9 research outputs found

    The Disruptive Adaptations of Construction 4.0 and Industry 4.0 as a Pathway to a Sustainable Innovation and Inclusive Industrial Technological Development

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    Construction 4.0 (C4.0) has tremendously impacted construction activities worldwide in recent times. This effect was made possible on account of innovations brought about by Industry 4.0 (I4.0). Industry 4.0 has the potential to create Construction 4.0 through the integration of the design, construction and maintenance of infrastructure through useful component integration for industrial and technological development. Therefore, this study aimed to present a pathway for achieving sustainable innovations and inclusive technological and infrastructural developments. The following parameters were reviewed in this study as part of the goals and objectives set in the survey: identifying the adaptable areas of Construction 4.0 in design, planning, construction and maintenance as part of infrastructural innovation in order to study the industrial application drivers of I4.0 and C4.0 hindrances in achieving C4.0; achieving the automation dream through C4.0, benchmarking the social and economic implications of C4.0 and identifying the issues and challenges in achieving sustainable innovation through infrastructural development and documenting the disruptive tools of C4.0 in achieving a sustainable design through technological development and examining the critical factors influencing the effective adaptation of C4.0 in achieving growth. The authors utilised 200 construction firms for this study using the Cochran and Slovin’s formulas. In addition, the sample size of 150 respondents that constituted the study were construction professionals. The respondents used the simple percentage, relative index, Spearman’s rank, Mann–Whitney U test, Kendall’s Tau test, Student’s t‐test, ANOVA and chi‐square tools in the data processing. The study found out, among other things, the following as part of the parameters earlier proposed: the introduction of a circular economy by adopting intelligent innovation, engaging new tools, technological innovation diffusion and the vertical and horizontal integration of versatile tools like I4.0 and C4.0 for inclusive technological development. This study recommended the objective and effective adaptation of I4.0 tools to enhance C4.0 for technical development, circular economic integration and a framework for sustainable innovation and a system for the inclusive monitoring of innovations in the design and planning of construction maintenance

    Políticas de Copyright de Publicações Científicas em Repositórios Institucionais: O Caso do INESC TEC

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    A progressiva transformação das práticas científicas, impulsionada pelo desenvolvimento das novas Tecnologias de Informação e Comunicação (TIC), têm possibilitado aumentar o acesso à informação, caminhando gradualmente para uma abertura do ciclo de pesquisa. Isto permitirá resolver a longo prazo uma adversidade que se tem colocado aos investigadores, que passa pela existência de barreiras que limitam as condições de acesso, sejam estas geográficas ou financeiras. Apesar da produção científica ser dominada, maioritariamente, por grandes editoras comerciais, estando sujeita às regras por estas impostas, o Movimento do Acesso Aberto cuja primeira declaração pública, a Declaração de Budapeste (BOAI), é de 2002, vem propor alterações significativas que beneficiam os autores e os leitores. Este Movimento vem a ganhar importância em Portugal desde 2003, com a constituição do primeiro repositório institucional a nível nacional. Os repositórios institucionais surgiram como uma ferramenta de divulgação da produção científica de uma instituição, com o intuito de permitir abrir aos resultados da investigação, quer antes da publicação e do próprio processo de arbitragem (preprint), quer depois (postprint), e, consequentemente, aumentar a visibilidade do trabalho desenvolvido por um investigador e a respetiva instituição. O estudo apresentado, que passou por uma análise das políticas de copyright das publicações científicas mais relevantes do INESC TEC, permitiu não só perceber que as editoras adotam cada vez mais políticas que possibilitam o auto-arquivo das publicações em repositórios institucionais, como também que existe todo um trabalho de sensibilização a percorrer, não só para os investigadores, como para a instituição e toda a sociedade. A produção de um conjunto de recomendações, que passam pela implementação de uma política institucional que incentive o auto-arquivo das publicações desenvolvidas no âmbito institucional no repositório, serve como mote para uma maior valorização da produção científica do INESC TEC.The progressive transformation of scientific practices, driven by the development of new Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), which made it possible to increase access to information, gradually moving towards an opening of the research cycle. This opening makes it possible to resolve, in the long term, the adversity that has been placed on researchers, which involves the existence of barriers that limit access conditions, whether geographical or financial. Although large commercial publishers predominantly dominate scientific production and subject it to the rules imposed by them, the Open Access movement whose first public declaration, the Budapest Declaration (BOAI), was in 2002, proposes significant changes that benefit the authors and the readers. This Movement has gained importance in Portugal since 2003, with the constitution of the first institutional repository at the national level. Institutional repositories have emerged as a tool for disseminating the scientific production of an institution to open the results of the research, both before publication and the preprint process and postprint, increase the visibility of work done by an investigator and his or her institution. The present study, which underwent an analysis of the copyright policies of INESC TEC most relevant scientific publications, allowed not only to realize that publishers are increasingly adopting policies that make it possible to self-archive publications in institutional repositories, all the work of raising awareness, not only for researchers but also for the institution and the whole society. The production of a set of recommendations, which go through the implementation of an institutional policy that encourages the self-archiving of the publications developed in the institutional scope in the repository, serves as a motto for a greater appreciation of the scientific production of INESC TEC

    Concurrent Speech Synthesis to Improve Document First Glance for the Blind

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    International audienceSkimming and scanning are two well-known reading processes, which are combined to access the document content as quickly and efficiently as possible. While both are available in visual reading mode, it is rather difficult to use them in non visual environments because they mainly rely on typographical and layout properties. In this article, we introduce the concept of tag thunder as a way (1) to achieve the oral transposition of the web 2.0 concept of tag cloud and (2) to produce an innovative interactive stimulus to observe the emergence of self-adapted strategies for non-visual skimming of written texts. We first present our general and theoretical approach to the problem of both fast, global and non-visual access to web browsing; then we detail the progress of development and evaluation of the various components that make up our software architecture. We start from the hypothesis that the semantics of the visual architecture of web pages can be transposed into new sensory modalities thanks to three main steps (web page segmentation, keywords extraction and sound spatialization). We note the difficulty of simultaneously (1) evaluating a modular system as a whole at the end of the processing chain and (2) identifying at the level of each software brick the exact origin of its limits; despite this issue, the results of the first evaluation campaign seem promising

    A Spot Reminder System for the Visually Impaired Based on a Smartphone Camera

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    The present paper proposes a smartphone-camera-based system to assist visually impaired users in recalling their memories related to important locations, called spots, that they visited. The memories are recorded as voice memos, which can be played back when the users return to the spots. Spot-to-spot correspondence is determined by image matching based on the scale invariant feature transform. The main contribution of the proposed system is to allow visually impaired users to associate arbitrary voice memos with arbitrary spots. The users do not need any special devices or systems except smartphones and do not need to remember the spots where the voice memos were recorded. In addition, the proposed system can identify spots in environments that are inaccessible to the global positioning system. The proposed system has been evaluated by two experiments: image matching tests and a user study. The experimental results suggested the effectiveness of the system to help visually impaired individuals, including blind individuals, recall information about regularly-visited spots

    Semantic adaptability for the systems interoperability

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    In the current global and competitive business context, it is essential that enterprises adapt their knowledge resources in order to smoothly interact and collaborate with others. However, due to the existent multiculturalism of people and enterprises, there are different representation views of business processes or products, even inside a same domain. Consequently, one of the main problems found in the interoperability between enterprise systems and applications is related to semantics. The integration and sharing of enterprises knowledge to build a common lexicon, plays an important role to the semantic adaptability of the information systems. The author proposes a framework to support the development of systems to manage dynamic semantic adaptability resolution. It allows different organisations to participate in a common knowledge base building, letting at the same time maintain their own views of the domain, without compromising the integration between them. Thus, systems are able to be aware of new knowledge, and have the capacity to learn from it and to manage its semantic interoperability in a dynamic and adaptable way. The author endorses the vision that in the near future, the semantic adaptability skills of the enterprise systems will be the booster to enterprises collaboration and the appearance of new business opportunities

    Integration of accessibility requirements in the design of multimedia user agents interfaces

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    Mención Internacional en el título de doctorThe continuous increase of multimedia content in the Web, especially video content, is not accompanied by a similar increase of accessibility; there is a lack of synchronized alternatives for the content such as captions, audio description, etc. that allow anyone with or without disability to access such content. This lack of accessibility in video content access is not only due to the lack of alternatives, but also because of the fact that user agents which deliver this content do not provide the necessary means to present them. This fact leads to the noncompliance of the current regulations and legislation in terms of accessibility. This noncompliance could be due to the lack of knowledge, or because of the fact that applying these regulations from an engineering point of view is not trivial. There is a lack of authoring tools and methodological approaches which assist in the development of an accessible product in the Engineering scope as it is the case of the development of a quality user agent which includes accessibility requirements. All these facts, multimedia content’s progressive increase on the Web, accessibility barriers both in the content and in the user agent together with current regulations and legislation regarding accessibility is what has motivated the accomplishment of this Doctoral Thesis. With this Doctoral Thesis, a set of accessibility requirements that a user agent which delivers multimedia content must fulfil is provided. Besides, a workspace is provided following a methodological approach which assists in the design and development of the interface of an accessible user agent which delivers accessible multimedia content. This workspace is composed of an architecture and models following a Model-Based User Interface Development (MBUID) approach and is oriented to be used by designers with knowledge in modeling. Finally, as a support to any professional regardless of their knowledge in modeling and in accessibility, an authoring tool based on models is offered in order to create user agents with accessibility requirements.El continuo incremento del contenido multimedia en la Web, especialmente del contenido vídeo, no va acompañado de un incremento similar de accesibilidad, hay una falta de alternativas sincronizadas al contenido como subtitulado, audiodescripción, etc., que permitan acceder a cualquier persona con y sin discapacidad a dicho contenido. Esta falta de accesibilidad en el acceso al contenido vídeo no solo se debe a la ausencia de alternativas, también es debido a que los agentes de usuario que entregan dicho contenido no proporcionan los medios necesarios para presentarlas. Este hecho da lugar a que no se cumpla la normativa y la legislación vigente en materia de accesibilidad. Dicho incumplimiento, puede ser debido al desconocimiento, o a que aplicar esa normativa desde el punto de vista de la ingeniería no es trivial. Hay una falta de herramientas de autor y de enfoques metodológicos que asistan en el desarrollo de un producto accesible en el ámbito de la Ingeniería, como es el caso del desarrollo de un agente de usuario con calidad que incluya requisitos de accesibilidad. Todos estos hechos, el incremento progresivo del contenido multimedia en la Web, las barreras de accesibilidad tanto en el contenido como en el agente de usuario junto con la normativa y legislación vigente en materia de accesibilidad es lo que ha motivado la realización de esta Tesis Doctoral. Con esta Tesis Doctoral se proporciona el conjunto de requisitos de accesibilidad que debe cumplir un agente de usuario que sirva contenido multimedia accesible. Además se proporciona un espacio de trabajo siguiendo un enfoque metodológico que asista en el diseño y desarrollo de la interfaz de un agente de usuario accesible que sirve contenido multimedia accesible. Este espacio de trabajo está compuesto de una arquitectura y modelos siguiendo el enfoque de Model-Based User Interface Development (MBUID) y está orientado a ser utilizado por diseñadores con conocimientos en modelado. Por último, como recurso de ayuda a cualquier profesional, independientemente de sus conocimientos en modelado y accesibilidad, se ofrece una herramienta de autor basada en modelos para crear agentes de usuario con requisitos de accesibilidad.Programa Oficial de Doctorado en Ciencia y Tecnología InformáticaPresidente: José Antonio Macías Iglesias.- Vocal: Hugo Alexandre Paredes Guede

    Preface

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    Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) play a major role in our lives. However, ICT development which is indifferent to the concerns of social inclusion may raise barriers and increase the gap between the average user and those with special needs, instead of contributing to eliminating this gap and promoting equal rights and opportunities for all. Senior citizens and others with special needs are often faced with multiple minor disabilities that prevent them from enjoying the benefits of technology and higher quality of life standards. According to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, technology design should take into account accessibility and usability features for the protection and promotion of the human rights of persons with disabilities, in all policies and programmes
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