Relationship between Externalized Knowledge and Evaluation in the Process of Creating Strategic Scenarios

Social systems are changing so rapidly that it is important for humans to make decisions considering uncertainty. A scenario is information about the series of events/actions, which supports decision makers to take actions and reduce risks. We propose Action Planning for refining simple ideas into practical scenarios (strategic scenarios). Frameworks and items on Action Planning Sheets provide participants with organized constraints, to lead to creative and logical thinking for solving real issues in businesses or daily life. Communication among participants who have preset roles leads the externalization of knowledge. In this study, we set three criteria for evaluating strategic scenarios; novelty, utility, and feasibility, and examine the relationship between externalized knowledge and the evaluation values, in order to consider factors which affect the evaluations. Regarding a word contained in roles and scenarios as the smallest unit of knowledge, we calculate Relativeness between roles and scenarios. The results of our experiment suggest that the lower the relativeness of a strategic scenario, the higher the strategic scenario is evaluated in novelty. In addition, in the evaluation of utility, a scenario satisfying a covert requirement tends to be estimated higher. Moreover, we found the externalization of stakeholders may affect the realization of strategic scenarios

Model of Creative Thinking Process on Analysis of Handwriting by Digital Pen

In order to perceive infrequent events as hints for new ideas, it is desired to know and model the process of creating and refining ideas. In this paper, we address this modeling problem experimentally. Firstly, we focus on the relation between thinking time and writing time in handwriting. We observe two types of patterns; one group takes longer time in thinking and shorter in writing, the other takes longer in writing and shorter in thinking. The group having spends longer in writing has shorter time span from one sentence to another than the other group. Backtracking, i.e., the event that participants return back to their former sheet and modify opinions, is observed more often in the group of longer writing than the other group. In addition, participants in this backtracking group gets higher scores for their ideas on sheets than those in the no-backtracking group. We propose a model of creative thinking by applying Operations of Structure of Intellect. It is inferred that the group of longer writing conducts a series of thinking flow, including divergent thinking, convergent thinking and evaluation. In contrast, the group of longer thinking tends to conduct the two different thinking flow: divergent thinking and evaluation; convergent thinking and evaluation. For making creative ideas, we conduct divergent thinking without evaluation and created a large number of ideas. We conclude that the rotations of divergent thinking, convergent thinking and evaluation increase the frequency of "backtracking" and make the ideas more logical ones

State Technological Power and Interstate Trade Relations and Conflict

This dissertation examines roles of state technology capacity in determining national power, whether and in what ways international trade affects between-state tech power transition, as well as how state tech power position influences their trade policy. This research argues that technology is an increasingly important component of national power in the modern era; state trade dependence on another is likely to cause unfavorable tech power transition; states tend to initiate trade conflict against its trade partner that is technologically catching up toward it, attempting to prevent further dyadic tech power convergence or even surpassing. A variety of analytical methods, including statistics, case studies, formal theory, and network analysis, are employed in this research, and the empirical findings appear supportive of the propositions

Data-driven Technology Foresight: Text Analysis of Emerging Technologies

학위논문 (박사)-- 서울대학교 대학원 : 공과대학 산업·조선공학부, 2018. 2. 박용태.This dissertation argues for new directions in the field of technology foresight. Technology foresight was formulated on the basis of qualitative and participatory research. Initially, most foresight activities were triggered by the prospect of a handful number of experts, but recent studies highlight theoretical paradigm shifts toward a more comprehensive and data-driven approach to creating shared insights on the future of emerging technologies. Much of the research up to now, however, has been descriptive in nature, and a definite method of realizing the notion has not yet been addressed in the existing literature to a large extent. To this end, we have attempted to formalize the concept of data-driven technology foresight by incorporating unconventional data sources – future-oriented web data, Wikipedia data, and scientific publication data – and different analytical tools – Latent Semantic Analysis, IdeaGraph, and Morphological Analysis. Four distinct foresight frameworks were proposed for the proactive management process of emerging technologies: impact identification, impact analysis, plan development, and technology ideation. The study was guided by the following research questions: (1) what kinds of data sources are available on the web and which of those are considered useful in foresight studies? (2) Where could we incorporate these data sources and which techniques are most suitable for the given purposes? (3) Which foresight-related fields would particularly benefit from applying a data-driven approach and what are the positive effects? The proposals outlined should be considered exploratory and open-ended. It is designed to determine the nature of the problem, rather than to offer definitive and conclusive answers. Nevertheless, the proposed scheme may well provide not just a rationale but a theoretical grounding for this newly introduced notion. This dissertation is expected to yield a foothold for the readers to better comprehend and act on this new shift in the field of technology foresight.Chapter 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Emergence of Technology Foresight 1 1.2 Towards a Data-driven Technology Foresight 3 1.3 Problem Statement 6 1.4 Dissertation Overview 8 Chapter 2 Data Sources and Methodologies 15 2.1 Data Sources 15 2.1.1 Future-oriented Web Data 15 2.1.2 Wikipedia Data 17 2.1.3 Scientific Publication Data 19 2.2 Methodologies 21 2.2.1 Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) 21 2.2.2 IdeaGraph 25 2.2.3 Morphological Analysis (MA) 29 Chapter 3 Foresight for Impact Identification 31 3.1 Introduction 32 3.2 Emerging Technology and its Social Impacts 36 3.2.1 Distinctive Nature of Emerging Technology 36 3.2.2 Technology Assessment 39 3.3 LSA for Constructing Scenarios 43 3.4 Research Framework 44 3.4.1 Step 1: Data Collection 46 3.4.2 Step 2: Scenario Development 49 3.4.2.1 Pre-LSA: Preprocessing Future-oriented Web Data 49 3.4.2.2 LSA: Applying Latent Semantic Analysis 52 3.4.2.3 Post-LSA: Constructing Scenarios 54 3.5 Illustrative Case Study: Drone Technology 55 3.6 Discussion 65 3.6.1 Categorization of Social Impacts 65 3.6.2 Comparative Analysis 72 3.6.3 Implication for Theory, Practice, and Policy 74 3.7 Conclusion 76 Chapter 4 Foresight for Impact Analysis 79 4.1 Introduction 80 4.2 Uncertainty and Complexity 82 4.3 Data-driven Foresight Process 84 4.4 Scenario Building Beyond the Obvious 86 4.4.1 Capturing Plausibility using LSA 90 4.4.2 Capturing Creativity using IdeaGraph 92 4.5 Research Framework 93 4.5.1 Step 1. Pre-Analysis: Data Preparation 94 4.5.1.1 Target Technology Selection 94 4.5.1.2 Data Acquisition 95 4.5.1.3 Data Preprocessing 95 4.5.2 Step 2. Text Analysis: Scenario Building 96 4.5.2.1 General Glimpse using Overt Structures 96 4.5.2.2 Hidden Details using Latent Structures 98 4.5.3 Step 3. Post-Analysis: Analytical Interpretation 101 4.5.3.1 Individual Impact Scenario 101 4.5.3.2 Overall Latent Impacts 101 4.6 Illustrative Case Study: 3D Printing Technology 102 4.7 Discussion 110 4.7.1 Scenarios Beyond the Obvious 110 4.7.2 Comparative Analysis 113 4.8 Conclusion 115 Chapter 5 Foresight for Plan Development 117 5.1 Introduction 118 5.2 Theoretical Paradigm Shift 120 5.2.1 Technology-focused vs. Society-focused 120 5.2.2 Co-evolution of Technology and Society 122 5.2.3 Responsible Development 125 5.3 Methodological Paradigm Shift 127 5.3.1 Participatory Approach 127 5.3.2 Data-driven Approach 129 5.4 Rationale for using LSA 131 5.5 Research Framework 132 5.5.1 Step 1. Envisioning Social Issues 133 5.5.1.1 Collection of Future-oriented Web Data 133 5.5.1.2 Construction of Impact Scenarios 135 5.5.1.3 Conceptualization of Impact Scenarios 137 5.5.2 Step 2. Deriving Technical Solutions 138 5.5.2.1 Collection of Scientific Publication Data 138 5.5.2.2 Construction of Solution Concepts 139 5.6 Illustrative Case Study: Autonomous Vehicle 140 5.7 Discussion 149 5.7.1 Comparative Analysis 149 5.7.2 Major Strengths in Envisioning Social Impacts 152 5.7.3 Major Strengths in Overviewing Solutions 154 5.8 Conclusion 156 Chapter 6 Foresight for Technology Ideation 158 6.1 Introduction 159 6.2 Related Studies 161 6.2.1 Generating Creative Ideas 161 6.2.2 Data-driven Morphological Analysis 163 6.3 Technology Foresight using Wikipedia 165 6.3.1 Wikipedia as a Good Remedy 165 6.3.2 Preliminaries: How to Apply Wikipedia 168 6.4 Research Framework 173 6.4.1 Basic Model 174 6.4.2 Extended Model 175 6.4.2.1 Phase 1: Preliminary Phase 177 6.4.2.2 Phase 2: Dimension Development Phase 177 6.4.2.3 Phase 3: Value Development Phase 179 6.4.2.4 Phase 4: Sub-dimension Development Phase 182 6.5 Illustrative Case Study: Drone Technology 183 6.5.1 Basic Model 183 6.5.2 Extended Model 185 6.6 Comparative Analysis 193 6.6.1 Experimental Setup 193 6.6.2 Comparison of Results 195 6.7 Intrinsic Limitations of Applying Wikipedia 199 6.8 Conclusion 201 Chapter 7 Concluding Remarks 203 Bibliography 211 Appendix 236 Appendix A Result of overt and latent structures of each impact scenario 236 Appendix B Result of Wikipedia-based morphological matrix (basic model) 240 Appendix C Result of Wikipedia-based morphological matrix using superordinate seed terms (extended model) 241 Appendix D Result of Wikipedia-based morphological matrix after applying subordinate value seed terms (extended model) 243 Appendix E Result of Wikipedia-based morphological matrix after developing sub-dimensions (extended model) 247Docto

Developing a Whole-Life Value Model for the Irish National Road Network

Planning of road maintenance helps to spend available budgets efficiently and aims to keep the network in a safe and useable condition for road users. Road pavement maintenance models have traditionally excluded externalities as part of quantitative assessments of maintenance options. However, road maintenance affects wider society and therefore any maintenance decisions should integrate externalities into the decisions and tools that are used to generate maintenance programmes. This thesis investigates how externalities of carbon and noise emissions from maintenance can be included in a pavement maintenance model and the associated impacts on developing a maintenance programme. Pavement maintenance models were studied and it showed that there is a general omission of externalities within the core of the models. A review of externalities (with an emphasis on environmental externalities) demonstrated that road authorities do have policies to take account of externalities but often in a qualitative assessment and often only at a project level, not at a strategic level. This research developed a whole-life cost model into which novel methodologies for modelling carbon and noise were included, with the methodologies developed so that they can be used in other pavement management systems. The result was a model that took account of a wider range of value parameters as part of the economic analysis. Two in-depth case studies were completed to investigate the impact that the methodologies had on a road network. Using current government prices for carbon and noise, noise had a significantly greater impact on the resulting maintenance programme. Sensitivity analysis showed that the resulting maintenance programmes were a lot less sensitive to changes in the price of carbon, although both parameters did lead to changes in the resulting maintenance programme, especially when specific environmentally focused maintenance options were included as treatments

Trustworthiness in Social Big Data Incorporating Semantic Analysis, Machine Learning and Distributed Data Processing

This thesis presents several state-of-the-art approaches constructed for the purpose of (i) studying the trustworthiness of users in Online Social Network platforms, (ii) deriving concealed knowledge from their textual content, and (iii) classifying and predicting the domain knowledge of users and their content. The developed approaches are refined through proof-of-concept experiments, several benchmark comparisons, and appropriate and rigorous evaluation metrics to verify and validate their effectiveness and efficiency, and hence, those of the applied frameworks

High Quality P2P Service Provisioning via Decentralized Trust Management

Trust management is essential to fostering cooperation and high quality service provisioning in several peer-to-peer (P2P) applications. Among those applications are customer-to-customer (C2C) trading sites and markets of services implemented on top of centralized infrastructures, P2P systems, or online social networks. Under these application contexts, existing work does not adequately address the heterogeneity of the problem settings in practice. This heterogeneity includes the different approaches employed by the participants to evaluate trustworthiness of their partners, the diversity in contextual factors that influence service provisioning quality, as well as the variety of possible behavioral patterns of the participants. This thesis presents the design and usage of appropriate computational trust models to enforce cooperation and ensure high quality P2P service provisioning, considering the above heterogeneity issues. In this thesis, first I will propose a graphical probabilistic framework for peers to model and evaluate trustworthiness of the others in a highly heterogeneous setting. The framework targets many important issues in trust research literature: the multi-dimensionality of trust, the reliability of different rating sources, and the personalized modeling and computation of trust in a participant based on the quality of services it provides. Next, an analysis on the effective usage of computational trust models in environments where participants exhibit various behaviors, e.g., honest, rational, and malicious, will be presented. I provide theoretical results showing the conditions under which cooperation emerges when using trust learning models with a given detecting accuracy and how cooperation can still be sustained while reducing the cost and accuracy of those models. As another contribution, I also design and implement a general prototyping and simulation framework for reputation-based trust systems. The developed simulator can be used for many purposes, such as to discover new trust-related phenomena or to evaluate performance of a trust learning algorithm in complex settings. Two potential applications of computational trust models are then discussed: (1) the selection and ranking of (Web) services based on quality ratings from reputable users, and (2) the use of a trust model to choose reliable delegates in a key recovery scenario in a distributed online social network. Finally, I will identify a number of various issues in building next-generation, open reputation-based trust management systems as well as propose several future research directions starting from the work in this thesis

Possible futures for the African built environment towards 2050

Purpose –The purpose of this thesis is to develop four scenarios for Africa’s built environment over the nextfortyyears: The ”Angel” or “Good Governance”Scenario,in which positive elements become a realisation for Africa’s built environment and are conjointly favourable; The “Dwarf” or “Uneven African Development”Scenario, in which key driving forces unfold inan uneven pattern, or have a differentiated impact on Africa’s built environment; The “Elf” or Bad Governance Scenario,in which less good governance prevails, but where a fortunate built environment and securemanagement allowsAfrica to become competitive and benefit from satisfactory economic growth;and The “Hobgoblin” or “Business and Governance as usual” Scenario,in which negative regional drivers of change corrode positive policies and initiatives in a manner which compounds the pre-existing threats of Africa’s built environment development.Design/Methodology/Approach –The goal of this thesis is not only to affirm what is already known and knowable regardingwhat is happening right now at the intersections of Africa and its built environment development, but also to explore the many ways in which environmental scanning and built environment development could co-involve,both push and inhibit each other,in the future. Thereafter, this thesis beginsto examine what possible paths may be implicatedfor Africa’s poor and vulnerable built environment. Scenario planning is a methodology designed to help researchers, organisations and even nations alike through this creative process. This thesis begins to identifydriversof change, and then combines these driversin different ways to create a set of scenarios regardinghow the future built environment of Africa could evolve.Practical implications –This thesis provides a useful insight regardingdrivers for change for Africa’s built environment,and how to anticipate these changes in the mostcurrentScenario planning.Originality/Value –This thesis addressesthe future of Africa’s built environment from a decision maker’s point of view over the next 40 years.Thesis (PhD) -- Faculty of Engineering, the Built Environment and Technology, School of the Built Environment and Civil Engineering, 202