Progress in information technology and tourism management: 20 years on and 10 years after the Internet—The state of eTourism research

This paper reviews the published articles on eTourism in the past 20 years. Using a wide variety of sources, mainly in the tourism literature, this paper comprehensively reviews and analyzes prior studies in the context of Internet applications to Tourism. The paper also projects future developments in eTourism and demonstrates critical changes that will influence the tourism industry structure. A major contribution of this paper is its overview of the research and development efforts that have been endeavoured in the field, and the challenges that tourism researchers are, and will be, facing

Adaptive Process Management in Cyber-Physical Domains

The increasing application of process-oriented approaches in new challenging cyber-physical domains beyond business computing (e.g., personalized healthcare, emergency management, factories of the future, home automation, etc.) has led to reconsider the level of flexibility and support required to manage complex processes in such domains. A cyber-physical domain is characterized by the presence of a cyber-physical system coordinating heterogeneous ICT components (PCs, smartphones, sensors, actuators) and involving real world entities (humans, machines, agents, robots, etc.) that perform complex tasks in the “physical” real world to achieve a common goal. The physical world, however, is not entirely predictable, and processes enacted in cyber-physical domains must be robust to unexpected conditions and adaptable to unanticipated exceptions. This demands a more flexible approach in process design and enactment, recognizing that in real-world environments it is not adequate to assume that all possible recovery activities can be predefined for dealing with the exceptions that can ensue. In this chapter, we tackle the above issue and we propose a general approach, a concrete framework and a process management system implementation, called SmartPM, for automatically adapting processes enacted in cyber-physical domains in case of unanticipated exceptions and exogenous events. The adaptation mechanism provided by SmartPM is based on declarative task specifications, execution monitoring for detecting failures and context changes at run-time, and automated planning techniques to self-repair the running process, without requiring to predefine any specific adaptation policy or exception handler at design-time

Laboratories of Reform: Virtual High Schools and Innovation in Public Education

Virtual schools are growing rapidly, serving over 700,000 students in the 2005-06 school year. But these schools are proving to be more than just another delivery system for students; they are bringing about reforms that have long eluded traditional public schools

Post-automation: report from an international workshop

The purpose of this report is to share lessons from an international research workshop dedicated to post- automation. Twenty-seven researchers from eleven different countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe, met at the Science Policy Research Unit at Sussex University on 11-13 September 2019, where we discussed empirical research papers and explored post-automation in group activities. We write this report primarily for researchers, but also for activists and policy advisors looking for more imaginative approaches to governing technology, work and sustainability in society, compared to those dominant agendas adapting automatically to the interests behind automation. The report is structured as follows. Section two introduces the workshop topic and papers presented, and which leads into two related areas that became a focus for discussion. First, some challenges in the foundations of automation theory (section three). And second, post-automation as a more constructive proposition to the challenges of automation, and that is happening right now (section four). Section five summarises some key points arising from the workshop, based on empirical observations from the margins of digital technology development, and that give both a flavour of the workshop and help elaborate the post-automation proposition. Some analytical and strategic themes are discussed in section six. We conclude in section seven with proposals for a post-automation agenda

Current trends on ICT technologies for enterprise information s²ystems

The proposed paper discusses the current trends on ICT technologies for Enterprise Information Systems. The paper starts by defining four big challenges of the next generation of information systems: (1) Data Value Chain Management; (2) Context Awareness; (3) Interaction and Visualization; and (4) Human Learning. The major contributions towards the next generation of information systems are elaborated based on the work and experience of the authors and their teams. This includes: (1) Ontology based solutions for semantic interoperability; (2) Context aware infrastructures; (3) Product Avatar based interactions; and (4) Human learning. Finally the current state of research is discussed highlighting the impact of these solutions on the economic and social landscape

Collaborative networks: A pillar of digital transformation

UID/EEA/00066/2019 POCI-01-0247-FEDER-033926The notion of digital transformation encompasses the adoption and integration of a variety of new information and communication technologies for the development of more efficient, flexible, agile, and sustainable solutions for industrial systems. Besides technology, this process also involves new organizational forms and leads to new business models. As such, this work addresses the contribution of collaborative networks to such a transformation. An analysis of the collaborative aspects required in the various dimensions of the 4th industrial revolution is conducted based on a literature survey and experiences gained from several research projects. A mapping between the identified collaboration needs and research results that can be adopted from the collaborative networks area is presented. Furthermore, several new research challenges are identified and briefly characterized.publishe

Heidegger, technology and sustainability: between intentionality, accountability and empowerment

Transition is the adequate term for characterising contemporary societies. Norms and values are in transit, led by a technological revolution, which is, in itself, the tip of the iceberg of millenary social and cultural changes. Heidegger, one of the leading philosophers of the twentieth century, captured this tension between social change and innovative technology and showed that the Western civilisation was captive of ontological instances whose role was already pin-pointed by Greek Antiquity philosophy but which went underground with Modernity. The product of Heidegger’s work was a revolution in Western thought, which found echoes across all areas of society. Taking Husserl’s call for “back to the things themselves”, Heidegger’s impact has empowered the calls for more sustainable and resilient societies. Sustainability models, with its three pillars of environmental, economic and social sustainability, are directly dependent upon the role of technology and of information science in shaping current patterns of production and consumption in contemporary societies. Industrial, academic and political discourses already voice such taken for granted assumptions. Nevertheless, it is crucial to clarify and to highlight the links between economic evolution and progress, social change and the catalysing role of technology, taken as an enabler of human action.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

A Big Data perspective on Cyber-Physical Systems for Industry 4.0: modernizing and scaling complex event processing

Doctoral program in Advanced Engineering Systems for IndustryNowadays, the whole industry makes efforts to find the most productive ways of working and it already understood that using the data that is being produced inside and outside the factories is a way to improve the business performance. A set of modern technologies combined with sensor-based communication create the possibility to act according to our needs, precisely at the moment when the data is being produced and processed. Considering the diversity of processes existing in a factory, all of them producing data, Complex Event Processing (CEP) with the capabilities to process that amount of data is needed in the daily work of a factory, to process different types of events and find patterns between them. Although the integration of the Big Data and Complex Event Processing topics is already present in the literature, open challenges in this area were identified, hence the reason for the contribution presented in this thesis. Thereby, this doctoral thesis proposes a system architecture that integrates the CEP concept with a rulebased approach in the Big Data context: the Intelligent Event Broker (IEB). This architecture proposes the use of adequate Big Data technologies in its several components. At the same time, some of the gaps identified in this area were fulfilled, complementing Event Processing with the possibility to use Machine Learning Models that can be integrated in the rules' verification, and also proposing an innovative monitoring system with an immersive visualization component to monitor the IEB and prevent its uncontrolled growth, since there are always several processes inside a factory that can be integrated in the system. The proposed architecture was validated with a demonstration case using, as an example, the Active Lot Release Bosch's system. This demonstration case revealed that it is feasible to implement the proposed architecture and proved the adequate functioning of the IEB system to process Bosch's business processes data and also to monitor its components and the events flowing through those components.Hoje em dia as indústrias esforçam-se para encontrar formas de serem mais produtivas. A utilização dos dados que são produzidos dentro e fora das fábricas já foi identificada como uma forma de melhorar o desempenho do negócio. Um conjunto de tecnologias atuais combinado com a comunicação baseada em sensores cria a possibilidade de se atuar precisamente no momento em que os dados estão a ser produzidos e processados, assegurando resposta às necessidades do negócio. Considerando a diversidade de processos que existem e produzem dados numa fábrica, as capacidades do Processamento de Eventos Complexos (CEP) revelam-se necessárias no quotidiano de uma fábrica, processando diferentes tipos de eventos e encontrando padrões entre os mesmos. Apesar da integração do conceito CEP na era de Big Data ser um tópico já presente na literatura, existem ainda desafios nesta área que foram identificados e que dão origem às contribuições presentes nesta tese. Assim, esta tese de doutoramento propõe uma arquitetura para um sistema que integre o conceito de CEP na era do Big Data, seguindo uma abordagem baseada em regras: o Intelligent Event Broker (IEB). Esta arquitetura propõe a utilização de tecnologias de Big Data que sejam adequadas aos seus diversos componentes. As lacunas identificadas na literatura foram consideradas, complementando o processamento de eventos com a possibilidade de utilizar modelos de Machine Learning com vista a serem integrados na verificação das regras, propondo também um sistema de monitorização inovador composto por um componente de visualização imersiva que permite monitorizar o IEB e prevenir o seu crescimento descontrolado, o que pode acontecer devido à integração do conjunto significativo de processos existentes numa fábrica. A arquitetura proposta foi validada através de um caso de demonstração que usou os dados do Active Lot Release, um sistema da Bosch. Os resultados revelaram a viabilidade da implementação da arquitetura e comprovaram o adequado funcionamento do sistema no que diz respeito ao processamento dos dados dos processos de negócio da Bosch e à monitorização dos componentes do IEB e eventos que fluem através desses.This work has been supported by FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the R&D Units Project Scope: UIDB/00319/2020, the Doctoral scholarship PD/BDE/135101/2017 and by European Structural and Investment Funds in the FEDER component, through the Operational Competitiveness and Internationalization Programme (COMPETE 2020) [Project nº 039479; Funding Reference: POCI-01- 0247-FEDER-039479]