How the Cathedral Embraced the Bazaar, and the Bazaar Became a Cathedral

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The assessment of information technology maturity in emergency response organizations

[EN] In emergency response organizations, information technologies are not adequately explored. Sometimes, the mere adoption of new information technologies is not productive, as their efficient use depends on other interrelated technologies and the environment where they are installed. This work describes a model to help organizations understand their capability in respect to the adoption of these technologies. The model also helps the performing of the evaluation from different perspectives, making it suitable to collaborative evaluation. Using the proposed model, an organization can measure its maturity level in different aspects of the evaluation and guide the investment on its capabilities. Part of the model has been developed for emergency response organizations and the information technology dimension of the model has been applied to two fire department installations.Marcos R. S. Borges was partially supported by grants No. 560223/2010-2 and 480461/2009-0 from CNPq (Brazil). Work of José H. Canós is partially funded by the Spanish Ministerio. de Educación y Ciencia (MEC) under grant TIPEX (TIN2010–19859-C03-03). The cooperation between the Brazilian and the Spanish research groups was partially sponsored by the CAPES/MECD Cooperation Program, Project #169/ PHB2007-0064-PC.Santos, RS.; Borges, MRS.; Canos Cerda, JH.; Gomes, JO. (2011). The assessment of information technology maturity in emergency response organizations. Group Decision and Negotiation. 20(5):593-613. doi:10.1007/s10726-011-9232-zS593613205Bigley G, Roberts KH (2001) The incident command system: high reliability organizing for complex and volatile task environments. Acad Manag J 44(6): 1281–1299Chinowsky P, Molenaar K, Realph A (2007) Learning organizations in construction. J Manag Eng 23(1): 27–34Diniz VB, Borges MRS, Gomes JO, Canós JH (2008) Decision making support in emergency response. In: Encyclopedia of decision making, Information Science Reference (an imprint of IGI Global), New York, pp 184–191Dörner R, Grimm P, Seiler C (2001) ETOILE—an environment for team, organizational and individual learning. CG Top 13(3): 5–6Dykstra E (2003) Concept paper: toward an international system model in emergency management. In: Proceedings of toward an international system model in emergency management, Public Entity Risk InstituteFederal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) (1998) Emergency management guide for business and industry: a step-by-step approach to emergency planning, response and recovery for companies of all sizesGu Q, Mendonça D (2005) Patterns of group information seeking in a simulated emergency response environment. In: Proceedings of the 2nd international ISCRAM conference, Brussels, BelgiumHale J (1997) A layered communication architecture for the support of crisis response. J Manag Inf Syst 14(1): 235–255King W, Teo T (1997) Integration between business planning and information systems planning: validating a stage hypothesis. Decis Sci 28(2): 279–307Lachner J, Hellwagner H (2008) Information and communication systems for mobile emergency response. Lecture notes in business information processing, vol 5. pp 213–224Lavoie D, Culbert A (1978) Stages in organization and development. Human Relat 31(5): 417–438Lindel MK, Prater C, Perry RW (2007) Emergency management. Wiley, New YorkLlavador M, Letelier P, Penadés MC, Borges MRS, Solís C (2006) Precise yet flexible specification of emergency resolution procedures. In: Proceedings of the information systems for crisis response and management (ISCRAM), pp 110–120Meissner A, Wang Z, Putz W, Grimmer J (2006) MIKoBOS: a mobile information and communication system for emergency response. In: Proceedings of the 3rd international ISCRAM conference, Newark, New JerseyNonaka I, Takeuchi H (1995) The knowledge creating company: how Japanese companies create the dynamics of innovation. Oxford University Press, OxfordOchoa S, Neyem A, Pino JA, Borges MRS (2007) Supporting group decision making and coordination in urban disasters relief efforts. J Decis Syst 16(2): 143–172Paton D, Flin R (1999) Disaster stress: an emergency management perspective. Disaster Prev Manag 8(4): 261–267Paulk MC, Weber C, Curtis B, Chrissis M (1995) The capability maturity model: guidelines for improving the software process. Addison-Wesley, ReadingQuarantelli EL (1997) Problematical aspects of the information/communication revolution for disaster planning and research: ten non-technical issues and questions. Disaster Prev Manag 6(2): 94–106Santos RS, Borges MRS, Gomes JO, Canós JH (2008) Maturity levels of information technologies in emergency response organizations. In: Proceedings of the international workshop on groupware, Omaha, Nebraska, USA. Groupware: design, implementation and use. Lecture notes in computer science, vol 5411. Springer, Berlin, pp 135–150Schoenharl T, Szabo G, Madey G, Barabasi AL (2006) WIPER: a multi-agent system for emergency response. In: Proceedings of the 3rd international ISCRAM conference, Newark, New JerseyTuroff M (2002) Past and future emergency response information systems. Commun ACM 45(4): 29–33Turoff M, Chumer M, Hiltz R, Clasher R, Alles M, Vasarhelyi M, Kogan A (2004a) Assuring homeland security: continuous monitoring, control and assurance of emergency preparedness. J Inf Technol Theor Appl (JITTA) 6(3): 1–24Turoff M, Chumer M, Vande Walle B, Yao X (2004b) The design of a dynamic emergency response management information system (DERMIS). J Inf Technol Theor Appl (JITTA) 5(4): 1–35Van der Lee MDE, Van Vugt M (2004) IMI—An information system for effective multidisciplinary incident management. In: Proceedings of the 1st international ISCRAM conference, Brussels, BelgiumYuan Y, Deltor B (2005) Intelligent mobile crisis response systems. Commun ACM 28(2): 95–98Zimmerman R, Restrepo CE (2006) Information technology (IT) and critical infrastructure interdependencies for emergency response. In: Proceedings of the 3rd international ISCRAM conference, Newark, New Jerse

Managing software engineers and their knowledge

This chapter begins by reviewing the history of software engineering as a profession, especially the so-called software crisis and responses to it, to help focus on what it is that software engineers do. This leads into a discussion of the areas in software engineering that are problematic as a basis for considering knowledge management issues. Some of the previous work on knowledge management in software engineering is then examined, much of it not actually going under a knowledge management title, but rather “learning” or “expertise”. The chapter goes on to consider the potential for knowledge management in software engineering and the different types of knowledge management solutions and strategies that might be adopted, and it touches on the crucial importance of cultural issues. It concludes with a list of challenges that knowledge management in software engineering needs to address

A framework for the first‑person internal sensation of visual perception in mammals and a comparable circuitry for olfactory perception in Drosophila

Perception is a first-person internal sensation induced within the nervous system at the time of arrival of sensory stimuli from objects in the environment. Lack of access to the first-person properties has limited viewing perception as an emergent property and it is currently being studied using third-person observed findings from various levels. One feasible approach to understand its mechanism is to build a hypothesis for the specific conditions and required circuit features of the nodal points where the mechanistic operation of perception take place for one type of sensation in one species and to verify it for the presence of comparable circuit properties for perceiving a different sensation in a different species. The present work explains visual perception in mammalian nervous system from a first-person frame of reference and provides explanations for the homogeneity of perception of visual stimuli above flicker fusion frequency, the perception of objects at locations different from their actual position, the smooth pursuit and saccadic eye movements, the perception of object borders, and perception of pressure phosphenes. Using results from temporal resolution studies and the known details of visual cortical circuitry, explanations are provided for (a) the perception of rapidly changing visual stimuli, (b) how the perception of objects occurs in the correct orientation even though, according to the third-person view, activity from the visual stimulus reaches the cortices in an inverted manner and (c) the functional significance of well-conserved columnar organization of the visual cortex. A comparable circuitry detected in a different nervous system in a remote species-the olfactory circuitry of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster-provides an opportunity to explore circuit functions using genetic manipulations, which, along with high-resolution microscopic techniques and lipid membrane interaction studies, will be able to verify the structure-function details of the presented mechanism of perception