dialect of the Lucid programming language, called Forensic Lucid, and we focus on defining hierarchical contexts based on intensional logic for the distributed evaluation of cyberforensic expressions. We also augment the work with credibility factors surrounding digital evidence and witness accounts, which have not been previously modeled. The Forensic Lucid programming language, used for this intensional cyberforensic analysis, formally presented through its syntax and operational semantics. In large part, the language is based on its predecessor and codecessor Lucid dialects, such as GIPL, Indexical Lucid, Lucx, Objective Lucid, and JOOIP bound by the underlying intensional programming paradigm.Comment: 412 pages, 94 figures, 18 tables, 19 algorithms and listings; PhD thesis; v2 corrects some typos and refs; also available on Spectrum at http://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/977460

Methodological approaches and techniques for designing ontologies in information systems requirements engineering

Programa doutoral em Information Systems and TechnologyThe way we interact with the world around us is changing as new challenges arise, embracing innovative business models, rethinking the organization and processes to maximize results, and evolving change management. Currently, and considering the projects executed, the methodologies used do not fully respond to the companies' needs. On the one hand, organizations are not familiar with the languages used in Information Systems, and on the other hand, they are often unable to validate requirements or business models. These are some of the difficulties encountered that lead us to think about formulating a new approach. Thus, the state of the art presented in this paper includes a study of the models involved in the software development process, where traditional methods and the rivalry of agile methods are present. In addition, a survey is made about Ontologies and what methods exist to conceive, transform, and represent them. Thus, after analyzing some of the various possibilities currently available, we began the process of evolving a method and developing an approach that would allow us to design ontologies. The method we evolved and adapted will allow us to derive terminologies from a specific domain, aggregating them in order to facilitate the construction of a catalog of terminologies. Next, the definition of an approach to designing ontologies will allow the construction of a domain-specific ontology. This approach allows in the first instance to integrate and store the data from different information systems of a given organization. In a second instance, the rules for mapping and building the ontology database are defined. Finally, a technological architecture is also proposed that will allow the mapping of an ontology through the construction of complex networks, allowing mapping and relating terminologies. This doctoral work encompasses numerous Research & Development (R&D) projects belonging to different domains such as Software Industry, Textile Industry, Robotic Industry and Smart Cities. Finally, a critical and descriptive analysis of the work done is performed, and we also point out perspectives for possible future work.A forma como interagimos com o mundo à nossa volta está a mudar à medida que novos desafios surgem, abraçando modelos empresariais inovadores, repensando a organização e os processos para maximizar os resultados, e evoluindo a gestão da mudança. Atualmente, e considerando os projetos executados, as metodologias utilizadas não respondem na totalidade às necessidades das empresas. Por um lado, as organizações não estão familiarizadas com as linguagens utilizadas nos Sistemas de Informação, por outro lado, são muitas vezes incapazes de validar requisitos ou modelos de negócio. Estas são algumas das dificuldades encontradas que nos levam a pensar na formulação de uma nova abordagem. Assim, o estado da arte apresentado neste documento inclui um estudo dos modelos envolvidos no processo de desenvolvimento de software, onde os métodos tradicionais e a rivalidade de métodos ágeis estão presentes. Além disso, é efetuado um levantamento sobre Ontologias e quais os métodos existentes para as conceber, transformar e representar. Assim, e após analisarmos algumas das várias possibilidades atualmente disponíveis, iniciou-se o processo de evolução de um método e desenvolvimento de uma abordagem que nos permitisse conceber ontologias. O método que evoluímos e adaptamos permitirá derivar terminologias de um domínio específico, agregando-as de forma a facilitar a construção de um catálogo de terminologias. Em seguida, a definição de uma abordagem para conceber ontologias permitirá a construção de uma ontologia de um domínio específico. Esta abordagem permite em primeira instância, integrar e armazenar os dados de diferentes sistemas de informação de uma determinada organização. Num segundo momento, são definidas as regras para o mapeamento e construção da base de dados ontológica. Finalmente, é também proposta uma arquitetura tecnológica que permitirá efetuar o mapeamento de uma ontologia através da construção de redes complexas, permitindo mapear e relacionar terminologias. Este trabalho de doutoramento engloba inúmeros projetos de Investigação & Desenvolvimento (I&D) pertencentes a diferentes domínios como por exemplo Indústria de Software, Indústria Têxtil, Indústria Robótica e Smart Cities. Finalmente, é realizada uma análise critica e descritiva do trabalho realizado, sendo que apontamos ainda perspetivas de possíveis trabalhos futuros