Framework for collaborative knowledge management in organizations

Nowadays organizations have been pushed to speed up the rate of industrial transformation to high value products and services. The capability to agilely respond to new market demands became a strategic pillar for innovation, and knowledge management could support organizations to achieve that goal. However, current knowledge management approaches tend to be over complex or too academic, with interfaces difficult to manage, even more if cooperative handling is required. Nevertheless, in an ideal framework, both tacit and explicit knowledge management should be addressed to achieve knowledge handling with precise and semantically meaningful definitions. Moreover, with the increase of Internet usage, the amount of available information explodes. It leads to the observed progress in the creation of mechanisms to retrieve useful knowledge from the huge existent amount of information sources. However, a same knowledge representation of a thing could mean differently to different people and applications. Contributing towards this direction, this thesis proposes a framework capable of gathering the knowledge held by domain experts and domain sources through a knowledge management system and transform it into explicit ontologies. This enables to build tools with advanced reasoning capacities with the aim to support enterprises decision-making processes. The author also intends to address the problem of knowledge transference within an among organizations. This will be done through a module (part of the proposed framework) for domain’s lexicon establishment which purpose is to represent and unify the understanding of the domain’s used semantic

A Case-based Reasoning Approach to Validate Grammatical Gender and Number Agreement in Spanish language

Across Latin America 420 indigenous languages are spoken. Spanish is considered a second language in indigenous communities and is progressively introduced in education. However, most of the tools to support teaching processes of a second language have been developed for the most common languages such as English, French, German, Italian, etc. As a result, only a small amount of learning objects and authoring tools have been developed for indigenous people considering the specific needs of their population. This paper introduces Multilingual–Tiny as a web authoring tool to support the virtual experience of indigenous students and teachers when they are creating learning objects in indigenous languages or in Spanish language, in particular, when they have to deal with the grammatical structures of Spanish. Multilingual–Tiny has a module based on the Case-based Reasoning technique to provide recommendations in real time when teachers and students write texts in Spanish. An experiment was performed in order to compare some local similarity functions to retrieve cases from the case library taking into account the grammatical structures. As a result we found the similarity function with the best performance

Integración de impactos ecológicos causados por plantas exóticas invasoras: propuesta metodológica

Tanto en España como en Europa existen demasiadas plantas exóticas invasoras para poder afrontar la gestión de todas ellas, por lo que es necesario priorizar las más nocivas. Sin embargo, ello requiere disponer de medidas cuantitativas, sistemáticas y comparables de su impacto. La información disponible es desigual en cuanto a los criterios y variables para medir impactos y por tanto difícil de integrar. Proponemos el siguiente método para integrar medidas de impactos procedentes de distintos estudios: 1) Búsqueda de casos de estudio, 2) cálculo de tamaños del efecto; 3) clasificación de los casos por nivel de organización, 4) integración de los tamaños del efecto para cada especie y nivel de impacto con técnicas de meta-análisis, y 5) estima de un índice de fiabilidad (basado en el número de casos) y otro de consistencia (basado en la heterogeneidad entre casos). Aplicamos este método para estimar los impactos en España de tres árboles invasores (Ailanthus altissima, Robinia pseudoacacia y Ulmus pumila). Encontramos 50 casos para A. altissima, 39 para R. pseudoacacia y 15 para U. pumila. Los impactos en el nivel de ecosistema (fertilidad) fueron los más estudiados, mientras que los de comunidad e individuo están menos documentados. Robinia pseudoacacia tiende a incrementar la fertilidad, mientras que A. altissima no altera esta propiedad. La metodología propuesta tiene la ventaja de permitir estimar el impacto con datos de estudios diversos, pero su aplicación está limitada por la disponibilidad de casos de estudio

Cursos abiertos en línea:¿ un escenario para la gestión personal del conocimiento?

A partir de uma discussão dos antecedentes e características dos cursos on-line, este artigo descreve uma solução tecnológica de apoio à realização deste tipo de curso, baseada no uso de ferramentas públicas e de uso gratuito(isto é, que não requerem instalação em um servidor próprio). Esta é uma prova de conceito que busca evidenciar as possibilidades e obstáculos associados à oferta deste tipo de prática educativa em um contexto latino-americano.A partir de una discusión de los antecedentes y características de los cursos abiertos en línea, este artículo describe una solución tecnológica de apoyo a la realización de este tipo de cursos, basada en el uso de herramientas públicas y de uso gratuito (esto es, que no requieren instalación en un servidor propio). Esta es una prueba de concepto que busca evidenciar las posibilidades y obstáculos asociados a la oferta de este tipo de práctica educativa en un contexto latinoamericano.Based on a discussion of the background and features of open online courses, this paper describes a technological solution to support their offering, built on online tools that don’t require self-managed hosting. This is a proof of concept that intends to highlight the possibilities and obstacles related to this kind of educational practice in a Latin American context.Revista do Serviço Público - RSP, v. 62, n. 3, p. 281-296Educação a DistânciaTecnologia da Informação. InformáticaISSN eletrônico: 2357-8017ISSN impresso: 0034-924

Analysis of the variables that contribute to self-organization for the management of family lands in the Yánesha Native Community Santa Rosa de Chuchurras, Pasco, Peru

This research analyzed the variables that contribute to self-organization within the general framework for analysing the sustainability of socioecological systems (SES). In our case study, a correlation analysis showed that 80% of the variables contribute to the self-organization of the community in relation to the key resource: family land. There was evidence of land use transition, initially dependent on agrosilvopastoral system, towards diverse economic activities and with it also the inclusion of informal norms (institutional bricolage). These changes stem from two circumstances that threaten community organization. The first is linked to the absence of legal recognition of family lands by the Peruvian State, despite the prioritization of family economic activities over collective actions. The second is the precarious road connectivity that makes exporting difficult, slowing down production and the quality of their supply. If these two circumstances were addressed through public policies: a) the emigration of the community's younger population would be reduced; b) foreign investment would be attractive in this community; c) would increase the flow of energy and information between the community and its environment improving social capital and trust; and finally, d) uncertainty would be reduced, strengthening community self-organization

Farming expansion and land degradation in Western Bahia, Brazil.

Land degradation by soil erosion has called attention in tropical developing countries, particularly when natural vegetation is converted to farmland. Thus, the occupation of Brazilian savannas in Western Bahia is a matter of growing environmental concern. There are approximately 10 million hectares affected by this relatively recent land-use dynamics, but little is known about the temporal and spatial distribution of the process. To better understand such transformations, this paper addresses three related topics: land use/land cover (LULC) in 1985 and 2000; LULC dynamics between 1985 and 2000; and risk of land degradation by soil erosion as a function of farming expansion. The study area is located in Northeastern Brazil, between the coordinates 11° S and 46° 30’ W and 14° S and 43° 30’ W. All classes of natural vegetation cover decreased their areas during the period of study. Savanna (cerrado) lost 21.0% of its original area. Modern farming and irrigated areas increased 154.4 and 526.0%, respectively. Farming expansion reached 1,675,233 ha. Moderate risk of land degradation by soil erosion increased from 28.0 to 36.8% of the landscape mosaic between 1985 and 2000. The spatial and temporal dynamics observed reproduces development and land degradation examples of other savanna lands in Brazil. The integrity of native vegetation cover and the dissemination of soil and water conservation practices should be considered. This research contributes with an understanding of landscape transformations as a baseline for strategic environmental and land-use planning within the region

Horizontal networks and sustainable complex systems

Los esquemas de desarrollo adoptados en forma generalizada en la mayoría de sociedades contemporáneas se basan en supuestos de sostenibilidad del crecimiento económico, que han demostrado ser irrealistas. Igualmente las formas de organización para el desarrollo mantienen inspiración en teorías clásicas organizacionales que no aportan mucho a su adaptabilidad a los retos contemporáneos. Muchas redes y organizaciones en todos los países están trabajando en experimentar con esquemas alternativos de organización social, basados en conceptos de auto-gestión y autoorganización, originalmente sugeridos por teóricos de las ciencias de complejidad. En este articulo se resumen algunos de los criterios de manejo de complejidad que son relevantes para la articulación de redes horizontales, en particular aquellas trabajando por la sostenibilidad de comunidades y sociedades.The most popular development schemes adopted in a majority of contemporary societies around the World are based on assumptions on the sustainability of economic growth that have proven to be unrealistic. In a parallel way, most organisational arrangements for implementation of development programs are still inspired in classic organisational theories that do not contribute much to improve adaptability to contemporary challenges. Many organisations and networks in all countries are working to experiment with alternative social organisational schemes, based on ideas on selforganisation and self-management, originally coming from Complexity Sciences. This paper introduces basic complexity management principles that are relevant for horizontal collaborative networks, in particular for those aiming to contribute to the sustainability of communities and societies