Utilização da SSM em ambientes organizacionais de engenharia

Este artigo trata da utilização da Soft System Methodology (SSM) em ambientes organizacionais de engenharia. Em primeiro lugar é feita uma síntese dos conceitos associados à gestão e garantia da qualidade de projectos em ambientes de Investigação e Desenvolvimento (I&D), abordando-se também a importância dos sistemas de informação no apoio à gestão de projectos. A seguir faz-se a análise de um Sistema de Informação (SI) para apoio à gestão da informação de projectos de I&D. Esta análise é suportada pela metodologia SSM, que é usada como ferramenta de inquérito organizacional, no entanto recorre-se à Unified Modeling Language (UML) como instrumento de modelação dos processos organizacionais na definição dos modelos conceptuais de actividades. Finalmente, é apresentado um caso de estudo aplicado a uma unidade de I&D, em que se apresentam os sistemas relevantes identificados, respectivos modelos conceptuais e é feita a comparação destes com a situação a actual. Os resultados obtidos permitiram apresentar a especificação de requisitos de um SI para suporte à gestão da informação relacionada com as actividades de gestão de projectos da unidade

Redes organizacionais e desenvolvimento de sistemas de informação

Este artigo faz uma revisão do estado-da-arte na aplicação de teorias de rede, em particular redes sociais, ao estudo e desenvolvimento de sistema inter-organizacionais. É feito um apanhado de aspectos relevantes ligados às redes organizacionais em termos de coordenação, colaboração e gestão doconhecimento, introduzindo-se em seguida teorias e metodologias para o estudo das redes organizacionais. Depois, faz-se uma síntese dacaracterização dos sistemas inter-organizacionais, principalmente do ponto de vista da coordenação e dependência inter-organizacional. Na últimasecção são apresentados três trabalhos exploratórios sobre a aplicação da abordagem de redes de actores sociais e da teoria actor-network aodesenvolvimento de sistemas de inter-organizacionais. Finalmente, sãotiradas algumas conclusões e apontadas direcções para novos trabalhos

Teoria actor-network na análise de requisitos de sistemas de informação

A teoria Actor-Network (ANT) é uma das correntes de pensamento contemporâneo, com origem nos estudos da ciência e tecnologia e que forma um quadro conceptual com reflexos importantes ao nível da Sociologia da Ciência e da Tecnologia. Utilizando as suas características permite analisar situações sociais onde o humano e o tecnológico têm importância equivalente, eliminando barreiras ontológicas entre ambos. Neste artigo pretende-se efectuar uma análise organizacional utilizando a teoria ANT e identificar um conjunto de requisitos que permitam perceber de que modo um Sistema de Gestão de Conteúdos (CMS) pode ser integrado numa organização, neste caso numa Escola de Ensino Superior. Interessa-nos perceber de que forma o recurso a novas tecnologias obriga à reorganização do sistema de actividades humanas, e de que forma, podem estas ser utilizadas com sucesso no desenvolvimento dos processos organizacionais

Teoria actor-network na análise e especificação de um sistema de informação

A teoria Actor-Network (ANT) é uma das correntes de pensamento contemporâneo, com origem nos estudos da ciência e tecnologia e que forma um quadro conceptual com reflexos importantes ao nível da Sociologia da Ciência e da Tecnologia. Utilizando as suas características permite analisar situações sociais onde o humano e o tecnológico têm importância equivalente, eliminando barreiras ontológicas entre ambos. Neste artigo pretende-se fazer o enquadramento da introdução de um novo sistema de informação (SI) numa organização representado por uma ferramenta colaborativa e consequentemente especificar uma nova situação organizacional, através da qual seja possível estabelecer comparações afim de perceber os benefícios e limitações que uma ferramenta destas pode oferecer. Interessa-nos perceber de que forma o recurso a novas tecnologias obriga à reorganização do sistema de actividades humanas, e de que forma, podem estas ser utilizadas com sucesso no desenvolvimento dos processos organizacionais. A ANT é apresentada como uma metodologia de análise que, será utilizada para desenvolver uma aproximação a um processo genérico para ser usado em análises organizacionais, principalmente onde exista a introdução de tecnologias que influenciem o funcionamento da organização

Augmented reality in complex manufacturing systems as an informational problem: A human-centered approach

The informational complexity that characterizes future manufacturing environments raises new problems in the Information Science and Information Management fields. New facets of the information overload problem are being revealed e.g., as textual and "smart data" from the manufacturing processes are continuously generated and pushed to the workers, beyond their cognitive capabilities. The challenge of making use of augmented reality in manufacturing pro- cesses, empowering the human-worker, has not yet been addressed by Information Science as an information organization and retrieval problem. Furthermore, manufacturing processes are more and more knowledge-intensive, so knowledge codification, transfer, and use are another challenge not addressed so far from the information management point of view. Therefore, the objective of this doctoral research project is to study the combination of augmented reality technology (as a way to convey real/virtual visual information), centered in the human-worker (as the crucial key user) as an information organization/retrieval problem, from the theoretical perspectives of Information Field. In this poster, we present the research design and the preliminary results of the literature review

Challenges to knowledge representation in multilingual contexts

To meet the increasing demands of the complex inter-organizational processes and the demand for continuous innovation and internationalization, it is evident that new forms of organisation are being adopted, fostering more intensive collaboration processes and sharing of resources, in what can be called collaborative networks (Camarinha-Matos, 2006:03). Information and knowledge are crucial resources in collaborative networks, being their management fundamental processes to optimize. Knowledge organisation and collaboration systems are thus important instruments for the success of collaborative networks of organisations having been researched in the last decade in the areas of computer science, information science, management sciences, terminology and linguistics. Nevertheless, research in this area didn’t give much attention to multilingual contexts of collaboration, which pose specific and challenging problems. It is then clear that access to and representation of knowledge will happen more and more on a multilingual setting which implies the overcoming of difficulties inherent to the presence of multiple languages, through the use of processes like localization of ontologies. Although localization, like other processes that involve multilingualism, is a rather well-developed practice and its methodologies and tools fruitfully employed by the language industry in the development and adaptation of multilingual content, it has not yet been sufficiently explored as an element of support to the development of knowledge representations - in particular ontologies - expressed in more than one language. Multilingual knowledge representation is then an open research area calling for cross-contributions from knowledge engineering, terminology, ontology engineering, cognitive sciences, computational linguistics, natural language processing, and management sciences. This workshop joined researchers interested in multilingual knowledge representation, in a multidisciplinary environment to debate the possibilities of cross-fertilization between knowledge engineering, terminology, ontology engineering, cognitive sciences, computational linguistics, natural language processing, and management sciences applied to contexts where multilingualism continuously creates new and demanding challenges to current knowledge representation methods and techniques. In this workshop six papers dealing with different approaches to multilingual knowledge representation are presented, most of them describing tools, approaches and results obtained in the development of ongoing projects. In the first case, Andrés Domínguez Burgos, Koen Kerremansa and Rita Temmerman present a software module that is part of a workbench for terminological and ontological mining, Termontospider, a wiki crawler that aims at optimally traverse Wikipedia in search of domainspecific texts for extracting terminological and ontological information. The crawler is part of a tool suite for automatically developing multilingual termontological databases, i.e. ontologicallyunderpinned multilingual terminological databases. In this paper the authors describe the basic principles behind the crawler and summarized the research setting in which the tool is currently tested. In the second paper, Fumiko Kano presents a work comparing four feature-based similarity measures derived from cognitive sciences. The purpose of the comparative analysis presented by the author is to verify the potentially most effective model that can be applied for mapping independent ontologies in a culturally influenced domain. For that, datasets based on standardized pre-defined feature dimensions and values, which are obtainable from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) have been used for the comparative analysis of the similarity measures. The purpose of the comparison is to verify the similarity measures based on the objectively developed datasets. According to the author the results demonstrate that the Bayesian Model of Generalization provides for the most effective cognitive model for identifying the most similar corresponding concepts existing for a targeted socio-cultural community. In another presentation, Thierry Declerck, Hans-Ulrich Krieger and Dagmar Gromann present an ongoing work and propose an approach to automatic extraction of information from multilingual financial Web resources, to provide candidate terms for building ontology elements or instances of ontology concepts. The authors present a complementary approach to the direct localization/translation of ontology labels, by acquiring terminologies through the access and harvesting of multilingual Web presences of structured information providers in the field of finance, leading to both the detection of candidate terms in various multilingual sources in the financial domain that can be used not only as labels of ontology classes and properties but also for the possible generation of (multilingual) domain ontologies themselves. In the next paper, Manuel Silva, António Lucas Soares and Rute Costa claim that despite the availability of tools, resources and techniques aimed at the construction of ontological artifacts, developing a shared conceptualization of a given reality still raises questions about the principles and methods that support the initial phases of conceptualization. These questions become, according to the authors, more complex when the conceptualization occurs in a multilingual setting. To tackle these issues the authors present a collaborative platform – conceptME - where terminological and knowledge representation processes support domain experts throughout a conceptualization framework, allowing the inclusion of multilingual data as a way to promote knowledge sharing and enhance conceptualization and support a multilingual ontology specification. In another presentation Frieda Steurs and Hendrik J. Kockaert present us TermWise, a large project dealing with legal terminology and phraseology for the Belgian public services, i.e. the translation office of the ministry of justice, a project which aims at developing an advanced tool including expert knowledge in the algorithms that extract specialized language from textual data (legal documents) and whose outcome is a knowledge database including Dutch/French equivalents for legal concepts, enriched with the phraseology related to the terms under discussion. Finally, Deborah Grbac, Luca Losito, Andrea Sada and Paolo Sirito report on the preliminary results of a pilot project currently ongoing at UCSC Central Library, where they propose to adapt to subject librarians, employed in large and multilingual Academic Institutions, the model used by translators working within European Union Institutions. The authors are using User Experience (UX) Analysis in order to provide subject librarians with a visual support, by means of “ontology tables” depicting conceptual linking and connections of words with concepts presented according to their semantic and linguistic meaning. The organizers hope that the selection of papers presented here will be of interest to a broad audience, and will be a starting point for further discussion and cooperation

Larval development and voracity of Eupeodes americanus (Diptera: Syrphidae): comparison of the focal prey Aphis gossypii (Hemiptera: Aphididae) and the banker prey Rhopalosiphum padi (Hemiptera: Aphididae)

ABSTRACT: Unlike European species, the potential of Nearctic syrphids as biological control agents is still poorly studied. However, the American hoverfly, Eupeodes americanus (Wiedemann), has recently demonstrated promising traits as a biocontrol agent, notably against the foxglove aphid, Aulacorthum solani Kaltenbach, on pepper. The present study aims to extend our knowledge of the American hoverfly by evaluating its potential as a biocontrol agent in a banker plant system against the melon aphid, Aphis gossypii Glover, in a greenhouse cucumber crop. The preimaginal development and voracity of E. americanus were compared when preying upon the focal prey/pest (A. gossypii) or the banker prey (bird cherry-oat aphid, Rhopalosiphum padi L.) by daily observations of larvae from egg to adult. Preimaginal development time, survival rate, and occurrence of deformation were similar on both prey species. The weight of third instar and pupae, however, was higher for larvae that fed on the banker prey. The ad libitum voracity of the syrphid larvae was generally very high and did not significantly differ between prey species, except for the third-instar larvae which consumed more focal prey. Results suggest that a banker plant system involving the bird cherry-oat aphid may be a promising tactic for utilizing E. americanus for melon aphid biocontrol.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Supporting collaboration in multilingual ontology specification: the conceptME approach

Despite the availability of tools, resources and techniques aimed at the construction of ontological artifacts, developing a shared conceptualization of a given reality still raises questions about the principles and methods that support the initial phases of conceptualization. These questions become more complex when the conceptualization occurs in a multilingual setting. To tackle these issues a collaborative platform – conceptME - was developed where terminological and knowledge representation processes support domain experts throughout a conceptualization framework, allowing the inclusion of multilingual data to promote knowledge sharing and enhance conceptualization.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Integrating semantic resources to support SME knowledge communities

The development of ontologies to unify and to put into context the different concepts and terms of the sometimes rather traditional and locally coloured construction industry domains is a necessary step to avoid misinterpretations and inefficient communication. The KNOW-CONSTRUCT project, as an approach to this task, decided to re-use, as far as possible, existing ontologies, classification systems and other semantic resources in order to develop a system for the integration, management and reuse of the area specific knowledge via a common knowledge base in order to consolidate and provide access to integrated knowledge, making community emergent knowledge a significant added value.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Selecting and structuring semantic resources to support SMEs knowledge communities

Knowledge management intrinsically involves communication and information sharing, which can be strongly affected by the context in which it is viewed and interpreted. This situation gets worst when complex domains are considered, as it is the case of the Construction Industry domains. The development of ontologies to unify and to put into context the different concepts and terms of the sometimes rather traditional and locally coloured construction industry domains is a necessary step to avoid misinterpretations and inefficient communication. The KNOW-CONSTRUCT project decided, as an approach to this task, to re-use, as far as possible, existing ontologies, classification systems and other semantic resources in order to develop a system that may come to contribute to standards and to the integration, management and reuse of the area specific knowledge via a common knowledge base in order to consolidate and provide access to integrated knowledge, making community emergent knowledge a significant added value. It aims at developing a methodology of common Construction Industry Knowledge (CIK) representation applicable to large sets of SMEs in the construction industry as a basis for the establishment of a knowledge community.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio