Assembling Algorithmic Decision-Making under Uncertainty: The Case of \u27Edge Cases\u27 in an Open Data Environment

Algorithmic decision-making is rapidly evolving as a source of data-driven competitive advantage with important implications for analytical practices in multiple settings. Despite the ambitions for algorithmic and intelligent technologies, however, the requirement for quality data input to the algorithm poses a significant challenge for its actual adoption. The trend towards open data might bring additional challenges such as strategic gaming and distortion of meaning. To address this problem, we draw on a two-year long qualitative case study of a firm in international maritime trade to understand the role of uncertainty associated with open data upon the uptake of a novel algorithm. We combine an uncertainty and assemblage perspective to unpack the arrangements by which the organization configures relations of humans and machine to mitigate this problem. We highlight the phenomenon of edge cases as a key challenge for automation and propose that an assemblage of augmentation and automation allows a dynamic arrangement that support the introduction and organization of algorithmic decision-making under uncertainty

A Framework for Exploiting Internet of Things for Context-Aware Trust-based Personalized Services

In the last years, we have witnessed the introduction of Internet of Things as an integral part of the Internet with billions of interconnected and addressable everyday objects. On the one hand, these objects generate massive volume of data that can be exploited to gain useful insights into our day-to-day needs. On the other hand, context-aware recommender systems (CARSs) are intelligent systems that assist users to make service consumption choices that satisfy their preferences based on their contextual situations. However, one of the major challenges in developing CARSs is the lack of functionality providing dynamic and reliable context information required by the recommendation decision process based on the objects that users interact with in their environments. Thus, contextual information obtained from IoT objects and other sources can be exploited to build CARSs that satisfy users’ preferences, improve quality of experience and recommendation accuracy. This article describes various components of a conceptual IoT based framework for context-aware personalized recommendations. The framework addresses the weakness whereby CARSs rely on static and limited contextual information from user’s mobile phone, by providing additional components for reliable and dynamic contextual information, using IoT context sources. The core of the framework consists of context recognition and reasoning management, dynamic user profile model incorporating trust to improve accuracy of context-aware personalized recommendations. Experimental evaluations show that incorporating context and trust in personalized recommendations can improve its accuracy

RATB Multi-modal sensor network

Water management is an important part of monitoring the natural environment and includes monitoring water quality of both coastal and inland marine locations. This covers the detection of pollution and monitoring the development of harmful algal blooms as well as coastal features and wave patterns. For many years water managers relied on field measurements for coastal monitoring and water quality evaluation. This type of sampling is quite limited on both temporal and spatial scales and is ineffective for capturing dynamic marine events, essential for increased knowledge and better decision making. It also involves costly, time and labour-intensive on-site sampling and data collection. The introduction of new policies such as the EU Water Framework Directive has increased pressure on governments to adopt new methods for continuous monitoring of all water bodies. In recent years, the use of in-situ wireless sensor networks (WSNs) for marine environmental monitoring has been developing to allow continuous real-time monitoring of the marine environment at greater temporal and spatial resolutions. WSNs have brought about great advantages and increased opportunities for environmental monitoring. The WSN concept envisages a world of ubiquitous sensing through large scale deployments of self-sustaining WSNs linked to digital communications, continuously monitoring our environment and detecting and reporting changes in its quality. However there are still several challenges remaining in the area of in-situ wireless sensor networks in order to realise this vision. Among these is the issue of data reliability and the need for a sensor network that adapts to changes in the availability and reliability of its own sensors, as it monitors an already changing environment. We are developing a reputation and trust based event detection system for environmental monitoring which incorporates alternative sensing modalities such as visual sensors (e.g. digital cameras and satellite sensing) and context information alongside an in-situ WSN. This can help to overcome some of the availability and reliability issues and essentially leads to a smarter, and more reliable event detection system for environmental monitoring

The chaotic nature of healthcare information systems: The need for transdisciplinary collaboration

Copyright @ 2013 EMCIS.This paper demonstrates one of the challenges of the healthcare information systems development, namely the chaotic nature of healthcare systems. Although the reliable evidence demonstrating the positive effects of health information systems on safety and quality remains inconclusive (a growing body of research revealing the unintended consequences and potentially error producing effects of health information systems’ implementation. Different arguments from the literature concerning the chaotic nature of healthcare, including but not limited to the nature of patients and disease have been presented. The requirements of new ways of systems design and the need for transdisciplinary dynamic teams within the requirements engineering phase as a start has been discussed. These arguments have been investigated in the context of an exploratory case addressing one of the advanced oncology centres in the US. This paper concludes that there is an important need to rethink healthcare information systems development method, which has to be in a dynamic ongoing manner for some major issues

Challenges to the Integration of Renewable Resources at High System Penetration

Successfully integrating renewable resources into the electric grid at penetration levels to meet a 33 percent Renewables Portfolio Standard for California presents diverse technical and organizational challenges. This report characterizes these challenges by coordinating problems in time and space, balancing electric power on a range of scales from microseconds to decades and from individual homes to hundreds of miles. Crucial research needs were identified related to grid operation, standards and procedures, system design and analysis, and incentives, and public engagement in each scale of analysis. Performing this coordination on more refined scales of time and space independent of any particular technology, is defined as a “smart grid.” “Smart” coordination of the grid should mitigate technical difficulties associated with intermittent and distributed generation, support grid stability and reliability, and maximize benefits to California ratepayers by using the most economic technologies, design and operating approaches

The Internet-of-Things Meets Business Process Management: Mutual Benefits and Challenges

The Internet of Things (IoT) refers to a network of connected devices collecting and exchanging data over the Internet. These things can be artificial or natural, and interact as autonomous agents forming a complex system. In turn, Business Process Management (BPM) was established to analyze, discover, design, implement, execute, monitor and evolve collaborative business processes within and across organizations. While the IoT and BPM have been regarded as separate topics in research and practice, we strongly believe that the management of IoT applications will strongly benefit from BPM concepts, methods and technologies on the one hand; on the other one, the IoT poses challenges that will require enhancements and extensions of the current state-of-the-art in the BPM field. In this paper, we question to what extent these two paradigms can be combined and we discuss the emerging challenges

From big data to big performance – exploring the potential of big data for enhancing public organizations’ performance : a systematic literature review

This article examines the possibilities for increasing organizational performance in the public sector using Big Data by conducting a systematic literature review. It includes the results of 36 scientific articles published between January 2012 and July 2019. The results show a tendency to explain the relationship between big data and organizational performance through the Resource-Based View of the Firm or the Dynamic Capabilities View, arguing that perfor-mance improvement in an organization stems from unique capabilities. In addition, the results show that Big Data performance improvement is influenced by better organizational decision making. Finally, it identifies three dimensions that seem to play a role in this process: the human dimension, the organizational dimension, and the data dimension. From these findings, implications for both practice and theory are derived

Let's mix it up: interviews exploring the practical and technical challenges of interactive mixing in games

Game audio has come a long way since the simple electronic beeps of the early 1970s, when significant technical constraints governed the scope of creative possibilities. Recent years have witnessed technological advancements on an unprecedented scale; no sooner is one technology introduced than it is superseded by another, boasting a range of new refinements and enhanced performance