A Framework of Information Systems Development Concepts

Background: Information Systems Development (ISD) is responsible for designing and implementing information systems that support organizational strategy, leveraging business models and processes. Several perspectives on this activity can be found in the literature, addressing – often in an undifferentiated manner – approaches, lifecycles, methodologies, and process models, among others. Objectives: The vast diversity of ideas and concepts surrounding ISD and the multiple underlying views on the subject make it harder for researchers and practitioners to understand the relevant aspects of this important activity. This article aims to systematize and organize ISD’s main concepts to create a coherent perspective. Methods/Approach: We conducted a literature review and thematic analysis of ISD\u27s main concepts. Results: To contribute to filling the research gap, this article proposes a new framework that addresses the key aspects related to ISD. Conclusions: The framework comprises ISD’s core concepts, such as lifecycles, process models, deployment approaches, and methodologies

Towards an Agile Information Systems Development Process Model

Process models are fundamental for structuring Information Systems Development (ISD) endeavors and contribute significantly to ISD projects’ efficiency and effectiveness. On the one hand, agile process models have been increasingly adopted in software development. In general, the agile approach emerged to overcome the limitations of the classical models, such as the late delivery of products or the lack of response to changes. On the other hand, regarding ISD, as far as we know, there are no specific proposals for agile processes. Considering the socio-technical nature of ISD, agile processes cannot be adopted in this context without being adequately tailored. This paper describes an ISD agile process model, underlying principles, and activities. It also discusses the model’s practical feasibility, benefits, and limitations

Metabolic miscommunication among organs: The missing links

Funding Information: The authors were funded by Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT), FEDER, Portugal2020, and co-financed by Lisboa2020 and Alentejo2020 (ALT20-03-0247-FEDER-113469 and LISBOA-01-0247-FEDER-113469), iNOVA4Health (UIDB/Multi/04462/2020), and by the Sociedade Portuguesa de Diabetologia, Acknowledgmentspublishersversionpublishe

Essays on monetary policy and financial markets

This thesis provides a contribution to the analysis of the link between monetary policy and financial markets. It does so by combining elements from the finance and economics literature and developing areas of intersection which, to some extent, have been evolving in a rather autonomous manner. The thesis takes an empirical perspective and examines three main issues. The first regards the modelling of the short-term interest rate where models are presented that integrate finance contributions with the literature on monetary policy rules. The chapter concludes that there are non-linearities in the short-rate process and these are related to macroeconomic factors in a way consistent with a monetary policy rule. A second essay deals with the effect of monetary policy announcements, improving on previous contributions by extending the investigation to a broader set of instruments and using multivariate models of volatility to capture in a better way the complex interactions between monetary policy and financial markets. The issue of the endogeneity of monetary policy is also a main concern in the final essay of the thesis which examines the contribution of monetary policy shocks in explaining fluctuations in real stock prices in the G7. In this chapter, it is argued that previous approaches may suffer from an omitted variables problem. By including a minimum set of variables both for identifying monetary policy shocks and explaining real stock prices, the study concludes that monetary policy may make a stronger contribution to stock price fluctuations than what is usually found in similar studies

Removing useless APs and fingerprints from WiFi indoor positioning radio maps

Maintaining consistent radio maps for WiFi fingerprinting-based indoor positioning systems is an essential step to improve the performance of the positioning engines. The radio maps consist of WiFi fingerprints collected at a predefined set of positions/places within a positioning area. Each fingerprint consists of the identification and radio signal level of the surrounding Access Points (APs). Due to the wide proliferation of WiFi networks, it is very common to observe 10 to 20 APs at a single position and more than 50 APs across a single building. However, in practical, not all of the detected APs are useful for the position estimation process. Some of them might have weak signals at certain positions or might have less significance for a position’s fingerprint. Thus, those useless APs will add additional computational overheads during the position estimation, and consequently they will reduce the overall performance of the positioning engines. A similar phenomenon also occurs with some of the collected fingerprints. While it is widely accepted that the larger and more detailed the radio map is, the better is the accuracy of the positioning system, we found that some of the fingerprint samples on the radio maps do not contribute significantly to the estimation process. In this paper, we propose two methods for filtering the positioning radio maps: APs filtering and Fingerprints filtering. Then we report on the results of a set of experiments that have been done to evaluate the performance of a WiFi positioning radio map before and after applying the filtering approaches. The results show that there is possibility to simplify the radio maps of the positioning engines without significant degradation on the positioning precision and accuracy, and therefore to reduce the processing time for estimating the position of a tracked WiFi tag. This result has an important impact on increasing the number of tags a single instance of a WiFi positioning engine can handle at a time.This work was supported by the FEDER program through the COMPETE and the Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation (FCT), within the context of the AAL4ALL (COMPETE 13852) and FCOMP-01-FEDER-0124-022674 projects

Design of a Multi-sensor and Re-configurable Smart Node for the IoT

The rapid deployment of the Internet of Things (IoT) is much dependent on the capacity of the IoT node to be able to self-adapt to the target application. With the increase of sensor networks and diversity of sensors available and with the increasing integration of multiple sensors in a sensor node, it is necessary to develop systems capable of handling all of these sensors with high level of flexibility. These may have different characteristics that provide quite distinct interface requirements, thus giving rise to the need for systems with re-configurable properties. With the implementation of sensor networks in places where energy supply is limited or non-existent, and in situations where technician intervention is expensive, there is a need to exchange conventional energy sources by methods of storage and harvesting of the energy present in the environment, where the sensor node is used (autonomous and renewable energy sources). This thesis will focus on the study and implementation of a family of re-configurable and multi-sensor IoT nodes with special emphasis on the energy storage and power management. It will also focus on the develop of a CAD tool in order to help in the design of CMOS circuits, for the purpose of integrating all the strategies here presented

Jornalismo radiofónico

Existem várias razões que me levaram a reescrever o livro 'Tudo o que se passa na TSF', publicado em 2003, mas não foi por estar desatualizado – na essência as melhores práticas jornalísticas são exatamente as mesmas e o que aconteceu nestes 16 anos (nomeadamente a internet) não mudou o jornalismo radiofónico. Quer isto dizer que estamos perante o mesmo livro, com uma nova data? Desde logo, o velho livro foi lido uma ponta à outra e reescrito. Reescrever, neste contexto, significa acrescentar, mas também eliminar. E a preocupação de cortar repetições, eventuais incoerências ou adaptar ao acordo ortográfico nem foi a primeira. Desde o princípio que o objetivo passou por escrever um livro sobre jornalismo radiofónico, na teoria e na prática – o que implicou eliminar o que não estivesse diretamente ligado e que faria sentido por exemplo num manual ou num livro de estilo. Outra diferença: houve a preocupação de desenvolver, em vários aspetos, uma questão demasiado importante para ser esquecida: a comunicação radiofónica, e, portanto, o jornalismo, é fortemente condicionado pelas características de receção do próprio meio; daí que o capítulo sobre o “ruído” seja um dos mais desenvolvidos e retrabalhados.Esta publicação é editada no âmbito do Programa Estratégico o CECS financiado pelo COMPETE: POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007560 e FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, no âmbito do projeto: UID/CCI/00736/2013