Development of Distributed Research Center for analysis of regional climatic and environmental changes

We present an approach and first results of a collaborative project being carried out by a joint team of researchers from the Institute of Monitoring of Climatic and Ecological Systems, Russia and Earth Systems Research Center UNH, USA. Its main objective is development of a hardware and software platform prototype of a Distributed Research Center (DRC) for monitoring and projecting of regional climatic and environmental changes in the Northern extratropical areas. The DRC should provide the specialists working in climate related sciences and decision-makers with accurate and detailed climatic characteristics for the selected area and reliable and affordable tools for their in-depth statistical analysis and studies of the effects of climate change. Within the framework of the project, new approaches to cloud processing and analysis of large geospatial datasets (big geospatial data) inherent to climate change studies are developed and deployed on technical platforms of both institutions. We discuss here the state of the art in this domain, describe web based information-computational systems developed by the partners, justify the methods chosen to reach the project goal, and briefly list the results obtained so far

Electronic governance, premise for implementation of electronic democracy

Living in a rapidly changing society, where information travels with great speed and its upgrade is essential, we decided to approach certain aspects of e-democracy, as a dynamic way of citizen participation, using new Information and Communications Technologies. The theme chosen for this research, Electronic governance, premise for implementation of electronic democracy, is a part of Electronic Administration field and identifies the meanings of implementing e-government and e-democracy, the necessity and effects of putting them into practice and the conditions to be fulfilled for the development of electronic services and fostering citizen participation in their use. E-governance as well as edemocracy have a clear contribution in making social progress, thanks to capitalize the most important irreversible resource, the time for achievement of the main administrative operations. The overall objective of the research aims to establish the relationship between governance and electronic democracy. From this perspective, this paper will contain: analyzing the importance of both e-governance and e-democracy, risks and benefits for each one, clarifying the need and implications underlying the implementation of electronic systems and explain the conditions to be met by citizens in order to benefit from these services. To achieve the objectives set, will be dominant the analyzing method of the social phenomena in their evolution. They will also combine harmoniously with practical examples in various member states of the European Union.e-governance, e-democracy

A framework for loosely coupled components to automate municipal services (FLCCAMS)

Unifying and computerizing the procedures of municipal operations and maintenance is of great importance to municipalities as well as to ministries of local governments. On top of that, enhancing municipal e-services in terms of efficiency, quality, reusability, distribution and interoperability of these services; is a goal for most of municipalities.  Municipalities need to unify and computerize the procedures of maintenance and operations for their assets. This will eliminate the difficulties to prioritize the maintenance tasks; to let every task takes its turn fairly. In addition, this will speed up performing such maintenance and operation tasks, and will decrease the bugs appear after the maintenance is done. Therefore, the objective of this research work is to define, design and evaluate a conceptual framework for loosely coupled components to automate municipal services as well as unifying and computerizing maintenance and operations in local governments. The scope of this research covers roads and public buildings as the most important parts of municipal assets

Toward sustainable data centers: a comprehensive energy management strategy

Data centers are major contributors to the emission of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, and this contribution is expected to increase in the following years. This has encouraged the development of techniques to reduce the energy consumption and the environmental footprint of data centers. Whereas some of these techniques have succeeded to reduce the energy consumption of the hardware equipment of data centers (including IT, cooling, and power supply systems), we claim that sustainable data centers will be only possible if the problem is faced by means of a holistic approach that includes not only the aforementioned techniques but also intelligent and unifying solutions that enable a synergistic and energy-aware management of data centers. In this paper, we propose a comprehensive strategy to reduce the carbon footprint of data centers that uses the energy as a driver of their management procedures. In addition, we present a holistic management architecture for sustainable data centers that implements the aforementioned strategy, and we propose design guidelines to accomplish each step of the proposed strategy, referring to related achievements and enumerating the main challenges that must be still solved.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Collaboration in the Semantic Grid: a Basis for e-Learning

The CoAKTinG project aims to advance the state of the art in collaborative mediated spaces for the Semantic Grid. This paper presents an overview of the hypertext and knowledge based tools which have been deployed to augment existing collaborative environments, and the ontology which is used to exchange structure, promote enhanced process tracking, and aid navigation of resources before, after, and while a collaboration occurs. While the primary focus of the project has been supporting e-Science, this paper also explores the similarities and application of CoAKTinG technologies as part of a human-centred design approach to e-Learning

A prototypical Skin Cancer Information System

Skin cancer is a common problem in Australia and indeed around the world. Within the domain of eHealth, there appears to be no satisfactory clinical software that follows the flow of a normal skin cancer examination. This paper introduces a system that was specifically designed, coded and implemented to store patient health records as a means of registering the diagnoses of skin cancer along with the treatment. The information system was intended to be web-based, and connect to remote database servers. The implemented system was designed to incorporate features such as inserting procedural details, generating forms and reports with interactive interfaces, yet be relatively unsophisticated to use. We expect the system once fully implemented and on line, will aid in Australia’s eHealth industry, delivering more accurate information to doctors and patients in an effort to combat issues involving skin cancer. Other parameters discussed are the need for data encryption of medical records and the role such a system can play in medical information