Decision-focussed resource modelling for design decision support

Resource management including resource allocation, levelling, configuration and monitoring has been recognised as critical to design decision making. It has received increasing research interests in recent years. Different definitions, models and systems have been developed and published in literature. One common issue with existing research is that the resource modelling has focussed on the information view of resources. A few acknowledged the importance of resource capability to design management, but none has addressed the evaluation analysis of resource fitness to effectively support design decisions. This paper proposes a decision-focused resource model framework that addresses the combination of resource evaluation with resource information from multiple perspectives. A resource management system constructed on the resource model framework can provide functions for design engineers to efficiently search and retrieve the best fit resources (based on the evaluation results) to meet decision requirements. Thus, the system has the potential to provide improved decision making performance compared with existing resource management systems

Actor perception in business use case modeling

Mainstream literature recognizes the validity and effectiveness of use cases as a technique for gathering and capturing system requirements. Use cases represent the driver of various modern development methods, mainly of object-oriented extraction, such as the Unified Process. Although the adoption of use cases proliferated in the context of software systems development, they are not as extensively employed in business modeling . The concept of business use case is not a novelty, but only recently did it begin to re-circulate in the literature and in case tools. This paper examines the issues involved in adopting business use cases for capturing the functionality of an organization and proposes guidelines for their identification, packaging, and mapping to system use cases. The proposed guidelines are based on the principle of actor perception described in the paper. The application of this principle is exemplified with a worked example aimed at demonstrating the utility of the proposed guidelines and at clarifying the application of the principle of actor perception. The worked example is based on a series of workshops run at a major UK financial institution

Hypermedia support for argumentation-based rationale: 15 years on from gIBIS and QOC

Having developed, used and evaluated some of the early IBIS-based approaches to design rationale (DR) such as gIBIS and QOC in the late 1980s/mid-1990s, we describe the subsequent evolution of the argumentation-based paradigm through software support, and perspectives drawn from modeling and meeting facilitation. Particular attention is given to the challenge of negotiating the overheads of capturing this form of rationale. Our approach has maintained a strong emphasis on keeping the representational scheme as simple as possible to enable real time meeting mediation and capture, attending explicitly to the skills required to use the approach well, particularly for the sort of participatory, multi-stakeholder requirements analysis demanded by many design problems. However, we can then specialize the notation and the way in which the tool is used in the service of specific methodologies, supported by a customizable hypermedia environment, and interoperable with other software tools. After presenting this approach, called Compendium, we present examples to illustrate the capabilities for support security argumentation in requirements engineering, template driven modeling for document generation, and IBIS-based indexing of and navigation around video records of meetings

A debate dashboard to enhance on-line knowledge sharing

Purpose – Web 2.0 technologies have radically modified the way in which knowledge is created, managed and shared, improving productivity and accelerating innovation processes for the enterprises. These technologies have allowed enterprises to produce knowledge, leverage collective intelligence and build social capital on a scale that was unimaginable a few years ago. In this paper we focus on a particular kind of web-based collaborative platforms known as argument mapping tools and we discuss the main barriers to the adoption of them. Literature has proved that these argument mapping tools provide large and small and medium enterprise with several advantages, but nevertheless, they have low level adoption. In this paper we explore new technological solutions to support the adoption of argument mapping tools. In particular, we propose the design of a Debate Dashboard to provide visual feedback to support online deliberation. These visual feedback aims at compensating the loss of information due to the mediation of the technology. The Debate Dashboard is composed of a set of suitable visualization tools that have been selected on the basis of a literature review of the visualization tools. Design/methodology/approach - We propose a literature review of existing visualization tools. Building on the literature review we selected thirty visualization tools, which have been classified on the basis of the kind of feedback they are able to provide. We identify three classes of feedback: Community feedback (identikit of users), Interaction feedback (about how users interact) and Absorption feedback (about generated content and its organization). We distilled the Debate Dashboard features by building on results of a literature review on Web 2.0 tools for data visualization. As output of literature review we selected six visualization tools. We consider these selected tools as a sort of starting point. Indeed, our aim is the improvement of them through the addition of further features and functions in order to make them more effective in providing feedback. Originality/value – Our paper enriches the debate about computer mediated conversation and visualization tools. We propose a Dashboard prototype to augment collaborative knowledge mapping tools by providing visual feedback on conversations. The Dashboard will provide at the same time three different kinds of feedback about: details of the participants to the conversation, interaction processes and generated content. This will allow the improvement of the benefits and reduce the costs deriving from the use of mapping tools. Moreover, another important novelty is that visualization tools will be integrated to mapping tools, as until now they have been used only to visualize data contained in forums (as Usenet or Slash.dot), chat or email archives Practical implications – The Dashboard provides feedback about participants, interaction processes and generated contents, thus supporting the adoption of mapping tools as technologies able to foster knowledge sharing among remote workers or/and customers and supplier. The integration of Debate Dashboard with common online argument mapping tools aims at enabling the following advantages: 1. Reduction of misunderstanding; 2. Reduction of cognitive effort required to use argument mapping tools; 3. Improvement of the exploration and the analysis of the maps - the Debate Dashboard feedback improves the usability of the object (the map), thus allowing users to pitch into the conversation in the right place

A collaborative platform for integrating and optimising Computational Fluid Dynamics analysis requests

A Virtual Integration Platform (VIP) is described which provides support for the integration of Computer-Aided Design (CAD) and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis tools into an environment that supports the use of these tools in a distributed collaborative manner. The VIP has evolved through previous EU research conducted within the VRShips-ROPAX 2000 (VRShips) project and the current version discussed here was developed predominantly within the VIRTUE project but also within the SAFEDOR project. The VIP is described with respect to the support it provides to designers and analysts in coordinating and optimising CFD analysis requests. Two case studies are provided that illustrate the application of the VIP within HSVA: the use of a panel code for the evaluation of geometry variations in order to improve propeller efficiency; and, the use of a dedicated maritime RANS code (FreSCo) to improve the wake distribution for the VIRTUE tanker. A discussion is included detailing the background, application and results from the use of the VIP within these two case studies as well as how the platform was of benefit during the development and a consideration of how it can benefit HSVA in the future

The Palaeographical Method under the Light of a Digital Approach

This paper has the twofold aim of reflecting upon a humanities computing approach to palaeography, and of making such reflections - together with its related experimental results - fruitful at the implementation level. Firstly, the paper explores the methodological issues related to the use of a digital tool to support the palaeographical analysis of medieval handwriting. It claims that humanities computing methods can assist in making explicit those processes of the palaeographical research that encompass detailed analyses, in particular of the handwriting and, more generally, of other idiosyncratic features of written cultural artefacts. Thus, palaeographical tools are to be contextualised and used within a broader methodological framework where their role is to mediate the vision, the comparison, the representation, the analysis and the interpretation of these objects. Secondly, the paper attempts to evaluate the experimentations carried out with a specific software and, in so doing, to test a humanities computing approach to palaeography at a practical level, so as to direct future implementations. Some of these implementations have already been carried out by the current developers of the application in question with whom the author collaborates closely, while others are still in progress and in need of future iterative refinements

Developing a distributed electronic health-record store for India

The DIGHT project is addressing the problem of building a scalable and highly available information store for the Electronic Health Records (EHRs) of the over one billion citizens of India

Usability dimensions in collaborative GIS

Collaborative GIS requires careful consideration of the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Usability aspects, given the variety of users that are expected to use these systems, and the need to ensure that users will find the system effective, efficient, and enjoyable. The chapter explains the link between collaborative GIS and usability engineering/HCI studies. The integration of usability considerations into collaborative GIS is demonstrated in two case studies of Web-based GIS implementation. In the first, the process of digitising an area on Web-based GIS is improved to enhance the user's experience, and to allow interaction over narrowband Internet connections. In the second, server-side rendering of 3D scenes allows users who are not equipped with powerful computers to request sophisticated visualisation without the need to download complex software. The chapter concludes by emphasising the need to understand the users' context and conditions within any collaborative GIS project. © 2006, Idea Group Inc