Search

Der digitale Wandel hat in den letzten Jahrzehnten die Geisteswissenschaften transformiert. Jede Art von Tätigkeit in Forschung und Lehre hat zumindest einen digitalen Anteil und sei es, dass dieser nur in der Nutzung digitaler Informationsinfrastrukturen für die Recherche besteht. In den historisch arbeitenden Wissenschaften mag der Beharrungswille größer sein als in anderen Disziplinen, aber auch hier haben sich in den vergangenen Jahren zwei Tendenzen herauskristallisiert: Erstens nimmt die Arbeit mit digitalen Surrogaten analoger Quellen zu – und wird noch mehr an Bedeutung gewinnen, je mehr die Fächer mit digital geborenen Quellen arbeiten. Zweitens werden die historischen Fächer selbst zu Produzenten von Forschungsdaten. Der Beitrag zeichnet diese Veränderungen nach und zeigt exemplarisch aktuelle Verfahren, Workflows und deren Voraussetzungen. Für die Gedächtniseinrichtungen argumentiert er, dass diese die sich abzeichnende Entwicklung nicht nur nicht ignorieren dürfen, sondern dass sie bereits jetzt ein wichtiger Teil des digitalen Umbruchs sind, der sich durch eine Konvergenz von Datenkompetenzen, aber auch von Verfahren und Modellierungen über die Grenzen der Fächer hinweg auszeichnet. Abschließend reflektiert der Beitrag, auf welche Weise Gedächtniseinrichtungen den Anforderungen dieser Veränderung und neuer Gruppen von Nutzenden gerecht werden können und welche Herausforderungen auch epistemischer Art in den bestehenden Sammlungen ruhen. The digital turn has shaped the humanities in recent decades. Every kind of activity in research and teaching now has at least a digital component, even if this only implies using digital information infrastructures for research. In the historical scholarship, the will to persevere time honed approaches may be greater than in other disciplines, yet even here two trends have emerged in recent years: firstly, scholarship based on datafied surrogates of analogue sources is increasing–and will become even more important the more scholars work with digitally born sources. Secondly, the historical disciplines themselves are becoming producers of research data. This paper traces the transformation, illustrating current techniques, workflows, and their prerequisites arguing that memory institutions should not only not ignore the development, but that they form already an important part of the digital transformation. For memory institutions the digital turn is characterised by a convergence of data competencies as well as procedures and models across the traditional boundaries of the disciplines. Finally, the article reflects on how memory institutions can meet the requirements of this transformation and new groups of users and what challenges, of an epistemic nature as well, are inherent to the existing collections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The duplication of semantic data modelled in different disciplines poses interoperability challenges. Information models that benefit from the application of standards that enable data reusability and prevent redundancy and misuse should be compatible, particularly when different systems are used in the same domain-specific area, as in the case of public transportation. Transportation information models, leading and providing reliable and robust public transport services, can nowadays be enriched with information found in building information models devoted to transportation infrastructure. Therefore, in the present paper, a mapping between the standards and technical specifications that support each modelling approach is explored, analysed, and aligned to maximise the best out of the current common practices used. The information from the Industry Foundation Classes IFC specification-based models complements the conceptual and physical transportation models, where Transmodel and NeTEx are well-established, with accurate (as-built) detailed characteristics of the transportation infrastructure (stop places, quays, entrances, access spaces and equipment as ramps, staircases, and escalators). The extraction of topological information stored in IFC models allows for navigation-network extraction, information about spaces, and passages between spaces. A specific public transport case study focused on a train station is detailed to better corroborate and illustrate the advantages and uses of compatible and complementing modelling approaches. As building-information-modelling awareness and use is growing, the validated mapping approach can benefit from the future application of automation procedures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To increase the speed and efficiency of expressways construction, information management is being gradually introduced into the construction process. However, progress is limited due to the complexity of expressway engineering and application limitations of information technology. Design and delivery are still dominated by paper files, and the management of test and inspection data is still relatively extensive. Research to date into digital expressway construction has been piecemeal and fragmented with a lack of research related to the whole construction process and a data-centric information management system yet to be realized. In response, through literature research and semi-structured interviews, the framework of a data-driven digital whole-process highway construction management platform was determined. A whole process management platform was established according to the framework, and the functional application of the proposed platform was explained through a case. The framework is proposed from the perspective of the whole process of collaborative sharing., which provides a new way of thinking to solve the problems existing in the current field of expressway construction whole-process management. It also provides data-centric management, electronic design and delivery, a refined workflow, and an efficient management process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the key elements to consider in business management is the management of IT (Information Technology) departments by implementing processes as described in the ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) standard. This is particularly important in industries that are not directly related to ICT (Information and Communication Technologies), such as the tourism industry. In this paper, we present a methodology to sequence the implementation of the ITIL processes in any company to support its development. The methodology is based on an optimization algorithm and the information extracted from a survey. The optimal sequence is built from this information and from the information of the restrictions imposed by the company that implements the ITIL processes. We applied the methodology to a company in the tourism industry. The sequence obtained shows the need to implement operative processes (initial positions in the sequence), and afterwards strategic processes (final positions in the sequence). A comparison with other authors' proposals shows differences in the order of processes proposed by this methodology. The main conclusion is that it is possible to use the information of companies to efficiently generate an optimal sequence of ITIL processes which enhances their management; this sequence is unique for every company that wants to implement ITIL in the tourism industry, and it is independent from the proposals of other authors who designed generic/non-optimal sequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information Technology (IT) is the very essential for today as well as the tomorrow in education, economy, businesses etc. Education play the vital role in day today lifetime because it is the place that everyone's lifetime begins. Education is very efficient, valuable useful when it accumulated with information technology. Most of the schools around the world use Information Technology and Communication (ICT) integrated technologies in teaching and learning process such as video, audio and image projection, tablet usage, online learning, websites, mobile phone techniques etc. For identifying challenges, techniques, problems that arise with the new methodologies, most of the countries have conducted surveys and questionnaires. From that most of the countries give solutions for problems like IT centers, providing infrastructures, trainings for teachers, improving English capabilities. In Sri Lanka 400 IT centers are established for improving IT related education. The results of this study are to provide literature review under integration of ICT in teaching and learning in schools which are written in the area of topic. And this paper identifies the technologies that use by several different counties, challenges that they face and give the solutions for them. This will help for every future carrier to build their future valuably. Information Technology (IT) is critical for today's and tomorrow's education, economy, and enterprises, among other areas. Education is extremely important in today's world because it is where everyone's life begins. When education is combined with information technology, it becomes very efficient and useful. Most schools throughout the world employ ICT-integrated technology in their teaching and learning processes, such as video, audio, and image projection, tablet use, online learning, websites, and mobile phone approaches, among others. Most countries have done surveys and questionnaires to discover issues, strategies, and problems that develop with new methodologies. As a result, the majority of countries provide answers to concerns such as IT centres, infrastructure, teacher training, and English improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades, climate change and a shortage of resources have brought about the need for technology in agriculture. Farmers have been forced to use information and innovation in communication in order to enhance production efficiency and crop resilience. Systems engineering and information infrastructure based on the Internet of Things (IoT) are the main novel approaches that have generated growing interest. In agriculture, IoT solutions according to the challenges for Industry 4.0 can be applied to greenhouses. Greenhouses are protected environments in which best plant growth can be achieved. IoT for smart greenhouses relates to sensors, devices, and information and communication infrastructure for real-time monitoring and data collection and processing, in order to efficiently control indoor parameters such as exposure to light, ventilation, humidity, temperature, and carbon dioxide level. This paper presents the current state of the art in the IoT-based applications to smart greenhouses, underlining benefits and opportunities of this technology in the agriculture environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To optimize the accessibility algorithm and quantify the potential relationship between human development index and traffic comprehensive accessibility system, this paper analyzed the spatial distribution pattern of urban accessibility and human development index of highway, railway, and aviation transportation systems using data on highway, railway, and aviation schedules based on GIS spatial analysis method. Furthermore, the coupling degree between human development index and accessibility and its influence mechanism on the city level in China were explored based on the super-efficiency data envelopment analysis model. Results showed as follows: (1) Spatial distribution of human development index from high to low was gradually changing from east to west. The spatial distribution of urban accessibility of the three traffic systems had an evident "Hu Huanyong Line" effect. (2) The coordination degree of urban accessibility and human development index spread in a ladder mode. High coordination of cities in North and East China and the central Yangtze River region forms the spatial distribution of urban development circles connecting an urban development belt. (3) Railway connectivity and control value were highly sensitive to human development index in cities where serious imbalance between accessibility and human development index. Highway connectivity and control value were highly sensitive to human development index in cities where high coordination between accessibility and human development index. The results would provide scientific references for spatial planning of transportation, economic, and social development of cities and coordinated development of urban agglomeration in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global trends towards an increase in the number and complexity of cyber-attacks led to the actualization of the issue of information and telecommunication systems (ITS) security. In particular, it is important to sectoral ITS, which are critically important for the functioning of society, the socio-economic development of the state and ensuring the informational component of national security. Taking into account the needs of national security and the need to introduce a systemic approach for solving the problem of critical infrastructure protection, at the national level, creating a security system is one of the priorities in the reforming of the defense and security sector of Ukraine. Thus, there is a need to develop methods and models for the ITS categorization as critical information infrastructure to ensure the national security of Ukraine. The paper presents a method for calculating the level of criticality of sectoral ITS, which, due to the use of a structural-logical and functional model for determining the functional profile of the sectoral ITS security, as well as a functional model for calculating the quantitative criterion for assessing the security of ITS, allow to increase the accuracy of the decision to categorize ITS as critical. The use of the developed method makes it possible to make a decision to categorize ITS as critical, taking into account the properties of information (such as confidentiality, integrity, availability, observability). In addition, an experimental study of the proposed method was carried out on the example of the ITS of the National Confidential Communication System (NCCS), which was used to check the adequacy of the methodʼs response to changes in input data. Using the method of calculating the criticality of sectoral ITS, the calculation of the criticality ranks for the functionality disruption of components, subsystems and systems of NCCS was carried out; the calculation of the quantitative indicator of the severity of the consequences of the functionality disruption of NCCS, as well as the quantitative indicator of the rank of criticality of NCCS was calculated and a conclusion was made regarding the NCCS criticality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evidence of past earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and floods has been discovered during archaeological excavations. The Nara National Research Institute for Cultural Properties (hereafter referred to as "NABUNKEN") has been constructing and releasing the "Historical Disaster Evidence Database" constructed upon Geographic Information System (GIS; hereafter referred to as "HDE-GISdb") by compiling disaster evidence information from excavation sites throughout Japan. Through this initiative, we aim to build an information infrastructure that will facilitate not only the elucidation of disaster occurrence mechanisms and local disaster histories but also disaster prevention and mitigation research. This paper discusses the effectiveness of HDE-GISdb using a case study of the Palace and Capital of Nagaoka sites in Kyoto Prefecture to visualize potential hazards, which cannot be read from topography, by disaster evidence recorded in Holocene and Pleistocene deposits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intelligent transportation systems (ITS) are a today´s hot topic, especially in the context of the development of information technologies, which can be employed in transportation. Although the scope and the technical solution of these systems may vary, they are frequently based on VANET (Vehicular ad hoc network), i.e. a communication network, which is primarily generated among the moving subjects, which form ITS. Given the highly dynamic VANET, the questions are raised as to the data transmission. This paper is aimed to make a detail analysis of the communications within VANET using the simulation model, which includes the static infrastructure of ITS and to experimentally verify the impact of this infrastructure on the dynamics of information spreading in ITS. The authors present the results obtained from a few different scenarios, which have been tested. [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]

Relying on the national rural revitalization policy and the policy of green rise of Jiangxi, the development of rural tourism in Wan'an County has ushered in new opportunities, and traffic accessibility is one of the important factors to be considered in rural tourism. Based on the accessibility evaluation method of the shortest travel time of highway traffic, this paper analyzes the accessibility of current tourism projects in Wan'an County. Research results show that; (J) the accessibility of rural tourism projects in Wan'an County is basically good except the Tianhu Mountain; @ the accessibility of rural tourism projects in Wan'an County is strong in the north and weak in the south; @ the transportation network serving the rural tourism in the north of Wan'an County is relatively perfect, while S221 Provincial Highway, DaqingGuangzhou Expressway and Wan'an-Baoshan County Road play an important role in the rural tourism project in the south of Wan'an County. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, in the industrial field, various studies are being conducted on converging IIoT devices that combine low-power processes and network cards into industrial sites to improve production efficiency and reduce costs. In this paper, we propose a processing model that can efficiently manage products produced by attaching IIoT sensor information to infrastructure built in industrial sites. The proposed model creates production data using IIoT data collection, preprocessing, characteristic generation, and labels to detect abnormally processed sensing information in real time by checking sensing information of products produced by IIoT at regular intervals. In particular, the proposed model can easily process IIoT data by performing tracking and monitoring so that product information produced in industrial sites can be processed in real time. In addition, since the proposed model is operated based on the existing production environment, the connection with the existing system is smooth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cloud computing provides scalable, low-cost and location-independent services over the internet. The services provided ranges from simple backup services to cloud storage infrastructures. The fast growth of data volumes has greatly increased the demand for techniques for saving disk space and network bandwidth. Cloud storage services like Dropbox, Mozy, Google Drive choose a deduplication technique where the cloud server stores only a single copy of redundant data and creates links to the copy instead of storing actual copies. The security of users data become a new challenge. Hence the users encrypt the data before outsourcing to the cloud. Conventional encryption techniques are incompatible with deduplication while convergent encryption resolves this problem effectively. Various research papers have been studied from the literature, as a result, this paper attempts to survey data deduplication techniques in cloud storage along with concepts, categories and methods used in data deduplication. [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]

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]

Vehicle-tree collisions are the most common type of road crash with fixed obstacle in Czech Republic. Based on the literature review and using real world in-depth crash data, this paper aims to define factors, which significantly influence the injury severity of single vehicle-tree crashes. In-depth data provide a comprehensive view to the failure on the system infrastructure—human—vehicle related to crash, the in-depth crash database include very detailed information related to infrastructure, vehicle, human failure and crash participants characteristics and their medical condition and also crash reconstruction. Multinomial logistic regression and generalized linear mixed model were used to determine the individual effect of each predictor. The statistically significant variables were the day period, trunk diameter and impact speed. Using multinomial logistic regression shows also vehicle age as statistically significant. Obtained results can help to efficiently direct countermeasures not only on the road infrastructure—e.g. speed reduction in selected locations with specified tree character. However, the emphasis should be also focused on driver behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Containers have emerged as a more portable and efficient solution than virtual machines for cloud infrastructure providing both a flexible way to build and deploy applications. The quality of service, security, performance, energy consumption, among others, are essential aspects of their deployment, management, and orchestration. Inappropriate resource allocation can lead to resource contention, entailing reduced performance, poor energy efficiency, and other potentially damaging effects. In this paper, we present a set of online job allocation strategies to optimize quality of service, energy savings, and completion time, considering contention for shared on-chip resources. We consider the job allocation as the multilevel dynamic bin-packing problem that provides a lightweight runtime solution that minimizes contention and energy consumption while maximizing utilization. The proposed strategies are based on two and three levels of scheduling policies with container selection, capacity distribution, and contention-aware allocation. The energy model considers joint execution of applications of different types on shared resources generalized by the job concentration paradigm. We provide an experimental analysis of eighty-six scheduling heuristics with scientific workloads of memory and CPU-intensive jobs. The proposed techniques outperform classical solutions in terms of quality of service, energy savings, and completion time by 21.73–43.44%, 44.06–92.11%, and 16.38–24.17%, respectively, leading to a cost-efficient resource allocation for cloud infrastructures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to examine the functionality of mobile applications (apps) in flood disasters in China, their usefulness in flood emergency management, and their ability to enable coproduction between participating parties. By conducting a tri-fold analysis on twenty-three mobile apps used nationwide and within Zhejiang province during the 2020-21 flood seasons, this paper finds that mobile apps have established an interconnected, multi-layered, and multi-functional information infrastructure for flood emergency management in China. Mobile apps have the potential to contribute in their respective ways to the core elements and phases of emergency management. In addition, these apps are found able to create the conditions for coproduction across sectors, which was corroborated by some good practice examples from media reports. However, governmental apps are found less ready to engage in cross-sector coproduction although they show signs of cross-department coproduction within the sub-nation government units. It implies a tension between the current way the government facilitates mobile apps in emergency management and the citizen empowerment by the mobile apps. This research contributes to the fields of information and communication technologies (ICT), emergency management communication and collaboration as one of the few studies examining mobile apps in China from the standpoint of emergency management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the hidden carbon footprint of corporate big data infrastructures and provide guidance for communicators responsible for corporate ESG and reputation. Design/methodology/approach: It is based on a subjective view of the literature on this topic, selecting relevant examples. Findings: The authors found that consciousness within corporations of the carbon footprint of their own information technology infrastructures is low and only a few companies have a strategy for identifying it. Originality/value: To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first treatment of this subject from the perspective of the corporate owner of ESG and reputation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: In the cloud computing era, three merging developments in software industry are: cloud and on-premises software may offer complementary value to each other; cloud software service requires the support of significant information technology infrastructure; and software piracy problems can be better managed in the cloud. However, how these developments together impact a vendor's bundling strategy has not yet been investigated. The paper aims to discuss this issue. Design/methodology/approach: Drawing on the product bundling framework, this research establishes stylized models to study a software vendor's bundling decision in the cloud-based era with special consideration on the issue of software piracy. Findings: The authors find different key parameters associated with the cloud era exert different effects on the bundling decision. When on-premises software and cloud software generate additional value by complementing each other, software vendors can make greater profits under the pure components (PC) strategy. Regarding a low infrastructure cost, software vendors should favor pure bundling (PB). The impact of piracy deterrence effectiveness is less straightforward – it favors PC when piracy deterrence effectiveness is low, but PB when piracy deterrence effectiveness is high. Originality/value: This study makes key contributions to theory and practice. First, this is the first study to examine software bundling strategies in the cloud computing era, whereby the three factors relevant to the cloud phenomenon have been considered. Second, this paper contributes to the literature of bundling and software piracy by examining the intersection of these two streams of literature. Third, this paper sheds light on a vendor's bundling decision when facing piracy problems in the emerging cloud software era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Although an increasing number of organisations implement the Information Technology Infrastructure Library® (ITIL®) with the aim to improve provision of information technology services to their customers, a significant number of ITIL implementations do not achieve the expected outcomes. The organisational change strategies of organisations during ITIL implementation initiatives may have an effect on success, but empirical research on this topic is scarce. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach: A multiple case study methodology comprising successful ITIL implementations in eight large Australian organisations is used. A socio-technical systems approach represented by Leavitt's Diamond is adopted as a lens to shed light on the attributes of effective organisational change strategies for successful ITIL implementation. Findings: This paper identifies organisational change strategies employed by organisations that have effected a successful ITIL implementation. The authors identified that the ITIL implementation required changes to the four components of the socio-technical work system (STS) identified in Leavitt's Diamond. Changes to one STS component affected other STS components when implementing ITIL; and that effort applied to the STS components did not need to be equal, but appropriate to the requirements of the ITIL implementation and the organisation. Research limitations/implications: The sample size of eight ITIL implementation cases studied may limit the generalisation of findings. Practical implications: This research provides IT service management researchers and ITIL practitioners, for the first time, information about organisational change strategies as applied to successful ITIL implementations. Originality/value: This research has developed novel insights into organisational change strategies and ITIL implementation that had not previously been explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Advanced Land Observing Satellite-2 (ALOS-2) was launched on May 24, 2014, and it is operating very well in space more than 4.5 years. The designed mission life is five years as nominal operational phase and the target is over seven years since launch the satellite. The mission objectives of ALOS-2 are 1) disaster monitoring, 2) national land and infrastructure information, 3) cultivated area monitoring, and 4) global forest monitoring. To achieve the objectives, ALOS-2 carries on the Phased Array type L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar-2 (PALSAR-2), which is an active microwave radar using the 1.2 GHz frequency band and observes in day and night times even in bad weather conditions as successor PALSAR instrument onboard ALOS satellite operated from 2006 to 2011. PALSAR-2 instrument has several enhanced features from PALSAR e.g. finer spatial resolution, spotlight observing mode, dual-polarisation ScanSAR. This paper summarises an introduction of typical data analysis results for monitoring natural disasters by ALOS-2 during the operational phase. As the response natural disasters, more than 400 times of the emergency observations have been conducted to identify damages caused by volcanic activities, earthquakes, flooding etc. happened in Japan and the World. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The proliferation of high-throughput sequencing machines ensures rapid generation of up to billions of short nucleotide fragments in a short period of time. This massive amount of sequence data can quickly overwhelm today's storage and compute infrastructure. This paper explores the use of hardware acceleration to significantly improve the runtime of short-read alignment, a crucial step in preprocessing sequenced genomes. We focus on the Levenshtein distance (edit-distance) computation kernel and propose the ASAP accelerator, which utilizes the intrinsic delay of circuits for edit-distance computation elements as a proxy for computation. Our design is implemented on an Xilinx Virtex 7 FPGA in an IBM POWER8 system that uses the CAPI interface for cache coherence across the CPU and FPGA. Our design is $200\times$ faster than an equivalent Smith-Waterman-C implementation of the kernel running on the host processor, $40-60\times$ faster than an equivalent Landau-Vishkin-C++ implementation of the kernel running on the IBM Power8 host processor, and $2\times$ faster for an end-to-end alignment tool for 120–150 base-pair short-read sequences. Further the design represents a $3760\times$ improvement over the CPU in performance/Watt terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the existing Croatian research information infrastructure and to outline a new model of the Croatian Current Research Information System (CroRIS), required for the systematical monitoring and evaluation of the research processes and output of the Croatian public research and higher education institutions, as well as for the increasing of their international visibility. Based on the results of the analysis of the existing research information infrastructure in Croatia, the general outline of the new CERIF-based CroRIS model is proposed. The analysis of the existing research information infrastructure showed that there are some functional parts which could be reused and/or used as a basis for the implementation of the proposed CroRIS model. The proposed model represents a concept which would allow a quality decision and science-policy making in Croatia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the core of every organisation is a set of electronic assets that enables an organisation to perform its daily operations. This Critical Infrastructure (CI) forms the fundamental core of the organisation. CI is dynamic in nature, with electronic and information assets consistently changing states, and creating new information. Conventional protection mechanisms have failed to ensure effective protection, and the critical environments have dynamic states which change consistently. Organisations heavily rely on CI to support daily operations. The hinderance of such CI can have several negative impacts. To mitigate risks, organisations should look elsewhere for more adaptive solutions which are geared towards the protection of CI. This paper proposes a Continual Evaluative Self-aware Immune-inspired Multi Agent Critical Information Infrastructure Protection System (CESIMAS). The purpose of the CESIMAS model is to establish a self-aware, and self-adaptive MAS in which agents can adapt their behaviour given internal and external stimuli, enabling more effective responses and an improved level of CI protection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Block chain is a decentralized core architecture, which is widely used in emerging digital encryption currencies. It has attracted much attention and has been researched with the gradual acceptance of bitcoin. Block chaining technology has the characteristics of centralization, block data, no tampering and trust, so it is sought after by enterprises, especially financial institutions. This paper expounds the core technology principle of block chain technology, discusses the application of block chain technology, the existing regulatory problems and security problems, so as to provide some help for the related research of block chain technology. Intrusion detection is an important way to protect the security of information systems. It has become the focus of security research in recent years. This paper introduces the history and current situation of intrusion detection system, expounds the classification of intrusion detection system and the framework of general intrusion detection, and discusses all kinds of intrusion detection technology in detail. Intrusion detection technology is a kind of security technology to protect network resources from hacker attack. IDS is a useful supplement to the firewall, which can help the network system to quickly detect attacks and improve the integrity of the information security infrastructure. In this paper, intrusion detection technology is applied to block chain information security model, and the results show that proposed model has higher detection efficiency and fault tolerance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper specifies the Internet of People, Things & Services (IoPTS) as the visualization where people, things and services are effortlessly integrated into the internet as active participants which exchange data about itself and their perceived nearby environments over a network-based infrastructure. The IoPTS, among many other features, is characterized by its gross sum in terms of services, things, and people that will generate data populating massive directories; its advanced potential for tracking people, things and objects; its focus is on various frontiers, a person can guess multiple identities where every identity is associated with multiple things (devices) linked to numerous services; its vertical agility with a phenomenal rise in the level of difficulty from a governance perspective. As stated by World Economic Forum (WEF), in January 2016, as The Future of Jobs: Skills, Workforce and Employment Strategy for the 4th Industrial Revolution, a mass of developments had moved the world of labor into the "4th Industrial Revolution" that will fundamentally change the way we work, live and relate to each other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the role of government in the construction of the National Information Infrastructure (NII) by reviewing the relevant literature, presenting the historical case of the railroad and drawing on information gathered from in-depth interviews. Striking a balance between government leadership and free open market competition is essential to ensure universal service as the Nil continues to develop. While government has many choices to coerce compliance for the provision of universal service, it neither owns nor directly controls the companies providing service. On the other hand, while free open market competition has the potential to reduce prices, lower costs and facilitate innovation, it fails to attend to disadvantaged populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - This paper seeks to present six key articles from the archives of Internet Research within a research framework, covering infrastructure, organization, commerce, governance, linking, and interface. Design/methodology/approach - The six articles are introduced, summarized, and used to focus attention on each of the core areas of research that impacted the growth of the Internet. Findings - The prism of time is one of the most powerful tools of observation available to scientists and researchers. Palaeontologists think in terms of aeons, archaeologists consider millennia a mere starting-point, even the biologists, chemists, and physicists have centuries of prior research to consider. Internet Research, the Journal, is only 20 years old - and the field only slightly older than that. Yet what decades those have been. Six articles from the early years of Internet Research epitomize much of the innovation, excitement, challenges and vision that would reshape the world. While tremendous advances in technology have been made in the past 20 years, a number of the original issues and challenges remain unresolved. Practical implications - The paper serves to frame the historic articles within a broader research context. Originality/value - The paper provides a conceptual framework for researchers seeking insights into some of the early formative research on the Internet and web. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces the special issue “China: Internationalizing the Creative Industries”, describing the Australian Research Council funded “MATE” project which provides the conceptual background for the questions the issue explores. The MATE project began with the expectation that as China evolves from its status as a developing country with an emphasis on primary industries and manufacturing, to a mature, market-driven economy benefiting from high levels of international investment, it will become more actively engaged with the global “knowledge economy” and “information society”. In this context, developments in the “creative industries”, which are playing such an important role in developed economies, might reasonably be expected in China. Although China continues to be characterised by strong central-policy settings, as the domestic consumer market matures there is greater scope for consumer-led creative business development. The “MATE” project aimed to capture some of these changes as they began to gain momentum across a range of services: Media, Advertising, Tourism and Education. This special issue continues this theme with papers that explore the theoretical challenges, economic questions and implications, and practical instantiations of creative industries growth in China. All papers contained in this special issue have been peer-reviewed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The selection of an appropriate project delivery system (PDS) is of paramount importance to an infrastructure project, as it could affect the success of the plan in terms of time, cost, and quality. Researchers have advocated that the development and application of a systematic approach to the selection of PDS is needed. To achieve that, not only is a reliable analytical framework necessary, but a platform that would allow users to freely access and share their experience on various PDSs would also be indispensable. The World Wide Web, a powerful tool for collecting and disseminating knowledge and information, is a suitable platform for developing the PDS selection model. The purpose of this paper is, therefore, to examine the suitability of applying internet technologies to selecting appropriate project delivery approaches for infrastructure projects. The paper begins by describing the conceptual framework of the virtual project delivery system adviser for infrastructure facilities (VPDSA-IF), and the design considerations and features of the VPDSA-IF are then detailed. The paper concludes by examining the results of an initial validation of the model. [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]

Trust is the key element of commerce, both for traditional models and — more recently — for eCommerce. Unlike its traditional counterpart, eCommerce relies on trust being created and maintained with the help of digital devices and services. Convergence brings significant changes to the way people interact through digital media by offering ubiquitous and seamless communication. This has a significant impact on the way trust is established and maintained, with consequent impact upon eCommerce. This paper identifies a number of the most important challenges to trust in eCommerce as well as trust-related aspects of key enablers of eCommerce. From this perspective, the paper studies an impact of convergence on trust within eCommerce to identify several positive relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Notwithstanding impressive developments in SDI in exchange, sharing, accessibility, and use of spatial data, its operational implementation appears sometimes problematic. This paper explores conditions and factors for effective and sustainable use of SDI and suggests that the inherent complexity of SDI requires a multi-faceted way of monitoring and evaluation rather than confinement to the limited scope of objective oriented performance only. Critical issues, challenges, and dilemmas can be identified while looking at SDI as facilitator of communication, as networked infrastructure, as socio-technical actor-network, as common-pool resource, and as community of practice. Finally, the paper suggests institutionalization of SDI within a spatial data community as a unifying concept towards effectiveness and sustainability of SDI initiatives while recognizing their inherent complexities. Institutionalization is the process in which the SDI will gain an institutional (structural) role within the spatial data community in which it is embedded and consequently contributes to effective exchange, sharing, accessibility, and use of spatial data. The paper also discusses some operational conditions to this end. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the challenges in the paper by Rose et al. (2005) is the need to build integrative theories to address the interweaving of machine and human agency. I would like to suggest, alternatively, that we should encourage a thousand theoretical flowers to bloom. I illustrate my argument using research on GIS in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

C-ITS is an intelligent transportation system that can improve transportation convenience and traffic safety by collecting, managing, and providing traffic information between components such as vehicles, road infrastructure, drivers, and pedestrians. In Korea, road infrastructure is being built across the country through the C-ITS project, and various services such as real-time traffic information provision and bus operation management are provided. However, the current state-of-the-art road infrastructure and information linkage system are insufficient to build C-ITS. In this paper, considering the continuity of time in various spatial aspects, we proposed a group-type network-based traffic situation recognition system that can recognize traffic flows and unexpected accidents through information linkage between traffic infrastructures. It is expected that the proposed system can primarily respond to accident detection and warning in the field, and can be utilized as more diverse traffic information services through information linkage with other systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cloud computing has provided new dimensions and opportunities to telecom providers to enhance their ability in creating new revenue streams, reduce operational costs and increase customer satisfaction. In recent years, the progression of evolving cloud computing systems is huge. Conversely, it also encountered a lot of new challenges to the institutions utilizing cloud systems. It is critical to evaluate the change in organizational risk profile before deciding the level of cloud adoption. The conventional risk assessment framework of telecom providers may be unsuitable for cloud computing owing to the difficulties in the configuration. This paper aims to propose a system to quantify the influences of cloud adoption in telecom risk profile. This study also provides a comparison of overall risk profile change between clouds enabled infrastructure, traditional on-premises information technology solutions, and a combination of both in the telecom sector. The result encourages the selective adoption of the hybrid cloud model which demonstrated a relatively low organizational risk score. This work contributes to cloud computing business research by providing a holistic risk comparison model which reflects the distinctiveness of telecom service provider's assets and capabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergence of Building Information Modelling (BIM) has revolutionized the infrastructure construction industry by introducing real-time and collaborative information management tools to be used throughout the lifecycle of projects. The importance of BIM in this industry has been emphasized in previous research. However, strategies for the implementation of this system is still less explored, which requires more elaboration and validation. The purpose of this paper is to investigate such strategies considering all necessary dimensions of the BIM system in infrastructure construction projects. The findings are based on theoretical discussion and semi-structured interviews in a case study project in New South Wales, Australia. The results revealed that BIM integrates various elements of infrastructure construction, which include but are not limited to risk, time, cost, energy, safety, and sustainability. It was found that implementation strategies should focus on improving the contribution of the BIM system to infrastructure construction in terms of improved (1) integrity and automation, (2) collaboration, and (3) optimization. Identification of seven technical and managerial implementations strategies is the core contribution of this research. These strategies provide practitioners with insight into technical and managerial measures to be taken for the successful implementation of the BIM system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

South Africa's democracy in 1994 triggered the promotion of socio-economic development in the public sector, with specific emphasis on improving infrastructure and bridging the information Technology (IT) skills gap. In this paper, the factors that influence the retention of competent IT resources for the State Information Technology Agency (SITA) are examined. The Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) is the underlying theoretical framework. A case study approach is employed as a suitable qualitative research design to investigate contemporary occurrences in real-life settings for exploratory and theory-building research. Empirical insights, regarding excessive power accumulation, lack of accountability, and skills imbalance, in state enterprises, are provided to manage IT infrastructure, effectively. The authors assert that reliance on consultants, promotes opportunistic bargaining that could be detrimental to the government's strategy to retain skilled IT resources. The results reveal that recruiting and retaining appropriately skilled IT professionals, would address challenges of information asymmetry in the SITA, and facilitate the building of a strong professional network to manage the state enterprises' IT platforms. The analyzed data emanate from the minutes of meetings, as well as published media sources, and validated by the project's respondents. One limitation is that the stakeholders did not disclose all the facts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inspecting and assessing existing utility poles has become increasingly important for reducing the vulnerability of power distribution infrastructure systems in disaster situations, which can enhance community resilience. Although vision-based systems have been applied to detect faults in power distribution infrastructures, little research currently exists on assessing component- and network-level failures of utility poles based on their geometric and environmental information. This paper aims to propose a new data-driven approach to support risk-informed decision-making for utility maintenance under extreme wind conditions. Large-scale open-source imagery from Google Street View is used to assess geometric properties of utility poles (i.e., leaning angle). Then the failure probability of utility poles is analyzed under varying conditions (e.g., age, leaning angle, and wind loads) in a three-dimensional virtual city model. The proposed method is tested through case studies in Texas to (1) validate an algorithm for estimating leaning angles of utility poles and (2) understand the progress of failures of leaning utility poles from a network perspective. The outcomes of the case studies demonstrate that the proposed method has the potential to leverage large-scale open-source visual data to assess the vulnerability of utility pole networks that may lead to cascading failures in power distribution infrastructure systems. Based on the proposed virtual environment, the method is expected to enable practitioners to facilitate risk-informed decision-making against disaster situations, which creates an opportunity for prioritizing maintenance tasks regarding power distribution infrastructures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the development of an enterprise domain model in an environment where part of the domain knowledge is vague and not yet formalised in company-wide business rules. The domain model was developed for a young company starting in the telecommunications sector. The company relied on a number of stand-alone business support systems and sought for a manner to integrate them. There was opted for the development of an enterprise-wide domain model that had to serve as an integration layer to coordinate the stand-alone applications. A specific feature of the company was that it could build up its information infrastructure form scratch, so that many aspects of its business were still in the process of being defined. The paper will highlight parts of the Enterprise Model where there was a need for co-designing business rules together with the domain model. A result of this whole effort was that the company got more insight into important domain knowledge and developed a common understanding across functional areas of the way of doing business. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the author's comments on the paper "Holistic, Continuous Assurance Integration: e-Business Opportunities and Challenges," by M. Greenstein and A.W. Ray, which appeared in volume16 of "Journal of Information Systems." He finds the paper to be excellent; however, some of the assumptions about how accounting firms operate today may be out of date. The author suggests that the best way to get a new service started in a professional service firm is to set up a little group. Much of the discussion in the paper sounds good in concept but does not address the market for these services.