The application of workflows to digital heritage systems

Digital heritage systems usually handle a rich and varied mix of digital objects, accompanied by complex and intersecting workflows and processes. However, they usually lack effective workflow management within their components as evident in the lack of integrated solutions that include workflow components. There are a number of reasons for this limitation in workflow management utilization including some technical challenges, the unique nature of each digital resource and the challenges imposed by the environments and infrastructure in which such systems operate. This thesis investigates the concept of utilizing Workflow Management Systems (WfMS) within Digital Library Systems, and more specifically in online Digital Heritage Resources. The research work conducted involved the design and development of a novel experimental WfMS to test the viability of effective workflow management on the complex processes that exist in digital library and heritage resources. This rarely studied area of interest is covered by analyzing evolving workflow management technologies and paradigms. The different operational and technological aspects of these systems are evaluated while focusing on the areas that traditional systems often fail to address. A digital heritage resource was created to test a novel concept called DISPLAYS (Digital Library Services for Playing with Antiquity and Shared Heritage), which provides digital heritage content: creation, archival, exposition, presentation and interaction services for digital heritage collections. Based on DISPLAYS, a specific digital heritage resource was created to validate its concept and, more importantly, to act as a test bed to validate workflow management for digital heritage resources. This DISPLAYS type system implementation was called the Reanimating Cultural Heritage resource, for which three core components are the archival, retrieval and presentation components. To validate workflow management and its concepts, another limited version of these reanimating cultural heritage components was implemented within a workflow management host to test if the workflow technology is a viable choice for managing control and dataflow within a digital heritage system: this was successfully proved

eLabs – platform for online laboratory management

We observe, today, an unprecedented development of information technologies in various organizational, social and economic fields. The Web is the main driver of this evolution from a simple display system of linked pages to a powerful platform for information and communication, having the interaction, the dynamism and multimedia resources their main features. At the organizational level, the Web has introduced several improvements, turning the business processes more effective and centered on users. The deployment of portals to support management and communication in organizations was the first step in the integration of information technologies in several fields of organizations. One of the most relevant technologies to support business process management is workflow, representing the most significant solution for process automation and information management inside an organization. According to Hales (1997) workflow is a proactive management system that manages the workflow among the participants (users or other systems), according to predefined procedures that define the tasks. This article discusses the development of a platform for online laboratory management based on workflow technologies, with the main goals to improve communication, cooperation and integrated management of resources, promoting greater efficiency in laboratory management. The eLabs platform is been used in Instituto Politécnico de Bragança for laboratory management, integrating the management of internal and external services, equipment, resources and tasks. The results obtained demonstrate an improvement in the efficiency of resources management and the enhancement of quality of services realized inside the institution and to the community

Achieving Coordination Through Dynamic Construction of Open Workflows

Workflow middleware executes tasks orchestrated by rules defined in a carefully handcrafted static graph. Workflow management systems have proved effective for service-oriented business automation in stable, wired infrastructures. We introduce a radically new paradigm for workflow construction and execution called open workflow to support goal-directed coordination among physically mobile people and devices that form a transient community over an ad hoc wireless network. The quintessential feature of the open workflow paradigm is dynamic construction of custom, context-specific workflows in response to unpredictable and evolving circumstances by exploiting the knowledge and services available within a given spatiotemporal context. This paper introduces the open workflow approach, surveys open research challenges in this promising new field, and presents algorithmic, architectural, and evaluation results for the first practical realization of an open workflow management system

Development of Swim Lane Workflow Process Map for Sales and Inventory Workflow Management Information System: A Case Study of Petrospan Integrated Services, Eket, Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria

According to experts, sales workflow management system can impact overall sales effectiveness, vis-à-vis, improve the efficiency of sales people, accelerate sales follow-ups, increase sales and reduce costs. On the other hand, inventory management system can be used to avoid product overstock and outages by tracking inventory levels, orders, sales and deliveries. This paper identified the problems prevalent in the existing sales and inventory flow management system at Petrospan Integrated Services in Eket, Akwa Ibom state, Nigeria. Then, the analysis and design of a new sales and inventory workflow management system for the Petrospan Integrated Services was presented. The “as-is” sales and inventory workflow management system was first modelled using swim lane process flow map. Then, the swim lane process flow map was also used to develop the “to-be” or “should-be” sales and inventory workflow management system specifically to address the shortcomings of the “as-is” workflow management system as well as to facilitate the development and deployment of automated sales and inventory management workflow management system at Petrospan Integrated Services-Sales Eket

Open Workflows: Context-Dependent Construction and Execution in Mobile Wireless Settings

Existing workflow middleware executes tasks orchestrated by rules defined in a carefully handcrafted static graph. Workflow management systems have proved effective for service-oriented business automation in stable, wired infrastructures. We introduce a radically new paradigm for workflow construction and execution called open workflow to support goal-directed coordination among physically mobile people and devices that form a transient community over an ad hoc wireless network. The quintessential feature of the open workflow paradigm is dynamic construction and execution of custom, context-specific workflows in response to unpredictable and evolving circumstances by exploiting the knowledge and services available within a given spatiotemporal context. This work introduces the open workflow approach, surveys open research challenges in this promising new field, and presents algorithmic, architectural, and evaluation results for the first practical realization of an open workflow management system

The Impact of Business Process Management Values on Enterprise Content Management Workflow Systems Performance

Improving an enterprise’s operations, services, policies and rules using information systems and business process management is a continuance decision-makers role. This research explores how business process management values impact on enterprise content management (ECM) workflow system performance and how business process management values can be incorporated as part of a measurement model for improving ECM workflow system performance to achieve business objectives and organisational goals. The research focuses on establishing a set of variables for the measurement of CERT business process management values and further explores the impact of these CERT values on ECM workflow system performance. The CERT values are customer orientation (C), excellence (E), responsibility (R) and teamwork (T). These values can be applied using the three round structure of the Delphi method to validate key performance indicators, which are used to implement a performance measurement and management framework in order to measure workflow information system performance. Through this process, the current ECM workflow system performance (i.e. “Now” situation) and the desired future system performance (i.e. “Preferred” situation) can be described using a performance profile development model based on the concepts and variables of CERT values. This thesis contributes to business practice studies, information systems literature and the informatics body of knowledge in several ways: First, it explains how CERT values can support decision-making by finding their impact on ECM workflow systems performance. Second, it formulates a performance profile development model, which is a decision-making process to measure ECM workflow systems performance. Third, it shows how to implement the research strategic procedures using Delphi’s rounds. Fourth, it demonstrates the quality of mixed methods as the research choice for this type of information systems enquiry. The research promotes the use of the Delphi method for the implementation of such decision-making processes, the application of the performance profile development model for scientific decision studies and the analysis of the relationships between variables to recognise other key performance indicators within business process management and the performance measurement and management research contexts

Mounting Books Project

4th International Conference on Open RepositoriesThis presentation was part of the session : Conference PresentationsDate: 2009-05-19 03:00 PM – 04:30 PMThe Northwestern University Library undertook a software development project to create an automated workflow to enable files from its Kirtas book scanner to be both linked to the OPAC with a page viewer application, and ingested into its Fedora repository as archivally sustainable and reusable digital objects. The web-based Book Workflow Interface (BWI) software utilizes jBPM for management and web services for key creation components. It also features an AJAX interface to support drag-and-drop creation and editing of METS-based book structures. The BWI system ingests locally scanned texts as well as texts digitized by external partners or vendors. This project addressed the need for a Fedora-based book viewing tool that can be used by other research libraries developing digital repositories based on a Fedora systems architecture. The book view interface includes full-text search and view, search-within-a-book, book structure browse, page turning, and zooming interface components. The workflow system can be expanded over time to support new functions in the book publishing process, and can be redeployed in support of digitization processes for other types of media. Shifting from a simple book reformatting operation to a dynamic program that makes any multipage text object fully accessible online, this system dramatically improves Northwestern's ability to share its unique library and archival collections. The project was fully supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Book Workflow Interface and public book viewing software will both be released as open source in spring 2009.Andrew W. Mellon Foundatio

Distributed simulation of city inundation by coupled surface and subsurface porous flow for urban flood decision support system

We present a decision support system for flood early warning and disaster management. It includes the models for data-driven meteorological predictions, for simulation of atmospheric pressure, wind, long sea waves and seiches; a module for optimization of flood barrier gates operation; models for stability assessment of levees and embankments, for simulation of city inundation dynamics and citizens evacuation scenarios. The novelty of this paper is a coupled distributed simulation of surface and subsurface flows that can predict inundation of low-lying inland zones far from the submerged waterfront areas, as observed in St. Petersburg city during the floods. All the models are wrapped as software services in the CLAVIRE platform for urgent computing, which provides workflow management and resource orchestration.Comment: Pre-print submitted to the 2013 International Conference on Computational Scienc

Medical Virtual Public Services

The healthcare enterprises are very disconnected. This paper intends to propose a solution that will provide citizens, businesses and medical enterprises with improved access to medical virtual public services. Referred medical services are based on existing national medical Web services and which support medically required services provided by physicians and supplementary health care practitioners, laboratory services and diagnostic procedures, clinics and hospitals’ services. Requirements and specific rules of these medical services are considered, and personalization of user preferences will to be supported. The architecture is based on adaptable process management technologies, allowing for virtual services which are dynamically combined from existing national medical services. In this way, a comprehensive workflow process is set up, allowing for service-level agreements, an audit trail and explanation of the process to the end user. The process engine operates on top of a virtual repository, providing a high-level semantic view of information retrieved from heterogeneous information sources, such as national sources of medical services. The system relies on a security framework to ensure all high-level security requirements are met. System’s architecture is business oriented: it focuses on Service Oriented Architecture - SOA concepts, asynchronously combining Web services, Business Process Management – BPM rules and BPEL standards.Business Process Management, Service Oriented Architecture, Application Integration, Web services, information technologies, virtual repository, database.