Business Processes as Social Entities – A Use Case Driven Approach

Social media represents one of the most rapidly growing trends in information technology. Up to now, however, this trend has been mainly driven by private users, although in organizational context social media technologies would provide a multiplicity of benefits. This paper shows – based on a state of the art analysis – application potentials of social media in the field of business process management (BPM). The focus lies on the interplay between the subjects and objects of BPM and social media. The goal is to turn business processes into social entities with the capability to communicate and to take on identity. Based on a holistic idea finding process, several potential use cases are arranged within the phases of the BPM cycle. The results show that unexploited potentials exist particularly in the phases of “Business Process Design” and “Business Process Controlling”. Available at: https://aisel.aisnet.org/pajais/vol5/iss3/5

Application of Geographic Information Systems

The importance of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) can hardly be overemphasized in today’s academic and professional arena. More professionals and academics have been using GIS than ever – urban & regional planners, civil engineers, geographers, spatial economists, sociologists, environmental scientists, criminal justice professionals, political scientists, and alike. As such, it is extremely important to understand the theories and applications of GIS in our teaching, professional work, and research. “The Application of Geographic Information Systems” presents research findings that explain GIS’s applications in different subfields of social sciences. With several case studies conducted in different parts of the world, the book blends together the theories of GIS and their practical implementations in different conditions. It deals with GIS’s application in the broad spectrum of geospatial analysis and modeling, water resources analysis, land use analysis, infrastructure network analysis like transportation and water distribution network, and such. The book is expected to be a useful source of knowledge to the users of GIS who envision its applications in their teaching and research. This easy-to-understand book is surely not the end in itself but a little contribution to toward our understanding of the rich and wonderful subject of GIS

Geo-Information Technology and Its Applications

Geo-information technology has been playing an ever more important role in environmental monitoring, land resource quantification and mapping, geo-disaster damage and risk assessment, urban planning and smart city development. This book focuses on the fundamental and applied research in these domains, aiming to promote exchanges and communications, share the research outcomes of scientists worldwide and to put these achievements better social use. This Special Issue collects fourteen high-quality research papers and is expected to provide a useful reference and technical support for graduate students, scientists, civil engineers and experts of governments to valorize scientific research

Engineering an adaptive and socially- aware feedback acquisition.

Self-adaptive software systems are characterised by their ability to monitor changes in their dynamic environment and react to these changes when needed. Adaptation is driven by these changes in the internal state of the system and its external environment. Social Adaptation is a kind of adaptation which gives users’ feedback a primary role in shaping adaptation decisions. Social Adaptation infers and employs users’ collective judgement on the alternative behaviours of a system as the main driver in tailoring adaptation decision. Users’ collective judgement is determined through individual users’ feedback collected during the lifetime of the software. Social Adaptation still lacks systematic and efficient engineering mechanisms of the acquisition process of users’ feedback. The goal of this thesis is to devise an engineering method for a systematic and adaptive acquisition of users’ feedback. Given the various contextual information which could influence how feedback should be collected from users, this thesis looks at the acquisition process itself as an adaptive process. The goal of such adaptation is to optimize the quality of obtained feedback without affecting users’ experience. In order to achieve the goal of this thesis, several empirical studies with software engineering experts and end-users have been conducted. This helped gaining insights into how the role of users’ feedback is perceived by software experts and how users behave and react to feedback acquisition. The outcomes of the empirical studies are then exploited to achieve the aim of thesis. The findings informed by these studies suggest that users’ behaviours to feedback acquisition highly varies and an adaptive feedback acquisition is highly needed to cater for differences in behaviours, improve users’ satisfaction, feedback quality and software success. To tackle this problem, the concept of Persona is employed to aid software engineers understand the various users’ behaviours and improve their ability to design feedback acquisition techniques more efficiently. The personas are developed based on a mixture of the qualitative and quantitative studies conducted throughout this thesis. In addition, this thesis proposes PAFA, a Persona-based method for a systematic design of an Adaptive Feedback Acquisition and reports on its evaluation. Finally, this thesis is also meant to contribute to the knowledge of software engineering community on developing systematic ways for feedback engineering which are hoped to lead to a better quality feedback and maintained users experience

Big data analytics tools for improving the decision-making process in agrifood supply chain

Introduzione: Nell'interesse di garantire una sicurezza alimentare a lungo termine di fronte a circostanze mutevoli, è necessario comprendere e considerare gli aspetti ambientali, sociali ed economici del processo di produzione. Inoltre, a causa della globalizzazione, sono stati sollevati i problemi delle lunghe filiere agroalimentari, l'asimmetria informativa, la contraffazione, la difficoltà di tracciare e rintracciare l'origine dei prodotti e le numerose questioni correlate quali il benessere dei consumatori e i costi sanitari. Le tecnologie emergenti guidano verso il raggiungimento di nuovi approcci socioeconomici in quanto consentono al governo e ai singoli produttori agricoli di raccogliere ed analizzare una quantità sempre crescente di dati ambientali, agronomici, logistici e danno la possibilità ai consumatori ed alle autorità di controllo della qualità di accedere a tutte le informazioni necessarie in breve tempo e facilmente. Obiettivo: L'oggetto della ricerca riguarda lo studio delle modalità di miglioramento del processo produttivo attraverso la riduzione dell'asimmetria informativa, rendendola disponibile alle parti interessate in un tempo ragionevole, analizzando i dati sui processi produttivi, considerando l'impatto ambientale della produzione in termini di ecologia, economia, sicurezza alimentare e qualità di cibo, costruendo delle opportunità per le parti interessate nel prendere decisioni informate, oltre che semplificare il controllo della qualità, della contraffazione e delle frodi. Pertanto, l'obiettivo di questo lavoro è quello di studiare le attuali catene di approvvigionamento, identificare le loro debolezze e necessità, analizzare le tecnologie emergenti, le loro caratteristiche e gli impatti sulle catene di approvvigionamento e fornire utili raccomandazioni all'industria, ai governi e ai policy maker.Introduction: In the interest of ensuring long-term food security and safety in the face of changing circumstances, it is interesting and necessary to understand and to take into consideration the environmental, social and economic aspects of food and beverage production in relation to the consumers’ demand. Besides, due to the globalization, the problems of long supply chains, information asymmetry, counterfeiting, difficulty for tracing and tracking back the origin of the products and numerous related issues have been raised such as consumers’ well-being and healthcare costs. Emerging technologies drive to achieve new socio-economic approaches as they enable government and individual agricultural producers to collect and analyze an ever-increasing amount of environmental, agronomic, logistic data, and they give the possibility to the consumers and quality control authorities to get access to all necessary information in a short notice and easily. Aim: The object of the research essentially concerns the study of the ways for improving the production process through reducing the information asymmetry, making it available for interested parties in a reasonable time, analyzing the data about production processes considering the environmental impact of production in terms of ecology, economy, food safety and food quality and build the opportunity for stakeholders to make informed decisions, as well as simplifying the control of the quality, counterfeiting and fraud. Therefore, the aim of this work is to study current supply chains, to identify their weaknesses and necessities, to investigate the emerging technologies, their characteristics and the impacts on supply chains, and to provide with the useful recommendations the industry, governments and policymakers

Modular product development for mass customization

fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Natural and Technological Hazards in Urban Areas

Natural hazard events and technological accidents are separate causes of environmental impacts. Natural hazards are physical phenomena active in geological times, whereas technological hazards result from actions or facilities created by humans. In our time, combined natural and man-made hazards have been induced. Overpopulation and urban development in areas prone to natural hazards increase the impact of natural disasters worldwide. Additionally, urban areas are frequently characterized by intense industrial activity and rapid, poorly planned growth that threatens the environment and degrades the quality of life. Therefore, proper urban planning is crucial to minimize fatalities and reduce the environmental and economic impacts that accompany both natural and technological hazardous events

Strategic Assortment Decisions in Omnichannel Retailing: The Design and Evaluation of an Omnichannel Assortment Ontology for Consumer Confusion.

Consumer confusion is a phenomenon observed in retail settings where consumers feel irritation or frustration during the shopping journey. Consumers can be overwhelmed by assortment size, complex product variety, brand similarities, information inconsistencies or by intense stimuli from store atmospherics inducing information overload, leading to adverse reactions. Oftentimes, these experiences result in various negative short- and long-term consequences such as helplessness, purchase abandonment, dissatisfaction, or loss of trust or loyalty, thus representing a crucial challenge for retailers to prevent or mitigate. Consumer confusion has been studied extensively in a single-channel context, for instance, by investigating information overload phenomena in online shopping situations or examining increased choice sets resulting from large assortment sizes in physical stores. However, although omnichannel retailing has become the current state-of-the-art in the retail industry today, consumer confusion research from an omnichannel perspective is still very scarce. With the increased adoption of the omnichannel strategy by retailers that allow free switching behaviour for their customers during their shopping journeys, a new dimension to the consumer confusion phenomenon is observed. Customers are not only exposed to potential confusion at a specific retail situation in a single channel but are now confronted with potential new negative experiences while comparing products, prices, or information across channels. Particularly, when confronted with assortment inconsistencies across channels while switching channels, customers can experience irritation, frustration, or annoyance if the desired item is not to be found on the other channel, leading to adverse reactions that can potentially impact the retailer's financial performance. Prior literature has considered consumer confusion induced by assortment size, variety, or layout, but neglected its occurrence from assortment inconsistencies across channels from a channel switching perspective so far. This thesis focuses on the consumer confusion phenomenon resulting from assortment inconsistencies across channels from a channel-switching perspective in omnichannel retailing. Strategic assortment decisions in omnichannel retailing involve the coordination of the assortment between channels. Retailers can decide to realise a “Full”, “Asymmetric”, or “No Integration” approach for their assortment across channels. These strategic assortment decisions are taken at the Marketing-Operations-Interface (MOI), an interface harmonizing oftentimes conflicting relationships between objectives of the marketing and operations functions of the retailer. Although identical assortment across channels seems to be the desired solution to prevent consumer confusion (representing an objective from the marketing function), retailers oftentimes apply partial integration to benefit from channel-specific advantages such as the Long Tail effect (representing an objective from the operations function) which is detrimental to consumer confusion prevention. Retailers seem to neglect the significance of consumer confusion while making strategic assortment decisions at the MOI indicating that the phenomenon is not sufficiently explored or captured in an omnichannel context. Retailers appear to lack knowledge of the relevant concepts, dimensions, and consequences of the consumer confusion phenomenon. As a result, retailers are likely to fail in addressing and preventing the occurrence of the consumer confusion phenomenon in an omnichannel context. Current studies on strategic assortment decisions and consumer confusion in omnichannel retailing are very scarce and primarily based on experimental studies with a strong lack of empirical contributions. More importantly, none of the studies considers channel switching behaviour in the context of consumer confusion although representing the primary condition for the phenomenon to occur. There is a need for the integration and alignment of knowledge capturing the domains for strategic assortment decisions, the consumer confusion concept, and its short- and long-term consequences from a channel switching behaviour perspective in order to inform strategic assortment decisions at the MOI. Ontologies are explicit and formal specifications of shared conceptualisations that can structure and link information of specific domains and thus are a suitable technique for knowledge representation. Grounded on a Design Science project, this research designs and develops an ontology-based knowledge representation that captures and aligns domain knowledge on strategic assortment decisions, the consumer confusion concept and its consequences from a channel switching behaviour perspective in an omnichannel retailing context. The literature- and practitioner-informed Omnichannel Assortment Ontology for Consumer Confusion is able to integrate and represent relevant concepts and their relationships at the MOI in order to inform omnichannel retailers on the link between strategic assortment decisions and the consumer confusion phenomenon. The ontology is instantiated and evaluated through a System Dynamics model based on a case study that demonstrates successfully its ability to inform omnichannel retailers on strategic assortment decisions and the consumer confusion concept at the MOI. This study contributes to theory and practice in various ways. From a theoretical perspective, this is the first study to link strategic assortment decisions with the consumer confusion concept from a channel switching behaviour perspective. The solution design embodies novel design knowledge on the construction of an ontology-based knowledge representation. Moreover, the study enhances the fields of omnichannel assortment, consumer confusion, and channel switching behaviour research by introducing novel concepts, tools, and an improved understanding of the domains and their interplay with each other. From a managerial perspective, the ontology effectively serves as a knowledge reference that is able to guide strategic decision-making in assortment integration for omnichannel retailers at the MOI. This allows omnichannel retailers to identify and mitigate potential adverse consumer reactions induced by consumer confusion, thus eventually preventing financial impact on their retail performance

Symmetry-Adapted Machine Learning for Information Security

Symmetry-adapted machine learning has shown encouraging ability to mitigate the security risks in information and communication technology (ICT) systems. It is a subset of artificial intelligence (AI) that relies on the principles of processing future events by learning past events or historical data. The autonomous nature of symmetry-adapted machine learning supports effective data processing and analysis for security detection in ICT systems without the interference of human authorities. Many industries are developing machine-learning-adapted solutions to support security for smart hardware, distributed computing, and the cloud. In our Special Issue book, we focus on the deployment of symmetry-adapted machine learning for information security in various application areas. This security approach can support effective methods to handle the dynamic nature of security attacks by extraction and analysis of data to identify hidden patterns of data. The main topics of this Issue include malware classification, an intrusion detection system, image watermarking, color image watermarking, battlefield target aggregation behavior recognition model, IP camera, Internet of Things (IoT) security, service function chain, indoor positioning system, and crypto-analysis