Non-invasive estimation of stress in conflict resolution environments

The current trend in Online Dispute Resolution focuses mostly on the development of technological tools that allow parties to solve conflicts through telecommunication means. However, this tendency leaves aside key issues, namely our concern with respect to context information that was previously available in traditional Alternative Dispute Resolution processes. The main weakness of this approach is that conflict resolution may become a cold process, focused solely on objective questions. In order to overcome this inconvenience, we move forward to incorporate context information in an Online Dispute Resolution platform. In particular, we consider the estimation of the level of stress of the users by analyzing their interaction patterns. As a result, the conflict resolution platform or the mediator may weight to what extent a party is affected by a particular matter, allowing one to adapt the conflict resolution strategy to a specific problem in real time

Implementation of context-aware workflows with Multi-agent Systems

Systems in Ambient Intelligence (AmI) need to manage workflows that represent users’ activities. These workflows can be quite complex, as they may involve multiple participants, both physical and computational, playing different roles. Their execution implies monitoring the development of the activities in the environment, and taking the necessary actions for them and the workflow to reach a certain end. The context-aware approach supports the development of these applications to cope with event processing and regarding information issues. Modeling the actors in these context-aware workflows, where complex decisions and interactions must be considered, can be achieved with multi-agent systems. Agents are autonomous entities with sophisticated and flexible behaviors, which are able to adapt to complex and evolving environments, and to collaborate to reach common goals. This work presents architectural patterns to integrate agents on top of an existing context-aware architecture. This allows an additional abstraction layer on top of context-aware systems, where knowledge management is performed by agents.This approach improves the flexibility of AmI systems and facilitates their design. A case study on guiding users in buildings to their meetings illustrates this approach

Development and implementation of clinical guidelines : an artificial intelligence perspective

Clinical practice guidelines in paper format are still the preferred form of delivery of medical knowledge and recommendations to healthcare professionals. Their current support and development process have well identified limitations to which the healthcare community has been continuously searching solutions. Artificial intelligence may create the conditions and provide the tools to address many, if not all, of these limitations.. This paper presents a comprehensive and up to date review of computer-interpretable guideline approaches, namely Arden Syntax, GLIF, PROforma, Asbru, GLARE and SAGE. It also provides an assessment of how well these approaches respond to the challenges posed by paper-based guidelines and addresses topics of Artificial intelligence that could provide a solution to the shortcomings of clinical guidelines. Among the topics addressed by this paper are expert systems, case-based reasoning, medical ontologies and reasoning under uncertainty, with a special focus on methodologies for assessing quality of information when managing incomplete information. Finally, an analysis is made of the fundamental requirements of a guideline model and the importance that standard terminologies and models for clinical data have in the semantic and syntactic interoperability between a guideline execution engine and the software tools used in clinical settings. It is also proposed a line of research that includes the development of an ontology for clinical practice guidelines and a decision model for a guideline-based expert system that manages non-compliance with clinical guidelines and uncertainty.This work is funded by national funds through the FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology) within project PEst-OE/EEI/UI0752/2011"

Segurança e privacidade no contexto de ambientes inteligentes

Dissertação de mestrado em Direito e InformáticaCom a realização do presente estudo pretende-se levar a cabo uma análise de ambientes inteligentes e as suas repercussões na privacidade e na proteção de dados, bem como possíveis soluções legais e tecnológicas para os problemas que os mesmos levantam. Neste trabalho procurou-se, por um lado, esclarecer o conceito de ambientes inteligentes, bem como definir os seus campos da aplicação e as suas vantagens, e, por outro lado, expor as críticas mais comuns dirigidas às ameaças à privacidade e à proteção de dados. Para o efeito, a investigação focou-se na análise da relevância e adequação da legislação atual face aos desafios emergentes de ambientes inteligentes através de uma abordagem detalhada do regime legal da União Europeia relativa à privacidade e à proteção de dados pessoais, bem como da legislação nacional, em concreto do Decreto-Lei n.º 67/98, de 26 de outubro. Ao longo do presente estudo foi possível inferir que o paradigma de ambientes inteligentes introduz novos riscos à privacidade e proteção de dados pessoais, os quais obrigam a repensar questões relacionadas com segurança, autonomia, identidade e autodeterminação da pessoa humana.This study intends to carry out an analysis of Ambient Intelligence and its impact on privacy and data protection; as well as possible legal and technological solutions to the problems that it raises. The aim is, on one hand, to clarify the concept of Ambient Intelligence, its advantages and application fields; and on the other hand, to expose common criticism regarding the threat that it poses to privacy and data protection. To this end, the main focus was to analyze the relevance and adequacy of current legislation towards Ambient Intelligence and the challenges that it faces; through a comprehensive breakdown of the European Union’s legal regime, as well as national legislation, on the matter of privacy and personal data protection, namely the Decree-Law n.º 67/98, October the 26th During this study it was possible to conclude that the paradigm of Ambient Intelligence introduces new and emerging concerns over privacy and personal data protection, which demand new thinking on issues related to security, autonomy, identity and self-determination of the individual.Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT) - projeto FCOMP-01-0124-FEDER-028980.Este trabalho foi desenvolvido no contexto do projeto CAMCoF -Contextaware Multimodal Communication Framework financiado por Fundos FEDER através do Programa Operacional Fatores de Competitividade - COMPETE