Catalysts for regional development: putting territorial coordination in practice

Lack of coordination among agencies at project level and scarce promotion of contracts at micro-scale are critical gaps widely spread in many Latin American regions. We discuss some specific and feasible mechanisms, namely: (i) alliances for rural development and (ii) contract promoters; that may play a catalytic role to deal with the mentioned problems. Based on a continuous improving integral strategy and an effective operative framework, these alliances would be prone to unveil areas for interventions and to channel them into the pipelines of the ministries, financing agencies or private investor initiatives. These alliances can assist in solving tradeoffs between enough economies of scale for enhancing capabilities and sufficient local knowledge. Also, they might reduce capture problems. Contract promoters on the other hand, can be viewed as facilitators for startup businesses. They evolve as enterprise incubators, with expertise for rural areas, projects and marketing; combined with a vision for development. Both catalysts have a synergetic effect for coordinating regional development and should be prominent in rural modernization agendas.Rural development, Catalyst, Experimental, Promoter, Local Governance, Applied Political Economy

Rural Livelihood Strategies and Social Capital in Latin America: Implications for Rural Development Projects

Evidence from studies across Latin America show that rural households in the region are increasingly employing a diverse set of activities to maintain and improve livelihoods suggesting that households use multiple paths to get out of poverty. Of particular importance in household livelihood strategies are the assets households own and the context in which they operate. Recent development literature has highlighted the important role of social capital in development and particular emphasis is place on the role of this asset in this paper. The objective of this paper is to examine these trends in order to inform project design and implementation in the region. Based on the conceptual framework and evidence from Latin America, the paper offers a number of suggestions for improving project design and implementation in Latin America.rural livelihoods, social capital, Latin America, rural development projects, Community/Rural/Urban Development, Labor and Human Capital,

Food Insecurity and Vulnerability in Latin America and the Caribbean

This paper examines how Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) nations have proceeded in addressing the issues of food insecurity and vulnerability in response to the 1996 Rome Declaration on World Food Security. The data suggests that while the food insecurity situation has improved in LAC over the past few years, many nations are worse off in terms of food insecurity than they were at the beginning of the 1990s. Nations that reduced food insecurity tend to be those who have effectively reduced poverty and have increased social spending. While some regional initiatives have occurred to address regional food insecurity issues, additional national and international policy responses are required in the Latin American Region.food insecurity, vulnerability, Latin America and the Caribbean, World Food Summit, Food Security and Poverty,

Ciclones: diseño de una aplicación GIS usando orientación a objetos

En este trabajo mostramos una aplicación GIS diseñada utilizando tecnología de orientación a objetos. Mostramos además el uso de algunos patterns en este ámbito y discutimos acerca del impacto que tiene el empleo de los mismos en el diseño de esta aplicación

Identifying and Modelling Complex Workflow Requirements in Web Applications

Workflow plays a major role in nowadays business and therefore its requirement elicitation must be accurate and clear for achieving the solution closest to business’s needs. Due to Web applications popularity, the Web is becoming the standard platform for implementing business workflows. In this context, Web applications and their workflows must be adapted to market demands in such a way that time and effort are minimize. As they get more popular, they must give support to different functional requirements but also they contain tangled and scattered behaviour. In this work we present a model-driven approach for modelling workflows using a Domain Specific Language for Web application requirement called WebSpec. We present an extension to WebSpec based on Pattern Specifications for modelling crosscutting workflow requirements identifying tangled and scattered behaviour and reducing inconsistencies early in the cycle

Architectural and Implementation Issues for a Context-Aware Hypermedia Platform

In this paper we present the rationale and the main components of a modular and extensible architecture for building and deploying mobile hypermedia software. Using some simple archetypical examples we show how to provide context-aware assistance to the mobile user, as he explores the physical world. We also show that this kind of software systems poses strong requirements on supporting software (such as Web browsers) and we explain how to provide a modular software substrate to support these requirements. This paper shows how to use some simple concepts to develop complex context-aware systems, which are evolvable and easy to extend.Facultad de InformáticaLaboratorio de Investigación y Formación en Informática Avanzada (LIFIA

Context-Aware Services for Physical Hypermedia Applications

In this paper we present an approach for designing and deploying context-aware services in the context of physical hypermedia applications, those applications in which mobile users explore real and digital objects using the hypermedia paradigm. We show how to adapt the objects’ response to the user’s navigation context by changing the role these objects play in the user’s travel. We first motivate our research with a simple example and survey some related work; next we introduce the concept of travel object and show that physical objects might assume the role of different type of travel objects. We then present an architectural approach for context-aware services and describe its evolution into a software substrate for physical hypermedia services. We conclude by indicating some further work we are pursuing.Publicado en: OTM'06 Proceedings of the 2006 international conference on On the Move to Meaningful Internet Systems: AWeSOMe, CAMS, COMINF, IS, KSinBIT, MIOS-CIAO, MONET - Volume Part IIFacultad de InformáticaLaboratorio de Investigación y Formación en Informática Avanzada (LIFIA

Dealing with Variability in Context-Aware Mobile Software

Mobile context-aware software pose a set of challenging requirements to developers as these applications exhibit novel features, such as handling varied sensing devices and dynamically adapting to the user’s context (e.g. his or her location), and evolve quickly according to technological advances. In this paper, we discuss how to handle variability both across different domains and during the evolution of a single application. We present a set of design structures for solving different problems related with mobility (such as location sensing, behaviour adaptation, etc.), together with the design rationale underlying them, and show how these sound micro-architectural constructs impact on variability. Our presentation is illustrated with case studies in different domains.Facultad de Informátic

Client-side adaptation: An approach based in reutilization using transversal models

Improving navigability in Web applications is essential for applications success. Our research aims to improve the user experience by applying novel techniques such as concern-sensitive navigation. Concern-sensitive navigation allows enriching Web pages with content related to the context in which they are accessed. In previous works, we showed how this technique can be applied during the development process; at present we are working in a client-side adaptation approach to apply concern-sensitive navigation to existing applications. This approach is open to other adaptation kinds which are illustrated in this position paper. We also outline a set of tools we are developing to simplify the process of adaptation.Publicado en Lecture Notes in Computer Science book series (LNCS, vol. 6385).Laboratorio de Investigación y Formación en Informática Avanzad

Model-Based Concerns Mashups for Mobile Hypermedia

Mobile (or Physical) Hypermedia combines the navigational style typical of Web applications with the functionality of location and context-aware software. Users explore digital and physical relationships while accessing to information about their actual location, e.g. the object in front of them. Similar to “conventional” Web applications one might suffer usability problems when dealing with multiple informational concerns, but the situation gets worse because of screen size issues, the need to avoid user distraction, etc. In this paper we outline our model based approach for building mobile hypermedia applications by combining (“mashing up”) information corresponding to multiple concerns in a modular, usable way. Architectural issues are discussed and a simple example is presented together with its implementation.Laboratorio de Investigación y Formación en Informática Avanzad