An evaluation methodology and framework for semantic web services technology

Software engineering has been driven over decades by the trend towards component based development and loose coupling. Service oriented architectures and Web Services in particular are the latest product of this long-reaching development. Semantic Web Services (SWS) apply the paradigms of the Semantic Web to Web Services to allow more flexible and dynamic service usages. Numerous frameworks to realize SWS have been put forward in recent years but their relative advantages and general maturity are not easy to assess. This dissertation presents a solution to this issue. It defines a general methodology and framework for SWS technology evaluation as well as concrete benchmarks to assess the functional scope and performance of various approaches. The presented benchmarks have been executed within international evaluation campaign. The thesis thus comprehensively covers theoretical, methodological as well as practical results regarding the evaluation and assessment of SWS technologies

Digital Transformation and Public Services

Through a series of studies, the overarching aim of this book is to investigate if and how the digitalization/digital transformation process affects various welfare services provided by the public sector, and the ensuing implications thereof. Ultimately, this book seeks to understand if it is conceivable for digital advancement to result in the creation of private/non-governmental alternatives to welfare services, possibly in a manner that transcends national boundaries. This study also investigates the possible ramifications of technological development for the public sector and the Western welfare society at large. This book takes its point of departure from the 2016 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report that targets specific public service areas in which government needs to adopt new strategies not to fall behind. Specifically, this report emphasizes the focus on digitalization of health care/social care, education, and protection services, including the use of assistive technologies referred to as "digital welfare." Hence, this book explores the factors potentially leading to whether state actors could be overrun by other non-governmental actors, disrupting the current status quo of welfare services. The book seeks to provide an innovative, enriching, and controversial take on society at large and how various aspects of the public sector can be, and are, affected by the ongoing digitalization process in a way that is not covered by extant literature on the market. This book takes its point of departure in Sweden given the fact that Sweden is one of the most digitalized countries in Europe, according to the Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI), making it a pertinent research case. However, as digitalization transcends national borders, large parts of the subject matter take on an international angle. This includes cases from several other countries around Europe as well as the United States

Bibliographic Control in the Digital Ecosystem

With the contributions of international experts, the book aims to explore the new boundaries of universal bibliographic control. Bibliographic control is radically changing because the bibliographic universe is radically changing: resources, agents, technologies, standards and practices. Among the main topics addressed: library cooperation networks; legal deposit; national bibliographies; new tools and standards (IFLA LRM, RDA, BIBFRAME); authority control and new alliances (Wikidata, Wikibase, Identifiers); new ways of indexing resources (artificial intelligence); institutional repositories; new book supply chain; “discoverability” in the IIIF digital ecosystem; role of thesauri and ontologies in the digital ecosystem; bibliographic control and search engines

For Want of Resources: Reimagining the State's Obligation to Use 'Maximum Available Resources' for the Progressive Realisation of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights

This thesis provides insights into, additional commentary on and analysis of the fundamental role of resources in advancing Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ESC rights). Its objective is to expand the policy space within which States can operate to fulfil their obligations related to these rights. It addresses a number of central questions about the resource dimension of ESC rights policy, including interpretation of the concept of ‘maximum available resources’ in the context of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). By applying a cross-disciplinary approach, the thesis investigates legal, economic and public policy dimensions of resource mobilisation, allocation and governance that are essential in advancing progressive realisation of ESC rights. This thesis proposes that the obligation to take steps to the ‘maximum available resources’ for the progressive realisation of ESC rights can be made more meaningful by adopting a broader interpretation of the concept of resources and by taking active steps to maximise the quality and quantity of resources available through public sector revenue, international assistance and co-operation and private sector investment, all of which can be enhanced through institutional mechanisms and processes of allocation and governance. This proposition is supported by an in-depth qualitative analysis of relevant ESC rights literature, interpretive works of the ESCR Committee and Special Rapporteurs, periodic reports of States, institutional documents and case studies, which provide evidence on the current understanding and application of the concept of resources in this context. Based on analysis of multiple sources of evidence on State practice, this thesis presents a cross-disciplinary model of the nature, scope and policy dimensions of resources for ESC rights and suggests how concerted State policy efforts can optimise their impact on the realisation of ESC rights

SeMoM: a semantic middleware for IoT healthcare applications

De nos jours, l'internet des objets (IoT) connaît un intérêt considérable tant de la part du milieu universitaire que de l'industrie. Il a contribué à améliorer la qualité de vie, la croissance des entreprises et l'efficacité dans de multiples domaines. Cependant, l'hétérogénéité des objets qui peuvent être connectés dans de tels environnements, rend difficile leur interopérabilité. En outre, les observations produites par ces objets sont générées avec différents vocabulaires et formats de données. Cette hétérogénéité de technologies dans le monde IoT rend nécessaire l'adoption de solutions génériques à l'échelle mondiale. De plus, elle rend difficile le partage et la réutilisation des données dans d'autres buts que ceux pour lesquels elles ont été initialement mises en place. Dans cette thèse, nous abordons ces défis dans le contexte des applications de santé. Pour cela, nous proposons de transformer les données brutes issues de capteurs en connaissances et en informations en s'appuyant sur les ontologies. Ces connaissances vont être partagées entre les différents composants du système IoT. En ce qui concerne les défis d'hétérogénéité et d'interopérabilité, notre contribution principale est une architecture IoT utilisant des ontologies pour permettre le déploiement d'applications IoT sémantiques. Cette approche permet de partager les observations des capteurs, la contextualisation des données et la réutilisation des connaissances et des informations traitées. Les contributions spécifiques comprennent : * Conception d'une ontologie " Cognitive Semantic Sensor Network ontology (CoSSN) " : Cette ontologie vise à surmonter les défis d'interopérabilité sémantiques introduits par la variété des capteurs potentiellement utilisés. CoSSN permet aussi de modéliser la représentation des connaissances des experts. * Conception et mise en œuvre de SeMoM: SeMoM est une architecture flexible pour l'IoT intégrant l'ontologie CoSSN. Elle s'appuie sur un middleware orienté message (MoM) pour offrir une solution à couplage faible entre les composants du système. Ceux-ci peuvent échanger des données d'observation sémantiques de manière flexible à l'aide du paradigme producteur/consommateur. Du point de vue applicatif, nous sommes intéressés aux applications de santé. Dans ce domaine, les approches spécifiques et les prototypes individuels sont des solutions prédominantes ce qui rend difficile la collaboration entre différentes applications, en particulier dans un cas de patients multi-pathologies. En ce qui concerne ces défis, nous nous sommes intéressés à deux études de cas: 1) la détection du risque de développement des escarres chez les personnes âgées et 2) la détection des activités de la vie quotidienne (ADL) de personnes pour le suivi et l'assistance à domicile : * Nous avons développé des extensions de CoSSN pour décrire chaque concept en lien avec les deux cas d'utilisation. Nous avons également développé des applications spécifiques grâce à SeMoM qui mettent en œuvre des règles de connaissances expertes permettant d'évaluer et de détecter les escarres et les activités. * Nous avons mis en œuvre et évaluer le framework SeMoM en se basant sur deux expérimentations. La première basée sur le déploiement d'un système ciblant la détection des activités ADL dans un laboratoire d'expérimentation pour la santé (le Connected Health Lab). La seconde est basée sur le simulateur d'activités ADLSim développé par l'Université d'Oslo. Ce simulateur a été utilisé pour effectuer des tests de performances de notre solution en générant une quantité massive de données sur les activités d'une personne à domicile.Nowadays, the adoption of the Internet of Things (IoT) has received a considerable interest from both academia and industry. It provides enhancements in quality of life, business growth and efficiency in multiple domains. However, the heterogeneity of the "Things" that can be connected in such environments makes interoperability among them a challenging problem. Moreover, the observations produced by these "Things" are made available with heterogeneous vocabularies and data formats. This heterogeneity prevents generic solutions from being adopted on a global scale and makes difficult to share and reuse data for other purposes than those for which they were originally set up. In this thesis, we address these challenges in the context of healthcare applications considering how we transform raw data to cognitive knowledge and ontology-based information shared between IoT system components. With respect to heterogeneity and integration challenges, our main contribution is an ontology-based IoT architecture allowing the deployment of semantic IoT applications. This approach allows sharing of sensors observations, contextualization of data and reusability of knowledge and processed information. Specific contributions include: * Design of the Cognitive Semantic Sensor Network ontology (CoSSN) ontology: CoSSN aims at overcoming the semantic interoperability challenges introduced by the variety of sensors potentially used. It also aims at describing expert knowledge related to a specific domain. * Design and implementation of SeMoM: SeMoM is a flexible IoT architecture built on top of CoSSN ontology. It relies on a message oriented middleware (MoM) following the publish/subscribe paradigm for a loosely coupled communication between system components that can exchange semantic observation data in a flexible way. From the applicative perspective, we focus on healthcare applications. Indeed, specific approaches and individual prototypes are preeminent solutions in healthcare which straighten the need of an interoperable solution especially for patients with multiple affections. With respect to these challenges, we elaborated two case studies 1) bedsore risk detection and 2) Activities of Daily Living (ADL) detection as follows: * We developed extensions of CoSSN to describe each domain concepts and we developed specific applications through SeMoM implementing expert knowledge rules and assessments of bedsore and human activities. * We implemented and evaluated the SeMoM framework in order to provide a proof of concept of our approach. Two experimentations have been realized for that target. The first is based on a deployment of a system targeting the detection of ADL activities in a real smart platform. The other one is based on ADLSim, a simulator of activities for ambient assisted living that can generate a massive amount of data related to the activities of a monitored person

Realising Global Water Futures: a Summary of Progress in Delivering Solutions to Water Threats in an Era of Global Change

Canada First Research Excellence FundNon-Peer ReviewedOver the past six years the Global Water Futures program has produced a wide range of scientific findings and engagements with multiple types of potential users of the research. This briefing book provides a snapshot of some of the science advancements and user engagement that have taken place to date. Annual reports to the funding agency are the most up to date source of information: this compilation has been created from reports submitted by projects in 2022, representing both completed and current project work. The briefing book aims to provide quick access to information about GWF projects in a single place for GWF’s User Advisory Panel: we hope that knowing more about the research being produced will spark conversations about how to make the best use of the new knowledge in both policy and practice

CLARIN

The book provides a comprehensive overview of the Common Language Resources and Technology Infrastructure – CLARIN – for the humanities. It covers a broad range of CLARIN language resources and services, its underlying technological infrastructure, the achievements of national consortia, and challenges that CLARIN will tackle in the future. The book is published 10 years after establishing CLARIN as an Europ. Research Infrastructure Consortium

Bridging between Research and Practice

This book presents a fresh approach to bridging the perceived gap between academic and classroom cultures. It describes a unique form of research partnership whereby Cambridge University academics and school teachers together grappled with and reformulated theory—through in-depth case studies analysing practice using interactive whiteboards in five subject areas. The inquiry exploited the collaborators’ complementary professional knowledge bases. Teachers’ voices are particularly audible in co-authored case study chapters. Outcomes included deeper insights into concepts of sociocultural learning theory and classroom dialogue, more analytical mindsets, sustained new practices and ways of working collegially.; Readership: The book will interest academic and teacher researchers, initial teacher educators, professional development leaders, mentors, plus practitioners interested in using interactive whiteboards and dialogic teaching. It explores widening approaches to collegial development to reach educators working in other contexts (with and without technology). This could involve intermediate theory building or shortcutting by sharing and adapting the outcomes—springboarding teachers’ further critique and professional learning