An agile business process and practice meta-model

Business Process Management (BPM) encompasses the discovery, modelling, monitoring, analysis and improvement of business processes. Limitations of traditional BPM approaches in addressing changes in business requirements have resulted in a number of agile BPM approaches that seek to accelerate the redesign of business process models. Meta-models are a key BPM feature that reduce the ambiguity of business process models. This paper describes a meta-model supporting the agile version of the Business Process and Practice Alignment Methodology (BPPAM) for business process improvement, which captures process information from actual work practices. The ability of the meta-model to achieve business process agility is discussed and compared with other agile meta-models, based on definitions of business process flexibility and agility found in the literature. (C) 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V

Human Performance Contributions to Safety in Commercial Aviation

In the commercial aviation domain, large volumes of data are collected and analyzed on the failures and errors that result in infrequent incidents and accidents, but in the absence of data on behaviors that contribute to routine successful outcomes, safety management and system design decisions are based on a small sample of non- representative safety data. Analysis of aviation accident data suggests that human error is implicated in up to 80% of accidents, which has been used to justify future visions for aviation in which the roles of human operators are greatly diminished or eliminated in the interest of creating a safer aviation system. However, failure to fully consider the human contributions to successful system performance in civil aviation represents a significant and largely unrecognized risk when making policy decisions about human roles and responsibilities. Opportunities exist to leverage the vast amount of data that has already been collected, or could be easily obtained, to increase our understanding of human contributions to things going right in commercial aviation. The principal focus of this assessment was to identify current gaps and explore methods for identifying human success data generated by the aviation system, from personnel and within the supporting infrastructure

Aligning enterprise risk management with business strategy and information systems

Business leaders recognise effective risk management as one of the main success drivers for enterprises. Even though the Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) concept has evolved significantly in the past years, in the aftermath of recent economic crises it became evident some of its critical challenges still need to be addressed. The review of subject literature led to a conclusion that current ERM approaches failed to protect enterprise value in turbulent and risky market conditions. Therefore, this paper aims to provide a conceptual analysis of the most common ERM practices and frameworks, in order to identify their shortcomings and areas requiring development. It is further aimed to provide guidance to business practitioners in implementing more integrated and effective Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) solutions. This research recognises the importance of aligning ERM programmes with business strategies, and with consolidated Information Systems. A “New Approach ERM Model” is developed as guidance for a successful alignment of ERM with enterprise business strategy, and for an effective adaption of Information Systems to requirements of ERM programmes. The “New Approach ERM Model” steers risk management initiatives and strategies in the same direction, and consequently allows enterprises to improve organisational effectiveness, increase shareholders value, and gain competitive advantage in the market

Dynamic Intelligent Lighting for Directing Visual Attention in Interactive 3D Scenes

Recent enhancements in real-time graphics have facilitated the design of high fidelity game environments with complex 3D worlds inhabited by animated characters. Under such settings, it is hard, especially for the untrained eyes, to attend to an object of interest. Neuroscience research as well as film and theatre practice identified several visual properties, such as contrast, orientation, and color that play a major role in channeling attention. In this paper, we discuss an adaptive lighting design system called ALVA (Adaptive Lighting for Visual Attention) that dynamically adjusts the lighting color and brightness to enhance visual attention within game environments using features identified by neuroscience, psychophysics, and visual design literature. We also discuss some preliminary results showing the utility of ALVA in directing player’s attention to important elements in a fast paced 3D game, and thus enhancing the game experience especially for non-gamers who are not visually trained to spot objects or characters in such complex 3D worlds

A survey of machine learning techniques applied to self organizing cellular networks

In this paper, a survey of the literature of the past fifteen years involving Machine Learning (ML) algorithms applied to self organizing cellular networks is performed. In order for future networks to overcome the current limitations and address the issues of current cellular systems, it is clear that more intelligence needs to be deployed, so that a fully autonomous and flexible network can be enabled. This paper focuses on the learning perspective of Self Organizing Networks (SON) solutions and provides, not only an overview of the most common ML techniques encountered in cellular networks, but also manages to classify each paper in terms of its learning solution, while also giving some examples. The authors also classify each paper in terms of its self-organizing use-case and discuss how each proposed solution performed. In addition, a comparison between the most commonly found ML algorithms in terms of certain SON metrics is performed and general guidelines on when to choose each ML algorithm for each SON function are proposed. Lastly, this work also provides future research directions and new paradigms that the use of more robust and intelligent algorithms, together with data gathered by operators, can bring to the cellular networks domain and fully enable the concept of SON in the near future

The Standard Problem

Crafting, adhering to, and maintaining standards is an ongoing challenge. This paper uses a framework based on common models to explore the standard problem: the impossibility of creating, implementing or maintain definitive common models in an open system. The problem arises from uncertainty driven by variations in operating context, standard quality, differences in implementation, and drift over time. Fitting work by conformance services repairs these gaps between a standard and what is required for interoperation, using several strategies: (a) Universal conformance (all agents access the same standard); (b) Mediated conformance (an interoperability layer supports heterogeneous agents) and (c) Localized conformance, (autonomous adaptive agents manage their own needs). Conformance methods include incremental design, modular design, adaptors, and creating interactive and adaptive agents. Machine learning should have a major role in adaptive fitting. Choosing a conformance service depends on the stability and homogeneity of shared tasks, and whether common models are shared ahead of time or are adjusted at task time. This analysis thus decouples interoperability and standardization. While standards facilitate interoperability, interoperability is achievable without standardization.Comment: Keywords: information standard, interoperability, machine learning, technology evaluation 25 Pages Main text word Count: 5108 Abstract word count: 206 Tables: 1 Figures: 7 Boxes: 2 Submitted to JAMI

A Systematic Literature Review of Requirements Engineering for Self-Adaptive Systems

During 2003 to 2013, the continuous effort of researchers and engineers particularly has resulted in a hugely grown body of work on engineering self-adaptive systems. Although existing studies have explored various aspects of this topic, no systematic study has been performed on categorizing and evaluating the requirement engineering for self-adaptive activities. The objective of this paper is to systematically investigate the research literature of requirements engineering for self-adaptive systems, summarize the research trends, categorize the used modeling methods and requirements engineering activities as well as the topics that most described. a systematic literature review has been conducted to answer the research questions by searching relevant studies, appraising the quality of these studies and extracting available data. From the study, a number of recommendations for future research in requirements engineering for self-adaptive systems has been derived. So that, enabling researchers and practitioners to better understand the research trends

Ability-Based Design: Concept, Principles and Examples

Current approaches to accessible computing share a common goal of making technology accessible to users with disabilities. Perhaps because of this goal, they may also share a tendency to centralize disability rather than ability. We present a refinement to these approaches called ability-based design that consists of focusing on ability throughout the design process in an effort to create systems that leverage the full range of human potential. Just as user-centered design shifted the focus of interactive system design from systems to users, ability-based design attempts to shift the focus of accessible design from disability to ability. Although prior approaches to accessible computing may consider users’ abilities to some extent, ability-based design makes ability its central focus. We offer seven ability-based design principles and describe the projects that inspired their formulation. We also present a research agenda for ability-based design.Engineering and Applied Science

Auto-bandwidth control in dynamically reconfigured hybrid-SDN MPLS networks

The proposition of this work is based on the steady evolution of bandwidth demanding technology, which currently and more so in future, requires operators to use expensive infrastructure capability smartly to maximise its use in a very competitive environment. In this thesis, a traffic engineering control loop is proposed that dynamically adjusts the bandwidth and route of flows of Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) tunnels in response to changes in traffic demand. Available bandwidth is shifted to where the demand is, and where the demand requirement has dropped, unused allocated bandwidth is returned to the network. An MPLS network enhanced with Software-defined Networking (SDN) features is implemented. The technology known as hybrid SDN combines the programmability features of SDN with the robust MPLS label switched path features along with traffic engineering enhancements introduced by routing protocols such as Border Gateway Patrol-Traffic Engineering (BGP-TE) and Open Shortest Path First-Traffic Engineering (OSPF-TE). The implemented mixed-integer linear programming formulation using the minimisation of maximum link utilisation and minimum link cost objective functions, combined with the programmability of the hybrid SDN network allows for source to destination demand fluctuations. A key driver to this research is the programmability of the MPLS network, enhanced by the contributions that the SDN controller technology introduced. The centralised view of the network provides the network state information needed to drive the mathematical modelling of the network. The path computation element further enables control of the label switched path's bandwidths, which is adjusted based on current demand and optimisation method used. The hose model is used to specify a range of traffic conditions. The most important benefit of the hose model is the flexibility that is allowed in how the traffic matrix can change if the aggregate traffic demand does not exceed the hose maximum bandwidth specification. To this end, reserved hose bandwidth can now be released to the core network to service demands from other sites