201 research outputs found

    Towards a data-driven military: a multi-disciplinary perspective

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    Towards a data-driven military. A multi-disciplinary perspective assesses the use of data and information on modern conflict from different scientific and methodological disciplines, aiming to generate valuable contributions to the ongoing discourse on data, the military and modern warfare. Military Systems and Technology approaches the theme empirically by researching how data can enhance the utility of military materiel and subsequently accelerate the decision-making process. War Studies take a multidisciplinary approach to the evolution of warfare, while Military Management Studies take a holistic organisational and procedural approach. Based on their scientific protocols and research methods, the three domains put forward different research questions and perspectives, providing the unique character of this book

    Comparative process mining:analyzing variability in process data

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    Comparative process mining:analyzing variability in process data

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    Scalable and fault-tolerant data stream processing on multi-core architectures

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    With increasing data volumes and velocity, many applications are shifting from the classical “process-after-store” paradigm to a stream processing model: data is produced and consumed as continuous streams. Stream processing captures latency-sensitive applications as diverse as credit card fraud detection and high-frequency trading. These applications are expressed as queries of algebraic operations (e.g., aggregation) over the most recent data using windows, i.e., finite evolving views over the input streams. To guarantee correct results, streaming applications require precise window semantics (e.g., temporal ordering) for operations that maintain state. While high processing throughput and low latency are performance desiderata for stateful streaming applications, achieving both poses challenges. Computing the state of overlapping windows causes redundant aggregation operations: incremental execution (i.e., reusing previous results) reduces latency but prevents parallelization; at the same time, parallelizing window execution for stateful operations with precise semantics demands ordering guarantees and state access coordination. Finally, streams and state must be recovered to produce consistent and repeatable results in the event of failures. Given the rise of shared-memory multi-core CPU architectures and high-speed networking, we argue that it is possible to address these challenges in a single node without compromising window semantics, performance, or fault-tolerance. In this thesis, we analyze, design, and implement stream processing engines (SPEs) that achieve high performance on multi-core architectures. To this end, we introduce new approaches for in-memory processing that address the previous challenges: (i) for overlapping windows, we provide a family of window aggregation techniques that enable computation sharing based on the algebraic properties of aggregation functions; (ii) for parallel window execution, we balance parallelism and incremental execution by developing abstractions for both and combining them to a novel design; and (iii) for reliable single-node execution, we enable strong fault-tolerance guarantees without sacrificing performance by reducing the required disk I/O bandwidth using a novel persistence model. We combine the above to implement an SPE that processes hundreds of millions of tuples per second with sub-second latencies. These results reveal the opportunity to reduce resource and maintenance footprint by replacing cluster-based SPEs with single-node deployments.Open Acces

    Leadership, innovation and strategy development in military hard structures: Bringing chaos to order

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    This thesis is a critical engagement with the development of leadership for officers in the United States Air Force (USAF) at the USAF’s Air University (AU) through specially designed graduate level education courses in leadership and innovation. These programs have been in regular demand and requests for their dissemination to various other parts of the military are frequent. They are also the seed bed for a number of change initiatives and graduates are to be found at the highest level of decision making. This responsibility to anticipate the future and contribute to supporting officers to lead in increasing complexity, requires me to be constantly questioning myself, my own leadership, my ideas and the ideas of others to inform the design and ongoing evolution of these programs. This evolution is nudged not only from questioning but from the input of students, faculty, and staff in a collaborative endeavor. The context is leadership in, what I refer to as, a ‘hard structure’, one that is heavily regulated and bureaucratized with non-negotiable expectations of its members in service to the protection of systems of security, from economy and law enforcement to trade and civil liberties. In the context of this particular hard structure of the military, the mandate to safeguard a nation’s institutions and alliances can also be a mandate to kill on small and large scales, if ordered to, in the interests of national and international security. This critique has brought into greater awareness the ambiguities, contradictions, and paradoxes faced by military leadership; it questions whether existing formulaic models are relevant to practice in field conditions and tracks my search for concepts as translational devices to negotiate opposing tensions and to see the possibilities in ‘the middle way’. I collaborate with students, peers, and literature to enable leadership and innovation education to shift from a monoperspective to a multi-perspective lens and from leadership as some form of mono-discipline to a multidisciplinary one. I explore the relevance of approaches and concepts including transdisciplinary perspectives as complementary ways to approach leadership for the future. While innovation is part of the leadership portfolio, I arrive at the need to introduce strategy into that portfolio and have set in motion an initiative to integrate all three into a Master’s program that stretches not only the skills of young officers but their imagination. I can now articulate more clearly the concepts, ideas and distilled experience that informs the content and the delivery of the leadership and innovation programs– a transparency of my own understanding including (i) context is pivotal (ii) once leaders understand and are comfortable with their ‘being’ they will be confident to seek cognitive diversity to complement any perceived or actual ‘weaknesses’ in themselves (iii) this in turn results in strong, cohesive teams where individuals can feel less inhibited in expressing and comprehending their strengths and can strive to help each other flourish with an understanding that leaders can only be as great as the teams they create

    Online and Distance Education for a Connected World

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    Learning at a distance and learning online are growing in scale and importance in higher education, presenting opportunities for large scale, inclusive, flexible and engaging learning. These modes of learning swept the world in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. The many challenges of providing effective education online and remotely have been acknowledged, particularly by those who rapidly jumped into online and distance education during the crisis. This volume, edited by the University of London’s Centre for Online and Distance Education, addresses the practice and theory of online and distance education, building on knowledge and expertise developed in the University over some 150 years. The University is currently providing distance transnational education to around 50,000 students in more than 180 countries around the world. Throughout the book, contributors explore important principles and highlight successful practices in areas including course design and pedagogy, online assessment, open education, inclusive practice, and enabling student voice. Case studies illustrate prominent issues and approaches. Together, the chapters offer current and future leaders and practitioners a practical, productive, practice- and theory-informed account of the present and likely future state of online and distance higher education worldwide
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