Enrichment of the Phenotypic and Genotypic Data Warehouse analysis using Question Answering systems to facilitate the decision making process in cereal breeding programs

Currently there are an overwhelming number of scientific publications in Life Sciences, especially in Genetics and Biotechnology. This huge amount of information is structured in corporate Data Warehouses (DW) or in Biological Databases (e.g. UniProt, RCSB Protein Data Bank, CEREALAB or GenBank), whose main drawback is its cost of updating that makes it obsolete easily. However, these Databases are the main tool for enterprises when they want to update their internal information, for example when a plant breeder enterprise needs to enrich its genetic information (internal structured Database) with recently discovered genes related to specific phenotypic traits (external unstructured data) in order to choose the desired parentals for breeding programs. In this paper, we propose to complement the internal information with external data from the Web using Question Answering (QA) techniques. We go a step further by providing a complete framework for integrating unstructured and structured information by combining traditional Databases and DW architectures with QA systems. The great advantage of our framework is that decision makers can compare instantaneously internal data with external data from competitors, thereby allowing taking quick strategic decisions based on richer data.This paper has been partially supported by the MESOLAP (TIN2010-14860) and GEODAS-BI (TIN2012-37493-C03-03) projects from the Spanish Ministry of Education and Competitivity. Alejandro Maté is funded by the Generalitat Valenciana under an ACIF grant (ACIF/2010/298)

How can the Business Intelligence system be developed at YIT?

The main purpose of this thesis is to improve the Business Intelligence (BI) reporting system at YIT Group. The system features, information quality and usability have been monitored in order to find improvement needs. The objective was approached by a survey and exploring the possibilities that Business Intelligence can generally offer. The survey was carried out by a questionnaire via e-mail. The questionnaire was sent to 60 out of the 500 active system users across the Nordic countries inside YIT Group. The sample of the user group consists of financial personnel and management, who can be divided inside the user group to management users, process owners, key users and end users. 14 out of 60 users answered the survey. The study discovered that there is room for improvements. Especially the system performance should be more efficient, a variety of reports should be available and the graphical details and lack of features in the user interface require more examination for better usability. By developing these basic features the system usage could be improved. Despite the problems that arose, the users have set large expectations on the new reporting system in the future. According to the survey, the system is widely used at YIT and it is a key system for reporting, planning and analysing on all levels and in all sectors. Building a better system should start from setting the objectives and slowly move forward by developing the features that need improvements. In this study ideas and remarks from the users are analysed and presented to give the right direction for the system development in the future.Miten Business Intelligence -järjestelmää voidaan kehittää YIT:llä? Tämän opinnäytetyön tarkoituksena on parantaa YIT Konsernissa käytössä olevaa Business Intelligence (BI) -raportointijärjestelmää. Parannettavaa on etsitty tiedon laadun, käytettävyyden ja sisällöllisten ominaisuuksien osa-alueilta. Tavoitteeseen on pyritty YIT:n työntekijöille laaditulla kyselyllä ja tutkimalla järjestelmän mahdollisuuksia yleisesti. Kysely toteutettiin sähköpostitse käyttäen kyselylomaketta. Kyselylomake lähetettiin 60:lle järjestelmän aktiiviselle käyttäjälle 500 aktiivisen käyttäjän kokonaismäärästä. Otanta koostui talouden ja johtotason henkilöistä, jotka jakautuvat käyttäjäryhmässä johtotason käyttäjiin, prosessin omistajiin, avainkäyttäjiin ja loppukäyttäjiin. Kyselyyn vastasi 14 käyttäjää 60:stä. Tutkimus osoitti että järjestelmän parannuksille on tarvetta. Järjestelmän suorituskyky pitäisi olla tehokkaampi, raporttivalikoima pitäisi olla laajempi sekä graafinen ulkoasu ja käyttöliittymän yksityiskohtien puutokset vaatisivat tarkastelua paremman käytettävyyden kannalta. Näitä perusasioita kehittämällä koko järjestelmän käyttöä pystyttäisiin parantamaan. Esille tulleista puutteista huolimatta käyttäjät odottavat paljon uudelta raportointijärjestelmältä tulevaisuudessa. Kyselyssä tuli esille, että järjestelmä on laajasti käytössä ja se on tärkeä järjestelmä raportointiin, suunnitteluun ja analysointiin kaikilla tasoilla ja toimialoilla YIT:n organisaatiossa. Paremman järjestelmän rakentaminen olisi syytä aloittaa tavoitteista ja edetä parantamalla yksityiskohtia esille tulleiden kehityskohteiden osalta. Tässä tutkimuksessa käyttäjien ideat ja huomiot on analysoitu ja esitelty antamaan kehitykselle oikea suunta tulevaisuudessa

Spatial and Multidimensional Visualization of Jeddah Health Resources: A Community Health Assessment of Jeddah City

Jeddah public health resources are struggling to meet the demand of the large populations. The city is suffering from insufficient public health resources along with other health problem, like high rates of some disease, which resulted in an amount of dissatisfaction among some of the health facilities visitors. The absence of a comprehensive Community Health Assessment study of Jeddah public health resources and the fact that health resources are not meeting the needs of the large population created the need to conduct this study. This is an exploratory study that will use the guidance of two frameworks, Mandala of Health and “Access as fit” theories, and take into account all public hospitals and primary clinics provided by the ministry of health (MOH). Availability and accessibility of MOH resources will be assessed according to the Saudi planning standards for the years 2006 – 2010. Furthermore, health professionals’ numbers will be assessed against the demand of some prominent disease cases in each census tract for the years 2006 – 2010. A multidimensional exploration of the data is needed to answer the queries of this study. Thus, Spatial OLAP Visualization and Analysis Tool (SOVAT) is utilized. This tool has the capability of integrating multidimensional databases to maps. It also answers complex queries easily and rapidly and gives results in maps, spreadsheets, and graphs. The exploration resulted in determining that primary clinics are allocated in accordance with populations’ densities with few exceptions. In addition, parts of the city were found to be lacking some facilities or health professionals while few parts were found to be over-served with resources. Finally, it has been found that there is a need to increase the number of hospitals. Additional patterns of the resources have been uncovered due to the multidimensional capability of SOVAT. The tool proved to be efficient and established a much better comprehensive understanding of the health resources. Additionally, it helped interpreting the interaction between the dimensions of the “Access as fit” framework. Nevertheless, some technical skills were needed for a successful data preparation and integration. It could be implemented by MOH as few requirements must be met