ICT–supported reforms of service delivery in Flemish cities: testing the concept of 'information ecology'

This paper explores organizational reforms in Flemish cities related to making the cities’ individual service delivery more efficient, customer orientated, customer friendly and integrated. The paper is the first one of a recently started research project and PhD research about the complexity of managing ICT-supported change of ‘individual’ service delivery. The overall objective of this paper is to set the stage for the research project’s research design in terms of its theoretical framework. Therefore, we report about our first explorative, inductive and descriptive findings related to this type of change within one city. We firstly inductively report about the objectives and the objects of change. Secondly, we develop a provisional theoretical framework. We therefore take the notion of an information ecology as a conceptual starting point and use a combination of elements of neo-institutional theory, system theory and a political perspective on organizational development. In order to explore the potentialities of this approach, we test the framework’s value for understanding the changes within the city. The framework enabled us to describe and analyze this type of reforms without neglecting the complexity of these changes. It tries to link some important public administration theories to the study of the e-government phenomenon that is still an important challenge. The most important lesson is that further refinement of the conceptual framework is needed. Although the analysis shows that the framework offers a conceptual basis to analyze front and back office reforms within public organizations, it still lacks a full and straightforward operationalization of its components, constructs, relations, etc

A digital library of language learning exercises

Recent years have seen widespread adoption of the Internet for language teaching and learning. Interactive systems on the World-Wide Web provide useful alternatives to face-to-face tuition, and both teachers and learners can benefit from the exercises available. However, although there is a wealth of suitable material, it is hard to find because it is scattered around the web. Moreover, teachers are restricted by the material that is available, and cannot provide their own. To tackle these problems we have constructed a digital library of language learning exercises that presents students with different kinds of exercise, and also lets teachers contribute new material. We first reviewed existing language learning systems on the web in order to develop a taxonomy of exercise types used for language activity. A prototype, ELLE, based on this taxonomy, provides various kinds of interactive exercises using material that teachers submit. The system has been evaluated by practicing language teachers

Sheet-Metal Production Scheduling Using AlphaGo Zero

This work investigates the applicability of a reinforcement learning (RL) approach, specifically AlphaGo Zero (AZ), for optimizing sheet-metal (SM) production schedules with respect to tardiness and material waste. SM production scheduling is a complex job shop scheduling problem (JSSP) with dynamic operation times, routing flexibility and supplementary constraints. SM production systems are capable of processing a large number of highly heterogeneous jobs simultaneously. While very large relative to the JSSP literature, the SM-JSSP instances investigated in this work are small relative to the SM production reality. Given the high dimensionality of the SM-JSSP, computation of an optimal schedule is not tractable. Simple heuristic solutions often deliver bad results. We use AZ to selectively search the solution space. To this end, a single player AZ version is pretrained using supervised learning on schedules generated by a heuristic, fine-tuned using RL and evaluated through comparison with a heuristic baseline and Monte Carlo Tree Search. It will be shown that AZ outperforms the other approaches. The work’s scientific contribution is twofold: On the one hand, a novel scheduling problem is formalized such that it can be tackled using RL approaches. On the other hand, it is proved that AZ can be successfully modified to provide a solution for the problem at hand, whereby a new line of research into real-world applications of AZ is opened

Enhancing smart home energy efficiency through accurate load prediction using deep convolutional neural networks

The method of predicting the electricity load of a home using deep learning techniques is called intelligent home load prediction based on deep convolutional neural networks. This method uses convolutional neural networks to analyze data from various sources such as weather, time of day, and other factors to accurately predict the electricity load of a home. The purpose of this method is to help optimize energy usage and reduce energy costs. The article proposes a deep learning-based approach for nonpermanent residential electrical energy load forecasting that employs temporal convolutional networks (TCN) to model historic load collection with timeseries traits and to study notably dynamic patterns of variants amongst attribute parameters of electrical energy consumption. The method considers the timeseries homes of the information and offers parallelization of large-scale facts processing with magnificent operational efficiency, considering the timeseries aspects of the information and the problematic inherent correlations between variables. The exams have been done using the UCI public dataset, and the experimental findings validate the method's efficacy, which has clear, sensible implications for setting up intelligent strength grid dispatching

CYBERNETIFICATION I: Cybernetics Feedback Netgraft in Architecture

During the last decades, architecture has changed its role from fetishizing and fertilizing objectification and objects alike towards glamorising the processing of relations, observations and materialization of the 'objectile'. Steering the design process in contemporary computational architecture through and with a variety of dynamic, interconnecting agents affords re-framing, reviewing, and re-designing prescribed patterns of creating architecture. It critically encourages to examine the concept of feedback beyond the beloved evolutionary algorithm, which presents a technical rather than architectural cultural calculus. ‚CYBERNETICS FEEDBACK NETGRAFT’ proposes cybernetic principles as blueprint or genotype for computational architecture. Such principles allow for a systemic continuation of re-programming the architectural culture currently at stake. The forthcoming observation hovers between theories and meta-models. It argues that the possibilities for design increase through digitization and digitalization. In this respect, the chapter refers to Ross Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety (Ashby 1957) on one hand and to emergence through digital self-organization on the other. (DeLanda 2011; Johnson 2001). The text offers a critic of the bio-digital and too fantastic (Werner 2014, pp.229-230). The author is starting to suggest an ‘architectural laboratorium of and for computational theory’ built on a systemic approach to emergence and the unforeseen - nourished by cybernetic principles: a cybernetification that eventually can govern and feed back into practice and the art of architecture.In den letzten Jahrzehnten hat die Architektur ihre Rolle verändert; von 'fetishizing' von Objektivierung und Objekten, hin zu einer Veredelung von Beziehungen, Beobachtungen und Materialisierung des 'objectile'. Lenkung Design-Prozess in der zeitgenössischen Computational Architecture durch und mit einer Vielzahl von dynamischen, verbindenden Agenten offeriert ein Re-Framing und Überprüfung von Entwurfsstrategien von vorgeschriebenen Mustern zur Gestaltung von Architekturen. Dies fordert kritisch dazu auf, das Konzept des Feedbacks jenseits der geliebten evolutionärer Algorithmus, der eher ein technisches als ein architektonisches Kulturkalkül. ,CYBERNETICS FEEDBACK NETGRAFT' schlägt vor Kybernetische Prinzipien als Blaupause oder Genotyp für Computational Architecture. Solche Prinzipien ermöglichen eine systematische Fortsetzung der Neuprogrammierung der derzeit auf dem Spiel steht. Die bevorstehende Beobachtung schwebt zwischen Theorien und Metamodellen. In dieser Hinsicht bezieht sich der Text auf Ross Ashby's 'Law of Requisite Variety' (Ashby 1957) einerseits und durch digitale Selbstorganisation auftauchen. (DeLandas) 2011; Johnson 2001). Die Autorin beginnt, ein 'architektonisches Laboratorium' über und für die Computertheorie aufgebaut 'auf einem systemischen Ansatz zu konstruieren