1,015,649 research outputs found
Understanding spatial data usability
In recent geographical information science literature, a number of researchers have made passing reference to an apparently new characteristic of spatial data known as 'usability'. While this attribute is well-known to professionals engaged in software engineering and computer interface design and testing, extension of the concept to embrace information would seem to be a new development. Furthermore, while notions such as the use and value of spatial information, and the diffusion of spatial information systems, have been the subject of research since the late-1980s, the current references to usability clearly represent something which extends well beyond that initial research. Accordingly, the purposes of this paper are: (1) to understand what is meant by spatial data usability; (2) to identify the elements that might comprise usability; and (3) to consider what the related research questions might be
Beyond enterprise resource planning projects: innovative strategies for competitive advantage
ABSTRACT A rapidly changing business environment and legacy IT problems has resulted in many organisations implementing standard package solutions. This 'common systems' approach establishes a common IT and business process infrastructure within organisations and its increasing dominance raises several important strategic issues. These are to what extent do common systems impose common business processes and management systems on competing firms, and what is the source of competitive advantage if the majority of firms employ almost identical information systems and business processes? A theoretical framework based on research into legacy systems and earlier IT strategy literature is used to analyse three case studies in the manufacturing, chemical and IT industries. It is shown that the organisations are treating common systems as the core of their organisations' abilities to manage business transactions. To achieve competitive advantage they are clothing these common systems with information systems designed to capture information about competitors, customers and suppliers, and to provide a basis for sharing knowledge within the organisation and ultimately with economic partners. The importance of these approaches to other organisations and industries is analysed and an attempt is made at outlining the strategic options open to firms beyond the implementation of common business systems
A Consistent Quantum Ontology
The (consistent or decoherent) histories interpretation provides a consistent
realistic ontology for quantum mechanics, based on two main ideas. First, a
logic (system of reasoning) is employed which is compatible with the
Hilbert-space structure of quantum mechanics as understood by von Neumann:
quantum properties and their negations correspond to subspaces and their
orthogonal complements. It employs a special (single framework) syntactical
rule to construct meaningful quantum expressions, quite different from the
quantum logic of Birkhoff and von Neumann. Second, quantum time development is
treated as an inherently stochastic process under all circumstances, not just
when measurements take place. The time-dependent Schr\"odinger equation
provides probabilities, not a deterministic time development of the world. The
resulting interpretive framework has no measurement problem and can be used to
analyze in quantum terms what is going on before, after, and during physical
preparation and measurement processes. In particular, appropriate measurements
can reveal quantum properties possessed by the measured system before the
measurement took place. There are no mysterious superluminal influences:
quantum systems satisfy an appropriate form of Einstein locality. This ontology
provides a satisfactory foundation for quantum information theory, since it
supplies definite answers as to what the information is about. The formalism of
classical (Shannon) information theory applies without change in suitable
quantum contexts, and this suggests the way in which quantum information theory
extends beyond its classical counterpart.Comment: Very minor revisions to previous versio
SA 8000 - ACCOUNTING FOR CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
In the current context, organizations are evaluated not only in terms of product quality. The modern organization is valued beyond its economic performance, quality management and communication policy, and by its contribution to the social life of the community it takes part of. The new social responsibilities that appear for the companies involve the increasement of information requests from both outside and inside for better management of the entity. Social responsibility accounting is a branch of accounting in the context of scientific knowledge that provides answers to social problems, the causes, manifestations and projections in a dynamic environment. This article aims to show what social responsibility is and how it works according to SA 8000:2008, what would be its implications and its main objectives, emphasizes the importance of publishing additional information on corporate social responsibility other than traditional financial situations.social responsibility, social responsibility accounting, SA 8000: 2008, key areas, quality
Incentive Mechanisms for Participatory Sensing: Survey and Research Challenges
Participatory sensing is a powerful paradigm which takes advantage of
smartphones to collect and analyze data beyond the scale of what was previously
possible. Given that participatory sensing systems rely completely on the
users' willingness to submit up-to-date and accurate information, it is
paramount to effectively incentivize users' active and reliable participation.
In this paper, we survey existing literature on incentive mechanisms for
participatory sensing systems. In particular, we present a taxonomy of existing
incentive mechanisms for participatory sensing systems, which are subsequently
discussed in depth by comparing and contrasting different approaches. Finally,
we discuss an agenda of open research challenges in incentivizing users in
participatory sensing.Comment: Updated version, 4/25/201
Cloud-based Quadratic Optimization with Partially Homomorphic Encryption
The development of large-scale distributed control systems has led to the
outsourcing of costly computations to cloud-computing platforms, as well as to
concerns about privacy of the collected sensitive data. This paper develops a
cloud-based protocol for a quadratic optimization problem involving multiple
parties, each holding information it seeks to maintain private. The protocol is
based on the projected gradient ascent on the Lagrange dual problem and
exploits partially homomorphic encryption and secure multi-party computation
techniques. Using formal cryptographic definitions of indistinguishability, the
protocol is shown to achieve computational privacy, i.e., there is no
computationally efficient algorithm that any involved party can employ to
obtain private information beyond what can be inferred from the party's inputs
and outputs only. In order to reduce the communication complexity of the
proposed protocol, we introduced a variant that achieves this objective at the
expense of weaker privacy guarantees. We discuss in detail the computational
and communication complexity properties of both algorithms theoretically and
also through implementations. We conclude the paper with a discussion on
computational privacy and other notions of privacy such as the non-unique
retrieval of the private information from the protocol outputs
Avoiding Discrimination through Causal Reasoning
Recent work on fairness in machine learning has focused on various
statistical discrimination criteria and how they trade off. Most of these
criteria are observational: They depend only on the joint distribution of
predictor, protected attribute, features, and outcome. While convenient to work
with, observational criteria have severe inherent limitations that prevent them
from resolving matters of fairness conclusively.
Going beyond observational criteria, we frame the problem of discrimination
based on protected attributes in the language of causal reasoning. This
viewpoint shifts attention from "What is the right fairness criterion?" to
"What do we want to assume about the causal data generating process?" Through
the lens of causality, we make several contributions. First, we crisply
articulate why and when observational criteria fail, thus formalizing what was
before a matter of opinion. Second, our approach exposes previously ignored
subtleties and why they are fundamental to the problem. Finally, we put forward
natural causal non-discrimination criteria and develop algorithms that satisfy
them.Comment: Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 30, 2017
http://papers.nips.cc/paper/6668-avoiding-discrimination-through-causal-reasonin
- …