196,245 research outputs found
A Design Science Research Approach to Smart and Collaborative Urban Supply Networks
Urban supply networks are facing increasing demands and challenges and thus constitute a relevant field for research and practical development. Supply chain management holds enormous potential and relevance for society and everyday life as the flow of goods and information are important economic functions. Being a heterogeneous field, the literature base of supply chain management research is difficult to manage and navigate. Disruptive digital technologies and the implementation of cross-network information analysis and sharing drive the need for new organisational and technological approaches. Practical issues are manifold and include mega trends such as digital transformation, urbanisation, and environmental awareness.
A promising approach to solving these problems is the realisation of smart and collaborative supply networks. The growth of artificial intelligence applications in recent years has led to a wide range of applications in a variety of domains. However, the potential of artificial intelligence utilisation in supply chain management has not yet been fully exploited. Similarly, value creation increasingly takes place in networked value creation cycles that have become continuously more collaborative, complex, and dynamic as interactions in business processes involving information technologies have become more intense.
Following a design science research approach this cumulative thesis comprises the development and discussion of four artefacts for the analysis and advancement of smart and collaborative urban supply networks. This thesis aims to highlight the potential of artificial intelligence-based supply networks, to advance data-driven inter-organisational collaboration, and to improve last mile supply network sustainability. Based on thorough machine learning and systematic literature reviews, reference and system dynamics modelling, simulation, and qualitative empirical research, the artefacts provide a valuable contribution to research and practice
Knowledge-based System to Support Architectural Design. Intelligent objects, project net-constraints, collaborative work
The architectural design business is marked by a progressive increase in operators all cooperating towards the realization of building structures and complex infrastructures (Jenckes, 1997). This type of design implies the simulta-neous activity of specialists in different fields, often working a considerable dis-tance apart, on increasingly distributed design studies. Collaborative Architectural Design comprises a vast field of studies that em-braces also these sectors and problems. To mention but a few: communication among operators in the building and design sector; design process system logic architecture; conceptual structure of the building organism; building component representation; conflict identification and management; sharing of knowledge; and also, user interface; global evaluation of solutions adopted; IT definition of objects; inter-object communication (in the IT sense). The point of view of the research is that of the designers of the architectural arte-fact (Simon, 1996); its focus consists of the relations among the various design operators and among the latter and the information exchanged: the Building Objects. Its primary research goal is thus the conceptual structure of the building organ-ism for the purpose of managing conflicts and developing possible methods of resolving them
Towards collaborative learning via shared artefacts over the Grid
The Web is the most pervasive collaborative technology in widespread use today; and its use to support
eLearning has been highly successful. There are many web-based Virtual Learning Environments such as
WebCT, FirstClass, and BlackBoard as well as associated web-based Managed Learning Environments. In
the future, the Grid promises to provide an extremely powerful infrastructure allowing both learners and
teachers to collaborate in various learning contexts and to share learning materials, learning processes,
learning systems, and experiences. This position paper addresses the role of support for sharing artefacts
in distributed systems such as the Grid. An analogy is made between collaborative software development
and collaborative learning with the goal of gaining insights into the requisite support for artefact sharing
within the eLearning community
Towards a business-IT alignment maturity model for collaborative networked organizations
Aligning business and IT in networked organizations is a complex endeavor because in such settings, business-IT alignment is driven by economic processes instead of by centralized decision-making processes. In order to facilitate managing business-IT alignment in networked organizations, we need a maturity model that allows collaborating organizations to assess the current state of alignment and take appropriate action to improve it where needed. In this paper we propose the first version of such a model, which we derive from various alignment models and theories
Making visible the invisible through the analysis of acknowledgements in the humanities
Purpose: Science is subject to a normative structure that includes how the
contributions and interactions between scientists are rewarded. Authorship and
citations have been the key elements within the reward system of science,
whereas acknowledgements, despite being a well-established element in scholarly
communication, have not received the same attention. This paper aims to put
forward the bearing of acknowledgements in the humanities to bring to the
foreground contributions and interactions that, otherwise, would remain
invisible through traditional indicators of research performance.
Design/methodology/approach: The study provides a comprehensive framework to
understanding acknowledgements as part of the reward system with a special
focus on its value in the humanities as a reflection of intellectual
indebtedness. The distinctive features of research in the humanities are
outlined and the role of acknowledgements as a source of contributorship
information is reviewed to support these assumptions.
Findings: Peer interactive communication is the prevailing support thanked in
the acknowledgements of humanities, so the notion of acknowledgements as
super-citations can make special sense in this area. Since single-authored
papers still predominate as publishing pattern in this domain, the study of
acknowledgements might help to understand social interactions and intellectual
influences that lie behind a piece of research and are not visible through
authorship.
Originality/value: Previous works have proposed and explored the prevailing
acknowledgement types by domain. This paper focuses on the humanities to show
the role of acknowledgements within the reward system and highlight publication
patterns and inherent research features which make acknowledgements
particularly interesting in the area as reflection of the socio-cognitive
structure of research.Comment: 14 page
A study of BIM collaboration requirements and available features in existing model collaboration systems
Established collaboration practices in the construction industry are document centric and are challenged by the introduction of Building Information Modelling (BIM). Document management collaboration systems (e.g. Extranets) have significantly improved the document collaboration in recent years; however their capabilities for model collaboration are limited and do not support the complex requirements of BIM collaboration. The construction industry is responding to this situation by adopting emerging model collaboration systems (MCS), such as model servers, with the ability to exploit and reuse information directly from the models to extend the current intra-disciplinary collaboration towards integrated multi-disciplinary collaboration on models. The functions of existing MCSs have evolved from the manufacturing industry and there is no concrete study on how these functions correspond to the requirements of the construction industry, especially with BIM requirements. This research has conducted focus group sessions with major industry disciplines to explore the user requirements for BIM collaboration. The research results have been used to categorise and express the features of existing MCS which are then analysed in selected MCS from a user’s perspective. The potential of MCS and the match or gap in user requirements and available model collaboration features is discussed. This study concludes that model collaborative solutions for construction industry users are available in different capacities; however a comprehensive custom built solution is yet to be realized. The research results are useful for construction industry professionals, software developers and researchers involved in exploring collaborative solutions for the construction industry
An Architecture for Integrated Intelligence in Urban Management using Cloud Computing
With the emergence of new methodologies and technologies it has now become
possible to manage large amounts of environmental sensing data and apply new
integrated computing models to acquire information intelligence. This paper
advocates the application of cloud capacity to support the information,
communication and decision making needs of a wide variety of stakeholders in
the complex business of the management of urban and regional development. The
complexity lies in the interactions and impacts embodied in the concept of the
urban-ecosystem at various governance levels. This highlights the need for more
effective integrated environmental management systems. This paper offers a
user-orientated approach based on requirements for an effective management of
the urban-ecosystem and the potential contributions that can be supported by
the cloud computing community. Furthermore, the commonality of the influence of
the drivers of change at the urban level offers the opportunity for the cloud
computing community to develop generic solutions that can serve the needs of
hundreds of cities from Europe and indeed globally.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figure
The contribution of data mining to information science
The information explosion is a serious challenge for current information institutions. On the other hand, data mining, which is the search for valuable information in large volumes of data, is one of the solutions to face this challenge. In the past several years, data mining has made a significant contribution to the field of information science. This paper examines the impact of data mining by reviewing existing applications, including personalized environments, electronic commerce, and search engines. For these three types of application, how data mining can enhance their functions is discussed. The reader of this paper is expected to get an overview of the state of the art research associated with these applications. Furthermore, we identify the limitations of current work and raise several directions for future research
Specifications and Development of Interoperability Solution dedicated to Multiple Expertise Collaboration in a Design Framework
This paper describes the specifications of an interoperability platform based on the PPO (Product Process Organization) model developed by the French community IPPOP in the context of collaborative and innovative design. By using PPO model as a reference, this work aims to connect together heterogonous tools used by experts easing data and information exchanges. After underlining the growing needs of collaborative design process, this paper focuses on interoperability concept by describing current solutions and their limits. Then a solution based on the flexibility of the PPO model adapted to the philosophy of interoperability is proposed. To illustrate these concepts, several examples are more particularly described (robustness analysis, CAD and Product Lifecycle Management systems connections)
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