163,524 research outputs found

    Valuing flexibility in the migration to flexible-grid networks

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    Increasing network demand is expected to put pressure on the available capacity in core networks. Flexible optical networking can now be installed to increase network capacity in light of future traffic demands. However, this technology is still in its infancy and might lack the full functionality that may appear within a few years. When replacing core network equipment, it is therefore important to make the right investment decision between upgrading toward flexible-grid or fixed-grid equipment. This paper researches various installation options using a techno-economic analysis, extended with real option insights, showing the impact of uncertainty and flexibility on the investment decision. By valuing the different options, a correct investment decision can be made

    Designing Robots for Care: Care Centered Value-Sensitive Design

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    The prospective robots in healthcare intended to be included within the conclave of the nurse-patient relationship—what I refer to as care robots—require rigorous ethical reflection to ensure their design and introduction do not impede the promotion of values and the dignity of patients at such a vulnerable and sensitive time in their lives. The ethical evaluation of care robots requires insight into the values at stake in the healthcare tradition. What’s more, given the stage of their development and lack of standards provided by the International Organization for Standardization to guide their development, ethics ought to be included into the design process of such robots. The manner in which this may be accomplished, as presented here, uses the blueprint of the Value-sensitive design approach as a means for creating a framework tailored to care contexts. Using care values as the foundational values to be integrated into a technology and using the elements in care, from the care ethics perspective, as the normative criteria, the resulting approach may be referred to as care centered value-sensitive design. The framework proposed here allows for the ethical evaluation of care robots both retrospectively and prospectively. By evaluating care robots in this way, we may ultimately ask what kind of care we, as a society, want to provide in the futur

    Public Libraries and the Internet 2006

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    Examines the capability of public libraries to provide and sustain public access Internet services and resources that meet community needs, including serving as the first choice for content, resources, services, and technology infrastructure

    Federated and autonomic management of multimedia services

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    Over the years, the Internet has significantly evolved in size and complexity. Additionally, the modern multimedia services it offers have considerably more stringent Quality of Service (QoS) requirements than traditional static services. These factors contribute to the ever-increasing complexity and cost to manage the Internet and its services. In the dissertation, a novel network management architecture is proposed to overcome these problems. It supports QoS-guarantees of multimedia services across the Internet, by setting up end-to-end network federations. A network federation is defined as a persistent cross-organizational agreement that enables the cooperating networks to share capabilities. Additionally, the architecture incorporates aspects from autonomic network management to tackle the ever-growing management complexity of modern communications networks. Specifically, a hierarchical approach is presented, which guarantees scalable collaboration of huge amounts of self-governing autonomic management components

    WESTT (Workload, Error, Situational Awareness, Time and Teamwork): An analytical prototyping system for command and control

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    Modern developments in the use of information technology within command and control allow unprecedented scope for flexibility in the way teams deal with tasks. These developments, together with the increased recognition of the importance of knowledge management within teams present difficulties for the analyst in terms of evaluating the impacts of changes to task composition or team membership. In this paper an approach to this problem is presented that represents team behaviour in terms of three linked networks (representing task, social network structure and knowledge) within the integrative WESTT software tool. In addition, by automating analyses of workload and error based on the same data that generate the networks, WESTT allows the user to engage in the process of rapid and iterative “analytical prototyping”. For purposes of illustration an example of the use of this technique with regard to a simple tactical vignette is presented

    Real Options Methodology Applied to the ICT Sector: A Survey

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    This survey focuses on the application of real options methodology to the information and communications technology (ICT) industries. It examines the development of the methodology to areas as diverse as wireless cell site investments to dynamic pricing issues. In addition to aiding the reader in understanding the breadth of the applications, it demonstrates the importance of the topic. It provides a guide to the reader who is interested in exploring the topic in greater depth.Discounted cash flow, economic methodology, information and communications technology (ICT), investment, investment under uncertainty, options, present discounted value, real options, valuations.
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