NoTube – making TV a medium for personalized interaction

In this paper, we introduce NoTube’s vision on deploying semantics in interactive TV context in order to contextualize distributed applications and lift them to a new level of service that provides context-dependent and personalized selection of TV content. Additionally, lifting content consumption from a single-user activity to a community-based experience in a connected multi-device environment is central to the project. Main research questions relate to (1) data integration and enrichment - how to achieve unified and simple access to dynamic, growing and distributed multimedia content of diverse formats? (2) user and context modeling - what is an appropriate framework for context modeling, incorporating task-, domain and device-specific viewpoints? (3) context-aware discovery of resources - how could rather fuzzy matchmaking between potentially infinite contexts and available media resources be achieved? (4) collaborative architecture for TV content personalization - how can the combined information about data, context and user be put at disposal of both content providers and end-users in the view of creating extremely personalized services under controlled privacy and security policies? Thus, with the grand challenge in mind - to put the TV viewer back in the driver's seat – we focus on TV content as a medium for personalized interaction between people based on a service architecture that caters for a variety of content metadata, delivery channels and rendering devices

Towards a generic platform for developing CSCL applications using Grid infrastructure

The goal of this paper is to explore the possibility of using CSCL component-based software under a Grid infrastructure. The merge of these technologies represents an attractive, but probably quite laborious enterprise if we consider not only the benefits but also the barriers that we have to overcome. This work presents an attempt toward this direction by developing a generic platform of CSCL components and discussing the advantages that we could obtain if we adapted it to the Grid. We then propose a means that could make this adjustment possible due to the high degree of genericity that our library component is endowed with by being based on the generic programming paradigm. Finally, an application of our library is proposed both for validating the adequacy of the platform which it is based on and for indicating the possibilities gained by using it under the Grid.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Software X10-UPNP Bridge

IADIS MULTI CONFERENCE ON COMPUTER SCIENCE AND INFORMATION SYSTEMS 2008 Amsterdam, The Netherlands JULY 22 - 24, 2008In a future of smart houses where multiple heterogeneous devices will be interconnected to provide new functionalities and to ease everyday tasks, several issues will challenge the research, including interoperability and interfaces between different systems. The work presented in this paper describes a software bridge that exposes X10 devices as UPnP devices to UPnP control points, banking on the networks integration and alternatives to create mixed installations that are optimized for ease, reliability and functionality

A fuzzy hierarchical multiple criteria group decision support system - Decider - and its applications

Decider is a Fuzzy Hierarchical Multiple Criteria Group Decision Support System (FHMC-GDSS) designed for dealing with subjective, in particular linguistic, information and objective information simultaneously to support group decision making particularly on evaluation. In this chapter, the fuzzy aggregation decision model, functions and structure of Decider are introduced. The ideas to resolve decision and evaluation problems we have faced in the development and application of Decider are presented. Two real applications of the Decider system are briefly illustrated. Finally, we discuss our further research in this area. © 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

Can Public Discussion Enhance Program Ownership?

We use the concepts of deliberative democracy from political science and cheap talk from economics to develop a better understanding of how public discussion can contribute to building and demonstrating ownership of IMF programs and hence to program success. We argue that ownership is more complex than many discussions of it would suggest, since it must include not only the willingness to carry out a program, but also the technical capacity and especially the political ability to do so. Public discussion can serve a number of purposes, each of which can be better understood by moving to a more formal treatment. We illustrate our points by means of simple examples. We also consider some of the drawbacks of public discussion, especially as applied to IMF programs.

A social network based approach for consensus achievement in multiperson decision making

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.Nowadays we are living the apogee of the Internet based technologies and consequently web 2.0 communities, where a large number of users interact in real time and share opinions and knowledge, is a generalized phenomenon. This type of social networks communities constitute a challenge scenario from the point of view of Group Decision Making approaches, because it involves a large number of agents coming from different backgrounds and/or with different level of knowledge and influence. In these type of scenarios there exists two main key issues that requires attention. Firstly, the large number of agents and their diverse background may lead to uncertainty and or inconsistency and so, it makes difficult to assess the quality of the information provided as well as to merge this information. Secondly, it is desirable, or even indispensable depending on the situation, to obtain a solution accepted by the majority of the members or at least to asses the existing level of agreement. In this contribution we address these two main issues by bringing together both decision Making approaches and opinion dynamics to develop a similarity-confidence-consistency based Social network that enables the agents to provide their opinions with the possibility of allocating uncertainty by means of the Intuitionistic fuzzy preference relations and at the same time interact with like-minded agents in order to achieve an agreement

Simulating the deep decarbonisation of residential heating for limiting global warming to 1.5C

Whole-economy scenarios for limiting global warming to 1.5C suggest that direct carbon emissions in the buildings sector should decrease to almost zero by 2050, but leave unanswered the question how this could be achieved by real-world policies. We take a modelling-based approach for simulating which policy measures could induce an almost-complete decarbonisation of residential heating, the by far largest source of direct emissions in residential buildings. Under which assumptions is it possible, and how long would it take? Policy effectiveness highly depends on behavioural decision- making by households, especially in a context of deep decarbonisation and rapid transformation. We therefore use the non-equilibrium bottom-up model FTT:Heat to simulate policies for a transition towards low-carbon heating in a context of inertia and bounded rationality, focusing on the uptake of heating technologies. Results indicate that the near-zero decarbonisation is achievable by 2050, but requires substantial policy efforts. Policy mixes are projected to be more effective and robust for driving the market of efficient low-carbon technologies, compared to the reliance on a carbon tax as the only policy instrument. In combination with subsidies for renewables, near-complete decarbonisation could be achieved with a residential carbon tax of 50-200Euro/tCO2. The policy-induced technology transition would increase average heating costs faced by households initially, but could also lead to cost reductions in most world regions in the medium term. Model projections illustrate the uncertainty that is attached to household behaviour for prematurely replacing heating systems

Optiaml Resource Regime in Natural Resource Management: A revised economic theory of commons

The economic theory of natural resource management has its roots in the conventional economic theory of commons that overlooked the role of the institutional structures and the associated transaction costs. Hence, it has not been able to explain the outcomes of the cases of successful management of natural resources, such as forests, as common property. The possible economic optimality of community regimes has been recognised in the empirical literature, but it has not yet been incorporated in production models that would help to elucidate the reasons for its relatively superior performance in selected contexts. In this paper, we incorporate institutional structure into a static analysis of optimal resource management regimes which aims to correct this neglect. Resource regime is included as one variable input in natural resource production models that leads to determine global optimum resource regime. The other specific features of this paper are: i) a continuous array of possibilities varying from open access at one extreme to private regime at the other rather than just the two extreme options of state and private regimes; (ii) the socio-economic characteristics of the resource's "user group" as the main determinant of the relative efficiency of different regimes; and (iii) a specific mathematical form for the transaction function, in order to facilitate empirical studies in this area. Static models for general separable and non-separable transformation and transaction functions are discussed. The possibility of different resource regimes being optimal in different socio-economic conditions is highlighted.