Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse

Syrian Refugees and the Digital Passage to Europe: Smartphone Infrastructures and Affordances

This research examines the role of smartphones in refugees’ journeys. It traces the risks and possibilities afforded by smartphones for facilitating information, communication, and migration flows in the digital passage to Europe. For the Syrian and Iraqi refugee respondents in this France-based qualitative study, smartphones are lifelines, as important as water and food. They afford the planning, navigation, and documentation of journeys, enabling regular contact with family, friends, smugglers, and those who help them. However, refugees are simultaneously exposed to new forms of exploitation and surveillance with smartphones as migrations are financialised by smugglers and criminalized by European policies, and the digital passage is dependent on a contingent range of sociotechnical and material assemblages. Through an infrastructural lens, we capture the dialectical dynamics of opportunity and vulnerability, and the forms of resilience and solidarity, that arise as forced migration and digital connectivity coincide

A Conceptual Framework for Firm Cooperation and Clusters and Their Impact on Productivity and Competitiveness

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Theory, reality, and possibilities for a digital/communicative socialist network society

Digital capitalism is guided by the organising principles of digital automation, information processing, and communication. It rests on the consolidation of relations of exploitation of digital labour based on flexibility and generating precarity. It makes profit from user data under conditions of surveillance. What would an alternative paradigm look like? This paper aims to sketch a possible socialist society resting on digital technology but organised on a different logic, namely that of autonomous production, leisure, and social engagement. It draws on relevant theories of the Left, evaluates them against the reality of digital capitalism, and suggests structural and user practice alternatives that can pave the way towards a digital/communicative socialism. This paper engages with the works of Czech philosopher Radovan Richta (1924-1983) and Austrian-French philosopher André Gorz (1923-2007). It shows that their ideas on the scientific and technological revolution and post-industrial socialism are highly relevant for the analysis and discussion of digital/communicative socialism

E-government and digital inclusion

LEFIS organized a meeting in July 2007 in Jaca (Spain) to discuss the status and the perspectives of e-Government especially applied to the legal aspects of society. As it is known the potential benefits of e-Government are numerous and they include greater efficiency, improved public services, enhanced engagement with citizens. Yet progress has been relatively slow, particularly when compared with other sectors such as e-Commerce. From the presentations of some experiences focused in particular on digital divide, e-Participation, form of government, role of citizens, planning methodology in proposing solutions for citizens, the book highlights some problems and solutions to help overcome barriers

Seismic Risk Assessment Tools Workshop

Held in the European Crisis Management Laboratory on 11-12 May 2017, the Workshop brought together on one side the developers of some of the most widely used modern seismic risk assessment tools and on the other a number of Civil Protection authorities from countries of the European Civil Protection Mechanism. The objective was to demonstrate the use and capabilities of the tools, explore the possible use in near-real-time impact assessment and promote their use in risk planning and disaster response. The systems presented in the workshop demonstrated a very high sophistication and increased flexibility in accepting data from a large number of sources and formats. Systems that were initially developed on a national scale can now work on a global level with little effort and the use of global-scale exposure data is almost seamless. An urgent need for more accurate exposure data being openly available was identified, as well as the need of proper use of the fragility curves. Inter-system collaboration and interoperability in some cases to increase ease of use was greatly appreciated and encouraged. All systems participated in a real-time simulation exercise on previously unknown seismic data provided by the JRC; some additional automation might be in order, but in general all systems demostrated a capacity to produce results on a near-real-time basis. The demonstrations were unanimously welcomed as very useful by the participating Civil Protection Authorities, most of which are either using a locally-developed system of moving towards using one of those presented in the workshop.JRC.E.1-Disaster Risk Managemen