Design Fiction Diegetic Prototyping: A Research Framework for Visualizing Service Innovations

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.Purpose: This paper presents a design fiction diegetic prototyping methodology and research framework for investigating service innovations that reflect future uses of new and emerging technologies. Design/methodology/approach: Drawing on speculative fiction, we propose a methodology that positions service innovations within a six-stage research development framework. We begin by reviewing and critiquing designerly approaches that have traditionally been associated with service innovations and futures literature. In presenting our framework, we provide an example of its application to the Internet of Things (IoT), illustrating the central tenets proposed and key issues identified. Findings: The research framework advances a methodology for visualizing future experiential service innovations, considering how realism may be integrated into a designerly approach. Research limitations/implications: Design fiction diegetic prototyping enables researchers to express a range of ‘what if’ or ‘what can it be’ research questions within service innovation contexts. However, the process encompasses degrees of subjectivity and relies on knowledge, judgment and projection. Practical implications: The paper presents an approach to devising future service scenarios incorporating new and emergent technologies in service contexts. The proposed framework may be used as part of a range of research designs, including qualitative, quantitative and mixed method investigations. Originality: Operationalizing an approach that generates and visualizes service futures from an experiential perspective contributes to the advancement of techniques that enables the exploration of new possibilities for service innovation research

Sustainable consumption: towards action and impact. : International scientific conference November 6th-8th 2011, Hamburg - European Green Capital 2011, Germany: abstract volume

This volume contains the abstracts of all oral and poster presentations of the international scientific conference „Sustainable Consumption – Towards Action and Impact“ held in Hamburg (Germany) on November 6th-8th 2011. This unique conference aims to promote a comprehensive academic discourse on issues concerning sustainable consumption and brings together scholars from a wide range of academic disciplines. In modern societies, private consumption is a multifaceted and ambivalent phenomenon: it is a ubiquitous social practice and an economic driving force, yet at the same time, its consequences are in conflict with important social and environmental sustainability goals. Finding paths towards “sustainable consumption” has therefore become a major political issue. In order to properly understand the challenge of “sustainable consumption”, identify unsustainable patterns of consumption and bring forward the necessary innovations, a collaborative effort of researchers from different disciplines is needed

Identifying past social-ecological thresholds to understand long-term temporal dynamics in Spain

A thorough understanding of long-term temporal social-ecological dynamics at the national scale helps to explain the current condition of a country’s ecosystems and to support environmental policies to tackle future sustainability challenges. We aimed to develop a methodological approach to understand past long-term (1960-2010) social-ecological dynamics in Spain. First, we developed a methodical framework that allowed us to explore complex social-ecological dynamics among biodiversity, ecosystem services, human well-being, drivers of change, and institutional responses. Second, we compiled 21 long-term, national-scale indicators and analyzed their temporal relationships through a redundancy analysis. Third, we used a Bayesian change point analysis to detect evidence of past social-ecological thresholds and historical time periods. Our results revealed that Spain has passed through four socialecological thresholds that define five different time periods of nature and society relationships. Finally, we discussed how the proposed methodological approach helps to reinterpret national-level ecosystem indicators through a new conceptual lens to develop a more systems-based way of understanding long-term social-ecological patterns and dynamicsThis work was supported by the Biodiversity Foundation (http://www.fundacion-biodiversidad.es/) of the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Environment. Partial financial support was also provided by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness of Spain (project CGL2014-53782-P: ECOGRADIENTES). The Spanish National Institute for Agriculture and Food Research and Technology (INIA) funded Marina García-Llorente as part of the European Social Fund. Blanca González García-Mon participated in this article as a “la Caixa” Banking Foundation scholar. The funders had no role in the study design, data collection and analysis, preparation of the report, or the decision to submit the study for publicatio

Flooding through the lens of mobile phone activity

Natural disasters affect hundreds of millions of people worldwide every year. Emergency response efforts depend upon the availability of timely information, such as information concerning the movements of affected populations. The analysis of aggregated and anonymized Call Detail Records (CDR) captured from the mobile phone infrastructure provides new possibilities to characterize human behavior during critical events. In this work, we investigate the viability of using CDR data combined with other sources of information to characterize the floods that occurred in Tabasco, Mexico in 2009. An impact map has been reconstructed using Landsat-7 images to identify the floods. Within this frame, the underlying communication activity signals in the CDR data have been analyzed and compared against rainfall levels extracted from data of the NASA-TRMM project. The variations in the number of active phones connected to each cell tower reveal abnormal activity patterns in the most affected locations during and after the floods that could be used as signatures of the floods - both in terms of infrastructure impact assessment and population information awareness. The representativeness of the analysis has been assessed using census data and civil protection records. While a more extensive validation is required, these early results suggest high potential in using cell tower activity information to improve early warning and emergency management mechanisms.Comment: Submitted to IEEE Global Humanitarian Technologies Conference (GHTC) 201

Worldwide Research Trends on Wheat and Barley: A Bibliometric Comparative Analysis

Grain cereals such as wheat, barley, rice, and maize are the nutritional basis of humans and animals worldwide. Thus, these crop plants are essential in terms of global food security. We conducted a bibliometric assessment of scientific documents and patents related to wheat and barley through the Scopus database. The number of documents published per year, their affiliation and corresponding scientific areas, the publishing journals, document types and languages were metricized. The main keywords included in research publications concerning these crops were also analysed globally and clustered in thematic groups. In the case of keywords related to agronomy or genetics and molecular biology, we considered documents dated up to 1999, and from 2000 to 2018, separately. Comparison of the results obtained for wheat and barley revealed some remarkable different trends, for which the underlying reasons are further discussed

Exploratory landscape metrics for agricultural sustainability

Socioeconomic growth and urban change have been an increasing concern for decision makers in recent decades. The monitoring, mapping, and analysis of agricultural land use change, especially in areas where urban change has been high, is crucial. The collision between traditional economic activities related to agriculture in tourist areas such as the Algarve and current demand for tourism infrastructures in urban regions is also leading to loss of economic activity. This article uses a combined geographical information system approach with CORINE land cover datasets to perform a Shannon’s diversity index quantifying changes in agricultural areas. The article then expands on the nature of the agricultural changes observed, and offers a multi-temporal assessment by means of landscape metrics in order to understand the shifting land use patterns for the Algarve in land use planning and regional economic equilibrium: a) forest regions become transformed into agricultural areas and agricultural areas become urban; b) areas that are initially agricultural become scattered residential regions created by economic investors; and c) agricultural land use changes have a cyclical nature in which—in the course of the economic recession—such dynamic effects brought about a decrease in tourism and focus on traditional sectors

Method For Detecting Shilling Attacks In E-commerce Systems Using Weighted Temporal Rules

The problem of shilling attacks detecting in e-commerce systems is considered. The purpose of such attacks is to artificially change the rating of individual goods or services by users in order to increase their sales. A method for detecting shilling attacks based on a comparison of weighted temporal rules for the processes of selecting objects with explicit and implicit feedback from users is proposed. Implicit dependencies are specified through the purchase of goods and services. Explicit feedback is formed through the ratings of these products. The temporal rules are used to describe hidden relationships between the choices of user groups at two consecutive time intervals. The method includes the construction of temporal rules for explicit and implicit feedback, their comparison, as well as the formation of an ordered subset of temporal rules that capture potential shilling attacks. The method imposes restrictions on the input data on sales and ratings, which must be ordered by time or have timestamps. This method can be used in combination with other approaches to detecting shilling attacks. Integration of approaches allows to refine and supplement the existing attack patterns, taking into account the latest changes in user priorities