PERICLES Deliverable 4.3:Content Semantics and Use Context Analysis Techniques

The current deliverable summarises the work conducted within task T4.3 of WP4, focusing on the extraction and the subsequent analysis of semantic information from digital content, which is imperative for its preservability. More specifically, the deliverable defines content semantic information from a visual and textual perspective, explains how this information can be exploited in long-term digital preservation and proposes novel approaches for extracting this information in a scalable manner. Additionally, the deliverable discusses novel techniques for retrieving and analysing the context of use of digital objects. Although this topic has not been extensively studied by existing literature, we believe use context is vital in augmenting the semantic information and maintaining the usability and preservability of the digital objects, as well as their ability to be accurately interpreted as initially intended.PERICLE

Enterprise modelling framework for dynamic and complex business environment: socio-technical systems perspective

The modern business environment is characterised by dynamism and ambiguity. The causes include global economic change, rapid change requirements, shortened development life cycles and the increasing complexity of information technology and information systems (IT/IS). However, enterprises have been seen as socio-technical systems. The dynamic complex business environment cannot be understood without intensive modelling and simulation. Nevertheless, there is no single description of reality, which has been seen as relative to its context and point of view. Human perception is considered an important determinant for the subjectivist view of reality. Many scholars working in the socio-technical systems and enterprise modelling domains have conceived the holistic sociotechnical systems analysis and design possible using a limited number of procedural and modelling approaches. For instance, the ETHICS and Human-centred design approaches of socio-technical analysis and design, goal-oriented and process-oriented modelling of enterprise modelling perspectives, and the Zachman and DoDAF enterprise architecture frameworks all have limitations that can be improved upon, which have been significantly explained in this thesis. [Continues.

Aeronautical engineering: A continuing bibliography with indexes (supplement 276)

This bibliography lists 705 reports, articles, and other documents introduced into the NASA scientific and technical information system in Feb. 1992. Subject coverage includes: design, construction, and testing of aircraft and aircraft engines; aircraft components, equipment, and systems; ground support systems; and theoretical and applied aspects of aerodynamics and general fluid dynamics

The Child in Games: From the Meek, to the Mighty, to the Monstrous

Drawing across game studies, childhood studies, and children’s literature studies, this thesis catalogues and critiques the representation of children in contemporary video games. It poses two questions: 1) How are children represented in contemporary video games? 2) In what ways do the representations of children in video games affirm or challenge dominant Western beliefs about the figure of the child? To answer these questions, I combine a large-scale content analysis of over 500 games published between 2009 and 2019 with a series of autoethnographic close readings. My content analysis is designed to provide a quantitative snapshot of the representation of children in games. I use statistical analysis to assemble data points as meaningful constellations. I use the axes of race, gender, and age, as well as genre, age-rating, and publication year, to identify patterns in representation. I distil my findings as a set of seven archetypes: The Blithe Child, The Heroic Child, The Human Becoming, The Child Sacrifice, The Side Kid, The Waif, and The Little Monster. This typology is not intended to work against the granular detail of the information recorded in the dataset, but to draw attention to patterns of coherence and divergence that occur between particular examples, as well as to intersections with representational tropes about children identified in other media. I select four of these seven archetypes to structure my autoethnographic close readings. While content analysis is a useful tool for documenting the presence, absence, and dominant function of child-characters in games, close reading allows for a more intersectional approach that can attend to the nuances of representation across identity markers, creating opportunities to examine internal contradictions, ironies, and the polysemy generated through interpretive gaps. I develop my own close reading method building on the autoethnographic approaches of Carr (2019), Vossen (2020), McArthur (2018), and Jennings (2021), which I call critical ekphrasis. Chapter one argues that the Blithe Child triangulates ‘children’, ‘toys’, and ‘paidia’. It suggests that both childhood and play can be conceptualised as a ‘magic circle’, and that the immateriality of the Blithe Child implies childhood can be a mode of being unconnected to anatomical markers or chronological age. Chapter two explores how the Heroic Child challenges the apparent affinity between video games and traditional hero 2 narratives. It argues that the dependence of the childly protagonist undermines dualistic thinking and instead celebrates cooperation, compromise, and connection. Chapter three compares the Child Sacrifice to the woman-in-the-refrigerator trope, arguing that it functions to justify aggressive, hypermasculine, militarised violence. The final chapter compares the Little Monster and the Waif to examine how the uncanny child raises metareferential questions about autonomy in interactive media and agency in intergenerational relationships. My research project concludes by suggesting that virtual children in simulated worlds point to the active construction and delimitation of ‘the child’ in society and can reveal that much of what is assumed to be natural, obvious, and universal about the figure of ‘the child’ is in fact ideological. It hints at the possibility that just as virtual children are used as rhetorical figures to explain and justify the rules, mechanics, and moral systems of a digital game, so too is the figure of ‘the child’ used to routinise and vindicate the rules, workings, and moral systems of Euro-American culture.AHR

Urban Informatics

This open access book is the first to systematically introduce the principles of urban informatics and its application to every aspect of the city that involves its functioning, control, management, and future planning. It introduces new models and tools being developed to understand and implement these technologies that enable cities to function more efficiently – to become ‘smart’ and ‘sustainable’. The smart city has quickly emerged as computers have become ever smaller to the point where they can be embedded into the very fabric of the city, as well as being central to new ways in which the population can communicate and act. When cities are wired in this way, they have the potential to become sentient and responsive, generating massive streams of ‘big’ data in real time as well as providing immense opportunities for extracting new forms of urban data through crowdsourcing. This book offers a comprehensive review of the methods that form the core of urban informatics from various kinds of urban remote sensing to new approaches to machine learning and statistical modelling. It provides a detailed technical introduction to the wide array of tools information scientists need to develop the key urban analytics that are fundamental to learning about the smart city, and it outlines ways in which these tools can be used to inform design and policy so that cities can become more efficient with a greater concern for environment and equity