Narrow Results

The software engineering and human factors communities are seeking ways to integrate their methodologies. This paper outlines an amplified, software engineering methodology that extends beyond requirements gathering to encompass human factors analyses. The methodology employs an object model that is uniform throughout the software project. It involves a procedure that seamlessly transforms a task action grammar model, from HCI theory, directly into a specification model based on user/machine dialog and, thence, into a software design model. The model's object-oriented structure makes it feasible to trace the effects of the user's needs throughout the amplified project life cycle to the final code. A case study documents evidence concerning how effectively the procedure supports the software engineering process. An examination of the extent of metamorphosis the model undergoes in the case study indicates that the transition through the amplified life history is well controlled; in particular, the transition from the software specification to the design model is more controlled than that under traditional methodologies.

Causal reasoning is a hard task that cognitive agents perform reliably and quickly. A particular class of causal reasoning that raises several difficulties is the cancellation class. Cancellation occurs when a set of causes (hypotheses) cancel each other's explanation with respect to a given effect (observation). For example, a cloudy sky may suggest a rainy weather; whereas a shiny sky may suggest the absence of rain. In this work we extend a recent neural model to handle cancellation interactions. Simulation results are very satisfactory and should encourage research.

Knowledge intensive applications require an intelligent environment, which can perform deductions in response to user queries or events that occur inside or outside of the applications. For that, we propose a fuzzy active object-oriented database for modeling knowledge intensive applications. In that, we incorporate fuzziness within the event, condition and action parts of an active rule. We consider deductive rules as special cases of active rules so that deductive queries are handled using abstract kind of events. We also introduce a model for fuzzy inferencing of fuzzy active rules where we develop a model for scenario concept. We use a Fuzzy Petri Net model for fuzzy rule-based inference.

In this paper, a novel business process engineering method based on quality assessment is proposed. In the proposed method, a goal model is used to estimate the operational costs of business processes. Goals scenarios in the goal model of desired information systems are applied as a basis for estimating the design cost. Qualities of business requirements models and business process models are also estimated. Based on the quality metrics, the process of business process modeling is examined. Then, using XOR operator in the goal model, a simple and direct mapping of the goal model to the business process model is introduced. Common activities in the business process model are further factored and summarized using pre- and post-factoring operations. The proposed business process modeling method is language-independent. An ICT office in Mazandaran Power Distribution Company is used as a case study to exemplify QABPEM. Our evaluation results demonstrates the capability of the proposed method compared with the existing ones.

This article aims to give some perspectives on social welfare in a globalizing world. The focus is on the West and East in a narrow sense; West from a European Nordic and East from an East Asian cultural perspective. Undoubtedly, modernization and globalization have brought about economic, technological and social progress and therefore, favorable effects on the development of postmodern society. However, progress is also followed by new risks and uncertainties which are not only found in the daily lives of individuals and families, but also the need to redesign social protection systems.

Of course, risks always exist and are as old as industrial society, but in modern times, life is more complex than ever and the increase in complexity has probably been the most rapid in parts of the world where the economic, technological and social changes have escalated. In economically and technologically advanced societies, individuals and families are exposed to multiple risks and this can be disturbing to their social reality.

In Finland, where the principles of the Nordic welfare model have been adopted, many people are still without work and financial resources of their own in maintaining an adequate standard of living. Young families with children have been affected the most. A welfare policy question is: ''How can the social protection system succeed in handling all new and changing problems in modern living?'' In order to minimize risks in the future and provide a fair standard of living for individuals and families, social investment in children seems to be an important challenge for social policies and social work. Both in the West and in the East, there is a growing call for a joint responsibility that addresses an appropriate social protection against risks and uncertainties.

People in modern times have more diverse and specific welfare needs than previously. The fulfillment of new and changed needs by welfare providers is becoming more difficult due to slowness in paradigm and policy renewals. It is a challenge for researchers to generate new knowledge from the study of different welfare systems. Scenario modeling and fuzzy logic may be good planning tools for future visions. While countries in the West are slow to adjust to new circumstances, their counterparts in the East have a new welfare climate for change, but there also exists unique resistance against policy changes.

Robots might not act according to human expectations if they cannot anticipate how people make sense of a situation and what behavior they consider appropriate in some given circumstances. In many cases, understanding, expectations and behavior are constrained, if not driven, by culture, and a robot that knows about human culture could improve the quality level of human–robot interaction. Can we share human culture with a robot? Can we provide robots with formal representations of different cultures? In this paper, we discuss the (elusive) notion of culture and propose an approach based on the notion of trait which, we argue, permits us to build formal modules suitable to represent culture (broadly understood) in a robot architecture. We distinguish the types of traits that such modules should contain, namely behavior, knowledge, rule and interpretation traits, and how they could be organized. We identify the interpretation process that maps situations to specific knowledge traits, called scenarios, as a key component of the trait-based culture module. Finally, we describe how culture modules can be integrated in an existing architecture, and discuss three use cases to exemplify the advantages of having a culture module in the robot architecture highlighting surprising potentialities.

A changing industry structure in the media and ICT industries requires not only new collaborative organizational forms but also new resources and capabilities to manage the new business. The objective of this paper is to create and test a framework for assessing the robustness of the firm's business model enabled by its resources in future scenarios. We have used a media delivery service as a case service platform. The framework includes building industry scenarios, defining the market environments in the different scenarios, business concept and resource mapping and connecting the business concepts and resources to the scenarios.

It can be challenging for people in an innovation project to develop a shared understanding of the project's overall vision and of what they need to do practically—especially if the project is organized as networked innovation and follows a designerly approach. Yet shared understanding is critical for success. Based on an explorative study of one innovation project, in which ICT applications are developed, we discuss the ways in which the development and evaluation of scenarios and demonstrators can help the people involved to develop a shared understanding. Furthermore, we propose several recommendations for managers of innovation projects for effectively organizing the development and evaluation of scenarios and demonstrators.

Several studies have been carried out to assess the building’s seismic vulnerability, to mitigate the seismic risk in urban areas, which is one of the most devastating natural hazards causing considerable economic and human losses. These studies must be incorporated to improve the planning of urban areas to have resistant and resilient cities in case of disasters. The seismic feedback has shown that the build-back-better concept has a direct impact on the city’s economic growth. In this paper, the existing buildings’ resilience is assessed, in order to highlight the capacity of these last to keep the functionality when an earthquake occurs. This building’s resilience has been determined for three types of structures: masonry, reinforced concrete and steel, according to the reconstruction time, the reconstruction cost and the damage state. This last has been assessed from empirical fragility curves developed using the log normal distribution for five structures typologies (Unreinforced masonry; reinforced masonry; RC frame; RC shear walls/Mixed RC frame-RC shear walls and steel structures). A seismic resilience scenario was performed using a geographic information system (GIS) and applied for the Blida city (Algeria) classified as a high seismic zone according to Algerian seismic regulations. According to the results found, the old districts of the Blida city, built mainly during the so-called pre-code period, will not be resilient in case of disaster. The other districts built later in the low-code and high-code periods will have, respectively, medium and good functionality.

This study aimed to assess the impact of digital development on the competitiveness indicators of countries and regions. The research methodology was based on the analytic hierarchy process (AHP), a structured technique adapted to solve the nonlinear optimization problem by choosing the most suitable scenario for the public administration of regions’ digital development. The analysis of digital competitiveness across European countries revealed that its development is quite uneven. Within the European Union, both digitalization leaders and outsiders were noted. Modeling three digitalization scenarios for Russia, China, the United States and the countries of Europe allowed defining Scenario 3 (accelerated digitalization) as the best way for managing their development in the context of digital transformation. The significance of the conducted research lies in the fact that it distinguished the digital economy components affecting both digital and overall regions’ competitiveness. The results obtained can be taken advantage of by individuals engaged in the field of economic activity to determine the role of various organizations, strategic levers, and indicators that ensure an effective response to challenges of competition in the regional and global markets.

After reading this chapter, you should have a general understanding of how river basin models are developed and how they are used within the field of international water resources. You should also have gained a basic understanding of some of the ways in which countries have attempted to use river basin models.

This paper proposes that the understanding and expression of commemorative quality of architectures shall be based on architectural scenario. Combining the architectural layout of Athenian Acropolis and its shocking influence on later generations, this paper conducts an in-depth analysis on the expression mode of commemorative architecture scenario from the perspectives of event, space and emotion.