A novel and validated agile Ontology Engineering methodology for the development of ontology-based applications

The goal of this Thesis is to investigate the status of Ontology Engineering, underlining the main key issues still characterizing this discipline. Among these issues, the problem of reconciling macro-level methodologies with authoring techniques is pivotal in supporting novel ontology engineers. The latest approach characterizing ontology engineering methodologies leverages the agile paradigm to support collaborative ontology development and deliver efficient ontologies. However, so far, the investigations in the current support provided by these methodologies and the delivery of efficient ontologies have not been investigated. Thus, this work proposes a novel framework for the investigation of agile methodologies, with the objective of identifying the strong point of each agile methodology and their limitations. Leveraging on the findings of this analysis, the Thesis introduces a novel agile methodology – AgiSCOnt – aimed at tackling some of the key issues characterizing Ontology Engineering and weaknesses identified in existing agile approaches. The novel methodology is then put to the test as it is adopted for the development of two new domain ontologies in the field of health: the first is dedicated to patients struggling with dysphagia, while the second addresses patients affected by Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.The goal of this Thesis is to investigate the status of Ontology Engineering, underlining the main key issues still characterizing this discipline. Among these issues, the problem of reconciling macro-level methodologies with authoring techniques is pivotal in supporting novel ontology engineers. The latest approach characterizing ontology engineering methodologies leverages the agile paradigm to support collaborative ontology development and deliver efficient ontologies. However, so far, the investigations in the current support provided by these methodologies and the delivery of efficient ontologies have not been investigated. Thus, this work proposes a novel framework for the investigation of agile methodologies, with the objective of identifying the strong point of each agile methodology and their limitations. Leveraging on the findings of this analysis, the Thesis introduces a novel agile methodology – AgiSCOnt – aimed at tackling some of the key issues characterizing Ontology Engineering and weaknesses identified in existing agile approaches. The novel methodology is then put to the test as it is adopted for the development of two new domain ontologies in the field of health: the first is dedicated to patients struggling with dysphagia, while the second addresses patients affected by Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

An Ontology-Based Decision Support System to Foster Innovation and Competitiveness Opportunities of Health Tourism Destinations

The competitiveness of nature-based Health Tourism (NHT) industry, especially in the Alpine regions, is increasingly linked to the sustainability and exploitation of unique natural resources of tourism destinations, which often lack the access to knowledge and networks of stakeholders to improve their offerings. In this sense, the use of digital tools can open up further opportunities to reconsider value offerings and better access different knowledge resources and relationships within the industry network. This Chapter illustrates the collaborative design approach adopted in HEALPS2 for the development of an ontology-based Decision Support System for health tourism destinations. The resulting ontology aims to model the relationships between the available natural resources, the value offerings and the target groups of NHT destinations. Moreover, the Collaborative Design approach foresees the involvement of end-users (i.e. not only tourism destinations, but also the network of stakeholders, and the actual and potential future tourists) as both sources of knowledge and validators of the ontology and its outputs, aiming to inform decision-making processes in a shared knowledge model that leverages on digital tools

LA COMUNICAZIONE POLITICA SUI SOCIAL NETWORK: UN’ANALISI LINGUISTICA

Questo lavoro si propone di analizzare le scelte linguistiche dei soggetti politici che utilizzano Facebook e Twitter per rivolgersi al sempre più frammentato panorama dei potenziali elettori. In particolare, analizza le tendenze linguistiche comuni che questi social network hanno fatto emergere nel rapporto tra politica, web e lettori. Cominciando dall’analisi della presenza di parlamentari e senatori su Facebook e Twitter, si cerca di riassumere le principali caratteristiche delle due piattaforme, per giungere ad una classificazione dei testi prodotti attraverso di esse; si analizza la scrittura di post e tweet, sottolineando la presenza di espedienti tipici del mezzo e valutando il loro effetto sui lettori, e si studiano le scelte sintattiche e morfosintattiche in relazione alla struttura e alle possibilità dei due social network. In ultima analisi si osservano le scelte lessicali dei soggetti politici, studiandone i campi semantici e la quantità di tecnicismi. Infine, si cerca di compiere una valutazione delle due differenti tipologie di trasmesso scritto rinvenute nei campioni, osservando come ognuna di esse abbia uno scopo ben preciso nell’economia della comunicazione politica sui social network. Political communication policy in social networks: a language analysis  Daniele Spoladore This paper aims to analyze the linguistic choices of politicians who use Facebook and Twitter to address the increasingly fragmented landscape of potential voters. In particular, it analyzes the common language trends that these social networks have revealed in the relationship between politics, the web and readers. Starting from the analysis of the presence of MPs and senators on Facebook and Twitter, we try to summarize the key features of the two platforms, in order to arrive at a classification of the texts produced using them.  We analyzed posts and tweets, emphasizing the  typical characteristics of these means and evaluating their effect on readers, and we studied the syntactic and morpho-syntactic choices in relation to the structure and the possibilities offered by the two social networks. In the final analysis, we observed the lexical choices of politicians, studying the semantic fields and the amount of technicalities. Finally, we tried to make an assessment of two different types of writing found in the samples submitted, noting that each has a specific purpose in the economy of political communication on social networks.

Digital and Strategic Innovation for Alpine Health Tourism

This open access book presents a set of practical tools and collaborative solutions in multi-disciplinary settings to foster the Alpine Space health tourism industry’s innovation and competitiveness. The proposed solutions emerge as the result of the synergy among health, environment, tourism, digital, policy and strategy professionals. The approach underlines the pivotal role of a sustainable and ecomedical use of Alpine natural resources for health tourism destinations, and highlights the need of integrating aspects of natural resources’ healing effects, a shared knowledge of Alpine assets through digital solutions, and frames strategic approaches for the long-term development of the sector. The volume exploits the results of the three-years long EU research project HEALPS 2, which involved several stakeholders from the health tourism, healthcare and sustainable tourism industries. This book is relevant for health tourism destinations and facilities (hotels, clinics, wellness and spa companies), regional and local authorities (policy makers), business support organizations, researchers involved in digital healthcare and geoinformatics

Semantic and Virtual Reality-Enhanced Configuration of Domestic Environments: The Smart Home Simulator

This paper introduces the Smart Home Simulator, one of the main outcomes of the D4All project. This application takes into account the variety of issues involved in the development of Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) solutions, such as the peculiarity of each end-users, appliances, and technologies with their deployment and data-sharing issues. The Smart Home Simulator - a mixed reality application able to support the configuration and customization of domestic environments in AAL systems - leverages on integration capabilities of Semantic Web technologies and the possibility to model relevant knowledge (about both the dwellers and the domestic environment) into formal models. It also exploits Virtual Reality technologies as an efficient means to simplify the configuration of customized AAL environments. The application and the underlying framework will be validated through two different use cases, each one foreseeing the customized configuration of a domestic environment for specific segments of users

A Multi-Analytical Study of an Ancient Egyptian Limestone Stele for Knowledge and Conservation Purposes: Recovering Hieroglyphs and Figurative Details by Image Analysis

A multi-analytical study was carried out on an ancient Egyptian limestone stele with red figures and hieroglyphs (S. 6145) coming from the village of Deir el-Medina and belonging to the collection of the Museo Egizio (Turin, Italy). With the support of a multidisciplinary team, a project for the preservation and conservation of this stele provided an opportunity to carry out a very detailed study of the object. Petrographic and mineralogical analysis led to the characterization and dating of the limestone, and ultrasonic tests were of great help in shedding light on the state of preservation of the stele, as a preliminary to planning conservation treatment. The chemical nature of the red pigment was investigated by non-invasive spectroscopic analyses. Multispectral imaging and statistical image processing improved the readability of the hieroglyphs, whose preservation ranged from heavily compromised to almost completely invisible, revealing some signs that had previously not been visible

An Ontology-Based Framework for a Telehealthcare System to Foster Healthy Nutrition and Active Lifestyle in Older Adults

In recent years, telehealthcare systems (TSs) have become more and more widespread, as they can contribute to promoting the continuity of care and managing chronic conditions efficiently. Most TSs and nutrition recommendation systems require much information to return appropriate suggestions. This work proposes an ontology-based TS, namely HeNuALs, aimed at fostering a healthy diet and an active lifestyle in older adults with chronic pathologies. The system is built on the formalization of users’ health conditions, which can be obtained by leveraging existing standards. This allows for modeling different pathologies via reusable knowledge, thus limiting the amount of information needed to retrieve nutritional indications from the system. HeNuALs is composed of (1) an ontological layer that stores patients and their data, food and its characteristics, and physical activity-related data, enabling the inference a series of suggestions based on the effects of foods and exercises on specific health conditions; (2) two applications that allow both the patient and the clinicians to access the data (with different permissions) stored in the ontological layer; and (3) a series of wearable sensors that can be used to monitor physical exercise (provided by the patient application) and to ensure patients’ safety. HeNuALs inferences have been validated considering two different use cases. The system revealed the ability to determine suggestions for healthy, adequate, or unhealthy dishes for a patient with respiratory disease and for a patient with diabetes mellitus. Future work foresees the extension of the HeNuALs knowledge base by exploiting automatic knowledge retrieval approaches and validation of the whole system with target users

Ambient Assisted Working Solutions for the Ageing Workforce: A Literature Review

The increase in older workers in industrialized countries has become evident in the past two decades. The need to support the ageing workforce to effectively perform their tasks has resulted in Ambient Assisted Working (AAW), consisting of developing “smart” systems that can adapt themselves to workers’ needs by exploiting ambient intelligence (AmI) solutions. In AAW, AmI provides flexible workplace adaptations for a wide range of older workers (including persons characterized by chronic conditions and disabilities), while ensuring the ageing workforce’s safety and comfort within the workplace. This work proposes a systematic literature review with the aim of identifying trends among existing AAW solutions specifically designed for older workers. The review adopted the PRISMA methodology, focusing on journal articles and surveying more than 1500 works. The review underlined an absence of articles completely devoted to this research question. Nonetheless, by extending the research question to existing AmI solutions for workers that could potentially be able to support older workers in performing their working activities, it was possible to draw some considerations on the adoption of AmI for the ageing workforce. Among them, the review identified the different types of supporting AmI solutions provided to AAW, which technologies were adopted, and which workplaces were investigated the most. Finally, this work leveraged the findings of the review process to sketch some future research directions for AAW as a discipline

Collaborative Ontology Engineering Methodologies for the Development of Decision Support Systems: Case Studies in the Healthcare Domain

New models and technological advances are driving the digital transformation of healthcare systems. Ontologies and Semantic Web have been recognized among the most valuable solutions to manage the massive, various, and complex healthcare data deriving from different sources, thus acting as backbones for ontology-based Decision Support Systems (DSSs). Several contributions in the literature propose Ontology engineering methodologies (OEMs) to assist the formalization and development of ontologies, by providing guidelines on tasks, activities, and stakeholders’ participation. Nevertheless, existing OEMs differ widely according to their approach, and often lack of sufficient details to support ontology engineers. This paper performs a meta-review of the main criteria adopted for assessing OEMs, and major issues and shortcomings identified in existing methodologies. The key issues requiring specific attention (i.e., the delivery of a feasibility study, the introduction of project management processes, the support for reuse, and the involvement of stakeholders) are then explored into three use cases of semantic-based DSS in health-related fields. Results contribute to the literature on OEMs by providing insights on specific tools and approaches to be used when tackling these issues in the development of collaborative OEMs supporting DSS

Semantic and Dweller-Based Decision Support System for the Reconfiguration of Domestic Environments: RecAAL

Researches in the field of ambient assisted living (AAL) have increased in the last ten years, and the paradigms of the smart home have widely spread. Smart homes must consider the health-related issues and the real needs deriving from the ageing of their dwellers. In the smart home, appliances are expected to provide support to the residents, especially when they are characterized by disabilities and/or impairments related to ageing. While most of the AAL solutions presented in literature rely on complex systems and architectures, residents affected by mild or moderate disabilities can take advantage of just a simpler reconfiguration of living environments, i.e., the replacement of certain appliances with others that are able to help them in coping with their limitations. This paper proposes a semantic-based decision support system (DSS), which relies on ontological models, to assist designers in domestic environments’ reconfiguration. The ontology leverages semantic representations of dwellers and domestic environments’ domains of knowledge to foster the adoption of appliances able to help the residents to live independently. The development process of the ontology is presented in detail together with the results deriving from reasoning processes. To ease the reconfiguration of domestic environments, a prototypical application taking advantage of the DSS is presented