Supporting End-Users\u27 Non-Consistent Views for Decision Support Applications

Database views typically are maintained to be consistent with the database at a specific point in time. There are applications, however, where users may prefer or require views which are not consistent with the database. Supporting non-consistent views provides better information for end-users in a decision support environment such as data warehousing. This paper examines thecharacteristics of non-consistent views and investigates their management

Hybrid process technologies in the financial sector

Abstract. Danish mortgage credit institutes deal with highly variable and knowledge-intensive processes. At the same time these processes are required to be strictly conformant to current regulations and laws. In addition different divisions of the business are interested in different views on the same process: whereas the IT department implementing the processes would like a complete view that shows the underlying business rules and supports all variants, the end users are only in-terested in a local view that (1) shows only the aspects of the process that they are responsible for and (2) only shows the variants of the process that are rel-evant to them. This paper reports on a project we undertook with such a credit institute where we investigated and addressed these issues by providing a hybrid solution, allowing processes to be modelled using our constraint-based modelling tools, but also supporting flow-based views of both the entire process and specific variants

Designing a novel virtual collaborative environment to support collaboration in design review meetings

Project review meetings are part of the project management process and are organised to assess progress and resolve any design conflicts to avoid delays in construction. One of the key challenges during a project review meeting is to bring the stakeholders together and use this time effectively to address design issues as quickly as possible. At present, current technology solutions based on BIM or CAD are information-centric and do not allow project teams to collectively explore the design from a range of perspectives and brainstorm ideas when design conflicts are encountered. This paper presents a system architecture that can be used to support multi-functional team collaboration more effectively during such design review meetings. The proposed architecture illustrates how information-centric BIM or CAD systems can be made human- and team-centric to enhance team communication and problem solving. An implementation of the proposed system architecture has been tested for its utility, likability and usefulness during design review meetings. The evaluation results suggest that the collaboration platform has the potential to enhance collaboration among multi-functional teams

OntoWeaver S: supporting the design of knowledge portals

This paper presents OntoWeaver-S, an ontology-based infrastructure for building knowledge portals. In particular, OntoWeaver-S is integrated with a comprehensive web service platform, IRS-II, for the publication, discovery, and execution of web services. In this way, OntoWeaver-S supports the access and provision of remote web services for knowledge portals. Moreover, it provides a set of comprehensive site ontologies to model and represent knowledge portals, and thus is able to offer high level support for the design and development process. Finally, OntoWeaver-S provides a set of powerful tools to support knowledge portals at design time as well as at run time

Events and Controversies: Influences of a Shocking News Event on Information Seeking

It has been suggested that online search and retrieval contributes to the intellectual isolation of users within their preexisting ideologies, where people's prior views are strengthened and alternative viewpoints are infrequently encountered. This so-called "filter bubble" phenomenon has been called out as especially detrimental when it comes to dialog among people on controversial, emotionally charged topics, such as the labeling of genetically modified food, the right to bear arms, the death penalty, and online privacy. We seek to identify and study information-seeking behavior and access to alternative versus reinforcing viewpoints following shocking, emotional, and large-scale news events. We choose for a case study to analyze search and browsing on gun control/rights, a strongly polarizing topic for both citizens and leaders of the United States. We study the period of time preceding and following a mass shooting to understand how its occurrence, follow-on discussions, and debate may have been linked to changes in the patterns of searching and browsing. We employ information-theoretic measures to quantify the diversity of Web domains of interest to users and understand the browsing patterns of users. We use these measures to characterize the influence of news events on these web search and browsing patterns

The EnTrak system : supporting energy action planning via the Internet

Recent energy policy is designed to foster better energy efficiency and assist with the deployment of clean energy systems, especially those derived from renewable energy sources. To attain the envisaged targets will require action at all levels and effective collaboration between disparate groups (e.g. policy makers, developers, local authorities, energy managers, building designers, consumers etc) impacting on energy and environment. To support such actions and collaborations, an Internet-enabled energy information system called 'EnTrak' was developed. The aim was to provide decision-makers with information on energy demands, supplies and impacts by sector, time, fuel type and so on, in support of energy action plan formulation and enactment. This paper describes the system structure and capabilities of the EnTrak system

Web Information Systems: Usage, Content, and Functionally Modelling

The design of large-scale data-intensive web information systems (WIS) requires a clear picture of the intended users and their behaviour in using the system, a support of various access channels and the technology used with them, and an integration of traditional methods for the design of data-intensive information systems with new methods that address the challenges arising from the web-presentation and the open access. This paper presents the conceptual modelling parts of a methodology for the design of WISs that is based on an abstract abstraction layer model (ALM). It concentrates on the two most important layers in this model: a business layer and a conceptual layer. The major activities on the business layer deal with user profiling and storyboarding, which addresses the design of an underlying application story. The core of such a story can be expressed by a directed multi-graph, in which the vertices represent scenes and the edges actions by the users including navigation. This leads to story algebras which can then be used to personalise the WIS to the needs of a user with a particular profile. The major activities on the conceptual layer address the support of scenes by modelling media types, which combine links to databases via extended views with the generation of navigation structures, operations supporting the activities in the storyboard, hierarchical presentations, and adaptivity to users, end-devices and channels. Adding presentation style options this can be used to generate the web-pages that will be presented to the WIS users