e-Social Science and Evidence-Based Policy Assessment : Challenges and Solutions

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An Evaluation of Inter-Organizational Workflow Modelling Formalisms

This paper evaluates the dynamic aspects of the UML in the context of inter-organizational workflows. Two evaluation methodologies are used. The first one is ontological and is based on the BWW (Bunge-Wand-Weber) models. The second validation is based on prototyping and consists in the development of a workflow management system in the aerospace industry. Both convergent and divergent results are found from the two validations. Possible enhancements to the UML formalism are suggested from the convergent results. On the other hand, the divergent results suggest the need for a contextual specification in the BWW models. Ce travail consiste en une évaluation des aspects dynamiques du language UML dans un contexte de workflow inter-organisationnel. Le choix du language par rapport à d'autres est motivé par sa richesse grammaticale lui offrant une très bonne adaptation à ce contexte. L'évaluation se fait par une validation ontologique basée sur les modèles BWW (Bunge-Wand-Weber) et par la réalisation d'un prototype de système de gestion de workflows inter-organisationnels. À partir des résultats convergents obtenus des deux différentes analyses, des améliorations au formalisme UML sont suggérées. D'un autre coté, les analyses divergentes suggèrent une possibilité de spécifier les modèles BWW à des contextes plus particuliers tels que ceux des workflows et permettent également de suggérer d'autres améliorations possibles au langage.Ontology, Conceptual study, Prototype Validation, UML, IS development methods and tools., Ontologie, étude conceptuelle, validation du prototype, UML, méthodes et outils de développement IS

Semantic reasoning for intelligent emergency response applications

Emergency response applications require the processing of large amounts of data, generated by a diverse set of sensors and devices, in order to provide for an accurate and concise view of the situation at hand. The adoption of semantic technologies allows for the definition of a formal domain model and intelligent data processing and reasoning on this model based on generated device and sensor measurements. This paper presents a novel approach to emergency response applications, such as fire fighting, integrating a formal semantic domain model into an event-based decision support system, which supports reasoning on this model. The developed model consists of several generic ontologies describing concepts and properties which can be applied to diverse context-aware applications. These are extended with emergency response specific ontologies. Additionally, inference on the model performed by a reasoning engine is dynamically synchronized with the rest of the architectural components. This allows to automatically trigger events based on predefined conditions. The proposed ontology and developed reasoning methodology is validated on two scenarios, i.e. (i) the construction of an emergency response incident and corresponding scenario and (ii) monitoring of the state of a fire fighter during an emergency response

at the 14th Conference of the Spanish Association for Artificial Intelligence (CAEPIA 2011)

Technical Report TR-2011/1, Department of Languages and Computation. University of Almeria November 2011. Joaquín Cañadas, Grzegorz J. Nalepa, Joachim Baumeister (Editors)The seventh workshop on Knowledge Engineering and Software Engineering (KESE7) was held at the Conference of the Spanish Association for Artificial Intelligence (CAEPIA-2011) in La Laguna (Tenerife), Spain, and brought together researchers and practitioners from both fields of software engineering and artificial intelligence. The intention was to give ample space for exchanging latest research results as well as knowledge about practical experience.University of Almería, Almería, Spain. AGH University of Science and Technology, Kraków, Poland. University of Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany

A Method for Systematic Adaptation and Synchronization of Healthcare Processes

International organizations, as the World Health Organization (WHO) and national governments are constantly defining (or modifying) new healthcare protocols and procedures. Those changes have a significant impact, on one side, on the organizational concerns of a great number of healthcare institutions and centers, and on the other side, on their health information systems that need to be adapted according to the new (or modified) procedures. Administrative workflows are commonly defined by a high level entity and they must then be applied on different institutions ruled by this high level entity. Those workflows must then be adapted to the particular circumstances of each institution, complying with the general regulations of the process established at the top level. This problem, called Hierarchical Adaptation Problem, also implies establishing the methods to evolve together the high level regulation. Such methods must maintain the consistency among the different levels by means of the propagation of the changes to all the different adaptations of the original workflow. To solve this problem, this work introduces the Hierarchical Adaptation Method. A method based on ontologies to define the rules that must be satisfied by a generic workflow to be considered adaptable to different application cases and the rules that must be satisfied by its adapted versions. Moreover, it provides the operations to facilitate both adaptation of administrative workflows and propagation of changes

An ontology co-design method for the co-creation of a continuous care ontology

Ontology engineering methodologies tend to emphasize the role of the knowledge engineer or require a very active role of domain experts. In this paper, a participatory ontology engineering method is described that holds the middle ground between these two 'extremes'. After thorough ethnographic research, an interdisciplinary group of domain experts closely interacted with ontology engineers and social scientists in a series of workshops. Once a preliminary ontology was developed, a dynamic care request system was built using the ontology. Additional workshops were organized involving a broader group of domain experts to ensure the applicability of the ontology across continuous care settings. The proposed method successfully actively engaged domain experts in constructing the ontology, without overburdening them. Its applicability is illustrated by presenting the co-created continuous care ontology. The lessons learned during the design and execution of the approach are also presented

Developing a European grid infrastructure for cancer research: vision, architecture and services

Life sciences are currently at the centre of an information revolution. The nature and amount of information now available opens up areas of research that were once in the realm of science fiction. During this information revolution, the data-gathering capabilities have greatly surpassed the data-analysis techniques. Data integration across heterogeneous data sources and data aggregation across different aspects of the biomedical spectrum, therefore, is at the centre of current biomedical and pharmaceutical R&D

Process Oriented Collaboration in Grid-Environments: A Case Study in the Construction Industry

This paper addresses the process-oriented collaboration based on a grid-based platform for the support of virtual organizations (VO), illustrated on the example of the construction industry. Distributed, organizational and IT-structures of teams involved in vintage complex projects cannot be managed with conventional methods in an appropriate manner. Both using a grid platform and grid-based services, in conjunction with semantic methods for consistency saving and goal-oriented process management can increase the efficiency of collaboration processes in large-scale projects. A hybrid grid- and web service-based architecture for the next generation of VO service and a gateway solution was developed integrating the process-oriented perspective and prototypically implemented. The problem, as well as the solution on the basis of the hybrid system architecture combing the benefits of the cutting-edge technologies, the methodical concept for modeling VO processes and their automated execution on a grid platform are discussed in detail

Intelligent IT Governance Platform: Strategic level

The objective of this work is the implementation of a new IT governance platform adaptable to any type of Information system architecture and any kind of business. The proposed platform is intelligent and independent to understand the business needs continuously changing, is distributed to involve all stakeholders and heterogeneous components, and scalable to accumulate the know-how of the company's IT Governance through a learning asset