Tailored information dashboards: A systematic mapping of the literature

Information dashboards are extremely useful tools to exploit knowledge. Dashboards enable users to reach insights and to identify patterns within data at-a-glance. However, dashboards present a series of characteristics and configurations that could not be optimal for every user, thus requiring the modification or variation of its features to fulfill specific user requirements. This variation process is usually referred to as customization, personalization or adaptation, depending on how this variation process is achieved. Given the great number of users and the exponential growth of data sources, tailoring an information dashboard is not a trivial task, as several solutions and configurations could arise. To analyze and understand the current state-of-the-art regarding tailored information dashboards, a systematic mapping has been performed. This mapping focus on answering questions regarding how existing dashboard solutions in the literature manage the customization, personalization and/or adaptation of its elements to produce tailored displays

Towards a Technological Ecosystem to Provide Information Dashboards as a Service: A Dynamic Proposal for Supplying Dashboards Adapted to Specific Scenarios

[EN]Data are crucial to improve decision-making and obtain greater benefits in any type of activity. However, the large amount of information generated by new technologies has made data analysis and knowledge generation a complex task. Numerous tools have emerged to facilitate this generation of knowledge, such as dashboards. Although dashboards are useful tools, their effectiveness can be affected by poor design or by not taking into account the context in which they are placed. Therefore, it is necessary to design and create custom dashboards according to the audience and data domain. This paper presents an application of the software product line paradigm and the integration of this approach into a web service to allow users to request source code for customized information dashboards. The main goal is to introduce the idea of creating a holistic ecosystem of different services to craft and integrate information visualizations in a variety of contexts. One of the contexts that can be especially favored by this approach is the educational context, where learning analytics, data analysis of student performance, and didactic tools are becoming very relevant. Three different use cases of this approach are presented to illustrate the benefits of the developed generative service

Cloud BI: Future of business intelligence in the Cloud

In self-hosted environments it was feared that business intelligence (BI) will eventually face a resource crunch situation due to the never ending expansion of data warehouses and the online analytical processing (OLAP) demands on the underlying networking. Cloud computing has instigated a new hope for future prospects of BI. However, how will BI be implemented on Cloud and how will the traffic and demand profile look like? This research attempts to answer these key questions in regards to taking BI to the Cloud. The Cloud hosting of BI has been demonstrated with the help of a simulation on OPNET comprising a Cloud model with multiple OLAP application servers applying parallel query loads on an array of servers hosting relational databases. The simulation results reflected that extensible parallel processing of database servers on the Cloud can efficiently process OLAP application demands on Cloud computing

Adaptive dashboard for IoT environments: application for senior residences

Les tableaux de bord sont de puissants outils électroniques qui peuvent fournir des informations exploitables et utiles pour une intervention rapide et une prise de décision éclairée. Ils peuvent être particulièrement bénéfiques pour favoriser un vieillissement en bonne santé en fournissant aux professionnels de la santé un aperçu en un coup d'œil des conditions du patient (par exemple, les personnes âgées). Alors que la population des personnes âgées augmente dans plusieurs pays, dont le Canada, un grand nombre d'entre eux seront forcés de déménager dans des résidences pour personnes âgées pour des raisons telles que la fragilité, la démence ou le sentiment de solitude. Cette population importante de personnes âgées augmentera la charge de travail des infirmières et des professionnels de la santé travaillant dans ces lieux, en raison du fait que les personnes âgées ont besoin de visites fréquentes et d'une surveillance en raison de leur état de santé. Ce problème a le potentiel de mettre plus de pression sur le système de santé déjà tendu dans les prochaines années. La pénurie d'infirmières et de main-d'œuvre rend la situation plus grave, en particulier dans les pays développés. Il faudrait donc prendre des initiatives pour soutenir les soignants de ces résidences. Le tableau de bord peut jouer un rôle clé pour aider les professionnels de la santé dans leurs tâches car il peut fournir des informations en un coup d'œil et en temps réel sur la situation actuelle. De nos jours, avec les progrès technologiques dans les dispositifs de détection et l'infrastructure IoT ainsi qu'un accès Internet élargi, la surveillance des patients à distance est devenue une option réalisable. Par ailleurs, en utilisant un tableau de bord, les professionnels de la santé peuvent visualiser les informations collectées à distance pour surveiller les personnes âgées vivant dans des résidences, ce qui fera gagner un temps considérable aux professionnels de la santé et les aidera à servir plus de patients. Cependant, il est important de considérer que les résidences pour personnes âgées accueillent généralement un grand nombre de résidents et les professionnels de la santé qui les desservent. Chaque professionnel de la santé est motivé par certains objectifs et exécute des tâches précises selon des priorités différentes. Cette différence change la façon dont chaque fournisseur de soins de santé utilisera le tableau de bord, car ils ont besoin d'informations qui les aident dans leurs tâches principales. Les informations qu'un groupe de professionnels de la santé trouve bénéfiques peuvent ne pas être utiles pour un autre groupe. Ainsi, la méthode de visualisation utilisée pour un individu peut ne pas être significative pour un autre. Par conséquence, les informations doivent être présentées de manière personnalisée et adaptée à un utilisateur ciblé. Il est important de souligner que la visualisation appropriée des informations dans les tableaux de bord est un facteur clé pour offrir une valeur réelle aux utilisateurs. Cette diversité de besoins, de préférences et de priorités doit être prise en compte tout au long de l'élaboration du tableau de bord. En raison de la diversité des rôles et des intérêts existant dans les résidences pour personnes âgées, et compte tenu du coût élevé du développement du tableau de bord, il est très difficile de développer des tableaux de bord séparés pour chaque partie. Cependant, les solutions existantes dans la littérature sont développées à l'aide de méthodes statiques et se concentrent sur la satisfaction des besoins d'un groupe particulier. Ces approches limitent les capacités des tableaux de bord existants à s'adapter aux besoins des différentes personnes. Dans cette étude, nous présentons AMI-Dash comme une tentative de réalisation d'une solution de tableau de bord qui permet une conception dynamique et une visualisation appropriée des informations pour plusieurs groupes. Notre solution vise à fournir les bonnes informations aux bonnes personnes en minimisant le temps nécessaire pour fournir un tableau de bord aux professionnels la santé, afin de les aider dans l'exercice de leurs fonctions en accédant à des informations exploitables. Nous avons également évalué notre solution sous deux aspects : l'évaluation de l'interaction homme-machine et l'évaluation technique. Le résultat de notre évaluation montre que la solution proposée peut satisfaire à la fois les exigences de l'utilisateur final et les exigences techniques tout en maintenant un haut niveau de satisfaction.Abstract: Dashboards are powerful electronic tools that can provide actionable insights for timely intervention and wise decision-making. They can be particularly beneficial to support healthy aging by providing healthcare professionals with at-a-glance overview of health conditions of patients (e.g., older adults). As the population of older adults is increasing in several countries including Canada, a large number of them will be forced to move to Senior Residences due to reasons like frailty, dementia or loneliness. This swelled senior population will increase the workload of nurses and health professionals working in these places, due to the fact that older adults need frequent visits and monitoring because of their health condition. This issue has the potential to put more pressure on the already stretched healthcare system in the next years. The situation is aggravated when it is coincided with the shortage of nurses and workforce especially in developed countries. Therefore, initiative should be taken to support healthcare professionals in these residences. Dashboard can play a key role to support healthcare professionals in their tasks as it can provide real-time information about the current situation in more helpful visualization form. Nowadays, with technological advancements in sensing devices and IoT infrastructure along with broadened internet access, remote patient monitoring has become a feasible option. By utilizing a dashboard, healthcare professionals can visualize information collected remotely to monitor patients/ older adults living in senior residences, which will save a considerable time of healthcare professionals and support them to serve more patients. However, it is important to consider that senior residences usually host a large number of older adults and healthcare professionals that serve them. Each healthcare professional is driven with certain goals, and they have different tasks and priorities. This difference, change how each healthcare professional will utilize the dashboard, as they need information that helps them in their main tasks. The information that a group of healthcare professionals find beneficial might not be useful for another group, and the visualization method used for an individual might not be meaningful for another. Therefore, information should be presented in a personalized way to the targeted user. It is important to emphasize that appropriate visualization of interesting information, in dashboards is a key factor to deliver real value to dashboard users. Due to the variety of roles and interests that exists in senior residences, and considering high development cost of a dashboard, developing separate dashboards for each party is not only difficult but also time consuming. Still, existing solutions in the literature are developed using static methods and they focused on satisfying the needs of a particular group in their domain. These approaches limited the capabilities of existing dashboards to adapt to the needs of different people. We argue that dashboard has to be tailored in order to address the diversity in needs, preferences and priorities of healthcare professionals. In this study we introduce AMI-Dash as an attempt to achieve a dashboard solution that allows dynamic design and information visualization. Our solution focused on providing the right information to the right people while minimizing the time required to deliver a dashboard to health professionals, so that supporting them in performing their duties by accessing timely and actionable information. We also evaluated our proposed solution from two aspects: Human-Computer Interaction Evaluation and Technical Evaluation. The result of our evaluation shows that proposed solution can satisfy both end-user and technical requirements while maintaining a high-level of satisfaction among users

Information Dashboards and Tailoring Capabilities: A Systematic Literature Review

[EN]The design and development of information dashboards are not trivial. Several factors must be accounted; from the data to be displayed to the audience that will use the dashboard. However, the increase in popularity of these tools has extended their use in several and very different contexts among very different user pro les. This popularization has increased the necessity of building tailored displays focused on speci c requirements, goals, user roles, situations, domains, etc. Requirements are more sophisticated and varying; thus, dashboards need to match them to enhance knowledge generation and support more complex decision-making processes. This sophistication has led to the proposal of new approaches to address personal requirements and foster individualization regarding dashboards without involving high quantities of resources and long development processes. The goal of this work is to present a systematic review of the literature to analyze and classify the existing dashboard solutions that support tailoring capabilities and the methodologies used to achieve them. The methodology follows the guidelines proposed by Kitchenham and other authors in the eld of software engineering. As results, 23 papers about tailored dashboards were retrieved. Three main approaches were identi ed regarding tailored solutions: customization, personalization, and adaptation. However, there is a wide variety of employed paradigms and features to develop tailored dashboards. The present systematic literature review analyzes challenges and issues regarding the existing solutions. It also identi es new research paths to enhance tailoring capabilities and thus, to improve user experience and insight delivery when it comes to visual analysis

Automatic generation of software interfaces for supporting decisionmaking processes. An application of domain engineering & machine learning

[EN] Data analysis is a key process to foster knowledge generation in particular domains or fields of study. With a strong informative foundation derived from the analysis of collected data, decision-makers can make strategic choices with the aim of obtaining valuable benefits in their specific areas of action. However, given the steady growth of data volumes, data analysis needs to rely on powerful tools to enable knowledge extraction. Information dashboards offer a software solution to analyze large volumes of data visually to identify patterns and relations and make decisions according to the presented information. But decision-makers may have different goals and, consequently, different necessities regarding their dashboards. Moreover, the variety of data sources, structures, and domains can hamper the design and implementation of these tools. This Ph.D. Thesis tackles the challenge of improving the development process of information dashboards and data visualizations while enhancing their quality and features in terms of personalization, usability, and flexibility, among others. Several research activities have been carried out to support this thesis. First, a systematic literature mapping and review was performed to analyze different methodologies and solutions related to the automatic generation of tailored information dashboards. The outcomes of the review led to the selection of a modeldriven approach in combination with the software product line paradigm to deal with the automatic generation of information dashboards. In this context, a meta-model was developed following a domain engineering approach. This meta-model represents the skeleton of information dashboards and data visualizations through the abstraction of their components and features and has been the backbone of the subsequent generative pipeline of these tools. The meta-model and generative pipeline have been tested through their integration in different scenarios, both theoretical and practical. Regarding the theoretical dimension of the research, the meta-model has been successfully integrated with other meta-model to support knowledge generation in learning ecosystems, and as a framework to conceptualize and instantiate information dashboards in different domains. In terms of the practical applications, the focus has been put on how to transform the meta-model into an instance adapted to a specific context, and how to finally transform this later model into code, i.e., the final, functional product. These practical scenarios involved the automatic generation of dashboards in the context of a Ph.D. Programme, the application of Artificial Intelligence algorithms in the process, and the development of a graphical instantiation platform that combines the meta-model and the generative pipeline into a visual generation system. Finally, different case studies have been conducted in the employment and employability, health, and education domains. The number of applications of the meta-model in theoretical and practical dimensions and domains is also a result itself. Every outcome associated to this thesis is driven by the dashboard meta-model, which also proves its versatility and flexibility when it comes to conceptualize, generate, and capture knowledge related to dashboards and data visualizations

CERN openlab Whitepaper on Future IT Challenges in Scientific Research

This whitepaper describes the major IT challenges in scientific research at CERN and several other European and international research laboratories and projects. Each challenge is exemplified through a set of concrete use cases drawn from the requirements of large-scale scientific programs. The paper is based on contributions from many researchers and IT experts of the participating laboratories and also input from the existing CERN openlab industrial sponsors. The views expressed in this document are those of the individual contributors and do not necessarily reflect the view of their organisations and/or affiliates

Restructuring the Internals of kettle/Pentaho platform

My thanks first goes to my school, for providing me an opportunity to do my internship in a reputed company and allowing me to move from Leiria to Lisbon. I would like to thank my Professors (Dr.José Vitor Martins Ramos and Dr.Maria Beatriz Guerra Piedade)for guiding me each and every step for developing my report and other things throughout my internship. Also my gratitude to my supervisor at Pentaho Pedro Vale, my Team Leader Peter and my teammates in 21-b, and personally my thanks to Duarte Teixeira, AndréJorge, Steve Maring, Amin Khan, Gonçalo Neto, Duarte Leão, Hugo Figueiraand all my colleagues at Pentaho for all the support that was provided throughout 9months and to complete my internship successfully. I also want to thank my parents, brother and friends for the support to do my masters

A cloud-based supply chain management system: effects on supply chain responsiveness

Purpose: Despite the ongoing calls for the incorporation of the cloud utility model, the effect of the cloud on elements of supply chain performance is still an evolving area of research. In this paper, we develop the architecture of a cloud-based supply chain management (C-SCM) ecosystem and explore how it enhances supply chain responsiveness. Design/methodology/approach: First, we discuss the potential benefits that cloud computing can yield compared to existing mature SCM information systems and solutions through a comprehensive literature review. We conceptualize SCR in terms of the level of visibility in the supply chain, supply chain flexibility, and rapid detection and reaction to changes and then we build the detailed architecture of a cloud based SCM system. The proposed ecosystem introduces a view of SCM and the associated practices when transferred to cloud environments. The potential to enhance SCR through the cloud is explored with scenarios on a case of supply chain operations in fashion retail industry. Findings: Our findings show that the proposed system can enhance all three dimensions of SCR. Implications for supply chain practice and how companies can migrate to a cloud supply chain are drawn. Originality/Value: Given that the development, creation, and delivery of goods and services is increasingly becoming a joint effort of several parties in a supply chain, we contribute to existing literature, by introducing a comprehensive cloud-based SCM system and show how companies can enhance their supply chain responsiveness