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The startup of Euronet in 1979 may eventually result in increased hourly charges to U.S. on-line users. This would arise from a drain-off of European business; access for Europeans to U.S. data processors has been made artificially expensive by the telecommunication charge established by the Postal and Telecommunications Administrations of the European Economic Community countries. Since the major data bases on the Euronet system will be U.S. produced, a plea is made for concerted effort by U.S. data producers and users to assure competitive communication rates in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Geographer is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Data and information are considered today as the "new oil" or the "new gold" in almost all aspects of life and economic domains, such as industry, healthcare, education, entertainment and more. The so‐called 4th Industrial Revolution1 is based on the digital transformation derived from the Big Data revolution, through the capability of storing huge amounts of data and performing very sophisticated analytics. In this paper, we present opportunities for Systems Engineering (SE) to evolve towards a data ‐driven and evidence ‐based discipline, thereby making better systems and engineering decisions. We discuss how systems engineers can apply data‐driven characteristics through systems engineering processes and programs. The classical Model‐Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) approaches are presented here as powerful tools to collect, generate, and analyze data on systems under development. In addition, the "Digital Twin" concept is presented here in the context of system design. We highlight the challenges for systems engineering to become an evidence‐based discipline. Moreover, we empha‐size research and development in systems engineering processes using statistical techniques in the design and analysis of systems testing, and Model‐Based Systems Engineering (SE) as a source for evidence‐based engineering decisions. The success of data driven SE in organizations depends on the information and data analytics infrastructure in these organizations. An information quality frame‐work is proposed for evaluating organizational information infrastructure. In addition, it is proposed to assess the data analytics maturity level in organizations. The level of data analytics is the basis for planning implementation programs of data‐driven and evidence‐based systems engineering. The paper concludes with a case study based on a real‐life complex project, and lessons learned for ef‐fective data analytics implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Smart infrastructure is positioned as central to the liveability and viability of rural and regional towns in Australia. The Australian Government's Smart Cities Plan and Regional Connectivity Program includes Smart Investment in regional areas and the New South Wales Government has prioritised connectivity and telecommunications infrastructural development through the Regional Digital Connectivity program. And yet regional and rural communities are typically excluded from the evidence base for smart technologies and services. Local Aboriginal Land Councils are also important stakeholders in managing the digital processes associated with information and infrastructure moving across different Countries. This paper draws on data from the 'It just works!': Regional and rural consumer understandings of smart technologies in North West New South Wales project, including over 130 survey responses and interviews with shire councillors, land councillors, and consumers on smart development and Internet infrastructure in the region. In the areas surveyed, smart regional policy is variously emerging, non‐existent, or assembled from existing policy domains and regulation involving the Internet, telecommunications, regional development, First Nations, and local government. We argue that regional and rural understandings of growth and development are experienced through the infrastructuring processes of Internet quality, availability, and speed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of highway construction on the size distribution of manufacturing firms using Chinese firm and highway network data. I construct instrumental variables using historical and counterfactual road approaches to identify the causal effects of highway construction. I find that highway construction can increase firm size dispersion and market concentration. Areas near highways have a higher number of firms, more outsourcing activities, and more large firms; while areas further from highways have a higher share of new entry firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summarizes the content of the special issue of "Computational Intelligence" journal related to various aspects of the application of agents to support electronic business (e-business). Impact of electronic commerce on traditional business processes; Issues that limit the use of Web for commercial purposes; Requirements in relation to the infrastructure for e-business; Role of agent technologies in doing business over the Internet.

This paper aims to examine and document the current state of practice of model‐based systems engineering (MBSE), and how organizations look toward the future. The paper is based on a survey of how MBSE has been applied and factors that influenced the perceived benefits and results. The survey was designed to evaluate the maturity and status of the implementation of MBSE (also called model‐centric systems engineering), within industry, academia, and governments. The approach to the survey development is described along with the survey results. The study indicates that one of the main hurdles to introducing a model‐based approach is the lack of clear and adopted organizational structures and an understanding of required conditions and needs at a management level. The survey also indicates that 50–75% of the respondents noted some improvement or a significant improvement across almost all systems engineering tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Terrorist attacks have contributed significantly to using wireless technologies to identify concrete destruction survivors. A dynamic ad hoc mobile network (MANET) consists of wireless linked nodes, which route hop‐by‐hop without the support of a fixed infrastructure acquires information from trapped survivors. The energy efficiency that extends the lifespan of the network is an essential prerequisite of MANET. Researchers have suggested many strategies to accomplish this purpose and a cluster of these techniques in MANETs are used to provide an energy‐efficient approach. In this paper we are proposing a red deer multi‐objective constraint applied for an energy efficient QoS routing (RD‐MOCER) algorithm to the number of clusters in an ad hoc network and the energy dispensing in nodes to provide an energy effective solution and to minimise network traffic. Intracluster and intercluster traffic is handled by the cluster heads in the proposed approach. The algorithm suggested takes account of mobile nodes' node degrees, transmitting capacity and battery power usage. This approach gives a variety of options at a time, the key benefit of which is that the ideal Pareto front results in these solutions. We correlate the findings with two other well‐known methods of clustering; MOPSO and MOEAQ‐based clustering with different results. We conduct detailed simulations to demonstrate that the solution proposed is an effective and stronger solution to clustering in ad hoc cell networks than the other two techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction/Background: Safe and quality surgery is crucial for child health. In Rwanda, district hospitals serve as primary entry points for pediatric patients needing surgical care. This paper reports on the organizational readiness and facility capacity to provide pediatric surgery in three district hospitals in rural Rwanda. Methods: We administered the Children's Surgical Assessment Tool, adapted for a Rwandan district hospital, to assess facility readiness across 5 domains (infrastructure, workforce, service delivery, financing, and training) at three Partners in Health supported district hospitals (Kirehe, Rwinkwavu, and Butaro District Hospitals). We used the Safe Surgery Organizational Readiness Tool (SSORT) to measure perceived individual and team readiness to implement surgical quality improvement interventions across 14 domains. Results: None of the facilities had a dedicated pediatric surgeon, and the most common barriers to pediatric surgery were lack of surgeon (68%), lack of physician anesthesiologists (19%), and inadequate infrastructure (17%). There were gaps in operating and recovery room infrastructure and information management for pediatric outpatients and referrals. In SSORT interviews (n = 47), the highest barriers to increasing pediatric surgery capacity were facility capacity (mean score = 2.6 out of 5), psychological safety (median score = 3.0 out of 5), and resistance to change (mean score = 1.5 out of 5 with 5 = no resistance). Conclusions: This study highlights challenges in providing safe and high‐quality surgical care to pediatric patients in three rural district hospitals in Rwanda. It underscores the need for targeted interventions to address facility and organizational barriers prior to implementing interventions to expand pediatric surgical capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a novel simulation‐based hybrid approach coupled with time‐dependent Bayesian network analysis to model multi‐infrastructure vulnerability over time under physical, spatial, and informational uncertainties while considering cascading failures within and across infrastructure networks. Unlike existing studies that unrealistically assume that infrastructure managers have full knowledge of all the infrastructure systems, the proposed approach considers a realistic scenario where complete information about the infrastructure network topology or the supply–demand flow characteristics is not available while estimating multi‐infrastructure vulnerability. A novel heuristic algorithm is proposed to construct a dynamic fault tree to abstract the network topology of any infrastructure. In addition, to account for the unavailability of exact supply–demand flow characteristics, the proposed approach constructs the interdependence links across infrastructure network systems using different simulated parameters considering the physical, logical, and geographical dependencies. Finally, using parameters for geographical proximity, infrastructure managers' risk perception, and the relative importance of one infrastructure on another, the multi‐infrastructure vulnerability over time is estimated. Results from the numerical experiment show that for an opportunistic risk perception, the interdependencies attribute to redundancies, and with an increase in redundancy, the vulnerability decreases. On the other hand, from a conservative risk perspective, the interdependencies attribute to deficiencies/liabilities, and the vulnerability increases with an increase in the number of such interdependencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the effects of New Public Management reforms on the information infrastructure underpinning the work of public service professionals. Focussing on the case of the British National Health Service (NHS), the paper argues that hospital accounting reforms played a significant role in the emergence of standardised models of clinical practice. The paper moreover argues that, under the label 'care pathways', such standardised models of clinical practice became embedded in the information infrastructure of the NHS and concludes by discussing their implications for the work of doctors and hospital accountants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While competition in the financial system generally mitigates small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises' (SMEs) financing constraints, this paper theorises that competition by microfinance institutions (MFIs) has adverse effects through aggravating the 'graduation problem': Small firms outgrowing microfinance struggle to find financing as conventional financial institutions abstain from downscaling and developing suitable lending instruments for smaller firms if these market segments are narrowed down by upscaling MFIs. Using data from 51 countries between 2002 and 2015, microfinance is found to significantly lower SMEs' access to credit. Credit bureaus can reverse this effect indicating that credit information infrastructure can reconcile a strong microfinance sector with functioning SME finance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the determinants of adoption of computer‐assisted audit tools and techniques (CAATTs) among internal audit units in Ghana. Data for the study was drawn from a sample of 75 private and state‐owned enterprises through questionnaires while the partial least squares structural equation modeling was employed to analyze and test the hypotheses. The findings indicate that albeit CAATT adoption within internal audit units is fairly high, the actual usage in the areas of risk assessment, fraud detection, substantive testing, and analytical procedures are still low. Using the extended technology‐organization‐environment (TOE) framework, results show that CAATT behavioral intention is driven by technological readiness, organizational readiness, and environmental readiness but not personal innovativeness. In addition, CAATT behavioral intention influences CAATT adoption among the internal audit units. The findings provide valuable insights to management, heads of audit units, policymakers, and regulators on ways to improve the adoption and use of CAATT. Firms should invest more in training workshops on big data analytics, hiring more data scientists or data engineers, and equipping internal audit units with the information technology infrastructure. The paper complements prior research by applying a hierarchical component modeling technique to the extended TOE framework to investigate CAATT adoption in internal audits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how the Internet has changed the work of academic researchers and addresses the question of how expanded Internet usage has affected Journal of Risk and Insurance ( JRI) and Journal of Finance ( JF) articles, including the shift to empirical research, joint authorship, and new authorship. Internet availability significantly increased joint authorship overall (more for JF than for JRI), shifting upwards a strong secular trend toward working with other researchers. Another big impact of the Internet has been to increase the number of new authors (more for JRI than for JF). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

P-GRADE portal is one of the most widely used general-purpose grid portal in Europe. The paper summarizes the most advanced features of P-GRADE, such as parameter sweep workflow execution, multi-grid workflow execution and integration with the DSpace workflow repository. It also shows the NGS P-GRADE portal that extends P-GRADE with the GEMLCA legacy code execution support in Grid systems, as well as with coarse-grain workflow interoperability services. Next, the paper introduces the second generation P-GRADE portal called WS-PGRADE that merges the advanced features of the first generation P-GRADE portals and extends them with new workflow and architecture concepts. Finally, the application-specific science gateway of the CancerGrid project is briefly described to demonstrate that application-specific portals can easily be developed on top of the general-purpose WS-PGRADE portal. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Bautechnik is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper highlights challenges and open questions pertaining to physical and social infrastructure system interdependencies and their implications for disaster response, recovery, and resilience planning efforts. We describe the importance of understanding interdependencies in disaster contexts and highlight limitations to existing approaches. Suggestions for understanding and addressing interdependencies focus on increasing availability of tools for assessing interdependencies and increasing stakeholder and decisionmaker uptake of infrastructure interdependency‐related information in planning efforts. Plain Language Summary: Interdependent physical and social systems offer enormous benefits for daily life because they produce and distribute essential goods and services that are necessary for health, safety, and economic well‐being. For instance, the power grid is required for effective functioning of information systems and cell phones, which underpin effective functioning of hospitals, water and sewer systems, traffic lights, and home appliances. In return, communications and information technology is required for effective functioning of the power grid, especially to meet the concurrent demands for reliable energy supply, protection, and automation. In this paper, we describe how failure in interdependent systems can be catastrophic and lead to death and prolonged human suffering. We examine difficulties in linking failures in interdependent systems to measurable social impacts including: limited availability of data and models, disciplinary silos that might stand in the way of different stakeholders, practitioners, and experts working together on this inherently cross‐disciplinary problem, and diversity in infrastructure systems, disruptive events, and communities. We suggest that awareness of the vulnerabilities in interdependent infrastructure systems needs to be coupled with coordinated action and collaboration among government agencies, communities, and industries. Key Points: Limited data and models and disciplinary silos make it difficult to link failures in interdependent infrastructures to social outcomesAwareness of infrastructure vulnerabilities needs to be coupled with coordinated action among government, communities, and industriesWe suggest ways to improve understanding of interdependencies and increase stakeholder uptake of relevant information in planning efforts [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A multiagent system (MAS) has recently gained public attention as a technique to solve competition and cooperation in distributed systems. However, MAS's vulnerability due to the propagation of failures prevents its application to a large-scale system. This paper proposes a general composition technique to improve its reliability easily applied to the existent MAS. The proposed system monitors messages between agents to detect undesirable behaviors (failures). Collecting related information, the system generates global information of interdependence between agents and expresses it in a graph. This interdependence graph enables us to detect or predict undesirable behaviors. This paper also shows that the system can optimize performance of MAS and improve adaptively its reliability under complicated and dynamic environment by applying the global information acquired from analysis of the interdependence graph to a replication system. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electr Eng Jpn, 164(1): 62–68, 2008; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/eej.20517 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a digitally twinned experimental analysis of a scale‐reduced laboratory‐sized steel cable net subjected to vertical loading. The test is aimed at establishing automated pipelines of information and analysis between the measurements (displacements of nodes) and the numerical model of the cable net, which are seamlessly interconnected through a BIM model. These automated pipelines erect the frame of the development of a digital twin of the cable net with structural analysis purposes. For the sake of measurements, a terrestrial laser scanner is used. Displacements of the nodes are extracted using computational geometry tools. For the sake of analysis, a data‐based numerical model is proposed to obtain the tensile state of the cables. Precisely understanding the force distribution along nets is a challenge at design, construction and operation stages. This research belongs to a vaster project related to the development of automated pipelines of information for European infrastructure in the form of digital twins. The outcome of this laboratory test results is of great use when developing similar automated pipelines of information in real sites including cable nets in roofs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information technology (IT) infrastructure relies on a globalized supply chain that is vulnerable to numerous risks from adversarial attacks. It is important to protect IT infrastructure from these dynamic, persistent risks by delaying adversarial exploits. In this paper, we propose max‐min interdiction models for critical infrastructure protection that prioritizes cost‐effective security mitigations to maximally delay adversarial attacks. We consider attacks originating from multiple adversaries, each of which aims to find a "critical path" through the attack surface to complete the corresponding attack as soon as possible. Decision‐makers can deploy mitigations to delay attack exploits, however, mitigation effectiveness is sometimes uncertain. We propose a stochastic model variant to address this uncertainty by incorporating random delay times. The proposed models can be reformulated as a nested max‐max problem using dualization. We propose a Lagrangian heuristic approach that decomposes the max‐max problem into a number of smaller subproblems, and updates upper and lower bounds to the original problem via subgradient optimization. We evaluate the perfect information solution value as an alternative method for updating the upper bound. Computational results demonstrate that the Lagrangian heuristic identifies near‐optimal solutions efficiently, which outperforms a general purpose mixed‐integer programming solver on medium and large instances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we investigate how data openness can be made possible in communal settings. We adopt a utility perspective that foregrounds the use value of data, conceptualizing them as "goods." On the basis of this conceptualization we explore 2 key goods' attributes: subtractability and exclusion. Our theoretical basis is built upon concepts from the theory of the commons, power theorizing, and notions related to data and information. Empirically, we investigate openness in the genetics domain through a longitudinal study of the evolving communal infrastructure for data related to 2 genes influencing women's susceptibility to breast and ovarian cancer (BRCA1 and BRCA2). We follow the continuously shifting "topology" of the BRCA information infrastructure and trace the multiple repositories that are put in place and the different arrangements for data collection, curation/quality assurance, access, and control that are tried out. In our analysis, we illustrate the actors' strategies for curbing the subtractability and exclusion attributes of data. We then propose a theoretically informed and empirically grounded framework that can guide understanding and action taking to enable data openness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To allow efficient and user-friendly development of a component-based application, component systems have to provide a rather complex development infrastructure, including a tool for component composition, component repository, and a run-time infrastructure. In this paper, we present and evaluate benefits of using meta-modeling during the process of defining a component system and also during creation of the development and run-time infrastructures. Most of the presented arguments are based on a broad practical experience with designing the component systems SOFA and SOFA 2; the former designed in a classical ad hoc 'manual' way, whereas the latter with the help of meta-modeling. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Grid technology and ICT-based infrastructures play a crucial role in the development of transnational multi-disciplinary collaborations and allow scientists to share a wide range of distributed computational resources, regardless of their geographical location, and address new global scientific challenges. Till now, the strict security policy requested in order to access distributed computing resources has been a limiting factor when trying to broaden the adoption of Grids by wide communities of users. There is a steep learning curve to climb before starting to gain some benefits from this new technology. Grid security is indeed based on the Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) of X.509 certificate although the procedure to get and manage those certificates is unfortunately not straightforward. A first step to make Grids more appealing for new users has recently been achieved with the adoption of robot certificates. In this paper, the solution proposed by the Italian National Institute of Nuclear Physics to go through the complexity of Grid security and allow bioinformaticians to perform large-scale Bayesian Phylogenetic analyses on the Grid by means of a web portal enabled by a robot certificate is presented. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on two summits convened by the health care organization AcademyHealth on the future of Health Services Research (HSR). The first Summit was held in 2007 and focused on the fields' strengths and limitations with regard to its own emerging workforce. And, the second Summit that was held in June 2009 was focused on the data infrastructure that will be needed as the next decade unfolds in order to produce robust and relevant HSR.

The purpose of this paper is to present two new parameters that aim to support the selection phase of a new e-business idea in order to evaluate its soundness and effectiveness. The paper explains the reasons for the creation of these new parameters, the identification of the measures and the metrics to evaluate them, and presents the final results and their meaning. This new methodology should integrate the traditional business analysis concepts through the identification of new useful measures that are specific to the e-business field. The parameters identified have been called “Conceptual Accessibility” and “Technological Accessibility.” In order to tune the new parameters and to execute all the needed subjective evaluations a user panel of 100 potential users was selected and utilized. In order to assess the soundness of the identified parameters and to give a definition and a metric that will allow a quantitative evaluation of the idea the reference user panel gave evaluations on an enterprise reference group of well known e-business ventures. All the components of the enterprise reference group are examples of successful implementation of e-business ideas. The users in the panel were carefully selected in order to represent the expected target of the new e-business idea to be evaluated. In the final sections of the paper we finally discuss the results and underline the advantages of this methodology. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Performance standards and accountability pervade modern healthcare. According to Michael Power, this may signify a new rationality of governance characterized by control of controls, which affects practices not by direct intervention, but through the processes by which practices are made auditable. The paper addresses this thesis by exploring the construction of a Danish standard for electronic patient records. It is shown that making healthcare auditable activates deep tensions between programs of clinical practice, quality control, evidence based medicine, and casemix funding, resulting in an ambiguous and unstable standard. During this process, however, particular notions of patients, diseases, and diagnoses emerge as undisputed innovations, which may come to survive the subsequent career of the standard. The paper discusses the performative effects of these innovations and argues that information infrastructure has become an analytically important site for exploring the substantial effects of new rationalities of governance in healthcare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global connectivity, low latency, and ready-to-use infrastructure of next generation wireless (NGW) networks provide a platform for machine-to-machine (M2M) communications on a large scale. However, M2M communications over NGW networks pose significant challenges because of different data rates, diverse applications, and a large number of connections. In this paper, we address M2M challenges over NGW networks, and in particular, we focus on random access overload issue and diverse quality-of-service (QoS) requirements to enable M2M communications in the context of NGW networks. To enable massive M2M access while QoS guarantees, we propose group-based M2M communications on the basis of identical transmission protocols and QoS requirements. Furthermore, to guarantee low energy consumption for M2M devices in the same group, we propose a decentralized group-head selection scheme. In addition, a solution is proposed by using an effective capacity concept to provide QoS guarantees for M2M devices with a strict time constraint. A new random access approach based on different lengths super orthogonal codes is proposed to ease massive random access challenges with provisioning diverse QoS requirements of M2M communications in heterogeneous NGW networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article suggests that reengineering brings human resource management departments into the world of the information superhighway. This redefining of work patterns addresses the overload of paper, the downsizing or rightsizing of technical platforms, and, often, the replacement of antiquated human resource systems. With the onset of work flow technology, human resource is able to decentralize and even eliminate many paper intensive processes, thereby increasing productivity and profitability. According to the article, manager and employee access is no longer a vision of the future, but a basic requirement of a human resources information system today.

It is time to assess the role of computers in allergy, their benefits and drawbacks, and the role of allergists in keeping their colleagues, their patients, and the health authorities of their respective countries informed. The tremendous development of information superhighways and of cybernetics in general deserves serious discussion, and all the endeavors made in the various European countries need to be made known, coordinated, and encouraged. The benefits of word-processing programs, which easily produce, reproduce, and correct papers letters, leaflets and other documents, are universally recognized.

SUMMARY Mobile devices with their more and more powerful resources allow the development of mobile information systems in which services are not only provided by traditional systems but also autonomously executed and controlled in the mobile devices themselves. Services distributed on autonomous mobile devices allow both the development of cooperative applications without a back-end infrastructure and the development of applications blending distributed and centralized services. In this paper, we propose MicroMAIS: an integrated platform for supporting the execution of Web service-based applications natively on a mobile device. The MicroMAIS platform is composed of mAS and μ-BPEL. The former allows the execution of a single Web service, whereas the latter permits the orchestration of several Web services according to the WS-BPEL standard. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Impact of the ubiquitous information technology on our society is so significant that directing technological development and preparing institutional apparatus are quite important and urgent. The present paper elaborates, with the efforts by both humanity and engineering disciplines, to find the sociotechnical issues of ubiquitous information society in 2010 by inspecting social implications of emerging technology as well as social expectations. In order to deliberate the issues, scenarios are developed that describe possible life in ubiquitous information society. The derived issues cover integrating information technology and the human body, producing smart sharable environment, protecting individual rights, fostering new service business, and forming community. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electr Eng Jpn, 165(1): 60–67, 2008; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/eej.20565 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electronic commerce models and prescriptions from rule-based market economies like the United States have limited applicability in emerging markets. This paper adopts a strategic management perspective to examine the distinctive challenges facing e-commerce in China. A theory is developed to explain how the lack of dependable rules encourages guanxi and relationship-based commerce. It suggests that personal trust, contextual and informal information, and blurred boundaries between business and government have shaped e-commerce in mainland China. Case studies of online retailers in Beijing and Shanghai and a business-to-business (B2B) marketspace reveal how dynamic business relationships with complementary service providers and state agents can overcome institutional deficiencies. Short message service (SMS)-based mobile commerce (m-commerce) and other leapfrogging information technology (IT) applications could transform Chinese consumer behaviour and improve economic efficiency. The evidence from China helps to explain the influence of culture and institutions on different types of IT applications. Implications for e-commerce research and practice in China and other emerging markets are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, one of the biggest challenges for companies is to cope with the high cost of their information technologies infrastructure. Edge computing is a new computing paradigm designed to allocate on-demand computing and storage resources. Those resources are Web cache servers scattered over the ISP backbones. We argue that this paradigm could be applied for on-demand full application hosting, helping to reduce costs. In this paper, we present a J2EE (Java Enterprise Edition) dynamic server able to deploy/host J2EE applications on demand and its autonomic manager. For this, we reengineer and experiment with JOnAS, an open-source J2EE static server. Two management policies of the autonomic manager were stressed by a simulation of a worldwide ISP network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In online commerce, a buyer cannot directly examine the product and has to trust the seller for the product description and delivery. The reputation of the seller (and other information signals on the quality of the product) can therefore affect the buyer's willingness to pay. However, while the impact of reputation on willingness to pay for homogeneous goods has been examined, its impact on heterogeneous goods (where there is more uncertainty about product quality) is largely unknown. This paper examines the effects of reputation in online auctions, using U.S. silver Morgan dollar coins in ‘Almost Uncirculated’ condition that are sold on eBay. Empirical results indicate that a seller's overall reputation has a positive impact on a buyer's willingness to pay, that negative comments about a seller often have a negative impact, and that these reputational effects increase in importance when there is more uncertainty about the quality of the coin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If we were to have a Grid infrastructure for visualization, what technologies would be needed to build such an infrastructure, what kind of applications would benefit from it, and what challenges are we facing in order to accomplish this goal? In this survey paper, we make use of the term ‘visual supercomputing’ to encapsulate a subject domain concerning the infrastructural technology for visualization. We consider a broad range of scientific and technological advances in computer graphics and visualization, which are relevant to visual supercomputing. We identify the state-of-the-art technologies that have prepared us for building such an infrastructure. We examine a collection of applications that would benefit enormously from such an infrastructure, and discuss their technical requirements. We propose a set of challenges that may guide our strategic efforts in the coming years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Networks of the future will be characterized by a variety of computational devices that display a level of dynamism not seen in traditional wired networks. Because of the dynamic nature of these networks, resource discovery is one of the fundamental problems that must be solved. While resource discovery systems are not a novel concept, securing these systems in an efficient and scalable way is challenging. This paper describes the design and implementation of an architecture for access-controlled resource discovery. This system achieves this goal by integrating access control with the Intentional Naming System (INS), a resource discovery and service location system. The integration is scalable, efficient, and fits well within a proxy-based security framework designed for dynamic networks. We provide performance experiments that show how our solution outperforms existing schemes. The result is a system that provides secure, access-controlled resource discovery that can scale to large numbers of resources and users. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last decade there has been a tremendous advance in the theory and practice of role-based access control (RBAC). One of the most significant aspects of RBAC can be viewed from its management of permissions on the basis of roles rather than individual users. Consequently, it reduces administrative costs and potential errors. The management of roles in various RBAC implementations, however, tends to be conducted on an ad hoc basis, closely coupled with a certain context of system environments. This paper discusses the development of a system whose purpose is to help manage a valid set of roles with assigned users and permissions for role-based authorization infrastructures. We have designed and implemented the system, called RolePartner. This system enables role administrators to build and configure various components of a RBAC model so as to embody organizational access control policies which can be separated from different enforcement mechanisms. Hence the system helps make it possible to lay a foundation for role-based authorization infrastructures. Three methodological constituents are introduced for our purposes, together with the design and implementation issues. The system has a role-centric view for easily managing constrained and hierarchical roles as well as assigned users and permissions. An LDAP-accessible directory service was used for a role database. We show that the system can be seamlessly integrated with an existing privilege-based authorization infrastructure. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The events of 11 September 2001 brought an increased focus on security in the United States and specifically the protection of critical infrastructure. Critical infrastructure encompasses a wide array of physical assets such as the electric power grid, telecommunications, oil and gas pipelines, transportation networks and computer data networks. This paper will focus on computer data networks and the spatial implications of their susceptibility to targeted attacks. Utilising a database of national data carriers, simulations will be run to determine the repercussions of targeted attacks and what the relative merits of different methods of identifying critical nodes are. This analysis will include comparison of current methods employed in vulnerability analysis with spatially constructed methods incorporating regional and distance variables. In addition to vulnerability analysis a method will be proposed to analyse the fusion of physical and logical networks, and will discuss what new avenues this approach reveals. The analysis concludes that spatial information networks are vulnerable to targeted attacks and algorithms based on distance metrics do a better job of identifying critical nodes than classic accessibility indexes. The results of the analysis are placed in the context of public policy posing the question do private infrastructure owners have sufficient incentives to remedy vulnerabilities in critical networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes an action research case study dealing with the development of an internet retail store with advanced capabilities. The research focuses on the exploitation of information generated through consumer–system interaction by the virtual retailer (i.e. sales, navigation and personal consumer data). The results effectively support the business processes, consumers and product suppliers. To that end, an internet retailing data framework was developed during the user requirements capturing phase of the ACTIVE (Advertising and Commerce Through the Internet in the context of the Virtual Enterprise) project, as a means of structuring the system's information requirements and data processing mechanisms. The purpose of this framework is to describe in detail what consumer information the system needs to collect and to advise the virtual retailer (i.e. ACTIVE's administrator) how to use the available software components to exploit this information in order to effectively support consumers and business processes. Despite the fact that the proposed framework is tailored to the ACTIVE characteristics and needs, it can also be utilized by other virtual retailers to effectively support their key stakeholders (i.e. customers and suppliers). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the development of a framework and methodology to use dynamic simulation to understand and help quantify the impact of deferred maintenance on a highway system and the effect on user and non-user benefits. This type of simulation allows the testing of policies and/or assumptions to gain insight into the problem solution. With this framework, better structured decisions can be made on utilizing scarce resources to provide for an area’s total infrastructure needs. Using the simulation model, policy decisions regarding deferring maintenance can be viewed for their impact over time, thus affecting the decision-making process. A hypothetical region is used to demonstrate the use of the framework, and possible measures of effectiveness, such as total net benefits per capita, revenues less expenditures, and benefit–cost ratio, are introduced that could be utilized to help decision-makers understand the impact of funding decisions. The dynamic modeling framework can then be applied and calibrated to a region or state based on the area to be studied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the impact of ultra‐broadband (UBB) internet connections on firm entry and exit dynamics. These connections are based on optical fiber cables that link telecommunication operators to final users, allowing a significantly higher performance compared with traditional copper‐line networks. We leverage on a unique comprehensive dataset collecting municipality‐level information on broadband diffusion and firm turnover in Italy for the period of 2012–2019. Our empirical strategy exploits the staggered roll‐out of UBB, starting from 2015. Our identification strategy is based on an instrumental variable approach that exploits plausibly exogenous variation in the physical and geographical peculiarities of the telecommunication infrastructure. Results suggest that UBB increases firm exit, particularly for small firms. On the contrary, firm entry rises only in digital intensive sectors and in the most developed geographical areas. Our findings have important implications for the ongoing debate around the massive investments in high‐speed digital infrastructures, as they argue against the conventional idea that business activities equally benefit from last‐generation broadband technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Markov chains have been widely used to characterize performance deterioration of infrastructure assets, to model maintenance effectiveness, and to find the optimal intervention strategies. For long‐lived assets such as bridges, the time‐homogeneity assumptions of Markov chains should be carefully checked. For this purpose, this research proposes a regime‐switching continuous‐time Markov chain of which the state transition probabilities depend on another, latent, Markov chain that characterizes the overall aging regime of an asset. With the aid of a state‐augmentation technique, closed‐form solutions for the transition probabilities are analytically derived, making the statistical analysis simple. A case study is presented using the open Ontario Bridge Condition data for provincial highway bridges. The case study demonstrates that the proposed method allows to (1) estimate a statistically superior model to the homogeneous Markov chain and (2) obtain results with comparable accuracy in approximately 48% of the computation time of the state‐of‐the‐art inhomogeneous Markov chain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Designing and implementing health information systems (HISs) in developing‐country settings is challenging. Many HISs do not go beyond the pilot stage and tend to vanish when external funding is over. In other cases, multiple fragmented HISs remain, but these are unable to talk to each other. And more often than not, data collected by HISs are not used in decision making. To better understand and address these problems, this article employs an information infrastructure (II) perspective and views HISs as parts of larger and complex social‐technical networks. This article contributes to the current knowledge with a set of rich empirical descriptions of the design and implementation of HISs in Vietnam. Theoretically, it contributes to II discussions in the information systems domain by presenting four design problems and suggesting five design principles and 15 design rules to meet them. These design principles and rules also offer practical guidance for managers and designers involved in the design and implementation of HISs in developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Standards are vital components in building large‐scale and complex information systems, but not all standards are well functioning. Therefore, standardization, the process that produces standards, plays a crucial role in creating good standards. This paper contributes to standardization literature by presenting a case study involving negotiation and development of a standardized medical service list through mapping separated existing standards. In our conceptualization, meta‐standardization is not a project but should be perceived as an open‐ended learning process where no individual or institutions are omnipotent to foresee all the dynamics and offer a universal working solution at the first attempt. This process was part of a larger attempt to build a national electronic insurance claim system in Vietnam. We propose the concept of meta‐standardization to understand the 3 aspects of that process: convergence/differentiation, learning, and multilevel. Practical implications include the following strategies for resolving tensions and complexities: building upon what exists, organizing a learning process, and automating the standardization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The World Wide Web (WWW) has opened many new opportunities for the exchange of information. This paper presents development work undertaken at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research to enable the distribution of scientific information over the WWW.One of the first projects was to provide an electronic version of the printed 'Hydrographic Atlas of the Southern Ocean'. The 'Southern Ocean' database is presented, the data from which was used for generation of the atlas graphics. This is followed by a discussion of some of the issues related to the creation on the electronic form of the atlas. One major database directly accessible on-line is the 'Ocean-Circulation Database', which comprises measured data from research vessel expeditions from 1985 on. The database itself is Introduced, after which a description of the two methods of database query via a Web browser is given. If known, the name of a cruise can be input, or alternatively, one can click in the geographical area of interest on a 'clickable image' map of the world. Each click zooms the user in to the area of interest until the separate measurement points can be resolved. The user can then directly interrogate the database by clicking on the points. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Telephone companies and cable operators have many needs in common. Both wish to increase revenues by adding new services. Both plan to convert to fibre optics in order to lower costs in installation, operations and maintenance. Each must provide basic services economically while replacing obsolete equipment and infrastructures. Each year, network operators devote a large portion of their revenues to the provision and maintenance of network-based services and equipment. Lately, activities such as installing equipment at a customer site and detecting and repairing network problems have become an area of concern as organizations strive to minimize technological impacts and achieve operations savings. This paper is divided into three parts. First, the reader is provided with a description of the Consortel network architecture. This functioned description is then completed by a description of the software applications that support network operations activities. Finally, economic considerations are examined in the implementation of this digital distribution network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the realization in West Germany of a 450 MHz cable TV system, which matches into the infrastructure already formed by the existing 300 MHz systems. The studies and developments dome to achieve this are described, and the results of a field trial detailed. Finally the impact of the new MAC standard is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: In the current trend in telecommunications industry towards all‐internet‐protocol (IP) infrastructures, IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) plays a critical role by providing a coherent data and control‐plane solution for large‐scale live multimedia applications in a flexible and cost‐effective manner. On the other hand, such a large‐scale service platform would inevitably fail without effective support for the quality‐of‐service (QoS) requirements perceived by its users. Among the most important factors that influence user QoS are system performance and scalability. In this paper, a performance model for IMS systems is developed using the queueing Petri nets (QPNs) as the modeling formalism. The model's parameters are tuned based on the measurements carried out using a well‐known IMS implementation. The model is validated against the real system. During the model calibration, the Java garbage‐collector process used in the home subscriber‐server (HSS) implementation was found to be a main factor in the discrepancy between the model and the reality. In addition, the effects of other factors such as the network stack in the operating system are investigated. The validated model is employed to give insights into the scalability of every single instance of IMS implementation. The model is extended to study load balancing among multiple instances of HSS to remove the main bottleneck in the system. It provides a valuable platform for resource management of various components of the IMS ecosystem to support the intended level of QoS for the users. This study presents a queueing Petri‐net (QPN) model for registration scenario of internet‐protocol (IP) multimedia subsystem (IMS). The model is validated against a real installation. During the model calibration, Java garbage collector used in the home subscriber server (HSS) is found to be a main factor in the discrepancy between the model and reality. The model is extended to study load balancing among multiple instances of HSS to remove the main bottleneck in the system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyze public points of interconnection of Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple (GAFA) in the global North versus the global South to determine the degree to which their location preferences differ, if at all. We find that there is a statistically significant difference in GAFA locating in the global North versus the global South—a difference based on a country's wealth, specifically as given by per capita GNI. Approximately 38% of countries classified as global North have a GAFA public point of interconnection, while 16% of those classified as global South do. Apple has approximately 92% of its presence in the global North, followed by Amazon (82.5%), Facebook (73%), and Google (72%). Our findings suggest that competition and antitrust policy discussions of digital platforms should include information on the dynamics of interconnection infrastructure distribution, and for that, such information must be available. We also assert that a global consideration of the digital platforms market is necessary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A governance infrastructure is the collection of technologies and systems, people, policies, practices, and relationships that interact to support governing activities. Information technology, especially communication and computational technologies, continues to augment society's ability to organize, interact, and govern. As we think about the future of governance, this article challenges us to move beyond questions of how to best manage government institutions to how to design smart governance systems with the appropriate incentives and rules to harness and coordinate the enthusiasm and capabilities of those governed. This article anticipates how the interaction of technology and society can be leveraged to mindfully design an interaction-defined, participation-based governance infrastructure to return power to the people while increasing accountability. Supporting examples of such governance approaches already exist and are regularly emerging in distributed organizations, online communities, nonprofits, and governments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]