629 research outputs found
Intentional dialogues in multi-agent systems based on ontologies and argumentation
Some areas of application, for example, healthcare, are known to resist the replacement of human operators by fully autonomous systems. It is typically not transparent to users how artificial intelligence systems make decisions or obtain information, making it difficult for users to trust them. To address this issue, we investigate how argumentation theory and ontology techniques can be used together with reasoning about intentions to build complex natural language dialogues to support human decision-making. Based on such an investigation, we propose MAIDS, a framework for developing multi-agent intentional dialogue systems, which can be used in different domains. Our framework is modular so that it can be used in its entirety or just the modules that fulfil the requirements of each system to be developed. Our work also includes the formalisation of a novel dialogue-subdialogue structure with which we can address ontological or theory-of-mind issues and later return to the main subject. As a case study, we have developed a multi-agent system using the MAIDS framework to support healthcare professionals in making decisions on hospital bed allocations. Furthermore, we evaluated this multi-agent system with domain experts using real data from a hospital. The specialists who evaluated our system strongly agree or agree that the dialogues in which they participated fulfil Cohenâs desiderata for task-oriented dialogue systems. Our agents have the ability to explain to the user how they arrived at certain conclusions. Moreover, they have semantic representations as well as representations of the mental state of the dialogue participants, allowing the formulation of coherent justifications expressed in natural language, therefore, easy for human participants to understand. This indicates the potential of the framework introduced in this thesis for the practical development of explainable intelligent systems as well as systems supporting hybrid intelligence
Improving Problem-Oriented Policing with Natural Language Processing
The policing approach known as Problem oriented policing (POP) was outlined by Herman Goldstein in 1979. Despite POP being shown as an effective method to reduce crime it is difficult to implement because of the high analytical burden that accompanies it. This analytical burden is centred on understanding the mechanism by which a crime took place. One of the factors that contributes to this high burden is that a lot of the required information is stored in free- text data, which has traditionally not been in a format suitable for aggregate analysis. However, advances in machine learning, in particular natural language processing, are lowering the barriers for extracting information from free-text data.
This thesis explores the potential for pre-trained language models (PTMs) to efficiently unlock the information in police crime free-text data. PTMs are a new class of machine learning model that are âpre-trainedâ to recognise the meaning of language. This allows the PTM to interrogate large quantities of free-text data. Thanks to this pre-training, PTMs can be adapted to specific natural language processing tasks with much less effort. Efficiently unlocking the information in the police free-text crime data should reduce the analytical burden for POP. In turn, the lower analytical burden should facilitate the wider adoption of POP. The thesis concludes that the evidence suggests PTMs are potentially an efficient method for extracting useful information from police free text data
Data journeys in the sciences
This is the final version. Available from Springer via the DOI in this record.âŻThis groundbreaking, open access volume analyses and compares data practices across several fields through the analysis of specific cases of data journeys. It brings together leading scholars in the philosophy, history and social studies of science to achieve two goals: tracking the travel of data across different spaces, times and domains of research practice; and documenting how such journeys affect the use of data as evidence and the knowledge being produced. The volume captures the opportunities, challenges and concerns involved in making data move from the sites in which they are originally produced to sites where they can be integrated with other data, analysed and re-used for a variety of purposes. The in-depth study of data journeys provides the necessary ground to examine disciplinary, geographical and historical differences and similarities in data management, processing and interpretation, thus identifying the key conditions of possibility for the widespread data sharing associated with Big and Open Data. The chapters are ordered in sections that broadly correspond to different stages of the journeys of data, from their generation to the legitimisation of their use for specific purposes. Additionally, the preface to the volume provides a variety of alternative âroadmapsâ aimed to serve the different interests and entry points of readers; and the introduction provides a substantive overview of what data journeys can teach about the methods and epistemology of research.European CommissionAustralian Research CouncilAlan Turing Institut
Designing hybridization: alternative education strategies for fostering innovation in communication design for the territory
Within the broad context of design studies, Communication Design for the Territory stands as a hybrid discipline constantly interfacing with other fields of knowledge. It assumes the territorial theme as its specific dimension, aiming to generate communication systems capable of reading the stratifications of places. From an educational perspective, teaching activities are closely linked to research and can take on different levels of complexity: from the various forms of cartographic translation to the design of sophisticated transmedia digital systems. In the wake of COVID-19, this discipline has come to terms with a profoundly changed scenario in terms of limited access to the physical space and the emergence of new technologies for remote access. In this unique context, we propose a pedagogical strategy that focuses on the hybridization of communication artifacts with the aim of fostering design experimentation. As a creative tool, hybridization leads to the design of innovative systems by strategically combining the characteristics of different artifacts to achieve specific communication goals. By experimenting with these creative strategies, students are led to critically reflect on existing communication artifactsâ features and explore original designs that deliberately combine different media, contents, and communication languages in innovative ways. Through hybridization, the methods for territorial knowledge production appear more effective, effectively combining the skills and knowledge embodied in multiple subject areas.
The paper presents the experience developed in the teaching laboratories of the DCxT (Communication Design for the Territory) research group of the Design Department of Politecnico di Milano. The teaching experience highlights how hybridization strategies can increase the effectiveness in learning about territorial specificities, in acquiring critical knowledge about communication systems, and in developing innovation strategies that allow to influence the evolution of traditional communication models
A geo-informatics approach to sustainability assessments of floatovoltaic technology in South African agricultural applications
South African project engineers recently pioneered the first agricultural floating solar photovoltaic tech nology systems in the Western Cape wine region. This effort prepared our country for an imminent large scale diffusion of this exciting new climate solver technology. However, hydro-embedded photovoltaic sys tems interact with environmentally sensitive underlying aquatic ecosystems, causing multiple project as sessment uncertainties (energy, land, air, water) compared to ground-mounted photovoltaics. The dissimi lar behaviour of floatovoltaic technologies delivers a broader and more diversified range of technical advan tages, environmental offset benefits, and economic co-benefits, causing analytical modelling imperfections
and tooling mismatches in conventional analytical project assessment techniques. As a universal interna tional real-world problem of significance, the literature review identified critical knowledge and methodology
gaps as the primary causes of modelling deficiencies and assessment uncertainties. By following a design thinking methodology, the thesis views the sustainability assessment and modelling problem through a geo graphical information systems lens, thus seeing an academic research opportunity to fill critical knowledge
gaps through new theory formulation and geographical knowledge creation. To this end, this philosophi cal investigation proposes a novel object-oriented systems-thinking and climate modelling methodology to
study the real-world geospatial behaviour of functioning floatovoltaic systems from a dynamical system thinking perspective. As an empirical feedback-driven object-process methodology, it inspired the thesis to
create new knowledge by postulating a new multi-disciplinary sustainability theory to holistically characterise
agricultural floatovoltaic projects through ecosystems-based quantitative sustainability profiling criteria. The
study breaks new ground at the frontiers of energy geo-informatics by conceptualising a holistic theoretical
framework designed for the theoretical characterisation of floatovoltaic technology ecosystem operations
in terms of the technical energy, environmental and economic (3E) domain responses. It campaigns for a
fully coupled model in ensemble analysis that advances the state-of-the-art by appropriating the 3E theo retical framework as underpinning computer program logic blueprint to synthesise the posited theory in a
digital twin simulation. Driven by real-world geo-sensor data, this geospatial digital twin can mimic the geo dynamical behaviour of floatovoltaics through discrete-time computer simulations in real-time and lifetime
digital project enactment exercises. The results show that the theoretical 3E framing enables project due
diligence and environmental impact assessment reporting as it uniquely incorporates balanced scorecard
performance metrics, such as the water-energy-land-food resource impacts, environmental offset benefits
and financial feasibility of floatovoltaics. Embedded in a geoinformatics decision-support platform, the 3E
theory, framework and model enable numerical project decision-supporting through an analytical hierarchy
process. The experimental results obtained with the digital twin model and decision support system show
that the desktop-based parametric floatovoltaic synthesis toolset can uniquely characterise the broad and
diverse spectrum of performance benefits of floatovoltaics in a 3E sustainability profile. The model uniquely
predicts important impact aspects of the technologyâs land, air and water preservation qualities, quantifying
these impacts in terms of the water, energy, land and food nexus parameters. The proposed GIS model
can quantitatively predict most FPV technology unknowns, thus solving a contemporary real-world prob lem that currently jeopardises floating PV project licensing and approvals. Overall, the posited theoretical
framework, methodology model, and reported results provide an improved understanding of floating PV renewable energy systems and their real-world behaviour. Amidst a rapidly growing international interest in
floatovoltaic solutions, the research advances fresh philosophical ideas with novel theoretical principles that
may have far-reaching implications for developing electronic, photovoltaic performance models worldwide.GeographyPh. D. (Geography
PROCEEDINGS 5th PLATE Conference
The 5th international PLATE conference (Product Lifetimes and the Environment) addressed product lifetimes in the context of sustainability. The PLATE conference, which has been running since 2015, has successfully been able to establish a solid network of researchers around its core theme. The topic has come to the forefront of current (political, scientific & societal) debates due to its interconnectedness with a number of recent prominent movements, such as the circular economy, eco-design and collaborative consumption. For the 2023 edition of the conference, we encouraged researchers to propose how to extend, widen or critically re-construct thematic sessions for the PLATE conference, and the paper call was constructed based on these proposals. In this 5th PLATE conference, we had 171 paper presentations and 238 participants from 14 different countries. Beside of paper sessions we organized workshops and REPAIR exhibitions
Programs and Courses Catalog 2023-2024
Contents:
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