Introducing a socio-technical perspective on business processes into enterprise interoperability frameworks

© IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2015. This paper looks at enterprise interoperability (EI), specifically process-level interoperability, and suggests that the inherent non-determinacy of human-centred business processes introduces another ingredient into the EI puzzle that has thus far been understated in EIF ontologies. A conceptualisation of business process based on socio-technical concepts is presented. It is argued that this provides a better way to accommodate human agency factors, and under the influence of these factors, how business processes inevitably evolve over time, potentially affecting their interoperability. We suggest the extant body of knowledge on the theory of dynamic capabilities is relevant to understanding how organisations can control this potentially undirected process evolution and thereby sustain interoperability. Some initial observations are made concerning how this new ontological element could be accommodated into existing EIFs. The paper aims to stimulate discussion in this area and make a contribution to the EI body of knowledge

Exploring system behavior in a system ontology

Understanding and modeling system behavior is a key aspect of many disciplines, and is crucial when systems are designed to manifest desirable behaviors. In order to grasp system behavior, it is inevitable to address how it emerges from the properties and behaviors of interrelated system components. In pursuit of an understanding of the emergence phenomenon and to account for the nature of emergent system behavior, this paper takes a first step in extending a system core ontology with behavioral aspects. The ontology extension is grounded on the Unified Foundational Ontology and also in system science definitions and disposition theories.</p

Towards smart assessment: A metamodel proposal

International audienceAssessment initiatives in organisations are focused on the evaluation of organisational aspects aiming to obtain a critic view of their status. The assessment results are used to lead improvement programs or to serve as base for comparative purposes. Assessment approaches may comprise complex tasks demanding a large amount of time and resources. Moreover, assessment results are highly dependent on the assessment input, which may have a dynamic nature due to the constant evolution of organisations. The assessment results should be adaptable to these changes without much effort whilst being able to provide efficient and reliable results. Therefore, providing smart capabilities to the assessment process or to systems in charge of performing assessments represents a step forward in the search for more efficient appraisal processes. This work proposes a metamodel defining the elements of a Smart Assessment, which is guided by elements related to the smartness concept such as knowledge, learning, reasoning and inferring capabilities. The metamodel is further specialized considering a Business Process In-teroperability Smart Assessment scenario

Food Tracing and Interoperability of Information Systems in the Hungarian Meat Industry

The manufacture, distribution and retailing of foodstuffs became an extraordinarily complex business activity. The complete food chain must provide for the implementation of the strictest quality standards and safety regulations. Problems of food safety can be solved by keeping (and enforcing) applicable regulations, by introducing modern quality assurance systems, by making possible the traceability of products and their identification. The safety of product lines and tracing of products cannot be solved without using information systems of a certain level. During our research, it came to light that, generally, agrarian traceability struggles with many more problems. Companies try to live up to expectation, but they often apply different solutions with totally different approaches, while serving several different market aspects, depending on their customers. The conception of the Digital Business Ecosystem (DBE) has come, to build an Internet-based environment in which businesses will be able to interact with each other efficiently. The DBE solutions based on community philosophy are able to create applications, which can solve most of food traceability problems

A System Core Ontology for Capability Emergence Modeling

To properly understand organizational adaptation and innovation, it is critical to understand the emergence phenomenon, i.e., how the capabilities of a system emerge after changes. However, for this, we should be able to explain systems, their structure, behavior, and capabilities. In pursuit of an understanding of the emergence phenomenon and the nature of those new kinds of systems in organizations, we propose a well-founded system core ontology based on the Unified Foundational Ontology. The ontology is also grounded in system science definitions and disposition theories. For a more integrated explanation of emergence, the proposed ontology considers distinct perspectives of a system, such as its composition, structure, properties, and functions. In the end, we discuss the applications and implications of the proposed ontology on the enterprise architecture area and emergence modeling

Engineering Crowdsourced Stream Processing Systems

A crowdsourced stream processing system (CSP) is a system that incorporates crowdsourced tasks in the processing of a data stream. This can be seen as enabling crowdsourcing work to be applied on a sample of large-scale data at high speed, or equivalently, enabling stream processing to employ human intelligence. It also leads to a substantial expansion of the capabilities of data processing systems. Engineering a CSP system requires the combination of human and machine computation elements. From a general systems theory perspective, this means taking into account inherited as well as emerging properties from both these elements. In this paper, we position CSP systems within a broader taxonomy, outline a series of design principles and evaluation metrics, present an extensible framework for their design, and describe several design patterns. We showcase the capabilities of CSP systems by performing a case study that applies our proposed framework to the design and analysis of a real system (AIDR) that classifies social media messages during time-critical crisis events. Results show that compared to a pure stream processing system, AIDR can achieve a higher data classification accuracy, while compared to a pure crowdsourcing solution, the system makes better use of human workers by requiring much less manual work effort

Building an Integrated Enhanced Virtual Research Environment Metadata Catalogue

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to boost multidisciplinary research by the building of an integrated catalogue or research assets metadata. Such an integrated catalogue should enable researchers to solve problems or analyse phenomena that require a view across several scientific domains. Design/methodology/approach There are two main approaches for integrating metadata catalogues provided by different e-science research infrastructures (e-RIs): centralised and distributed. The authors decided to implement a central metadata catalogue that describes, provides access to and records actions on the assets of a number of e-RIs participating in the system. The authors chose the CERIF data model for description of assets available via the integrated catalogue. Analysis of popular metadata formats used in e-RIs has been conducted, and mappings between popular formats and the CERIF data model have been defined using an XML-based tool for description and automatic execution of mappings. Findings An integrated catalogue of research assets metadata has been created. Metadata from e-RIs supporting Dublin Core, ISO 19139, DCAT-AP, EPOS-DCAT-AP, OIL-E and CKAN formats can be integrated into the catalogue. Metadata are stored in CERIF RDF in the integrated catalogue. A web portal for searching this catalogue has been implemented. Research limitations/implications Only five formats are supported at this moment. However, description of mappings between other source formats and the target CERIF format can be defined in the future using the 3M tool, an XML-based tool for describing X3ML mappings that can then be automatically executed on XML metadata records. The approach and best practices described in this paper can thus be applied in future mappings between other metadata formats. Practical implications The integrated catalogue is a part of the eVRE prototype, which is a result of the VRE4EIC H2020 project. Social implications The integrated catalogue should boost the performance of multi-disciplinary research; thus it has the potential to enhance the practice of data science and so contribute to an increasingly knowledge-based society. Originality/value A novel approach for creation of the integrated catalogue has been defined and implemented. The approach includes definition of mappings between various formats. Defined mappings are effective and shareable.Published929-9514IT. Banche datiJCR Journa

A semi-automated system for interoperability assessment: an ontology- based approach

International audienceA plethora of approaches to assess the ability of companies to interoperate can be found in the literature. Nevertheless, most of the current assessment approaches are following manual-conducted processes, which can be laborious, time-consuming and costly. Therefore, this paper aims at developing a knowledge-based system for supporting an interoperability assessment process using an ontology as its knowledge model. The resulting system allows identifying potential interoperability problems and related solutions based on the knowledge model including information of the assessed enterprise(s). A real business case is presented for evaluating the proposed approach

An ontology for interoperability assessment: a systemic approach

International audienceEnterprise Interoperability is a requirement for ensuring an effective collaboration within a network of enterprises. Therefore, interoperability should be continuously assessed and improved for avoiding collaboration issues. To do so, an interoperability assessment can be performed by the concerned enterprises. Such an assessment provides an overview of the enterprise systems' strengths and weaknesses regarding interoperability. A plethora of assessment approaches are proposed in the literature. The majority of them focus on one single aspect of interoperability. In general, to have a holistic view of the assessed systems, i.e. consider different aspects, enterprises have to apply different approaches. However, the application of multiple approaches may cause redundancy and confusion when assessing the same system using different metrics and viewpoints. Therefore, this article is to propose an ontology for interoperability assessment. The main objective of such an ontology is to provide a sound description of all relevant concepts and relationships regarding an interoperability assessment. Inference rules are also provided for reasoning on interoperability problems. A case study based on a real enterprise in presented to evaluate the proposed ontology

Using conceptual graphs for clinical guidelines representation and knowledge visualization

The intrinsic complexity of the medical domain requires the building of some tools to assist the clinician and improve the patient’s health care. Clinical practice guidelines and protocols (CGPs) are documents with the aim of guiding decisions and criteria in specific areas of healthcare and they have been represented using several languages, but these are difficult to understand without a formal background. This paper uses conceptual graph formalism to represent CGPs. The originality here is the use of a graph-based approach in which reasoning is based on graph-theory operations to support sound logical reasoning in a visual manner. It allows users to have a maximal understanding and control over each step of the knowledge reasoning process in the CGPs exploitation. The application example concentrates on a protocol for the management of adult patients with hyperosmolar hyperglycemic state in the Intensive Care Unit