Search

Presentation for the PSSOH 2021 plenary lecture on Digital Sovereignty. The lecture was recorded and the video of presentation held by Italo Vignoli together with the Q&A session is available at https://youtu.be/ovZYXxI5Fx8.

Aquest article descriu el disseny i la implementació d'un nou entorn per a la interconnectivitat de components de localització distribuïts, tant de codi obert com a propietari, donant així resposta a l'escassetat d'estudis d'investigació rellevants en aquesta àrea, ja que considerem que la interoperabilitat és clau per aconseguir la integració completa de diferents entitats. La solució que proposem permet la interoperabilitat mitjançant un esquema d'arquitectura orientada a serveis (SOA) que es basa en els estàndards de localització habituals. Descriurem un escenari d'ús genèric i l'arquitectura de l'entorn que ens permetrà estudiar qüestions d'interoperabilitat en els processos de localització. Aquest entorn va ser presentat amb èxit en el CNGL Public Showcase que es va celebrar a la seu de Microsoft, Irlanda, el novembre de 2010., This paper describes the design and implementation of a novel environment for the inter-connectivity of distributed localisation components - both open source and proprietary - in response to the scarcity of relevant research in this area, as we view interoperability as being the key to the seamless integration of different entities. The proposed solution promotes interoperability through the adoption of a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) framework based on established localisation standards. We describe a generic use scenario and the architecture of the environment that allows us to study interoperability issues in localisation processes. This environment was successfully demonstrated at the CNGL Public Showcase in Microsoft, Ireland, November 2010., Este artículo describe el diseño y la implementación de un nuevo entorno para la interconectividad de componentes de localización distribuidos, tanto de código abierto como propietario, con el propósito de paliar la escasez de estudios de investigación relevantes en esta área. A nuestro entender, la interoperabilidad es clave para conseguir la integración completa de diferentes entidades. La solución que proponemos permite la interoperabilidad mediante un esquema de arquitectura orientada a servicios (SOA) que se basa en los estándares de localización habituales. Describiremos un escenario de uso genérico y la arquitectura del entorno que nos permitirá estudiar cuestiones de interoperabilidad en los procesos de localización. Este entorno fue presentado con éxito en el CNGL Public Showcase que se celebró en la sede de Microsoft en Irlanda en noviembre de 2010.

The focus of this research is addressing a subset of the geovisualization (i.e., geographic visualization) challenges identified in the literature, namely multidimensional vector and raster geospatial data visualization. Moreover, the work implements an approach for multidimensional raster geospatial data processing. The results of this research are provided through a geoportal comprised of multiple applications that are related to 3D visualization of cities, ground deformation, land use and land cover and mobility. In a subset of the applications, the datasets handled are considered to be large in volume. The geospatial data were visualized on dynamic and interactive virtual globes to enable visual exploration. The geoportal is available on the web to enable cross-platform access to it. Furthermore, the geoportal was developed employing open standards, free and open source software (FOSS) and open data, most importantly to ensure interoperability and reduce the barriers to access it. The geoportal brings together various datasets, different both in terms of context and format employing numerous technologies. As a result, the existing web technologies for geovisualization and geospatial data processing were examined and exemplary and innovative software was developed to extend the state of the art.

Scientific innovation is increasingly reliant on data and computational resources. Much of today’s life science research involves generating, processing, and reusing heterogeneous datasets that are growing exponentially in size. Demand for technical experts (data scientists and bioinformaticians) to process these data is at an all-time high, but these are not typically trained in good data management practices. That said, we have come a long way in the last decade, with funders, publishers, and researchers themselves making the case for open, interoperable data as a key component of an open science philosophy. In response, recognition of the FAIR Principles (that data should be Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) has become commonplace. However, both technical and cultural challenges for the implementation of these principles still exist when storing, managing, analysing and disseminating both legacy and new data.COPO is a computational system that attempts to address some of these challenges by enabling scientists to describe their research objects (raw or processed data, publications, samples, images, etc.) using community-sanctioned metadata sets and vocabularies, and then use public or institutional repositories to share it with the wider scientific community. COPO encourages data generators to adhere to appropriate metadata standards when publishing research objects, using semantic terms to add meaning to them and specify relationships between them. This allows data consumers, be they people or machines, to find, aggregate, and analyse data which would otherwise be private or invisible. Building upon existing standards to push the state of the art in scientific data dissemination whilst minimising the burden of data publication and sharing.AvailabilityCOPO is entirely open source and freely available on GitHub at https://github.com/collaborative-open-plant-omics. A public instance of the platform for use by the community, as well as more information, can be found at copo-project.org.

GeoBIM, the integration of 3D geoinformation (Geo) with building information models (BIM), is a subject of increasing attention in both domains. A well-known practical challenge for this integration is the mixed state of software support for open standards in each domain that would ease the integration. This is often known by practitioners but poorly documented. In order to solve this problem, we devised the GeoBIM benchmark, in which we compile the experiences of volunteering participants, who perform a guided study to test the software they are most familiar with against a few provided datasets structured in open standards. The aim of the tests is to improve the knowledge of the state of the art in the software support for GeoBIM open standards and to identify points for improvement. In this paper, we present the design of the benchmark, especially explaining and discussing the chosen data to be used with their connected issues to be tested, and some initial results.

Today, in order to confront the growing complexity of products and organisations, Aeronautic, Space and Defence (ASD) manufacturing enterprises are using more and more System Engineering, Product Lifecycle Management and Computer Aided Solutions for various engineering and management activities. Combined with a more and more important outsourcing, such trends led to the emergence of what is called Dynamic Manufacturing Networks (DMN). These DMNs are facing important difficulties for the establishment of PLM interoperability based on legacy PLM standards for Manufactured Product and Process data exchange, sharing and long term archiving. To address such issues, Airbus Group Innovations (AGI) has been developing a Federative Interoperability Framework (FIF) through iterations between research, operational and standardisation projects. FIF defines interoperability principles, brakes and enablers. Based on an analysis of DMN interoperability brakes and enablers, this paper proposes a new way based on FIF interoperability principles for dealing with pragmatic interoperability of PLM processes within the ASD digital business ecosystem. We propose a DMN interoperability conceptual framework, coupled with an experimental collaborative open platform (cPlatform), to achieve pragmatic PLM process interoperability. For this, we rely on DMN blueprint of PLM Business Processes developed within the frame of the IMAGINE project. The proposed approach is then assessed according to scientific, business and standardisation viewpoints. Today, Aeronautic, Space and Defence manufacturing enterprises' products and organisations are more and more complex. It motivates usage of System Engineering, Product Life cycle Management (PLM) and computer aided solutions for engineering or management activities. Dynamic Manufacturing Networks (DMN) are then emerging, but facing important difficulties for the establishment of PLM interoper- ability based on legacy PLM standards for Manufactured Product and Process data exchange, sharing and long term archiving. Extending a Federative Interoperability Framework (FIF) developed by Airbus Group Innovations (AGI) through iterations between research, operational and standardisation projects.

The lifecycle of a 3D cadastral spatial unit and its associated rights, restrictions and responsibilities is made up of many different parts and substages (Van Oosterom 2013). Onepart could be the extraction of 3D data from building permit application process. This paper looks at how this process could be coordinated with a number of other processes and the 3D data used for a variety of purposes including testing conformance to building regulations, rates assessment, inclusion in a national topographic map and asset management. Anassociated use case narrows the scope and illustrates how software which uses the Design and Engineering Methodology for Organisations (DEMO) (Dietz 2006) as reference can be used to facilitate this process.

The lifecycle of a 3D cadastral spatial unit and its associated rights, restrictions and responsibilities is made up of many different parts and substages (Van Oosterom 2013). Onepart could be the extraction of 3D data from building permit application process. This paper looks at how this process could be coordinated with a number of other processes and the 3D data used for a variety of purposes including testing conformance to building regulations, rates assessment, inclusion in a national topographic map and asset management. Anassociated use case narrows the scope and illustrates how software which uses the Design and Engineering Methodology for Organisations (DEMO) (Dietz 2006) as reference can be used to facilitate this process.

Despite most Spatial Data Infrastructures are offering service-based visualization of geospatial data, requirements are often at a very basic level leading to poor quality of maps. This is a general observation for any geospatial architecture as soon as open standards as those of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) shall be applied. To improve the situation, this paper does focus on improvements at the portrayal interoperability side by considering standardization aspects. We propose two major redesign recommendations. First to consolidate the cartographic theory at the core of the OGC Symbology Encoding standard. Secondly to build the standard in a modular way so as to be ready to be extended with upcoming future cartographic requirements. Thus, we start by defining portrayal interoperability by means of typical use cases that frame the concept of sharing cartography. Then we bring to light the strengths and limits of the relevant open standards to consider in this context. Finally we propose a set of recommendations to overcome the limits so as to make these use cases a true reality. Even if the definition of a cartographic-oriented standard is not able to act as a complete cartographic design framework by itself, we argue that pushing forward the standardization work dedicated to cartography is a way to share and disseminate good practices and finally to improve the quality of the visualizations.

International audience; During the last years, important research investments have been made by Airbus Group Innovations for the establishment of sustainable Product and Process data interoperability based on open standards. Driven successively by concurrent engineering, collaborative product design in the virtual enterprise or digital behavorial aircraft, it was capitalize through the establishment of a federative interoperability framework. Driven by factory of the future-related research, the dynamic manufacturing network (DMN) concept enriched the framework, which aims at providing agile infrastructure for networked collaborative product development. For such networks, protocols based on open eBusiness product lifecycle management (PLM) standards for exchange and sharing of product and process data between the implied organizations, their processes and the technical enteprise applications supporting these processes are needed This paper presents a new way of combining model-based enterprise platform engineering, model-driven architecture, and system engineering in order to adress the establishment of a sustainable interoperability within DMN. Based on relevant litterature interoperability issues, this paper describes the new approach, which relies on the association of effective existing technologies coupled with research results on the fields of model-driven engineering (MDE), enterprise interoperability, system engineering and PLM. The new approach relies on the concept of digital factory system (DFS) coupled with DMN in order to produce sustainable and agile collaborative infrastructure for manufacturing digital ebusiness ecosystem. The approach is then illustrated through use case coming from the IMAGINE project and an outline is provided on how it will be used and developed further for the assessment of PLM standards and their implementation in the Standard Interoperability PLM project at IRT-Systemx.

This paper tackles the limitations of web 2.0, the keys to overcome them and the recent efforts towards a free and federated social web. Between these we will focus on the case of Lorea from our direct experience with it. Este artículo aborda las limitaciones de la web 2.0, las claves para superarlas y las recientes iniciativas de web social libre y federada. De entre ellas nos centraremos en el caso de Lorea desde nuestra experiencia directa con ella.

The Philippines is one of the eight founding members of the open government partnership (OGP) alongside Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, Norway, South Africa, United Kingdom, and the United States. The overarching concept of open government recognizes that good governance derives from the principle of transparency by providing an easily accessible, readily usable, and up-to-date online platform of digitized public records. Open data is an important component and commitment area of the OGP. The Philippines developed its first national open government action plan, which detailed nineteen initiatives under four broad outcome areas, from June to September 2011. This paper aims to: (1) document the historical development, key drivers, and milestones of open government Philippines and open data Philippines, and (2) pose recommendations for moving forward with its commitments. It reviews the composition and formation of the open data task force and showcases the features of data.gov.ph. The paper seeks to pose recommendations pertaining to the following areas: (1) release and manage organized, operable, and relevant data; (2) refine technical aspects of open data; (3) institutionalize open data within government; (4) promote civic engagement and stakeholder outreach; and (5) adopt complementary metrics and measures of success. The paper also opens a series of reports on the key stages in the development of the program, including implementation and impact evaluation.

Information and communication technologies (ICT) for health or eHealth solutions hold great potential for generating systemic efficiencies by strengthening five critical pillars of a health system: human resources for health, supply chain management, health care financing, governance and service delivery, and infrastructure. This report describes the changing landscape of eHealth initiatives through these five pillars, with a geographic focus on Sub-Saharan Africa. This report further details seven criteria, or prerequisites, that must be considered and addressed in order to effectively establish and scale up ICT-based solutions in the health sector. These criteria include infrastructure, data and interoperability standards, local capacity, policy and regulatory environments, an appropriate business model, alignment of partnerships and priorities, and monitoring and evaluation. In order to bring specific examples of these criteria to light, this report concludes with 12 specific case studies of potentially scalable ICT-based health care solutions currently being implemented across the globe at community, national, and regional levels. This report is intended to be used by development practitioners, including task team leaders at the World Bank, to strengthen their understanding of the use of ICT to support health systems strengthening (HSS) efforts as well as to highlight critical prerequisites needed to optimize the benefits of ICT for health.

Infrastructure in the form of payment systems is a necessity to allow for payments to reach from payer to payee, but it is also subject to product differentiation between banks. In the euro countries, a domestic-integration zone termed SEPA that consolidates payment systems into a singular system has been regulated, providing market efficiencies for customers and companies. However, in Sweden, banks use unstandardized file communication that is costly for stakeholders to interface against, and is becoming increasingly difficult to oversee. With the introduction of novel payment solutions (e.g. mobile payments), there is also an increase in competitors that access the infrastructure. A rising customer demand for faster, global and integrated payments has been identified. This increased fragmentation of the market requires large investments for banks and reduces customer mobility, which motivates the need for consolidation of payment flows. The purpose of this thesis is to identify the roles of stakeholders in the clearing and settlement mechanism, and to identify the drivers and inhibitors that affect business decisions to change the systems in place. These results are categorized according to co-opetition theory. Furthermore, the thesis brings forward the global industry standard for financial messaging ISO 20022 to the business context, and discusses its implications in the Swedish market from an interoperability point of view. The study has been conducted using mixed methods with a qualitative approach. It includes: Analysis of documents and materials, non-participative observation, interviews with 9 industry experts and an in-depth case study of real-time payments in Sweden (Betalningar i Realtid). Results show that actors’ perceptions of one another are ambiguous, but cooperation is well-established and reaps many positive effects for firms. Co-opetition activities in banks are inclined to drive change, while competitive moves are likely to leave the system unchanged. Co-opetition is only possible under certain pre-agreed rules such as differentiation by implementing flexible payment solutions. The main implication for migration to an improved, standardized payment flow is connected to the governance of infrastructure. It is suggested that if agreements between stakeholders are not reached in due time then SEPA-like regulation put forward by higher instances is a likely outcome.

[ES]Desde el principio de la disciplina, el eLearning ha sido un campo novedoso que ha generado nuevo software, sistemas, contenidos y herramientas con los que se está experimentando. la interoperabilidad se convierte, en este contexto, en un problema. Los sistemas consolidados y empleados regularmente tienen que ser capaces de interoperar con otros nuevos. Este artículo trata sobre cómo varias investigaciones y lproyectos de desarrollo se reunieron para encontrar una solución a este problema, proporcionando especificaciones abiertas y normas, además de ibre, implementaciones de referencia de código abierto., [EN] Since the beginning of the discipline, eLearning has been about innovation. New software, systems, contents and tools are being created and experimented with and in constant evolution. But when systems, contents and tools become successful and part of the regular infrastructure of educational institutions, interoperability becomes an issue. Systems that are consolidated and regularly used need to be able to interoperate with new ones. And the new tendencies need to fit within the current infrastructure. This paper states how several research and development projects with heterogeneous funding sources and locations worldwide, gathered together to find a solution to this common problem, providing open specifications and standards, plus Free/Libre, Open Source reference implementations.

Nowadays, power systems face more challenging network wide issues with regard to ensuring secure and reliable operation. Therefore, having a wide area monitoring system is a vital need in order to detect problems and react on them as quickly as possible. An important component when providing wide area monitoring and control for transmission networks is the SCADA system, which connects the substations to the control center by polling data from Remote Terminal Units (RTUs). However, due to data rate limitations, the monitoring is relatively static and therefore infrequent. By using Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) data can be provided in higher rates and with higher accuracy. Since different manufacturers exist in the market, standardization is the key for advancement of the connectivity and interoperability within the system. In the past, utilities used to employ proprietary protocols, which were specified by the product vendors. Gradually, it was decided to move towards open standards to provide an interoperable environment and improve modelling capabilities. Apart from PMU standards, in a typical power system several communication protocols exist and are required for transferring data and each of them covering certain domains and specific groups of data. The objective of this paper is to investigate the adoption, development and performance of the most common open standards to enable interoperable wide area monitoring systems.

The integration of mobile and sensor technologies, and the design and implementation of different web-enabled visualizations to support inquiry learning in different educational scenarios encompass the main research efforts carried out in this thesis. These challenges are addressed from the perspectives of mobile and web engineering, visualization and technology-enhanced learning (TEL). Thus, the main research question investigated in this thesis relates to the identification of the main features that can guide the design and implementation of web and mobile applications to support inquiry learning in different contexts. This thesis consists of a collection of four publications that describe the research efforts conducted during a period of three years in relation to the Learning Ecology through Science with Global Outcomes (LETS GO) research project. The research questions investigated and the implemented technological solutions reported in these publications are closely related to the main goals and challenges of this thesis. The design and implementation of the proposed software system was guided, deployed and refined having the following aspects in mind: (1) System Requirements and Architectural Design, (2) System Implementation and Deployment, and (3) System Assessment and Web Usability Testing. During the three years of development efforts, three software prototypes were implemented utilizing service-oriented approaches. These efforts have been tested with more than 200 users in connection to several trials that took place during this period. The user trials allowed testing the software application throughout three development iterations on authentic settings, while new requirements continuously emerged in these activities. This process made it possible to verify that user requirements were adequately addressed while satisfying their needs. The outcomes of these activities led to the design and implementation of a system architecture that relies on service-oriented approaches and open standards. The main outcomes of this thesis are presented in the form of Architectural Concepts, as they can be used to guide the design and implementation of web and mobile applications to support inquiry learning. The idea behind architectural concepts is to provide a set of tools for supporting the overall life cycle of a software development process, such as requirements, design, implementation, deployment and testing while coping with rapid changes of technological implementations. Some of the architectural concepts identified in this thesis correspond well with the kind of support that inquiry-learning activities require. They provide solid foundations in terms of possibilities to tackle the requirements for supporting inquiry learning in a flexible manner.

Background The Blue Obelisk movement was established in 2005 as a response to the lack of Open Data, Open Standards and Open Source (ODOSOS) in chemistry. It aims to make it easier to carry out chemistry research by promoting interoperability between chemistry software, encouraging cooperation between Open Source developers, and developing community resources and Open Standards. Results This contribution looks back on the work carried out by the Blue Obelisk in the past 5 years and surveys progress and remaining challenges in the areas of Open Data, Open Standards, and Open Source in chemistry. Conclusions We show that the Blue Obelisk has been very successful in bringing together researchers and developers with common interests in ODOSOS, leading to development of many useful resources freely available to the chemistry community.

This report reviews the status, opportunities and constraints of the Royal Government of Bhutan's e-Governance program, and recommends actions to enhance and accelerate it. The report is structured as follows: Part II is a strategic view and executive summary of the present situation, opportunities, constraints and suggested strategy for acceleration of e-Governance in Bhutan. Parts III through VII look at the various dimensions of the strategy, namely human resources (Part III), institutional framework (Part IV), e-governance architecture (Part V), interoperability framework (Part VI) and implementation roadmap (Part VII). The Appendices expand upon various aspects of the report and provide complementary information. Appendix (VIII) subsection F, describes an alternative strategy suggested by an external peer reviewer of the final report, which can enable the rapid rollout of e-Government in the Bhutanese context using a commercial Enterprise Resource Planning system purpose built for the public sector, albeit with certain limitations and costs which need to be evaluated in further detail.

Tez (Yüksek Lisans) -- İstanbul Teknik Üniversitesi, Fen Bilimleri Enstitüsü, 2010, Thesis (M.Sc.) -- İstanbul Technical University, Institute of Science and Technology, 2010, Bu çalışma kapsamında, eDevlet uygulamalarında birlikte çalışabilirliğin önemine vurgu yapılarak, bu işlevselliği sağlayacak olan açık standartlar konusu araştırılmıştır. Açık standartların, gün geçtikçe yakınlaşan bilgi ve iletişim çağında giderek daha çok önem kazandığı, gelişimi tetiklediği ve “açık” sistemlerin temel yapı taşını oluşturduğu görülmektedir. Kamu kurumları arasında veya dışında yüksek oranda birlikte çalışabilirlik ancak bu standartlara uyumla sağlanabilmektedir. Özellikle kalkınma hedefinde olan az gelişmiş ve gelişmekte olan ülkeler açısından bu konu daha büyük bir stratejik önem taşımaktadır. Açık ve gelişmiş bir topluma giden yolun önünü açmak için bu konuda doğru politikalar geliştirmek ve bu alandaki çalışmalara ağırlık verilmesi gereği ortaya çıkmaktadır. Çalışma, ana hatlarıyla şu akış içerisinde gerçekleşmiştir: eDevlet ve birlikte çalışabilirlik kavramlarının tanımlanması sonrasında “açık standartlar” konusuna girilerek, standartların gerekliliği ile çeşitleri ve oluşturulma süreçleri anlatılmış, “açık”lığın anlamı üzerinde durulmuştur. Açık standartların birlikte çalışabilirlik çerçevelerinde ne şekilde yer aldığının incelenmesi sonrasında, açık standartların önem ve yararları anlatılmış ve konu ile ilgili tartışmalara değinilmiştir. Bunun arkasından, birlikte çalışabilirlik ve açık standartlar konusunda dünyadaki ve Türkiye’deki durum ile ilgili araştırmalar yapılmıştır. Son olarak, Türkiye’de farkındalık düzeyini ve eğilimleri belirlemeye yönelik olarak gerçekleştiren anket çalışması ve değerlendirme sonuçlarına yer verilmiştir., This study underlines the importance of interoperability for eGovernment applications and investigates open standards which enable this functionality. Open standards are becoming increasingly important in the present age of information and communication convergence, driving the force for growth and are building blocks “open” systems. It is only by strict adherence to these standards that a high degree of interoperability can be achieved among government agencies or elsewhere. It takes greater strategic importance for especially underdeveloped and developing countries which target growth. To lead the way through open and advanced society, proper policies should be made and more attenttion should be given about this subject. Outline of the study is as follows: After defining the concepts of eGovernment and interoperability, “open standards” have been introduced in terms of need for standards, types and development processes, focusing on the meaning of “openness”. It further includes a research about how open standards are addressed in interoperability frameworks, the importance and benefits of open standards and discussions about the topic. Later, it investigates how interoperability and open standards is positioned in the world and Turkey. Finally, it presents the survey conducted to measure the awareness of and trends toward interoperability and open standards, and the assessments derived from results., Yüksek Lisans, M.Sc.

At KDD-2009 in Paris, a panel on open standards and cloud computing addressed emerging trends for data mining applications in science and industry. This report summarizes the answers from a distinguished group of thought leaders representing key software vendors in the data mining industry. Supporting open standards and the Predictive Model Markup Language (PMML) in particular, the panel members discuss topics regarding the adoption of prevailing standards, benefits of interoperability for business users, and the practical application of predictive models. We conclude with an assessment of emerging technology trends and the impact that cloud computing will have on applications as well as licensing models for the predictive analytics industry.

Many production Grid and e-Science infrastructures have begun to offer services to end-users during the past several years with an increasing number of scientific applications that require access to a wide variety of resources and services in multiple Grids. Therefore, the Grid Interoperation Now-Community Group of the Open Grid Forum-organizes and manages interoperation efforts among those production Grid infrastructures to reach the goal of a world-wide Grid vision on a technical level in the near future. This contribution highlights fundamental approaches of the group and discusses open standards in the context of production e-Science infrastructures. © 2009 John Wiley and Sons, Ltd.

Mestrado em Gestão de Sistemas de Informação A integração logística é uma condição determinante para o desenvolvimento do transporte maritímo-portuário. O presente trabalho de investigação propõe-se demonstrar que essa integração passa por adoptar uma estratégia digital e que a tecnologia emergente de Web Services constitui já uma boa aproximação. O transporte marítimo-portuário caracteriza-se pela multiplicidade de nós, de actores, concorrentes com diferentes papéis, por atravessar fronteiras, e por ser suportado por relações comerciais individualizadas entre pares de parceiros, pelo que, para a caracterização deste sistema e para encontrar as respostas às questões em investigação, se optou por efectuar uma triangulação de várias fontes de informação. A metodologia usada consiste na análise de alguns estudos europeus, que oferecem o enquadramento na EU, sendo aplicado o estudo de casos a algumas empresas de um porto português e a teoria de grafos para a análise da rede marítima do porto. É ainda efectuado um Benchmarking com o transporte aéreo, para comparar, nos aspectos em análise, as opções tomadas. Finalmente é verificado, se existe oferta do lado dos fornecedores de soluções TI. Atingir uma integração logística, passa por garantir a interoperabilidade ao longo da cadeia logística, visando a reutilização da informação através de infra-estruturas TI flexíveis e partilhadas. Sistemas de EAI ou Enterprise Application Integration, bem desenhados e implementados, permitem que as organizações respondam agilmente, e em tempo útil, às necessidades de mudança e inovação. Os Web Services baseados em XML, normas abertas e tecnologia Internet, prometem potenciar estes requisitos do negócio. Com base nos resultados obtidos são feitas algumas sugestões e proposto um modelo conceptual que visa fomentar a interoperabilidade das TI entre os diferentes actores e possibilitar uma efectiva gestão do conhecimento. Face à complexidade e interesse do tema, são ainda sugeridos futuros trabalhos. This research has the goals of identifying if the emerging Web Services technology could be a good approach for a strategy in the digital arena of the maritime-harbour business and also to suggest a conceptual model for that strategy. In order to pursue the goals in this industry, collaboration and integration enhancement is required, aiming information reuse throughout sharing flexible IT infrastructures. Supply-chain interoperability is becoming an essential requisite to accomplish. EAI systems or Enterprise Application Integration systems, well designed and implemented, allow the organizations to address both business changes and innovation needs. The XML based Web Services, open rules and Internet technology, promise to enable these business requirements. This business has many players with different roles, and goes over borders, and therefore, in order to characterize the system being studied and to find the right answers to the questions under research, it was chosen a triangulation approach, using different information sources. First of all, using some European final reports, which convey the EU situation. Secondly, the case study research is applied to some companies working in a Portuguese harbor, as well as the graph theory for the maritime net analysis. Thirdly, a benchmarking with the air transport is also made in order to identify the chosen options under the different criteria being analyzed. Finally, it is checked which solutions are available from the IT market suppliers. Based on the results found, some recommendations are made and a conceptual model is proposed in order to boost the IT interoperability among the different players, enabling an effective global knowledge management. Given the complexity of this subject, future work is also suggested.

Today's concepts of information and communication technologies merge is based on open network architecture standards and consistent development frameworks. Basic effect of synergy is visible through unique and common services. To enable convergence of existing network resources with new network concepts it is necessary to follow well defined interoperability standards and to use flexible/open technological elements. This article deals with basic analysis for component based architectures and of-the-shelf containers for service delivery environment in the telecommunication network. The analysis is based on the open standards and associated frameworks.