Mapping Big Data into Knowledge Space with Cognitive Cyber-Infrastructure

Big data research has attracted great attention in science, technology, industry and society. It is developing with the evolving scientific paradigm, the fourth industrial revolution, and the transformational innovation of technologies. However, its nature and fundamental challenge have not been recognized, and its own methodology has not been formed. This paper explores and answers the following questions: What is big data? What are the basic methods for representing, managing and analyzing big data? What is the relationship between big data and knowledge? Can we find a mapping from big data into knowledge space? What kind of infrastructure is required to support not only big data management and analysis but also knowledge discovery, sharing and management? What is the relationship between big data and science paradigm? What is the nature and fundamental challenge of big data computing? A multi-dimensional perspective is presented toward a methodology of big data computing.Comment: 59 page

Biofuels and Sustainability

This open access book presents a comprehensive analysis of biofuel use strategies from an interdisciplinary perspective using sustainability science. This interdisciplinary perspective (social science-natural science) means that the strategies and policy options proposed will have significant impacts on the economy and society alike. Biofuels are expected to contribute to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, revitalizing economies in agricultural communities and alleviating poverty. However, despite these anticipated benefits, international organizations such as the FAO, OECD and UN have published reports expressing concerns that biofuel promotion may lead to deforestation, water pollution and water shortages. The impacts of biofuel use are extensive, cross-sectoral and complex, and as such, comprehensive analyses are required in order to assess the extent to which biofuels can contribute to sustainable societies. Applying interdisciplinary sustainability science concepts and methodologies, the book helps to enhance the establishment of a sustainable society as well as the development of appropriate responses to a global need for urgent action on current issues related to biofuels

Combining computer vision and deep learning to enable ultra-scale aerial phenotyping and precision agriculture: A case study of lettuce production:AirSurf-Lettuce

Aerial imagery is regularly used by crop researchers, growers and farmers to monitor crops during the growing season. To extract meaningful information from large-scale aerial images collected from the field, high-throughput phenotypic analysis solutions are required, which not only produce high-quality measures of key crop traits, but also support professionals to make prompt and reliable crop management decisions. Here, we report AirSurf, an automated and open-source analytic platform that combines modern computer vision, up-to-date machine learning, and modular software engineering in order to measure yield-related phenotypes from ultra-large aerial imagery. To quantify millions of in-field lettuces acquired by fixed-wing light aircrafts equipped with normalised difference vegetation index (NDVI) sensors, we customised AirSurf by combining computer vision algorithms and a deep-learning classifier trained with over 100,000 labelled lettuce signals. The tailored platform, AirSurf-Lettuce, is capable of scoring and categorising iceberg lettuces with high accuracy (>98%). Furthermore, novel analysis functions have been developed to map lettuce size distribution across the field, based on which associated global positioning system (GPS) tagged harvest regions have been identified to enable growers and farmers to conduct precision agricultural practises in order to improve the actual yield as well as crop marketability before the harvest

Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse

An assessment of the sustainability of E-fulfilment models for the delivery of fast moving consumer goods to the home

Online retail sales are growing rapidly and have captured a significant proportion of the retail market in many countries. Although companies are under mounting pressure to reduce their environmental impact, the environmental effect of the different online distribution strategies remains unclear. Most previous studies of this subject have only included partial effects and consequences. To enable a more holistic understanding, this study proposes a more inclusive framework of environmental assessment based on life cycle analysis. This was applied to fast moving consumer goods (FMCG). Previous studies have shown that the last mile delivery contributes significantly to the environmental impact of online retailing, mainly because of the nature of the home delivery operations, including narrow time windows and short order lead times. If consumers were to buy products online on a subscription basis and give the supplier more control over the replenishment process there might be less need for fast deliveries, creating opportunities to improve the efficiency of home deliveries and reduce their environmental impact. The study classified different forms of subscription arrangement, assessed their relative attractiveness to consumers and examined their likely impact on the supply chain. Consumer views on subscriptions were surveyed by means of focus group discussions and interviews. To assess the likely supply chain impacts of subscriptions, the literature on vendor-managed inventory was consulted. A Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) model was built to quantify and compare the environmental impact of various e-fulfilment models for FMCG products in the United Kingdom. This study reveals that the method of execution have a large influence on the environmental impact. In store-based retailing, the energy consumption within the supermarket is a significant contributor to the total greenhouse gas emissions. On the other hand, some forms of home delivery, involving for example the use of parcel networks with no pre-agreed time-slots and relatively high rates of delivery failure and customer collection, are also carbon-intensive. This contribution of consumer trips to the total footprint is much smaller in case of van-based deliveries where pre-agreed time-windows are used. Regardless of the business model, the total carbon footprint per item depends heavily on the number of items per delivery. Consequently, companies or consumers looking to decrease the environmental impact of online shopping should maximise the number of items per delivery. The study concludes with an assessment of the strengths, weaknesses and possible environmental improvements of each of the efulfilment methods, taking account of the possible role of subscriptions

Biofuels and Sustainability

This open access book presents a comprehensive analysis of biofuel use strategies from an interdisciplinary perspective using sustainability science. This interdisciplinary perspective (social science-natural science) means that the strategies and policy options proposed will have significant impacts on the economy and society alike. Biofuels are expected to contribute to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, revitalizing economies in agricultural communities and alleviating poverty. However, despite these anticipated benefits, international organizations such as the FAO, OECD and UN have published reports expressing concerns that biofuel promotion may lead to deforestation, water pollution and water shortages. The impacts of biofuel use are extensive, cross-sectoral and complex, and as such, comprehensive analyses are required in order to assess the extent to which biofuels can contribute to sustainable societies. Applying interdisciplinary sustainability science concepts and methodologies, the book helps to enhance the establishment of a sustainable society as well as the development of appropriate responses to a global need for urgent action on current issues related to biofuels

Knowledge mobilisation crossing boundaries: a multi-perspective framework for agri-food value chains

Knowledge has long been recognised as a valuable asset to individuals, organisations and economy, subsequently knowledge management (KM) has been a well-established area of research. Existing research has developed various classification schemes for knowledge, and a great number of KM process and lifecycle models have been proposed over the last few decades. In particular, knowledge transfer and sharing has received great attention. However, majority of existing work has focused on knowledge sharing within the same organisation or community where people have a shared sense of identity, values and some common practice, hence knowledge process and learning is within relatively homogeneous groups. There is inadequate research to address the issue of knowledge boundaries and approaches to knowledge mobilisation spanning across knowledge boundaries. The knowledge boundaries can erect significant barriers to knowledge sharing and flowing especially in value chain context where there are a great number of players from different domains, with varied level of knowledge, having different and possibly conflicting interests - participating in knowledge sharing activities. This paper will explore how such knowledge boundaries can be identified and how knowledge gaps among different value chain players can be closed by using appropriate boundary-crossing mechanisms. A multi-perspective knowledge mobilisation framework is proposed. Example applications of the knowledge mobilisation framework in agri-food value chain will be illustrated, based on the most recent developments from an EU collaborative project, RUC-APS (standing for Risk and Uncertain Conditions in Agriculture Production Systems), which is funded by European Commission’s Horizon 2020 RISE programme.Laboratorio de Investigación y Formación en Informática Avanzad