C-EMO: A Modeling Framework for Collaborative Network Emotions

Recent research in the area of collaborative networks is focusing on the social and organizational complexity of collaboration environments as a way to prevent technological failures and consequently contribute for the collaborative network’s sustainability. One direction is moving towards the need to provide “human-tech” friendly systems with cognitive models of human factors such as stress, emotion, trust, leadership, expertise or decision-making ability. In this context, an emotion-based system is being proposed with this thesis in order to bring another approach to avoid collaboration network’s failures and help in the management of conflicts. This approach, which is expected to improve the performance of existing CNs, adopts some of the models developed in the human psychology, sociology and affective computing areas. The underlying idea is to “borrow” the concept of human-emotion and apply it into the context of CNs, giving the CN players the ability to “feel emotions”. Therefore, this thesis contributes with a modeling framework that conceptualizes the notion of “emotion” in CNs and a methodology approach based on system dynamics and agent-based techniques that estimates the CN player’s “emotional states” giving support to decision-making processes. Aiming at demonstrating the appropriateness of the proposed framework a simulation prototype was implemented and a validation approach was proposed consisting of simulation of scenarios, qualitative assessment and validation by research community peers.Recentemente a área de investigação das redes colaborativas tem vindo a debruçar-se na complexidade social e organizacional em ambientes colaborativos e como pode ser usada para prevenir falhas tecnológicas e consequentemente contribuir para redes colaborativas sustentáveis. Uma das direcções de estudo assenta na necessidade de fornecer sistemas amigáveis “humano-tecnológicos” com modelos cognitivos de factores humanos como o stress, emoção, confiança, liderança ou capacidade de tomada de decisão. É neste contexto que esta tese propõe um sistema baseado em emoções com o objectivo de oferecer outra aproximação para a gestão de conflitos e falhas da rede de colaboração. Esta abordagem, que pressupõe melhorar o desempenho das redes existentes, adopta alguns dos modelos desenvolvidos nas áreas da psicologia humana, sociologia e affective computing. A ideia que está subjacente é a de “pedir emprestado” o conceito de emoção humana e aplicá-lo no contexto das redes colaborativas, dando aos seus intervenientes a capacidade de “sentir emoções”. Assim, esta tese contribui com uma framework de modelação que conceptualiza a noção de “emoção” em redes colaborativas e com uma aproximação de metodologia sustentada em sistemas dinâmicos e baseada em agentes que estimam os “estados emocionais” dos participantes e da própria rede colaborativa. De forma a demonstrar o nível de adequabilidade da framework de modelação proposta, foi implementado um protótipo de simulação e foi proposta uma abordagem de validação consistindo em simulação de cenários, avaliação qualitativa e validação pelos pares da comunidade científica

Collective Emotions Supervision in the Product-Servicing Networks

Part 2: Collaborative Enterprise NetworksInternational audienceThe GloNet network is an agile virtual enterprise environment for networks of SMEs involved in highly customized and service-enhanced products through end-to-end collaboration with customers and local suppliers (co-creation) in the solar park construction sector. A challenge that arises in this network is the effective management of the interactions among participating organizations and their customers. Some participants’ problems, that are not solvable with the working hard procedures of the project execution, might arise leading to some potential tension. Most of the times this tension is a result of soft “emotional” issues experienced in the collaboration “environment”. Considering these challenges and having in mind enhancing the quality of the interactions between the involved participating organizations, this paper describes a scenario for supervising collective emotions in the GloNet network context

Simulation model to estimate emotions in collaborative networks

This work has been funded in part by the Center of Technology and Systems and the Portuguese FCT-PEST program UID/EEA/00066/2019 (Impactor project), and partly by the GloNet project funded by the European Commission.In recent years, the research on collaborative networks has been pointing to the need to put more emphasis on the social interactions of its participants, along with technical features, as a potential direction to finding solutions to prevent failures and potential conflicts. In this context, a modelling framework called Collaborative EMOtion modelling framework (C-EMO), conceived for appraising the collaborative network emotions that might be present in a collaborative networked environment, is presented, and an implementation approach, based on system dynamics and agentbased simulation modelling techniques, for estimating both the collaborative network emotional state and each member's emotions, is described. The work is divided in two parts: the first considers the design of the models and the second comprises the transformation of these conceptual models into a computer model, providing the proposed simulation model. In order to validate the simulation model, and taking into consideration the novelty of the research area, experiments are undertaken in different scenarios representing several aspects of a collaborative environment and a sensitivity analysis and discussion of the results is performed.publishe

Implementing RRI in a Research and Innovation Ecosystem

Funding Information: We acknowledge the support from the European Commission through the ETHNA System project (Grant Nº 872360). Partial financial support was also provided by Portuguese FCT program UIDB/00066/2020 (CTS – Center of Technology and Systems). Publisher Copyright: © 2023, The Author(s).New organizational forms are emerging today at all levels of society, and more and more research is conducted in dynamic collaborative networks or ecosystems. Unlike traditional research centers, these new types of organization are very dynamic, with fluid boundaries, and volatile in terms of membership. This characteristic requires that more attention be paid to research ethics and RRI. This work reports on an implementation process carried out in a research and innovation ecosystem according to the principles and guidelines proposed by the ETHNA project. The process, its barriers and drivers are described, and finally, learned lessons and recommendations are presented.publishersversionpublishe

Collaborative networks: A pillar of digital transformation

UID/EEA/00066/2019 POCI-01-0247-FEDER-033926The notion of digital transformation encompasses the adoption and integration of a variety of new information and communication technologies for the development of more efficient, flexible, agile, and sustainable solutions for industrial systems. Besides technology, this process also involves new organizational forms and leads to new business models. As such, this work addresses the contribution of collaborative networks to such a transformation. An analysis of the collaborative aspects required in the various dimensions of the 4th industrial revolution is conducted based on a literature survey and experiences gained from several research projects. A mapping between the identified collaboration needs and research results that can be adopted from the collaborative networks area is presented. Furthermore, several new research challenges are identified and briefly characterized.publishe

“Services to Empower YOU” – Interfaces Multimodais Inclusivas numa Plataforma de Serviços para Pessoas com Deficiência ou Incapacidade

 Services to Empower YOU” (SEU) responde a um desafio societal que visa fornecer a pessoas com deficiência ou incapacidade uma ferramenta agregadora e inclusiva através da qual possam requisitar com confiança serviços.  Este artigo apresenta os resultados iniciais obtidos no projeto SEU que compreende o estudo da conceção e implementação de interfaces digitais adaptadas às necessidades específicas de cada utilizador, assim como o estudo de um modelo de negócio que permita aos prestadores de serviços fornecerem serviços para um público com características especiais. Partindo do levantamento das necessidades de pessoas com incapacidades e do estudo das normas de acessibilidade digital, especificou-se um Modelo de Adaptação para interfaces em função das características de cada tipo de utilizador e um Modelo de Serviços, que estende o modelo base de plataformas facilitadoras de serviços offline. Estes dois modelos foram aplicados no desenvolvimento do protótipo web apresentado.Palavras-chave: Plataforma de serviços web. Acessibilidade digital. Interfaces multimodais. Inclusão. Pessoas com deficiência ou incapacidade. "Services to Empower YOU" - Inclusive Multimodal Interfaces in a Service Platform for People with DisabilitiesAbstract: “Services to Empower YOU” (SEU) responds to a societal challenge that aims to provide people with disabilities with an aggregating and inclusive tool through which they can confidently request services that are appropriate to them. This article presents the initial results achieved in project SEU, which comprises the study of the design and implementation of digital interfaces adapted to the specific needs of each user, as well as the study of a business model that allows service providers to offer services for an audience with special characteristics. Starting from the survey of the needs of people with disabilities and the study of digital accessibility standards, two models were proposed: an Adaptation Model for designing interfaces according to the characteristics of each type of user; and a Services Model, which extends the base model of platforms facilitating offline services. These two models were instantiated in the initial web prototype presented.Keywords: Web services platform. Digital accessibility. Multimodal user-interfaces. Inclusion. People with disabilities

Emotions in Collaborative Networks: A Monitoring System

Part 2: Collaborative SystemsInternational audienceIn the last years the rapid progress of ICT along with the growing business models have led to the emergence of a large variety of collaborative networks. Collaboration brought new achievements such as the capacity of the involved entities getting into business in a sustainable and stable way. Despite the fact that collaboration has significant benefits, especially in creating value and boosting innovation, some studies indicate that most of them tend to fail. Among others, the lack of specific systems to monitor the emotional state of the network is one of the reasons why collaboration fails. Emotions can interfere in collaboration environments by increasing or decreasing the motivation and performance level and even in conflict resolutions. Therefore, it becomes particularly necessary to find means for supervising the emotional state of collaborative networks in order to achieve the equilibrium for a healthy community. This paper introduces an approach to develop an emotions-oriented system and presents two scenario cases of collaborative networks where this system can be implemented

Collaborative Business Scenarios in a Service-Enhanced Products Ecosystem

Part 2: Service Enhanced ProductsInternational audienceEffective support to highly customized and service-enhanced products along their life cycle requires new organizational structures, involving the manufacturers, customers and local suppliers in a process of co-creation and co-innovation. In order to properly develop supporting infrastructures, tools and governance models, it is necessary to first identify representative business scenarios which enable individual requirements to be viewed in relation to one another in the context of the overall use case / target domain. In this context, a set of relevant business scenarios derived from the requirements of the solar energy domain are identified and discussed

Designing a Collaborative Personal Assistance Model for Persons with Disabilities: The Portuguese Independent Living Case

International audienceThis paper presents an ongoing research work that aims to develop governance models and ICTs to enable and empower persons with disabilities according to the orientations settled in the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Starting from the study of the current model of Independent Living Support adopted in Portugal and its practical limitations, we propose a model based on the collaborative networks scientific discipline. This new model aims to guarantee an environment in which all the involved participants can improve and combine their contributions toward providing Personal Assistance to persons with disabilities. The paper also presents a Web platform (SEU-Services to Empower yoU) designed to support offline services acquisition, providing a user interaction adapted to different types of disabilities. Furthermore, we propose an update to the platform SEU to be compliant with the proposed collaborative model