HERRAMIENTAS INTELIGENTES PARA LA GESTIÓN DE PROYECTOS

[EN] The application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Project Management (PM) is a current research field with a growing demand from companies and organizations, interested in applying these technologies to get the most out of their data and expertise. Many organizations use software tools that allow automating the status of projects (situation analysis). These tools also provide predictions on the evolution of projects, using classic techniques such as Earned Value Management (EVM). However, the standard tools do not have many advanced functionalities, based on AI, which would allow to take much better advantage of the knowledge acquired by the organization. This fact is especially important in Risk Management (RM), which is one of the most complex aspects of PM. The objective of this work is to propose a methodology for research and development of tools based on AI technologies that allow organizations to analyze information from projects already developed (historical information) and to use it to improve RM in the planning of future projects.[ES] La aplicación de la Inteligencia Artificial (IA) en la Gestión de Proyectos (GP) es un campo de investigación actual y además existe una demanda creciente por parte de empresas y organizaciones para aplicar estas tecnologías. Muchas organizaciones utilizan herramientas de software que permiten automatizar el estado de los proyectos (análisis de situación). Estas herramientas también proporcionan predicciones sobre la evolución de los proyectos, utilizando técnicas clásicas como la Gestión del Valor Ganado (EVM). Sin embargo, estas herramientas, en general, no disponen de muchas funcionalidades avanzadas, basadas en la IA, que permitirían aprovechar mucho mejor los conocimientos adquiridos por la organización. Este hecho es especialmente importante en la Gestión de Riesgos (GR), que es uno de los aspectos más complejos de la GP. El objetivo de este trabajo es proponer una metodología para la investigación y el desarrollo de herramientas basadas en las tecnologías de la IA que permitan a las organizaciones analizar la información histórica de los proyectos ya ejecutados (información histórica) y utilizarla para poder mejorar la GR en la planificación de los proyectos futuros.Palomares Chust, A.; Heras, S.; Gil Pérez, A. (2020). Intelligent Project Management Tools. Asociación Española de Dirección e Ingeniería de Proyectos (AIEPRO). 1860-1870. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/177493S1860187

Supportive consensus

[EN] The paper is concerned with the consensus problem in a multi-agent system such that each agent has boundary constraints. Classical Olfati-Saber's consensus algorithm converges to the same value of the consensus variable, and all the agents reach the same value. These algorithms find an equality solution. However, what happens when this equality solution is out of the range of some of the agents? In this case, this solution is not adequate for the proposed problem. In this paper, we propose a new kind of algorithms called supportive consensus where some agents of the network can compensate for the lack of capacity of other agents to reach the average value, and so obtain an acceptable solution for the proposed problem. Supportive consensus finds an equity solution. In the rest of the paper, we define the supportive consensus, analyze and demonstrate the network's capacity to compensate out of boundaries agents, propose different supportive consensus algorithms, and finally, provide some simulations to show the performance of the proposed algorithms.The author(s) received specific funding for this work from the Valencian Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence (VRAIN) where the authors are currently working. This work is partially supported by the Spanish Government project RTI2018-095390-B-C31, GVA-CEICE project PROMETEO/2018/002, and TAILOR, a project funded by EU Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under GA No 952215. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Palomares Chust, A.; Rebollo Pedruelo, M.; Carrascosa Casamayor, C. (2020). Supportive consensus. PLoS ONE. 15(12):1-30. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0243215S1301512Olfati-Saber, R., Fax, J. A., & Murray, R. M. (2007). Consensus and Cooperation in Networked Multi-Agent Systems. Proceedings of the IEEE, 95(1), 215-233. doi:10.1109/jproc.2006.887293Pérez, I. J., Cabrerizo, F. J., Alonso, S., Dong, Y. C., Chiclana, F., & Herrera-Viedma, E. (2018). On dynamic consensus processes in group decision making problems. Information Sciences, 459, 20-35. doi:10.1016/j.ins.2018.05.017Fischbacher, U., & Gächter, S. (2010). Social Preferences, Beliefs, and the Dynamics of Free Riding in Public Goods Experiments. American Economic Review, 100(1), 541-556. doi:10.1257/aer.100.1.541Du, S., Hu, L., & Song, M. (2016). Production optimization considering environmental performance and preference in the cap-and-trade system. Journal of Cleaner Production, 112, 1600-1607. doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2014.08.086Alfonso, B., Botti, V., Garrido, A., & Giret, A. (2013). A MAS-based infrastructure for negotiation and its application to a water-right market. Information Systems Frontiers, 16(2), 183-199. doi:10.1007/s10796-013-9443-8Rebollo M, Carrascosa C, Palomares A. Consensus in Smart Grids for Decentralized Energy Management. In: Highlights of Practical Applications of Heterogeneous Multi-Agent Systems. The PAAMS Collection. Springer; 2014. p. 250–261.Zhao, T., & Ding, Z. (2018). Distributed Agent Consensus-Based Optimal Resource Management for Microgrids. IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Energy, 9(1), 443-452. doi:10.1109/tste.2017.2740833Qiu, Z., Liu, S., & Xie, L. (2018). Necessary and sufficient conditions for distributed constrained optimal consensus under bounded input. International Journal of Robust and Nonlinear Control, 28(6), 2619-2635. doi:10.1002/rnc.4040Wei Ren, & Beard, R. W. (2005). Consensus seeking in multiagent systems under dynamically changing interaction topologies. IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, 50(5), 655-661. doi:10.1109/tac.2005.846556Ren, W., & Beard, R. W. (2008). Distributed Consensus in Multi-vehicle Cooperative Control. Communications and Control Engineering. doi:10.1007/978-1-84800-015-5Knorn F, Corless MJ, Shorten RN. A result on implicit consensus with application to emissions control. In: 2011 50th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control and European Control Conference; 2011. p. 1299–1304.Roy, S. (2015). Scaled consensus. Automatica, 51, 259-262. doi:10.1016/j.automatica.2014.10.073Mo, L., & Lin, P. (2018). Distributed consensus of second-order multiagent systems with nonconvex input constraints. International Journal of Robust and Nonlinear Control, 28(11), 3657-3664. doi:10.1002/rnc.4076Wang, Q., Gao, H., Alsaadi, F., & Hayat, T. (2014). An overview of consensus problems in constrained multi-agent coordination. Systems Science & Control Engineering, 2(1), 275-284. doi:10.1080/21642583.2014.897658Xi, J., Yang, J., Liu, H., & Zheng, T. (2018). Adaptive guaranteed-performance consensus design for high-order multiagent systems. Information Sciences, 467, 1-14. doi:10.1016/j.ins.2018.07.069Fontan A, Shi G, Hu X, Altafini C. Interval consensus: A novel class of constrained consensus problems for multiagent networks. In: 2017 IEEE 56th Annual Conference on Decision and Control (CDC); 2017. p. 4155–4160.Hou, W., Wu, Z., Fu, M., & Zhang, H. (2018). Constrained consensus of discrete-time multi-agent systems with time delay. International Journal of Systems Science, 49(5), 947-953. doi:10.1080/00207721.2018.1433899Elhage N, Beal J. Laplacian-based consensus on spatial computers. In: AAMAS; 2010. p. 907–914.Cavalcante R, Rogers A, Jennings N. Consensus acceleration in multiagent systems with the Chebyshev semi-iterative method. In: Proc. of AAMAS’11; 2011. p. 165–172.Hu, H., Yu, L., Zhang, W.-A., & Song, H. (2013). Group consensus in multi-agent systems with hybrid protocol. Journal of the Franklin Institute, 350(3), 575-597. doi:10.1016/j.jfranklin.2012.12.020Ji, Z., Lin, H., & Yu, H. (2012). Leaders in multi-agent controllability under consensus algorithm and tree topology. Systems & Control Letters, 61(9), 918-925. doi:10.1016/j.sysconle.2012.06.003Li, Y., & Tan, C. (2019). A survey of the consensus for multi-agent systems. Systems Science & Control Engineering, 7(1), 468-482. doi:10.1080/21642583.2019.1695689Salazar, N., Rodriguez-Aguilar, J. A., & Arcos, J. L. (2010). Robust coordination in large convention spaces. AI Communications, 23(4), 357-372. doi:10.3233/aic-2010-0479Pedroche F, Rebollo M, Carrascosa C, Palomares A. On the convergence of weighted-average consensus. CoRR. 2013;abs/1307.7562

Diseño y Evaluación de una Actividad para Desarrollar el Trabajo en Equipo en Primero de Turismo de la EPSG

[ES] En este trabajo presentamos el diseño, desarrollo y evaluación de una actividad para trabajar la competencia “Trabajo en Equipo y Liderazgo” (CT6). Esta actividad se desarrolló en el marco de una Sesión Tutorial del programa PATU (Plan de Acción Tutorial Universitario) de la UPV, durante el primer cuatrimestre del curso 2016-2017, en la asignatura Informática de Gestión (IG) del primer curso del Grado de Turismo (GT) que se imparte en de la Escuela Politécnica Superior de Gandia (EPSG). El objetivo principal era trabajar y evaluar la CT6 con el requisito de que la actividad propuesta estuviera integrada con los contenidos propios de la asignatura. La actividad consistió en la preparación, en un periodo de tiempo limitado (30 minutos), de una única presentación sobre el turismo en la provincia de Valencia. Para coordinar el desarrollo de la actividad se asignaron diferentes roles a los alumnos en función de su posición en la clase. Los alumnos tuvieron que preparar pequeñas presentaciones sobre temáticas y zonas específicas, que se fueron integrando en presentaciones más amplias hasta tener una única presentación. El resultado fue evaluado por los alumnos mediante una encuesta de satisfacción que puso de manifiesto el cumplimiento de los objetivos previstos.Palomares Chust, A.; Ábalos Galcerá, A. (2017). Diseño y Evaluación de una Actividad para Desarrollar el Trabajo en Equipo en Primero de Turismo de la EPSG. En In-Red 2017. III Congreso Nacional de innovación educativa y de docencia en red. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 720-732. https://doi.org/10.4995/INRED2017.2017.6736OCS72073

Diseño, Desarrollo y Evaluación del MOOC “Introducción a la Gestión de Proyectos”

[ES] En este artículo se analizan los aspectos más significativos del curso MOOC “Introducción a la Gestión de Proyectos” que la UPV imparte en EDX. La formación en Gestión de Proyectos es actualmente muy importante para todo tipo de empresas y organizaciones, y las perspectivas laborales para los profesionales formados en esta disciplina son muy buenas. Normalmente estos cursos suelen ser bastante caros e inaccesibles para muchos estudiantes, y por lo tanto es necesario desarrollarlos desde las Universidades Públicas (Servicio Público). Por otra parte, desde EDX tenían un interés estratégico preferente por el desarrollo de cursos en español en este tipo de disciplinas, para su expansión en toda el área de Sudamérica. Uno de los aspectos más innovadores de este curso MOOC es que se ha aplicado una metodología de mejora continua, es decir, se ha utilizado la información recogida en cada una de las ediciones para intentar mejorar la siguiente edición (corrección de errores, nuevos contenidos, etc.). Hasta el momento se han desarrollado 3 ediciones y la 4ª está prevista para empezar en Junio del 2017. Los resultados del curso son bastante buenos y además han ido mejorando en cada edición (nº alumnos, certificados emitidos, ingresos, opiniones, etc.).Palomares Chust, A.; Despujol Zabala, I. (2017). Diseño, Desarrollo y Evaluación del MOOC “Introducción a la Gestión de Proyectos”. En In-Red 2017. III Congreso Nacional de innovación educativa y de docencia en red. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 290-302. https://doi.org/10.4995/INRED2017.2017.6737OCS29030

Learning to collaboration: can integrated learning improve students perceptions and outcomes?

[EN] The introduction of the so-called Student Outcomes (SOs) in curricula is a main objective for the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV). SOs are adaptive dimensions of students to the labour world and to lifelong learning. They are a complementary reference to academic marks, but they also grow to be academic skills in themselves. However, the integration of these SOs in the methodology and dynamic of traditional subjects and the obtaining of objective evidence of their achievement and results is a big challenge. UPV details in its Strategy Plan 2015-2020 the significance of these SOs, and integrates actions to promote initiatives to help meet the challenge, such as Educational Innovation and Improvement Projects (PIME). The present work explains an activity carried out within this framework. This contribution describes an experience carried out with the collaboration of lecturers of three different subjects taught in the third year of the degree of Tourism and double degree Tourism and Business Management: Catering Production Management, New Technologies Applied to Tourism, and Business English. The actions completed were designed to simultaneously develop and assess different SOs: Comprehension and integration (CT-01) , Team work and leadership (CT-06), and effective communication (CT-08). Project based learning methodologies were used. Different groups of students, created using the Belbin Team Role Method, developed a catering business project. For it, they used content learnt in the subject Catering Production Management, created a website (contents based on New Technologies Applied to Tourism), and presented their work in English (related to Business English). The contents, techniques and knowledge were developed in parallel in the three subjects and integrated in the project. Specific assessment actions were designed for each subject, the project was considered for the final mark of all three subjects. Thus, the greatest possible amount of synergies among the subjects was created. The final result of the project was presented both in written form and in oral form in English. The three lecturers jointly evaluated the works presented, considering knowledge, content and outcomes accomplished. Two surveys were used to measure the project; one half-way, to assess its development, and another at the end, to assess the results. Then, there was a comparison of individual results vs group results. Student feedback about the adequacy of the methodology, class dynamism and learning outcomes was satisfactory, as was collaboration between lecturers. As the main limiting factor of the project, we can mention the small size of the group, which did not allow a parallel investigation with experimental and control groups, and the difficulty to include part-time teachers of other subjects to the project due to their lack of availability, as well as the existing syllabus and class distribution, which do not allow much flexibility outside the usual activities.This work is supported by the projects PIME B-05/2017 & PIME B-22/2016 from UPV.Osorio Acosta, E.; Mestre-Mestre, EM.; Palomares Chust, A. (2019). Learning to collaboration: can integrated learning improve students perceptions and outcomes?. IATED. 1541-1549. https://doi.org/10.21125/inted.2019.0467S1541154

Las OTAs como elemento dinamizador de un destino turístico inteligente: procesos de integración y negociación con proveedores y clientes

En este trabajo se estudia el funcionamiento de las denominadas Agencias de Viajes Online (OTAs) que actualmente se han convertido en actores fundamentales para la dinamización de los Destinos Turísticos Inteligentes (DTIs). El propósito de este trabajo es conocer de qué manera, las OTAs logran llegar a sus clientes en un entorno altamente competitivo, y cómo utilizan las diferentes herramientas de marketing disponibles. El análisis detallado de un conjunto de OTAs (casos de estudio) ha permitido indagar en diferentes aspectos de su organización destacando, en particular, las características funcionales y organizativas que las diferencian de las agencias de viajes físicas tradicionales: la gestión interna y adquisición del producto, el funcionamiento del sitio web público, y las estrategias de marketing y comunicación con el cliente. Además este análisis ha permitido también identificar la relación entre las operaciones de negociación con proveedores y las condiciones de contratación que establecen en relación a la adquisición de los productos que ofrecen en sus sitios web.In this work it is studied the operation of the called Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) which currently have become fundamental actors for the promotion of Smart Destinations. The purpose of this paper is to know in what way, the OTAs can reach out to customers in a highly competitive environment, and how to use the different marketing tools available. The detailed analysis of a set of OTAs (case studies) has made possible to investigate different aspects of its organization highlighting, in particular, the functional and organizational characteristics that differentiate them from the traditional physical travel agencies such as the internal management and acquisition of the product, the operation of the public web site, and the marketing strategies and communication with the customer. In addition, this analysis has also permitted to identify the relationship between the operations of negotiation with suppliers and the conditions of employment established in relation to the acquisition of the products OTAs offer on their web sites

Some examples of detection of connected components in undirected graphs by using the Laplacian matrix and the RCM algorithm

[EN] In this paper we use the recent method L-RCM, developed by the authors, to detect connected components in undirected graphs. The method uses the ordering RCM as a rst step and the computation of the row sums of the Laplacian matrix as a second step. We make the computations in MATLAB. We show the use of the method in three examples.This work is supported by Spanish DGI grant MTM2010-18674, Consolider Ingenio CSD2007-00022, PROMETEO 2008/051, OVAMAH TIN2009-13839-C03-01, and PAID-06-11-2084.Rebollo Pedruelo, M.; Carrascosa Casamayor, C.; Palomares Chust, A.; Pedroche Sánchez, F. (2012). Some examples of detection of connected components in undirected graphs by using the Laplacian matrix and the RCM algorithm. International Journal of Complex Systems in Science. 2(1):11-15. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/35890S11152

Convergence of Weighted-average consensus for undirected graphs

[EN] In this note we address the problem of reaching a consensus in an undirected network where the nodes interchange information with their neighbors. Each node is provided with a value X_i and a weight w_i. The specific goal of the consensus is that each node will be aware of the weighted-average consensus value, in a distributed way, that is to say without a central control. We show the applicability of a theoretical result about reaching a consensus following an iterative algorithm.This work is supported by Spanish DGI grant MTM2010-18674, Consolider Ingenio CSD2007-00022, PROMETEO 2008/051, OVAMAH TIN2009-13839-C03-01, and PAID-06-11-2084.Pedroche Sánchez, F.; Rebollo Pedruelo, M.; Carrascosa Casamayor, C.; Palomares Chust, A. (2014). Convergence of Weighted-average consensus for undirected graphs. International Journal of Complex Systems in Science. 4(1):13-16. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/46244S13164

Consensus over Multiplex Network To Calculate User Influence in Social Networks

[EN] User influence determines how the information is transmitted. Most of the current methods need to consider the complete network and, if it changes, the calculations have to be repeated from the scratch. This work proposes the use of a consensus algorithm to calculate the influence of the participants in a social event through their interactions in Twitter. Retweets, mentions and replies and considered and represented in a multiplex network. The algorithm determines the influence of the users using only local knowledgeThis work is supported by Spanish DGI grant MTM2010-18674, Consolider Ingenio CSD2007-00022, PROMETEO 2008/051, MINECO/FEDER grant TIN2012-36586-C03-01, and PAID-06-11-2084.Rebollo Pedruelo, M.; Del Val Noguera, E.; Carrascosa Casamayor, C.; Palomares Chust, A.; Pedroche Sánchez, F. (2013). Consensus over Multiplex Network To Calculate User Influence in Social Networks. International Journal of Complex Systems in Science. 3(1):71-75. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/58379S71753

Towards Integrating Mechanisms to Assess Students' Off-site Work within the Regular Teaching-Learning Process

[EN] The deployment of the Bologna process has caused a shift in the education paradigm of university studies. In this new education model, personal study is a crucial part of the learning process. However, in most cases, the personal (off-site) work performed by students is just evaluated by means of assignments, in the form of reports or deliverables. They could surely provide evidences of the degree of achievement of certain learning outcomes, but can hardly provide insights on how students have organised and coordinated (especially in a group work) to hand over the assignment, on the time devoted to perform the task, on the perception of the students about the usefulness of the task, etc. Accordingly, the Tools and Strategies for Competences Assessment (TASCA) Innovation and Quality Education Team (EICE) from the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV) has focused its initial efforts on gathering and analysing different information related to the personal study/off-site work carried out by students. Preliminary results show that there is not a clear relationship between the time devoted to each task and the obtained results, but there exist a number of students that devote a large amount of time to the task and get poor marks. If this feedback is obtained early during the course, the teacher can tutor those students to determine their specific problems and propose corrective actions. Another important aspect in the student s learning process is that, in general, the ratio between the number of on-site work (lectures, seminars, and labs) hours and off-site work (personal study, assignments, etc.) hours must be well balanced. At UPV, for instance, this ratio should be of 1.5 offsite work hours per each on-site work hour. However, the lack of adequate supervision of off-site work leads to situations where such time is underestimated or overestimated. While overestimation leads to a waste of time, underestimation of off-site work leads to overload, which may burn-out the student. Supervision of student s off-site work is thus an essential asset for the adequate tune of courses. Coordination among different courses and departments could also be of prime importance to distribute exams and assignments along the course, avoiding workload peaks in specific periods of time. Finally, an estimation of the degree of usefulness and satisfaction from students perspective may help teachers to improve the assignments of their courses to raise students motivation. Hence, the integration of mechanisms within the regular teaching-learning process to measure and assess the offsite work performed by students, not just its quality, but also the time required to fulfil the task, and the perceive usefulness and satisfaction, among other parameters, may provide a very interesting feedback to stimulate reflective and analytic thinking about the work one, increase students motivation, and improve the organisation and planning of course in general.This work has been partially sponsored by UPV’s project PIME 008-A-2013.Andrés Martínez, DD.; Ruiz, JC.; Antonino Daviu, E.; Palomares Chust, A.; Gisbert Domenech, MC.; Peña Cerdán, A.; Ballester Server, JV.... (2014). Towards Integrating Mechanisms to Assess Students' Off-site Work within the Regular Teaching-Learning Process. En ICERI2014 Proceedings. IATED. 3025-3034. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/70640S3025303