Working Together: ICT Infrastructures to Support Collaboration

The paper summarizes a part of research carried out in ICCI project and provides a current review of ICT infrastructures supporting collaboration. It covers taxonomies, protocols, standards, components, typical subsystems as well as future trends and recommendation for two most important technologies with applications in AEC: (1) EIP (Enterprise information portal) – a single gateway to a company's information, knowledge base, and applications for all actors; (2) RTC (Real-Time Communication and Collaboration technologies) that provide means for asynchronous communication between geographically dislocated people using ICT. Proposed future developments are: orientation towards web services - with building information models, business intelligence, personalization, AEC information retrieval, p2p workspaces and grids

Detecting Sockpuppets in Deceptive Opinion Spam

This paper explores the problem of sockpuppet detection in deceptive opinion spam using authorship attribution and verification approaches. Two methods are explored. The first is a feature subsampling scheme that uses the KL-Divergence on stylistic language models of an author to find discriminative features. The second is a transduction scheme, spy induction that leverages the diversity of authors in the unlabeled test set by sending a set of spies (positive samples) from the training set to retrieve hidden samples in the unlabeled test set using nearest and farthest neighbors. Experiments using ground truth sockpuppet data show the effectiveness of the proposed schemes.Comment: 18 pages, Accepted at CICLing 2017, 18th International Conference on Intelligent Text Processing and Computational Linguistic

Open educational resources : conversations in cyberspace

172 p. : ill. ; 25 cm.Libro ElectrónicoEducation systems today face two major challenges: expanding the reach of education and improving its quality. Traditional solutions will not suffice, especially in the context of today's knowledge-intensive societies. The Open Educational Resources movement offers one solution for extending the reach of education and expanding learning opportunities. The goal of the movement is to equalize access to knowledge worldwide through openly and freely available online high-quality content. Over the course of two years, the international community came together in a series of online discussion forums to discuss the concept of Open Educational Resources and its potential. This publication makes the background papers and reports from those discussions available in print.--Publisher's description.A first forum : presenting the open educational resources (OER) movement. Open educational resources : an introductory note / Sally Johnstone -- Providing OER and related issues : an introductory note / Anne Margulies, ... [et al.] -- Using OER and related issues : in introductory note / Mohammed-Nabil Sabry, ... [et al.] -- Discussion highlights / Paul Albright -- Ongoing discussion. A research agenda for OER : discussion highlights / Kim Tucker and Peter Bateman -- A 'do-it-yourself' resource for OER : discussion highlights / Boris Vukovic -- Free and open source software (FOSS) and OER -- A second forum : discussing the OECD study of OER. Mapping procedures and users / Jan Hylén -- Why individuals and institutions share and use OER / Jan Hylén -- Discussion highlights / Alexa Joyce -- Priorities for action. Open educational resources : the way forward / Susan D'Antoni

Informatics for devices within telehealth systems for monitoring chronic diseases

Preliminary investigation at the beginning of this research showed that informatics on point-of-care (POC) devices was limited to basic data generation and processing. This thesis is based on publications of several studies during the course of the research. The aim of the research is to model and analyse information generation and exchange in telehealth systems and to identify and analyse the capabilities of these systems in managing chronic diseases which utilise point-of-care devices. The objectives to meet the aim are as follows: (i) to review the state-of-the-art in informatics and decision support on point-of-care devices. (ii) to assess the current level of servitization of POC devices used within the home environment. (iii) to identify current models of information generation and exchange for POC devices using a telehealth perspective. (iv) to identify the capabilities of telehealth systems. (v) to evaluate key components of telehealth systems (i.e. POC devices and intermediate devices). (vi) to analyse the capabilities of telehealth systems as enablers to a healthcare policy. The literature review showed that data transfer from devices is an important part of generating information. The implication of this is that future designs of devices should have efficient ways of transferring data to minimise the errors that may be introduced through manual data entry/transfer. The full impact of a servitized model for point-of-care devices is possible within a telehealth system, since capabilities of interpreting data for the patient will be offered as a service (c.f. NHS Direct). This research helped to deduce components of telehealth systems which are important in supporting informatics and decision making for actors of the system. These included actors and devices. Telehealth systems also help facilitate the exchange of data to help decision making to be faster for all actors concerned. This research has shown that a large number of capability categories existed for the patients and health professionals. There were no capabilities related to the caregiver that had a direct impact on the patient and health professional. This was not surprising since the numbers of caregivers in current telehealth systems was low. Two types of intermediate devices were identified in telehealth systems: generic and proprietary. Patients and caregivers used both types, while health professionals only used generic devices. However, there was a higher incidence of proprietary devices used by patients. Proprietary devices possess features to support patients better thus promoting their independence in managing their chronic condition. This research developed a six-step methodology for working from government objectives to appropriate telehealth capability categories. This helped to determine objectives for which a telehealth system is suitable

Organizational Capital: A New Approach to Lending in Nonprofit Affordable Housing

In spite of a diminishing supply of public resources, many nonprofit housing developers are expanding their roles and their portfolios to address an increasing need for decent affordable housing. But as nonprofit housing organizations mature, the traditional project-by-project funding system fails to support their broader development goals. This paper stresses the urgent need for equity, or "organizational capital," to help nonprofit housing organizations build their capacity and their impact. Unlike conventional financing, organizational capital is underwritten against a borrower's balance sheet, or its organizational ability to repay. Whereas project-based loans are tied to one particular project, organizational loans can be a source of liquidity whenever an organization needs it: on the front end of a deal, for general business operations or during periods of organizational expansion. Despite its many advantages, there is an extremely limited supply of organizational capital in nonprofit affordable housing. This research outlines the practical challenges to organizational investing and uncovers the underlying barriers that have prevented a nonprofit organizational capital market from emerging. These findings lead us to explore nonprofit housing organizations in a "closed system" of standardized reporting and rational decision-making. The study concludes that while a new nonprofit reporting system would greatly encourage organizational investing in housing, the private markets alone will not bring organizational lending to scale. The final sections of the paper discuss the public policy implications of a closed nonprofit capital system and highlight some innovative approaches taken by lenders to overcome the obstacles of organizational investing and advance a new model of lending in nonprofit affordable housing