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This open access book discusses advances in semantic interoperability for materials modelling, aiming at integrating data obtained from different methods and sources into common frameworks, and facilitating the development of platforms where simulation services in computational molecular engineering can be provided as well as coupled and linked to each other in a standardized and reliable way. The Virtual Materials Marketplace (VIMMP), which is open to all service providers and clients, provides a framework for offering and accessing such services, assisting the uptake of novel modelling and simulation approaches by SMEs, consultants, and industrial R&D end users. Semantic assets presented include the EngMeta metadata schema for research data infrastructures in simulation-based engineering and the collection of ontologies from VIMMP, including the ontology for simulation, modelling, and optimization (OSMO) and the VIMMP software ontology (VISO).

This open access book covers the use of data science, including advanced machine learning, big data analytics, Semantic Web technologies, natural language processing, social media analysis, time series analysis, among others, for applications in economics and finance. In addition, it shows some successful applications of advanced data science solutions used to extract new knowledge from data in order to improve economic forecasting models. The book starts with an introduction on the use of data science technologies in economics and finance and is followed by thirteen chapters showing success stories of the application of specific data science methodologies, touching on particular topics related to novel big data sources and technologies for economic analysis (e.g. social media and news); big data models leveraging on supervised/unsupervised (deep) machine learning; natural language processing to build economic and financial indicators; and forecasting and nowcasting of economic variables through time series analysis. This book is relevant to all stakeholders involved in digital and data-intensive research in economics and finance, helping them to understand the main opportunities and challenges, become familiar with the latest methodological findings, and learn how to use and evaluate the performances of novel tools and frameworks. It primarily targets data scientists and business analysts exploiting data science technologies, and it will also be a useful resource to research students in disciplines and courses related to these topics. Overall, readers will learn modern and effective data science solutions to create tangible innovations for economic and financial applications.

This open access book constitutes the refereed post-conference proceedings of the 9th IFIP WG 5.5 International Precision Assembly Seminar, IPAS 2020, held virtually in December 2020. The 16 revised full papers and 10 revised short papers presented together with 1 keynote paper were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. The papers address topics such as assembly design and planning; assembly operations; assembly cells and systems; human centred assembly; and assistance methods in assembly.

This open access book shows the breadth and various facets of e-Science, while also illustrating their shared core. Changes in scientific work are driven by the shift to grid-based worlds, the use of information and communication systems, and the existential infrastructure, which includes global collaboration. In this context, the book addresses emerging issues such as open access, collaboration and virtual communities and highlights the diverse range of developments associated with e-Science. As such, it will be of interest to researchers and scholars in the fields of information technology and knowledge management.

This open access book provides a broad range of insights on market engineering and information management. It covers topics like auctions, stock markets, electricity markets, the sharing economy, information and emotions in markets, smart decision-making in cities and other systems, and methodological approaches to conceptual modeling and taxonomy development. Overall, this book is a source of inspiration for everybody working on the vision of advancing the science of engineering markets and managing information for contributing to a bright, sustainable, digital world. Markets are powerful and extremely efficient mechanisms for coordinating individuals’ and organizations’ behavior in a complex, networked economy. Thus, designing, monitoring, and regulating markets is an essential task of today’s society. This task does not only derive from a purely economic point of view. Leveraging market forces can also help to tackle pressing social and environmental challenges. Moreover, markets process, generate, and reveal information. This information is a production factor and a valuable economic asset. In an increasingly digital world, it is more essential than ever to understand the life cycle of information from its creation and distribution to its use. Both markets and the flow of information should not arbitrarily emerge and develop based on individual, profit-driven actors. Instead, they should be engineered to serve best the whole society’s goals. This motivation drives the research fields of market engineering and information management. With this book, the editors and authors honor Professor Dr. Christof Weinhardt for his enormous and ongoing contribution to market engineering and information management research and practice. It was presented to him on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday in April 2021. Thank you very much, Christof, for so many years of cooperation, support, inspiration, and friendship.

This open access book presents an overview and step-by-step explanation of process management. It starts with the individual participants’ perspectives on their work in a process and its structuring and harmonization, and then moves on to its specification in a model and how it is embedded in the organizational and IT environment of the company. Lastly, the book examines the joint processing of instances in the resulting socio-technical systems. A corresponding illustration, which expands with the overview, enables readers to gain a comprehensive understanding of business process management. The book presents various facets of business process management from the perspective of the participants, and introduces a selection of models that have proved useful in practice. The design of such models supports the transition from a more-or-less unstructured or unsatisfactory way of working to a structured process that corresponds to the ideas of the company and its customers. The book is intended for professionals in industry as well as students in the field of business information systems who are looking for guidelines on how to discover, create and implement real-world processes.

This open access book is part of the LAMBDA Project (Learning, Applying, Multiplying Big Data Analytics), funded by the European Union, GA No. 809965. Data Analytics involves applying algorithmic processes to derive insights. Nowadays it is used in many industries to allow organizations and companies to make better decisions as well as to verify or disprove existing theories or models. The term data analytics is often used interchangeably with intelligence, statistics, reasoning, data mining, knowledge discovery, and others. The goal of this book is to introduce some of the definitions, methods, tools, frameworks, and solutions for big data processing, starting from the process of information extraction and knowledge representation, via knowledge processing and analytics to visualization, sense-making, and practical applications. Each chapter in this book addresses some pertinent aspect of the data processing chain, with a specific focus on understanding Enterprise Knowledge Graphs, Semantic Big Data Architectures, and Smart Data Analytics solutions. This book is addressed to graduate students from technical disciplines, to professional audiences following continuous education short courses, and to researchers from diverse areas following self-study courses. Basic skills in computer science, mathematics, and statistics are required.

This open access book coherently gathers well-founded information on the fundamentals of and formalisms for modelling cyber-physical systems (CPS). Highlighting the cross-disciplinary nature of CPS modelling, it also serves as a bridge for anyone entering CPS from related areas of computer science or engineering. Truly complex, engineered systems—known as cyber-physical systems—that integrate physical, software, and network aspects are now on the rise. However, there is no unifying theory nor systematic design methods, techniques or tools for these systems. Individual (mechanical, electrical, network or software) engineering disciplines only offer partial solutions. A technique known as Multi-Paradigm Modelling has recently emerged suggesting to model every part and aspect of a system explicitly, at the most appropriate level(s) of abstraction, using the most appropriate modelling formalism(s), and then weaving the results together to form a representation of the system. If properly applied, it enables, among other global aspects, performance analysis, exhaustive simulation, and verification. This book is the first systematic attempt to bring together these formalisms for anyone starting in the field of CPS who seeks solid modelling foundations and a comprehensive introduction to the distinct existing techniques that are multi-paradigmatic. Though chiefly intended for master and post-graduate level students in computer science and engineering, it can also be used as a reference text for practitioners.

Der Krankenhaus-Report, der jährlich in Buchform und als Open-Access-Publikation erscheint, analysiert 2020 im Rahmen seines Schwerpunktthemas „Finanzierung und Vergütung am Scheideweg“ die aktuellen Entwicklungen in der Krankenhausfinanzierung. Jedes System der Krankenhausfinanzierung und -vergütung setzt zwangsläufig positive und negative Anreize. Auch mit dem in Deutschland 2003 eingeführten Fallpauschalensystem waren bestimmte Ziele verbunden. Das als „lernendes System“ angelegte G-DRG-System erfuhr im Lauf der Zeit eine Vielzahl von Modifikationen und Ergänzungen, die Ausgliederung der Pflegekosten ab 2020 gilt allerdings als die wesentlichste Veränderung. Ziel des Krankenhaus-Reports 2020 ist es, das Finanzierungssystem zu analysieren und Perspektiven der Weiterentwicklung aufzuzeigen. Aus dem Inhalt Der Krankenhaus-Report 2020 thematisiert unter anderem: Anspruch und Wirklichkeit der DRG-Einführung in Deutschland Empirische Evidenz zu den Wirkungen des G-DRG-Systems Systeme der Krankenhausfinanzierung und ihre Anreizwirkungen Mengensteuerung Vergütung der Pflege Vergütung und Qualität Gewinne im Krankenhausmarkt Investitionsfinanzierung und Strukturprobleme Zusätzlich werden folgende Themen zur Diskussion gestellt: Krankenhausfinanzierung und -vergütung als politisches Handlungsfeld Wirksamkeit des Krankenhausstrukturfonds Ausrichtung der Krankenhausplanung am Patientennutzen Der Datenteil greift die Krankenhausbudgetentwicklung sowie die fallpauschalenbezogene Krankenhausstatistik des Statistischen Bundesamtes auf. Ergänzt werden diese Datenanalysen durch die Krankenhauspolitische Chronik.

This open access book summarises the latest developments on data management in the EU H2020 ENVRIplus project, which brought together more than 20 environmental and Earth science research infrastructures into a single community. It provides readers with a systematic overview of the common challenges faced by research infrastructures and how a ‘reference model guided’ engineering approach can be used to achieve greater interoperability among such infrastructures in the environmental and earth sciences. The 20 contributions in this book are structured in 5 parts on the design, development, deployment, operation and use of research infrastructures. Part one provides an overview of the state of the art of research infrastructure and relevant e-Infrastructure technologies, part two discusses the reference model guided engineering approach, the third part presents the software and tools developed for common data management challenges, the fourth part demonstrates the software via several use cases, and the last part discusses the sustainability and future directions.

This open access book constitutes the proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Intelligent Data Analysis, IDA 2020, held in Konstanz, Germany, in April 2020. The 45 full papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 114 submissions. Advancing Intelligent Data Analysis requires novel, potentially game-changing ideas. IDA’s mission is to promote ideas over performance: a solid motivation can be as convincing as exhaustive empirical evaluation.

This open access book explores ways to leverage information technology and machine learning to combat disease and promote health, especially in resource-constrained settings. It focuses on digital disease surveillance through the application of machine learning to non-traditional data sources. Developing countries are uniquely prone to large-scale emerging infectious disease outbreaks due to disruption of ecosystems, civil unrest, and poor healthcare infrastructure – and without comprehensive surveillance, delays in outbreak identification, resource deployment, and case management can be catastrophic. In combination with context-informed analytics, students will learn how non-traditional digital disease data sources – including news media, social media, Google Trends, and Google Street View – can fill critical knowledge gaps and help inform on-the-ground decision-making when formal surveillance systems are insufficient.

This book contains the joint proceedings of the Winter School of Hakodate (WSH) 2011 held in Hakodate, Japan, March 15–16, 2011, and the 6th International Workshop on Natural Computing (6th IWNC) held in Tokyo, Japan, March 28–30, 2012, organized by the Special Interest Group of Natural Computing (SIG-NAC), the Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence (JSAI). This volume compiles refereed contributions to various aspects of natural computing, ranging from computing with slime mold, artificial chemistry, eco-physics, and synthetic biology, to computational aesthetics.