35 research outputs found
3D City Models and urban information: Current issues and perspectives
Considering sustainable development of cities implies investigating cities in a holistic way taking into account many interrelations between various urban or environmental issues. 3D city models are increasingly used in different cities and countries for an intended wide range of applications beyond mere visualization. Could these 3D City models be used to integrate urban and environmental knowledge? How could they be improved to fulfill such role? We believe that enriching the semantics of current 3D city models, would extend their functionality and usability; therefore, they could serve as integration platforms of the knowledge related to urban and environmental issues allowing a huge and significant improvement of city sustainable management and development. But which elements need to be added to 3D city models? What are the most efficient ways to realize such improvement / enrichment? How to evaluate the usability of these improved 3D city models? These were the questions tackled by the COST Action TU0801 “Semantic enrichment of 3D city models for sustainable urban development”. This book gathers various materials developed all along the four year of the Action and the significant breakthroughs
Modelling home care organisations from an operations management perspective
Home Care (HC) service consists of providing care to patients in their homes. During the last decade, the HC service industry experienced significant growth in many European countries. This growth stems from several factors, such as governmental pressure to reduce healthcare costs, demographic changes related to population ageing, social changes, an increase in the number of patients that suffer from chronic illnesses, and the development of new home-based services and technologies. This study proposes a framework that will enable HC service providers to better understand HC operations and their management. The study identifies the main processes and decisions that relate to the field of HC operations management. Hence, an IDEF0 (Integrated Definition for Function Modelling) activity-based model describes the most relevant clinical, logistical and organisational processes associated with HC operations. A hierarchical framework for operations management decisions is also proposed. This analysis is derived from data that was collected by nine HC service providers, which are located in France and Italy, and focuses on the manner in which operations are run, as well as associated constraints, inputs and outputs. The most challenging research areas in the field of HC operations management are also discussed
Towards the ontology-based consolidation of production-centric standards
This is an Author's Accepted Manuscript of an article published in the International Journal of Production Research [© Taylor & Francis], available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00207543.2011.627885.Production-centric
international
standards
are
intended
to
serve
as
an
important
route
towards
information
sharing
across
manufacturing
decision
support
systems.
As
a
consequence
of
textual-based
definitions
of
concepts
acknowledged
within
these
standards,
their
inability
to
fully
interoperate
becomes
an
issue
especially
since
a
multitude
of
standards
are
required
to
cover
the
needs
of
extensive
domains
such
as
manufacturing
industries.
To
help
reinforce
the
current
understanding
to
support
the
consolidation
of
production-centric
standards
for
improved
information
sharing,
this
article
explores
the
specification
of
well-defined
core
concepts
which
can
be
used
as
a
basis
for
capturing
tailored
semantic
definitions.
The
potentials
of
two
heavyweight
ontological
approaches,
notably
Common
Logic
(CL)
and
the
Web
Ontology
Language
(OWL)
as
candidates
for
the
task,
are
also
exposed.
An
important
finding
regarding
these
two
methods
is
that
while
an
OWL-based
approach
shows
capabilities
towards
applications
which
may
require
flexible
hierarchies
of
concepts,
a
CL-based
method
represents
a
favoured
contender
for
scoped
and
facts-driven
manufacturing
applications
ISO 15531 MANDATE: A Product-process-resource based Approach for Managing Modularity in Production Management
Abstract: Managing modularity and commonality in product development more and more needs modularity and commonality in the production process, with the objectives of reducing manufacturing costs, time to market and improving quality. A critical issue is the way of managing data, information and knowledge: data most of the time structured according to data models, often using proprietary formats, leading to consistency problems for the exchanges. The use of international standards is a good way of improving quality of the information systems used in production management, since they facilitate interoperability of the software tools used. They also contribute to the integration of the production process in a product life cycle management-based approach. This study presents the ISO 15531 MANDATE standard for the exchanges o