Generic system architecture for context-aware, distributed recommendation

In the existing literature on recommender systems, it is difficult to find an architecture for large-scale implementation. Often, the architectures proposed in papers are specific to an algorithm implementation or a domain. Thus, there is no clear architectural starting point for a new recommender system. This paper presents an architecture blueprint for a context-aware recommender system that provides scalability, availability, and security for its users. The architecture also contributes the dynamic ability to switch between single-device (offline), client-server (online), and fully distributed implementations. From this blueprint, a new recommender system could be built with minimal design and implementation effort regardless of the application.Electrical and Computer Engineerin

Modeling an ontology on accessible evacuation routes for emergencies

Providing alert communication in emergency situations is vital to reduce the number of victims. However, this is a challenging goal for researchers and professionals due to the diverse pool of prospective users, e.g. people with disabilities as well as other vulnerable groups. Moreover, in the event of an emergency situation, many people could become vulnerable because of exceptional circumstances such as stress, an unknown environment or even visual impairment (e.g. fire causing smoke). Within this scope, a crucial activity is to notify affected people about safe places and available evacuation routes. In order to address this need, we propose to extend an ontology, called SEMA4A (Simple EMergency Alert 4 [for] All), developed in a previous work for managing knowledge about accessibility guidelines, emergency situations and communication technologies. In this paper, we introduce a semi-automatic technique for knowledge acquisition and modeling on accessible evacuation routes. We introduce a use case to show applications of the ontology and conclude with an evaluation involving several experts in evacuation procedures. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

An analytic framework to assess organizational resilience

Background: Resilience Engineering is a paradigm for safety management that focuses on coping with complexity to achieve success, even considering several conflicting goals. Modern socio-technical systems have to be resilient to comply with the variability of everyday activities, the tight-coupled and underspecified nature of work and the nonlinear interactions among agents. At organizational level, resilience can be described as a combination of four cornerstones: monitoring, responding, learning and anticipating. Methods: Starting from these four categories, this paper aims at defining a semi-quantitative analytic framework to measure organizational resilience in complex socio-technical systems, combining the Resilience Analysis Grid (RAG) and the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). Results: This paper presents an approach for defining resilience abilities of an organization, creating a structured domain-dependent framework to define a resilience profile at different levels of abstraction, to identify weaknesses and strengths of the system and thus potential actions to increase system’s adaptive capacity. An illustrative example in an anaesthesia department clarifies the outcomes of the approach. Conclusions: The outcome of the RAG, i.e. a weighted set of probing questions, can be used in different domains, as a support tool in a wider Safety-II oriented managerial action to bring safety management into the core business of the organization

Academics as decision makers: what style do they adopt?

Many studies have focused on the decision-making styles (DMS) of managers, but very few have studied the DMS among academicians. Using the Rowe Decision Style Inventory, this study investigates the DMS of the academics in a public university in Malaysia. The objectives are to identify the common styles adopted by the academics and to determine their dominant styles in relation to their gender, age, faculty, qualifications, and years of service. This study employed a quantitative-questionnaire design that was distributed to 163 academics during an in-house training program. Four types of DMS—directive, analytical, conceptual, and behavioural styles—were identified with regard to gender, age, faculty, qualifications, and years of service. The results revealed that while the majority of the respondents have more than one dominant DMS, the conceptual and analytical styles predominate. Additionally, empirical evidence of variations in the types of DMS across demographic characteristics was found. These findings provide important implications for academics in making the most effective decisions within their professio

Cross-middleware Interoperability in Distributed Concurrent Engineering

Secure, distributed collaboration between different organizations is a key challenge in Grid computing today. The GDCD project has produced a Grid-based demonstrator Virtual Collaborative Facility (VCF) for the European Space Agency. The purpose of this work is to show the potential of Grid technology to support fully distributed concurrent design, while addressing practical considerations including network security, interoperability, and integration of legacy applications. The VCF allows domain engineers to use the concurrent design methodology in a distributed fashion to perform studies for future space missions. To demonstrate the interoperability and integration capabilities of Grid computing in concurrent design, we developed prototype VCF components based on ESA’s current Excel-based Concurrent Design Facility (a non-distributed environment), using a STEP-compliant database that stores design parameters. The database was exposed as a secure GRIA 5.1 Grid service, whilst a .NET/WSE3.0-based library was developed to enable secure communication between the Excel client and STEP database

Flow hydrodynamics across open channel flows with riparian zones: implications for riverbank stability

Riverbank vegetation is of high importance both for preserving the form (morphology) and function (ecology) of natural river systems. Revegetation of riverbanks is commonly used as a means of stream rehabilitation and management of bank instability and erosion. In this experimental study, the effect of different riverbank vegetation densities on flow hydrodynamics across the channel, including the riparian zone, are reported and discussed. The configuration of vegetation elements follows either linear or staggered arrangements as vegetation density is progressively increased, within a representative range of vegetation densities found in nature. Hydrodynamic measurements including mean streamwise velocity and turbulent intensity flow profiles are recorded via acoustic Doppler velocimetry (ADV)—both at the main channel and within the riverbank. These results show that for the main channel and the toe of riverbank, turbulence intensity for the low densities (λ ≈ 0 to 0.12 m−1) can increase up to 40% compared the case of high densities (λ = 0.94 to 1.9 m−1). Further analysis of these data allowed the estimation of bed-shear stresses, demonstrating 86% and 71% increase at the main channel and near the toe region, for increasing densities (λ = 0 to 1.9 m−1). Quantifying these hydrodynamic effects is important for assessing the contribution of physically representative ranges of riparian vegetation densities on hydrogeomorphologic feedback

Analyzing Project Management Maturity Level in Indonesia

Project management has been generally known and increasingly used by many organizations to gain competitive advantage. In this context, many studies have proposed maturity models to evaluate how project management knowledge has been deployed effectively and efficiently in organization. As a developing country, Indonesia needs many development projects managed by government and private companies in different industries. Here, a study to assess project management maturity level in Indonesian businesses may bring insight about current business practices, which is important to speed up country development and business sustainability.  Adapting the Project Management Maturity Model (ProMMM), a survey instrument has been developed and applied to professionals from Jakarta and surrounding area.  The result of analysis shows that construction and primary industry have a higher maturity level compare to manufacturing and services.  It is to be noted, however, that the level of project management understanding is low across industries.  This indicates that more quality project management training or certification is required to improve overall project management knowledge in Indonesia

Managerial commitment towards SPI in small and very small enterprises

This paper compares and contrasts the results of two similar studies into the software process practices in Irish Small and Very Small Enterprises. The first study contains rich findings in relation to the role and influence of managerial experience and style, with particular respect to the company founder and software development managers in small to medium seized enterprises (SMEs), whilst the second study contains extensive findings in relation to people and management involvement / commitment and SPI goal planning in very small enterprises (VSEs). By combining these results of these two studies of Irish SMEs/VSEs we can develop a rich picture of managerial commitment towards SPI and in particular explore the similarities between Small and Very Small Enterprises

Energy management in communication networks: a journey through modelling and optimization glasses

The widespread proliferation of Internet and wireless applications has produced a significant increase of ICT energy footprint. As a response, in the last five years, significant efforts have been undertaken to include energy-awareness into network management. Several green networking frameworks have been proposed by carefully managing the network routing and the power state of network devices. Even though approaches proposed differ based on network technologies and sleep modes of nodes and interfaces, they all aim at tailoring the active network resources to the varying traffic needs in order to minimize energy consumption. From a modeling point of view, this has several commonalities with classical network design and routing problems, even if with different objectives and in a dynamic context. With most researchers focused on addressing the complex and crucial technological aspects of green networking schemes, there has been so far little attention on understanding the modeling similarities and differences of proposed solutions. This paper fills the gap surveying the literature with optimization modeling glasses, following a tutorial approach that guides through the different components of the models with a unified symbolism. A detailed classification of the previous work based on the modeling issues included is also proposed