Towards a flexible open-source software library for multi-layered scholarly textual studies: An Arabic case study dealing with semi-automatic language processing

This paper presents both the general model and a case study of the Computational and Collaborative Philology Library (CoPhiLib), an ongoing initiative underway at the Institute for Computational Linguistics (ILC) of the National Research Council (CNR), Pisa, Italy. The library, designed and organized as a reusable, abstract and open-source software component, aims at solving the needs of multi-lingual and cross-lingual analysis by exposing common Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). The core modules, coded by the Java programming language, constitute the groundwork of a Web platform designed to deal with textual scholarly needs. The Web application, implemented according to the Java Enterprise specifications, focuses on multi-layered analysis for the study of literary documents and related multimedia sources. This ambitious challenge seeks to obtain the management of textual resources, on the one hand by abstracting from current language, on the other hand by decoupling from the specific requirements of single projects. This goal is achieved thanks to methodologies declared by the 'agile process', and by putting into effect suitable use case modeling, design patterns, and component-based architectures. The reusability and flexibility of the system have been tested on an Arabic case study: the system allows users to choose the morphological engine (such as AraMorph or Al-Khalil), along with linguistic granularity (i.e. with or without declension). Finally, the application enables the construction of annotated resources for further statistical engines (training set). © 2014 IEEE

An Architecture for Integrated Intelligence in Urban Management using Cloud Computing

With the emergence of new methodologies and technologies it has now become possible to manage large amounts of environmental sensing data and apply new integrated computing models to acquire information intelligence. This paper advocates the application of cloud capacity to support the information, communication and decision making needs of a wide variety of stakeholders in the complex business of the management of urban and regional development. The complexity lies in the interactions and impacts embodied in the concept of the urban-ecosystem at various governance levels. This highlights the need for more effective integrated environmental management systems. This paper offers a user-orientated approach based on requirements for an effective management of the urban-ecosystem and the potential contributions that can be supported by the cloud computing community. Furthermore, the commonality of the influence of the drivers of change at the urban level offers the opportunity for the cloud computing community to develop generic solutions that can serve the needs of hundreds of cities from Europe and indeed globally.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figure

Adopting national vegetation guidelines and the National Vegetation Information System (NVIS) framework in the Northern Territory

Guidelines and core attributes for site-based vegetation surveying and mapping developed for the Northern Territory, are relevant to botanical research, forestry typing, rangeland monitoring and reporting on the extent and condition of native and non-native vegetated landscapes. These initiatives are consistent with national vegetation guidelines and the National Vegetation Information System (NVIS) framework. This paper provides a synopsis of vegetation site data collection, classification and mapping in the Northern Territory, and discusses the benefits of consistency between the guidelines, core attributes and the NVIS framework; both of which has an emphasis on the NVIS hierarchical classification system for describing structural and floristic attributes of vegetation. The long-term aim of the NVIS framework is that national attributes are adopted at regional levels to enable comparability of vegetation information within survey and jurisdictional boundaries in the Northern Territory and across Australia. The guidelines and core attributes are incorporated in current and future vegetation survey and mapping programs in the Northern Territory

Streamlining governmental processes by putting citizens in control of their personal data

Governments typically store large amounts of personal information on their citizens, such as a home address, marital status, and occupation, to offer public services. Because governments consist of various governmental agencies, multiple copies of this data often exist. This raises concerns regarding data consistency, privacy, and access control, especially under recent legal frameworks such as GDPR. To solve these problems, and to give citizens true control over their data, we explore an approach using the decentralised Solid ecosystem, which enables citizens to maintain their data in personal data pods. We have applied this approach to two high-impact use cases, where citizen information is stored in personal data pods, and both public and private organisations are selectively granted access. Our findings indicate that Solid allows reshaping the relationship between citizens, their personal data, and the applications they use in the public and private sector. We strongly believe that the insights from this Flemish Solid Pilot can speed up the process for public administrations and private organisations that want to put the users in control of their data