Soft behaviour modelling of user communities

A soft modelling approach for describing behaviour in on-line user communities is introduced in this work. Behaviour models of individual users in dynamic virtual environments have been described in the literature in terms of timed transition automata; they have various drawbacks. Soft multi/agent behaviour automata are defined and proposed to describe multiple user behaviours and to recognise larger classes of user group histories, such as group histories which contain unexpected behaviours. The notion of deviation from the user community model allows defining a soft parsing process which assesses and evaluates the dynamic behaviour of a group of users interacting in virtual environments, such as e-learning and e-business platforms. The soft automaton model can describe virtually infinite sequences of actions due to multiple users and subject to temporal constraints. Soft measures assess a form of distance of observed behaviours by evaluating the amount of temporal deviation, additional or omitted actions contained in an observed history as well as actions performed by unexpected users. The proposed model allows the soft recognition of user group histories also when the observed actions only partially meet the given behaviour model constraints. This approach is more realistic for real-time user community support systems, concerning standard boolean model recognition, when more than one user model is potentially available, and the extent of deviation from community behaviour models can be used as a guide to generate the system support by anticipation, projection and other known techniques. Experiments based on logs from an e-learning platform and plan compilation of the soft multi-agent behaviour automaton show the expressiveness of the proposed model

Recommendation & mobile systems - a state of the art for tourism

Recommendation systems have been growing in number over the last fifteen years. To evolve and adapt to the demands of the actual society, many paradigms emerged giving birth to even more paradigms and hybrid approaches. These approaches contain strengths and weaknesses that need to be evaluated according to the knowledge area in which the system is going to be implemented. Mobile devices have also been under an incredible growth rate in every business area, and there are already lots of mobile based systems to assist tourists. This explosive growth gave birth to different mobile applications, each having their own advantages and disadvantages. Since recommendation and mobile systems might as well be integrated, this work intends to present the current state of the art in tourism mobile and recommendation systems, as well as to state their advantages and disadvantages

A diagnostic framework for biodiversity conservation institutions

Biodiversity loss is a critical issue on the environmental agenda, with species-based approaches failing to stem the decline. Landscape-scale approaches offer promise, but require institutional change. This article describes a novel conceptual framework for assessing institutional arrangements to tackle this persistent problem. In doing so, two critical issues for biodiversity governance are addressed. The first is a need to enrich largely theoretical descriptions of adaptive governance by considering how the practical realities of institutional environments (e.g. public agencies) limit achievement of an adaptive governance 'ideal'. The second is enabling explicit consideration of the unique aspects of biodiversity as a 'policy problem' in the analysis of institutional arrangements. The framework contributes to efforts to design more adaptive institutional arrangements, through supporting a more sophisticated and grounded institutional analysis incorporating insights from institutional theory, especially literature on organisational environments and public administration. Concepts from Pragmatism also contribute to this grounding, providing insight into how public agencies can play a more productive role in biodiversity conservation and building public consent for management actions. The diagnostic categories in the framework include the attributes of the biodiversity problem and the involved players; the political context; and practices contributing to both competence and capacity. Guidance on how to apply the framework and an example of its application in Australia illustrate the utility of this tool for institutional diagnosis and design. Development of this diagnostic framework could be further enhanced by empirically informed elaboration of the relationships between its components, and of the nature of, and factors influencing, key concerns for adaptation, particularly learning, self-organising and buffering

The Impact of Agent-Based Models in the Social Sciences after 15 Years of Incursions

This paper provides an overview on the impact of agent-based models in the social sciences. It focuses on the reasons why agent-based models are seen as important innovations in the recent decades. It is aimed to evaluate the impact of this innovation on various disciplines, such as economics, sociology, anthropology, and behavioural sciences. It discusses the advances it contributed to achieve and illustrates some comparatively new fields to which it gave rise. Finally, it emphasizes some research issues that need to be addressed in the future