Theoretical foundations for information representation and constraint specification

Research accomplished at the Knowledge Based Systems Laboratory of the Department of Industrial Engineering at Texas A&M University is described. Outlined here are the theoretical foundations necessary to construct a Neutral Information Representation Scheme (NIRS), which will allow for automated data transfer and translation between model languages, procedural programming languages, database languages, transaction and process languages, and knowledge representation and reasoning control languages for information system specification

On Ontological Foundations of Conceptual Modelling

Failures in information systems development have frequently been attributed to the application of insufficient or faulty information systems development methods. Some of these methods are concerned with the creation of conceptual models, which are used for multiple purposes throughout the information systems development process. Criticism of conceptual modelling methods usually targets their lacking of theoretical foundations. In response to such criticism, various approaches towards theoretical foundations of conceptual modelling have been proposed. They can be differentiated by the reference disciplines they are drawing on. Though the relevance of the philosophical discipline ontology for data modelling had already been recognised in the late 1950s, approaches that have been built on ontology are a rather recent phenomenon. It was not before 1986 that Wand and Weber commenced working on an ontological foundation of conceptual modelling—drawing on the scientific ontology by Mario Bunge, thus later named Bunge-Wand- Weber (BWW) ontology. Twenty years after its inception, claims regarding the validity of theoretical foundations of conceptual modelling based on the BWW ontology have not been scrutinised yet. In an attempt to open up a debate, a critical review of the BWW ontology and its application in the context of theoretical foundations of conceptual modelling is being offered

Model of Coordination Flow in Remote Collaborative Interaction

© 2015 IEEEWe present an information-theoretic approach for modelling coordination in human-human interaction and measuring coordination flows in a remote collaborative tracking task. Building on Shannon's mutual information, coordination flow measures, for stochastic collaborative systems, how much influence, the environment has on the joint control of collaborating parties. We demonstrate the application of the approach on interactive human data recorded in a user study and reveal the amount of effort required for creating rigorous models. Our initial results suggest the potential coordination flow has - as an objective, task-independent measure - in supporting designers of human collaborative systems and in providing better theoretical foundations for the science of Human-Computer Interaction

Empowerment as a metric for Optimization in HCI

We propose a novel metric for optimizing human-computer interfaces, based on the information-theoretic capacity of empowerment, a task-independent universal utility measure. Empowerment measures, for agent-environment systems with stochastic transitions, how much influence, which can be sensed by the agent sensors, an agent has on its environment. It captures the uncertainty in human-machine systems arising from different sources (i.e. noise, delays, errors, etc.) as a single quantity. We suggest the potential empowerment has as an objective optimality criterion in user interface design optimization, contributing to the more solid theoretical foundations of HCI.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

A Survey and Analysis of the Literature on Information Systems Outsourcing

With the development and penetration of business information systems, information systems outsourcing (IS Outsourcing) has attracted more and more interests from both managers and IT vendors. Meanwhile, there is an increasing number of theoretical research papers in academic journals. This paper reviews major theoretical research papers in this area and classifies them from the perspectives of research topics, research methods, journal categories, and theoretical foundations. Based on this review, we propose some directions for future research in IS outsourcing

Theories Used in Information Systems Research: Identifying Theory Networks in Leading IS Journals

Though use of theory is critical in Information Systems (IS) research, the theoretical foundations of IS research have been understudied. Using Social Network Analysis, we analyze theory usage in IS research published in MIS Quarterly and Information Systems Research from 1998 to 2006. We find Technology Acceptance Model, Resource- Based View and Game Theory to be the three most frequently used theories. While strong dominance is found in research focusing on Information Technology (IT) for individuals, organizations and markets, no theoretical dominance is found in IT for groups and IS development. Psychology, Economics and Sociology are disciplines IS researchers most frequently leverage for theories. Psychology contributes several theories representing a large fraction of the long tail of theories. Our analysis suggests that IS consists of a few distinctive clusters of research instead of a single core. Our results provide insights on theoretical foundations of IS and suggest research opportunities for scholars

Information Theoretic Approach to Design of Emergency Response Systems

Emergency response information systems provide critical support to the disaster management. Despite of the growing interest in this area, the existing research is scanty. A significant limitation is the lack of sound theoretical foundations for emergency management and the information system development. In this paper, the authors adapt Information Theory to explore the theoretical underpinnings of emergency response and discuss the general system design issues