Establishment of collaborative networks – a model-driven engineering approach based on thermodynamics

The setup of an efficient collaborative situation between organizations can be considered according to four main complementary dimensions: the context (geographical, social, economical environment), the partners (the actors, their capabilities, their resources and their relationships), the objectives (the collaborative goals of the network, the risks to be avoided, etc.) and finally the behaviour (the collaborative processes to be implemented by the partners to achieve the objectives considering the context). Some research works try to infer the behaviour based on the three other issues assumed to be known, by using different approaches such as model-driven engineering (MDE), optimization, heuristics, planning, etc. MDE helps studying the opportunity of inferring the objectives part from the context and partners dimensions in order to feed the behaviour issue. We use a non-equilibrium thermodynamics analogy where partners and context attributes and methods are mapped to thermodynamic state variables of an organisation seen as an open system in the frame of dissipative structure thermodynamics. We apply it specifically to enterprises and discuss briefly the analogy of behaviour as an irreversible trajectory aiming to maintain the enterprise activity aliv

An Event-Driven Platform for Agility Management of Crisis Response

International audienceThis article aims at presenting a whole approach of Information System Interoperability management in a crisis management cell: a Mediation Information System (MIS) may be used to help the crisis cell partners to design, run and manage the workflows of the response to a crisis situation. The architecture of the MIS meets the needs of low coupling between the partners' Information System components and the need of agility for such a platform. It is based on Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Event-Driven Architecture (EDA) principles that are combined to the Complex Event Processing (CEP) principles. This should leads on the one hand to an easier orchestration, choreography and real-time monitoring of the workflows' activities, on the other hand to assume on-the-fly automated agility of the crisis response (considering agility as the ability of the processes to remain consistent with the response to the crisis)

Prise en charge de l'agilité de workflows collaboratifs par une approche dirigée par les événements

It is known that organizations have to take part into collaborations to face un unstable world. But, the unstable nature of the collaboration and of its environment can threaten the accuracy of the processes. We can extract two main issues from this context : (i) How to detect the instant where the collaborative processes does not match with the current crisis situation and what are the causes; (ii) How to redefine the best possible response (i.e. at a concrete level, the best processes and their orchestration and choreography) at time t, in real time, depending of the collaborative situation, the processes execution progress, the state of the resources and collaboration's partners. The scientific problem is focused on the agility of collaborative processes. This thesis aspires to solve these issues by proposing (i) a definition for collaborative processes agility, (ii) the definition and the realization of an Event-Driven Architecture layer among the SOA architecture of the information system of the collaboration, in order to take in account the events emitted by the collaboration and its field to update the collaborative situation models. Then (iii) an algorithm to measure the distances between the model of the crisis situation at is it supposed to be when the processes are executed, and the model of the crisis situation as it really is, and (iv) a tool for decision support and a redesign of the crisis response processes and choreography. These results are in line with the ANR SocEDA project and the EUR FP7 PLAY project which aim at providing agility to collaborative processes, in an event-driven context. The mechanisms to ensure collaborative processes agility are implemented as an open-source prototype.Les organisations participent à des collaborations pour faire face à un environnement en perpétuelle évolution (mondialisation, crise, etc.). Or, la nature instable de la collaboration et de son environnement peuvent compromettre la pertinence des processus définis pour atteindre les objectifs collectifs. Deux problématiques émergent alors de ce constat : comment détecter l'inadéquation des processus exécutés par rapport aux objectifs poursuivis à l'instant t ? Comment redéfinir la meilleure réponse possible à l'instant t, dans un laps de temps proche du temps réel (en fonction de la situation de collaboration, de l'avancée de l'exécution des processus, et l'état des acteurs et ressources). La problématique scientifique relève de l'apport d'agilité aux processus collaboratifs. Ces travaux de thèse ambitionnent de répondre à ces questions en proposant (i) une définition de l'agilité des processus collaboratifs, (ii) la mise en place d'une architecture orientée services dirigée par les événements (ED-SOA), afin de prendre en compte les événements émis par la collaboration et son environnement, (iii) un algorithme de mesure de distance entre le modèle de la situation collaborative telle qu'elle devrait être et le modèle de la situation telle qu'elle est réellement (détection), et enfin (iv) un algorithme de recommandation d'adaptation des processus collaboratifs. L'implémentation des mécanismes de l'agilité des processus collaboratifs a donné naissance à un prototype open-source. Les résultats de cette thèse s'inscrivent également au sein des projets ANR SocEDA et EUR FP7 PLAY qui proposent chacun une gestion des processus collaboratifs dans le contexte d'une plateforme dirigée par les événements

Improving the design of interoperable platform through a structured case study description approach : application to a nuclear crisis

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Addressing Agility in Collaborative Processes: A comparative Study

7th IEEE International Conference on Digital Ecosystems and Technologies (DEST), Menlo Park, CA, JUL 24-26, 2013International audienceEfficiency of emerging digital ecosystems is strongly dependent on the efficiency of their collaborative processes. One crucial component of this efficiency is agility of collaborative processes. This article first provides a vision of agility of process in the world of workflow orchestration. Two approaches to deal with this issue (SAR from the European project PLAY and agility service from the French project SocEDA) are presented and illustrated (according to a scenario of nuclear crisis management). Comparison of both these approaches is structured according to different components of agility (detection, adaptation and reactivity). Some advantages and drawbacks of both these approaches are finally highlighted

Gathering, Structuring and Modeling Business Process Knowledge of the Response to a Nuclear Crisis: Towards a Simulation Platform for Better Coordination

Part 17: Networks in Crisis and Emergency ScenariosInternational audienceThis paper illustrates how nuclear crisis are managed in France. It proposes IT solutions dedicated to event management that could help to resolve such a crisis by facilitating coordination between actors and increasing situational awareness. This study has been conducted as part of the European project PLAY. Requirements have been collected from different stakeholders through reviews of the literature, internal reports and websites, and interviews. Our proposal consists in the construction of a simulation tool to validate the complex-event processing architecture and the associated platform. The aim is to show the potential added value from the PLAY platform in the context of the response to a nuclear crisis

Event-driven agility of crisis management collaborative processes

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